XII. PROSE WRITERS SINCE 1881: SPEKTOR
IN the short period of two years Judeo-German literature lost four of its most prominent writers: in 1891 there passed away the veteran poet, Michel Gordon; the next year J. L. Gordon followed him; and soon after death gathered in Dick and Zederbaum. Without having himself produced any works of a permanent value, without having in any way accelerated or retarded the course of its literature, Zederbaum is peculiarly identified with its development and has on two important occasions in the history of the Jews of Russia served as a crystallizing body for the literary forces in the vernacular. He was born in 1816, and in his youth enjoyed the intimate friendship of Ettinger and Aksenfeld. He had fostered the budding talents of Abramowitsch and Linetzki at a time when the efforts of the first disciples of the Haskala were about to be crowned by a success they had hardly dreamed would be realized so soon. And he lived to see all his hopes crushed in the occurrences of 1881, when his race was threatened to be cast back into darkness more dense than at his birth. During a lifetime thus rich in momentous experiences, he has in his person reflected the succession of events as far as they affected his race. In 1861 he founded a Hebrew periodical, the Hameliz, as a mouthpiece of the more advanced ideas of culture for that restricted class of the learned and educated who still clung to the sacred language as the only medium for the advancement of worldly knowledge. But he felt that the time had come when the masses who, on the one side, could not be reached by that ancient tongue, and who, on the other, had not yet had an opportunity of a Russian instruction, must be approached directly in their own mother-tongue. So, two years later, he started the Judeo-German supplement to his Hebrew weekly, the Kol-mewasser, which was for ten years the rallying ground of all who could wield a Judeo-German pen. Then the Government interfered in the publication, and for another decade there was no periodical published in Russia in that language. Nor was that to be regretted, for its usefulness had become very small. The Russian schools were crowded with Jewish young men and women, and there was not a science or an art to which the Jews had not given a large contingent, and this vanguard of the new culture, even if it had not broken with the traditions of the past, could be reached only by means of the Russian language. To fall in line with these changed conditions, Zederbaum founded two Russian periodicals for the discussion of Jewish affairs.
After a great deal of trouble, he succeeded in October of 1881 in getting the Government's permission to issue a Judeo-German weekly, the Jüdisches Volksblatt. He felt that his duty was once more with the masses, that they needed the advice of better-informed men in the impending danger, and at the advanced age of sixty-five he once more took upon his shoulders a publication in which he had no supporters. In the first two years the weekly was bare of literary productions. Except for an occasional poem by J. L. Gordon, and here and there a feuilleton, the rest was occupied by political news, for which Zederbaum had to supply the leaders. Abramowitsch and Linetzki had ceased writing, and no new generation had had time to develop literary talents. The tone of the new novel, to do any positive good, had to be different from those current before. Dick had been writing for the people with little regard to the people's familiarity with the scenes described, while Abramowitsch wrote of the people but not necessarily to the level of an humble audience. Now the author had to write both of and for the people, he had to be in touch with them not as a critic or moralizer, but as a sympathetic friend. In 1883, two such men made their debut in the Jüdisches Volksblatt: Mordechai Spektor, the calm observer of the life in the lower strata of society, and Solomon Rabinowitsch, the impulsive painter of scenes from the middle classes. Of these, the first came nearest to what Zederbaum regarded as requisite for a writer in those troublous times, and he called Spektor to St. Petersburg to take charge of the literary part of his weekly.
In the short time of his connection with the Volksblatt, and later as editor of several periodicals of his own, Spektor[94] has developed a great activity. He has written a large number of short sketches and more extended novels,[95] and his talent is still in the ascendant. All of his productions are characterized by the same melancholy dignity and even tenor. He is never in a hurry with his narration, and his characters are sketched with a firm hand and clearly outlined against the background of the story. He loves his subjects with a calm, dispassionate love, and he loves the meanest of his creations no less than his heroes. He likes to dwell with them and to inspect them from every coign of vantage. He fondly tells of their good qualities and suffers with them for their natural defects. And yet, though he loves them, he does not place a halo around them, he does not idealize them. The situations are developed in his stories naturally, independently of what he would like them to be.
Although he now and then describes the life of the middle classes, he more often treats incidents from the life of the artisans in the small towns, who have not been affected by the modern culture. Himself having had few advantages in life, he has been able to keep in closer touch with the men and women about whom and for whom he writes. He understands them thoroughly, and they like to listen to him. He does not sermonize to them, he does not attack them or their enemies; he merely speaks to them as their friend. The Khassid and the Anti-Khassid, the laborer and the man of culture, Jew and Non-Jew, can read him with equal pleasure. The student of manners finds in his faithful pictures as rich a store of information as in Schatzkes' or Linetzki's works, and he has the conviction that nothing is distorted or thrown out of its proper proportion, as the others sometimes have to do in order to strengthen their arguments. Spektor is a young man, having been born in 1859, and was a witness of the occurrences in the seventies and the eighties from which he draws the subjects for his stories. His style is simple, without any attempts at adornment, and his language, based on his native dialect of Uman in the Government of Kiev, is chaste and pure.
One of the most puzzling problems to the Judeo-German writers of modern times has been the treatment of love in the Jewish novel. They all agree that they have to follow Western models in that class of literature, and they are all equally sure that that passion does not exist among their people in any of the phases with which one meets elsewhere. The young woman's education in a Jewish home is such as to exclude a blind self-abandonment, with the consequent tragic results. Her desire to form family ties is greater than the natural promptings of her heart; her infatuation of the moment is easily smothered by a cool calculation of her future welfare, by the consideration of her duties towards her future husband and children. Unless the author uses the greatest caution in this matter, he is liable to fall into exaggerations and sentimentalities which would soon land him among the writers of the type of Schaikewitsch. But Spektor, not departing even in this from his usual candor, intermingles the most romantic passages with the cold facts of stern reality. His unrequited lovers do not commit suicide, or pine their lives away; they get over their infatuations in a manner prescribed by their religious convictions, get married to others, and rear happy families. Here is an example:
In 'The Fashionable Shoemaker' we are introduced to the sphere of a well-to-do shoemaker with no pretensions to any kind of culture. Having gotten on successfully in life, he is anxious to marry his daughter Breindele to Schlōme, the dandyish son of Sender Liebersohn, the rich man of the town. The latter looks favorably on the alliance in spite of the general disinclination of business men to enter into family ties with artisans, as he is desirous of feathering his son's nest before an impending bankruptcy sweeps away his fortune. Lipsche, Breindele's mother, in vain tries to dissuade her husband from the step, while Hirschel, the chief apprentice in the shop, is earnestly pleading with Breindele to marry him, for he loves her dearly. But she is too much attracted by the wealth of Schlōme and her future social position to listen to her father's simple-hearted, honest workman. The marriage is consummated, and soon a complete change takes place in the affairs of all concerned. Liebersohn loses his possessions. Hirschel, bearing in his heart his unrequited love, leaves his master and establishes a shop of his own. He works with great energy to forget his sorrow, and becomes a dangerous competitor of Susje, the shoemaker, whose hard-earned savings are slowly disappearing under the double obligation to support his family and that of his daughter Breindele. In vain some of the 'modern' girls of the town dress themselves in their best gowns and don fine silk stockings when Hirschel comes to take a measure of their feet for new pairs of shoes for them. Their machinations have no effect on Hirschel, who lives quietly for himself. But one day he notices Leotschke, Breindele's younger sister, in the street, and he is struck by her resemblance to his former love. When he left his master she was but a child, and now she is a pretty maiden. He cultivates her acquaintance, falls in love with her and is loved by her. There are no love scenes in the story. Hirschel goes to Leotschke's mother and gets her willing consent to the union. After the marriage he helps support Breindele and her family, for her husband, Schlōme, who has learned no trade, finds it hard to make a living.
One of his best sketches is the one entitled 'Two Companions.' It is a gem among the many good things he has written,—perfect in form and rounded off as few of his sketches are. It tells of two girls, Rōsele and Perele, who have grown up together as dear friends. When they reach the age of sixteen Rōsele notices that the young students of the gymnasium pay more attention to her beautiful companion than to her. She becomes jealous, suspects the seamstress of purposely favoring her friend with more carefully worked dresses, which enhance her natural beauty, accuses Rōsele of drawing away her gentlemen friends by unfair means, and finally when she finds herself more and more abandoned by her acquaintances, she completely breaks off her relations with the friend of her childhood. They lead a separate existence. At the age of thirty-five Perele is bowed down with sorrows: she has buried a husband and two children, has again married, and her days are taken up in the care of her family and unpleasant discussions with her jealous husband. Rōsele has married a sickly man with whom she has nothing in common. He married her only for her money. Their child is as frail as its father, and Rōsele's days are passed in sordid cares and worry.
"So passed another twenty-five years. After a long severe winter there came at last the young, fresh spring in all his glory, with his many attendants of all kinds who warble, whistle, chatter, and clatter, in the trees, in the air, on the earth, and in the grass. The streets are dry, the air is warm.... In an avenue of trees, on the sunlit side of it, two old women are walking together. They are dressed in old-fashioned, long burnouses, and hold umbrellas in their hands against which they lean. Their faces are wrinkled, their heads drooping to one side, and they stop every few steps they take, and speak with their toothless mouths:
"'My dear Perele, this has been a long winter!'