The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century

by Leo Wiener

While these writers had in view the eradication of some error and the dissemination of culture by their works, the ancient story-telling for the mere love of amusing still continues to attract the masses. The better class of authors were too serious to condescend to compete with the badchen in their efforts to entertain. The lighter story was consequently left to an inferior set of men who frequently had no other excuse for writing their stories than the hope of earning a few roubles by them. Of such a character are 'Doctor Kugelmann,' 'Wigderl the Son of Wigderl.' There is, however, a wide difference in these from similar story-books of the previous generation. The older chapbooks were based mainly on the romantic material of the West, generally reflecting nothing of the Jewish life in them. The newer stories of the Southwest of Russia have this in common with the works of the classical writers, that they reproduce scenes of contemporaneous Jewish life. At times these tales are well told and well worth reading. Such is the amusing quid pro quo in 'A Jew, then not a Jew, then a Good Jew [i.e. a Khassid], and Again a Jew,' by S. Hochbaum. Still more interesting is the charming comedy 'The Savings of the Women' by Ludwig Levinsohn.[90] Its plot is as follows: Jekel, a Khassid, returns late at night to his house, where he is awaited by his wife Selde. To silence her torrent of invectives he invents a story that the decree of Rabbi Gershon, by which monogamy had been introduced among the Jews of Europe in the eleventh century, was about to be dissolved in order that by marrying several wives the Jews of the town might get new dowries with which to pay the arrears in their taxes. His wife spreads this news throughout the community, to the great terror of the women. They resolve to avert the calamity by offering up their savings stored away in stockings and bundles. These are brought to the assembled brotherhood of the Khassidim, who, of course, use the money for a jollification. There are many amusing incidents in the play. The servant of Selde is dreaming of the time when she shall be married to Jekel and when she will lord it over her former mistress; the scene in the women's galleries when the news of the impending misfortune is reported is very humorous, and the attempt of the Rabbi's wife to learn the truth of the fact from her husband who had not been initiated in the story by Jekel is quite dramatic. It is one of the best, if not the best, comedy written in Judeo-German.

A number of witty stories in a semi-dramatic form have been produced by Ulrich Kalmus; the most of these are disfigured by coarse jokes, but a few of them it would well pay to rearrange for scenic representation. One of his best is a version of the Talmudical legend of the devil and the bad wife; it is almost precisely the same that Robert Browning has versified in his 'Doctor ——.' A good story, resembling Linetzki's 'The Polish Boy,' but with much less bitterness and humor, is given in 'Jekele Kundas,' by one who signs himself by the pseudonym Abasch. Translations from foreign tongues are not uncommon in this period. Some Russian stories are rendered into Judeo-German; also a few German dramas, such as Lessing's 'The Jews'; from the English we have Walter Scott's 'Ivanhoe' and Longfellow's 'Judas Maccabæus'; and from the French we get for that time Massé's 'The Story of a Piece of Bread,' and from the Hebrew one of Luzzato's dramas. To other useful works of a scientific character we shall return later.

There is a marked difference in the development of Judeo-German literature in the Khassidic Southwest and the Misnagdic North. While the first gave promise of a natural growth and a better future, the second showed early the seeds of decay. The nearness to Germany explains the deterioration of the literary Judeo-German of Lithuania, but the cause for the weaker activity in the literature itself is to be sought in the whole mental attitude of the Misnagdim, who as strict ritualists did not allow the promptings of the heart to interfere with their blind adherence to the Law. The very origin of Khassidism was due to a protest against that cold formalism which excluded everything imaginative. Unfortunately this protest opened the way to the Cabbala and admitted the wildest excesses of mysticism in the affairs of everyday life, and this soon gave rise to that form of the new sect with which we meet so frequently in the descriptions of the early authors of the Southwest. These, however, in tearing themselves away from their early associations abandoned only their degraded religious faith, not the love for the fanciful which, if properly directed by a controlling reason, would lead to an artistic career. The Misnagdim, on the contrary, in breaking with their traditions were predisposed to become rationalists with whom utilitarian motives prevailed over the finer sentiments. Their advocates of the Reform, who took to writing in the vernacular of the people, set about from the very start to create a useful, rather than an artistic, literature, to give positive instruction rather than to amuse. The outward form of language and style was immaterial to them; the information the story carried was their only excuse for writing it. Foremost of that class of writers was Aisik Meier Dick,[91] who in the introduction to one of his stories[92] speaks as follows of his purpose in publishing them:

"Our women have no ear and no feeling for pure ethical instruction. They want to hear only of miracles and wonderful deeds whether invented or true; they find delight in the story of Joseph de la Reyna, or of Elijah's appearance in the form of an old man to be the tenth in the Minyan on the eve of the Atonement day; they are even satisfied with the story of Bevys of Hamptoun and the Greyhound, with the Horse Drendsel and the Sword Familie, and with the beautiful Princess Deresna, or merely with a story of a Bride and Bridegroom.

"This sad fact, dear readers, I took deep to heart, and I resolved to make use of this very weakness for interesting stories for their own good by composing books of an entertaining nature, which would at the same time carry moral lessons. Thanks to God I have succeeded in my undertaking, for my stories are being read diligently, and they are productive of good. Several hundred stories of all kinds have been so far issued by me, each having a different purpose. Even every witty tale and mere witticism teaches something useful. I am sure a great number of my readers do not suspect my good intentions, and read my stories, just as they read Bovo, for pastime only, and will accuse me, the writer of the same, as being a mere babbler who distracts the attention from serious studies, and as writing them for the money that there is in them. I know all that full well, and yet I keep on doing my duty, for even greater men than I have been treated in no better way by our nation; our prophets have been cursed by us, and beaten, and pulled by the hair, and spit upon, and some have even been killed. I am proud to be able to say that I am not making my living from my writings, and I should have been repaid tenfold better if I had passed my time in some more profitable work. But I do it only out of love for my nation, of whom the most do not know how far they are removed from mankind at large, and what a miserable position we occupy in these enlightened days among the civilized nations.... We must, whether we wish or not, enter into much closer relations with the outside world than our parents did. We must, therefore, be better acquainted with the world, that we may be tolerated by our fellow-men (the Gentiles), who surpass us in civilization.... Consequently, I regard it as a great favor to speak to you by means of my books, and as a still greater favor that the famous firm of Romm is willing to print them, for the publication of prayers is more profitable than that of story-books that are only read in circulating libraries or merely borrowed from a friend."

This passage fully characterizes Dick's activity, which lasted from the fifties until his death, in 1893. He was not a man of deep learning, and did not produce any masterpieces, such as the other writers of the time were printing in the South. But he atoned for this by his great earnestness and good common sense, which led him to choose the best subjects for his stories, such as would be of the most immediate good for his humble readers. He translated or imitated the leading popular books of his time, not limiting himself to such as were taken out of Jewish life, but independently of their religious tenor. Among his translations we find the works of Bernstein, Campe, Beecher-Stowe; there are imitations of Danish, French, Polish, and Russian books; and many subjects, not easily traceable now, have been suggested to him by other literatures. He has also written many stories taken from the life of the Lithuanian Jews. He ascribes great importance to biographies, devoting several introductions to impress the necessity of reading these. But he treats just as frequently geographical and historical themes; among the latter he has even dared to give an impartial discussion of the Reformation.

At first Dick's books were small 16mos of rarely more than forty-eight pages, and up to the year 1871 the abbreviation AMD, for his name, occurs but twice. After that all his works bear the initials, or even the name in full. The small size of the books is due to his desire to make them accessible to the poorest of his race; this necessitated a retrenchment of nearly all the works which he translated. Only in the eighties, when reading had become universal and more expensive works could be published, did he issue octavos of considerable thickness, some of them being four-volumed books. Dick had no talent as a writer, and his style is but a weak reflection of the originals which he translated. The language he uses is a frightful mixture of Judeo-German with German, the latter frequently predominating over the first, so that he is often obliged to give in parentheses the explanation of unusual words. And so it happened that, although his purpose had been a good one, and his influence had at first been salutary on a very large circle of readers, he has set a bad example to a large host of scribblers who have taken all imaginable liberties with the language and the subjects they treated of, and have produced a flood of bastard literature under which the many better productions are entirely drowned. He has destroyed all feeling for a proper diction, and has cultivated only a passion for reading, so that it was necessary for his followers to write 'ein höchst interessanter Roman' on the title-page, and parade the book with crumbs of German words unintelligible to the public, in order to find a ready sale.

One of the first to write in the style of Dick was M. R. Schaikewitsch,[93] who began his prolific career in 1876, since which time he has brought out more than one hundred books, the most of which are of bulky proportions. At first he was satisfied to tell stories from the life of his immediate surroundings, but soon he aspired to higher things, and began to drag in by the hair scenes and situations of which he did not have the slightest conception. As long as he wrote of what he had himself seen he produced books that, without doing any particular good, were to a certain extent harmless. He certainly has a better talent for telling a story than Dick; his language is also nearer the spoken vernacular, and in the beginning he avoided Germanisms. He might, therefore, have developed into one of the best Jargonists, had he chosen to study, and had he worked less rapidly. In an adaptation of Gogol's 'The Inspector,' he has shown what he might have been had he had any earnest purpose in life. But he lacks entirely Dick's straightforwardness, and writes only to make money. The common people devoured his stories with the same zeal that formerly they showed towards the productions of Dick, and unwittingly they have imbibed a poison which the later authors of a nobler nature, who have the interests of the people at heart, are trying to eradicate. These try to point out directly by accusation, and indirectly by writing better novels, how dangerous and immoral Schaikewitsch is in his books. They go too far in their anxiety to bias the mind of the masses against him when they speak of his proneness to immoral scenes, for in that he is not worse than many of the better class of authors. The deleterious effect is produced not by these, but by his introducing a world to them that does not exist in reality, that gives them a most perverted idea of life, without teaching them any facts worth knowing. In his many historical novels, for example, he uses good sources for the fundamental facts on which he bases his tale, but the men and women are such as could never have existed at the period described and that do not exist now: they are monstrosities of his imagination as they appear to him in his very narrow sphere of experiences. His treatment of these historical themes is not unlike the one given to the stories of Alexander and other ancient works during the Middle Ages. The resemblance is still further increased by his extravagant, romantic conception of love, on which he dwells with special pleasure, to the great joy of his feminine public.

A much better attempt at transferring the method of Dick to dramatic productions had been made as early as 1867 and the following year by J. B. Falkowitsch. His two dramas 'Chaimel the Rich' and 'Rochele the Singer' were at one time very popular in the South. The second is an adaptation of some foreign work; the first is probably original. They are written in a good vernacular, but are devoid of interest, as the didactic element outweighs the plot, and the latter is very loosely developed. Schaikewitsch has had many imitators, all of whom try to rival him in quantity. Among these are to be counted Blaustein, Beckermann, Seiffert, Budson, Buchbinder; the latter, a writer without talent, has at least given some useful translations, and has also written some articles on the popular belief of the Jews. Outside of Dick, the Northwest has produced two important writers, one in the beginning, the other at the end, of the period. The first is Zweifel, whom we already know from his poetical works; the other is Schatzkes, the author of 'The Jewish Ante-Passover.' Zweifel has produced several small works of aphorisms which have been very popular and have been frequently reprinted. Their fine moral tone, the purity of the language used in them, the simple style in which they are composed, place them among the best books of Judeo-German literature. He has also written a story, 'The Happy Reader of the Haphtora,' which is a discussion on piety and honesty clad in the form of a tale. The other, M. A. Schatzkes, has written but one book, which is not properly called a story, but an invaluable cyclopedia of Jewish customs, particularly such as directly or indirectly refer to the Passover, strung together in chronological order as a consecutive action. With the exception of Linetzki's 'The Polish Boy,' there has been written no one work that treats so comprehensively of the beliefs and habits of the Jews in Russia. Schatzkes is an indifferent story-teller, and his work is full of repetitions, but, nevertheless, 'The Jewish Ante-Passover' must be counted among the classics of the period under discussion. It is a sad picture that is portrayed in it; in a straightforward manner, without exaggeration, he tells of conditions that one would hardly believe possible as existing at the end of the nineteenth century.

Neither of these men has told stories in the manner of the Southern writers, for neither of them cared as much for the form as for the contents in which they told them. They differ from Dick in that they at least did not use a corrupt language in their works. All the other writers have no excuse for writing at all. This inferior literature had its rise in the seventies, when the better forces had been alienated from the people and had received instruction in Russian schools. The men who had been writing for the Haskala, finding their efforts crowned with success, had ceased to write; many of the older men had passed away. The newer generation had no reason to proceed in the path of the older men. There were only the lower classes left, who had had no advantages in the foreign education, and who were craving for reading matter of whatsoever kind. It was to these alone that the newer writers spoke, and they were not animated by any high motives in addressing them. They were left to themselves to do as they pleased, for the seventies are characterized by an absence of all criticism. No one cared what they did or how they did it. All felt and hoped that the last hour for the Jargon had come, and it was immaterial to them what was produced in Judeo-German literature before its final decay. But Abramowitsch's prophecy in 'The Dobbin' was fulfilled,—the assimilation that had been going on peacefully had not produced the desired result, and one morning those who had had time to forget the language their mothers had been talking to them awoke to the bitter consciousness that they were despised Jews, on the same level with the most lowly of their race. Among these arose a new school of writers who introduced the methods of the literary languages into their native dialect. The next period, the present, is signalized by a spirit of sound criticism.