The latest blood-bath was instituted against the Jews of Russia in 1881.
In the same year there was started in St. Petersburg a weekly
periodical, _Jüdisches Volksblatt_, by the editor of the _Kol-mewasser_
which had gone out of existence ten years before. The purpose of the new
publication was to focus all the available forces that had been
dispersed in the decade preceding through the agencies that made for
assimilation, and to prepare the way for a renewed activity among the
people. These no longer needed to be urged on to progress, but had to be
comforted in the misfortunes that had befallen them, and in the dangers
that awaited them. In the first number of the new periodical there
appeared the poem of J. L. Gordon on 'The Law written on Parchment,'
while the second brought one by the same author, outlining his plan to
sing words of encouragement to his suffering, hard-working brothers and
sisters. However, very soon after all singing ceased. The year 1882 had
been one of too much suffering, when even consolation is out of place.
Two years later S. Rabinowitsch, who was destined by his unresting
energy and good example to cause a revival of Judeo-German literature,
justly exclaimed in the same weekly[63] in a poem 'To Our Poet': "Arise,
thou Poet! Where have you been all this time? Send us from afar your
words of wisdom! For what other pleasure have your brothers if not your
sweet and consoling songs?"
While no other singers were forthcoming, Rabinowitsch composed himself a
series of songs, although he was preparing himself to be a novelist. His
heart was with the poetry of the Russian Nekrasov, and his native
Judeo-German gave him Michel Gordon for a model. He imitated both,
taking the structure from the Russian, and the manner of the folksong
from Gordon. When his talent was just reaching its fullest development,
he abandoned this branch of literature to devote his undivided attention
to prose. Only twice afterwards he returned to the use of rhythm, once
in a poem, entitled 'Progress, Civilization,' an imitation of Nekrasov's
'Who lives in Russia Happily,' and at another time in a legend in blank
verse. The first has never been finished, the other appeared in a
collective volume of poetry published in 1887 by M. Spektor, his friend
and rival in the resuscitation of Judeo-German letters.
That volume, named 'Der Familienfreund,' was intended as an attempt to
bring together all those who wrote poetry; but we find in it only names
that had been known to us from the previous period: M. Gordon, Zunser,
Goldfaden, Linetzki.[64] To these must be added the name of Rabinowitsch
just mentioned, and of Samostschin, who had furnished a few poems to the
_Kol-mewasser_ nearly twenty years before. In the _Volksblatt_ there
were published in the meanwhile a few songs by various authors, most
prominently by Moses Chaschkes. He also printed in 1889 a volume of his
poems at Cracow, under the name of 'Songs from the Heart,' in which are
contained a number of reflections on the riots in Russia. There are some
good thoughts in them, although the technique is not always faultless.
He, too, belongs to the older type of folk-singers.
The Jews had at that time furnished three names to Russian poetry: those
of Nadson, Vilenkin (Minski), and Frug. Of these the first had a
Christian mother and died at the early age of twenty-four, in 1886. The
second had begun his poetical career in the seventies, after having
received a thorough Russian education. There was only Frug left, who had
not entirely broken with his Jewish traditions, for he had gone directly
from the Jewish farmer colony where he had been born to St. Petersburg
to engage in literary work. His first Russian poem was published in
1879. In 1885 he began to compose also in Judeo-German, continuing to do
so to the present time.[65] Like many other Jewish writers he had become
convinced that his duties were above all with his race, as long as it
was oppressed and persecuted, and his energy was thus unfortunately
split in two by writing in two languages. For the same reason such poets
as Perez, Winchevsky, Rosenfeld, have taken to Judeo-German, which is
understood by few and which in a few decades is doomed to extinction,
except in countries of persecution. They adorn their humble literature,
but they would have been an honor to other literatures as well, and from
these they have been alienated.
When Frug began to write in his native dialect, he had already acquired
a reputation in a literary language. He had passed the severe school of
the poet's technique, had been trained in the traditions of his
vocation. One could not expect that in descending to speak to his
coreligionists in their own tongue, he would return to the more
primitive methods of the popular bard. He simply changed the language,
but nothing of his art. By this transference he only gains in
reputation, although he loses in popularity, for the accusation
frequently brought against him, that he confines himself to too narrow a
sphere, falls to the ground when he intends that that narrow sphere
alone should be his audience. Half a century had gone by since Dr.
Ettinger had introduced the form and subject-matter of German poetry,
and since those days no such harmony had been heard to issue from the
mouth of a Jewish poet. There were no literary traditions to fall back
upon, except the folksong of the preceding generation; there scarcely
existed a poetical diction for Judeo-German, and a variety of dialects
were striving for supremacy. What he and the people owed to Michel
Gordon, he expressed in two poems entitled 'To Michel Gordon' and 'On
Michel Gordon's Grave'; both collectively he named 'One of the Best.' In
an allegorical series, 'Songs of the Jewish Jargon,' he sings of the
history of the language which is identical with that of his downtrodden
race. The prologue is a model of beautiful style. The Slavic dactyllic
diminutives, grafted on German stems, the gentle cadence of words, the
simplicity of the diction, remind one rather of mellifluous Italian than
of a disorderly mixture which, in the poem, he compares to the bits of
bread in a beggar's wallet, or which, according to another part in the
same allegory, excludes the deceased Jew from heaven, as the angel at
the gate cannot understand him.
There are a few poems in his collection in which he bewails the lot of a
Jewish poet who has only tears for his subject, but the most deal with
incidents in the life of his oppressed coreligionists, now painting
pictures of their misery, their poverty, their lack of orderliness, now
giving them words of consolation. He never passes the narrow frame of
his people's surroundings, no matter what he sings. Even when he chooses
nature of which to sing, it appears to him transformed under a heavy
cloud of his own sufferings superinduced by the persecution of his
brethren. The best of his poems are those entitled 'Night Songs,' in
which he depicts a few night scenes. Here is the way he describes the
Melamed, the teacher of children in those miserable quarters called a
school: "Behold the palace, oh, how beautiful, how magnificent: ivory
and velvet, silk, leather, bronze, cedar wood ... here lives a Jewish
teacher.... Of velvet is his skullcap--it glistens and shines from afar;
the fescue is made of ivory; his girdle is of silk; the candelabrum is
of bronze; the knout is of leather; the stool, the stool is cut out of
cedar wood!" One can easily see that the rest of the picture is in
keeping with the glory just described. There is gloom everywhere in his
songs. And how could it be otherwise? It was proper for Ettinger to
smile and to jest, for he was active at the dawn of better days; it was
natural for the poets of the thirties and fifties to battle against
superstitions and to sound the cry of progress; for the poets of the
eighties there was nothing left but tears.
It has been Frug's ambition to be a continuator of the bards who sang
for the masses, to be a folk-poet, and the people look upon him as such,
although he hardly appeals to them in the manner of the older bards. He
is entirely too literary to be understood without previous training, and
his allegory is not so easily unravelled. His greatest faults are,
perhaps, an absence of dramatic qualities and a certain coldness of
colors. Nevertheless, he is one of the best poets in Judeo-German
literature, who may also claim recognition by a wider class of readers.
The year 1888 is momentous in the history of Judeo-German literature: it
gave birth to two annuals, _Die jüdische Volksbibliothēk_ and _Der
Hausfreund_, around which were gathered all the best forces that could
be found among the Jewish writers. The first, under the leadership of S.
Rabinowitsch, started out with the purpose of clearing away all rubbish
from the field of Jewish letters and to prepare it for a new, a better
harvest; the second set out to serve the people with the best existing
literary productions. The latter was doomed to a certain mediocrity on
account of the bounds which it had placed around itself; the first, in
exercising a severe criticism on the productions presented for
publication, and in purifying the public taste, attracted from the start
the best talent obtainable and encouraged young promising men to try
themselves in Jargon letters. In the _Volksbibliothēk_ appeared the
firstling from the pen of Leon Perez, the poet and novelist, who must be
counted among the greatest writers not only of Judeo-German literature,
but of literature in general at the end of the nineteenth century. If he
had written nothing else but 'The Sewing of the Wedding Gown,' his name
would live as long as there could be found people to interpret the
language in which he sings. But he has produced several large volumes
of admirable works in prose and in verse.
Leon Perez, or Izchok Leibusch Perez, as he proudly prefers to be
called, was born in 1855 in Zamoszcz, the city which has been the
birthplace of so many famous men in Hebrew and Judeo-German letters, the
home of Zederbaum and Ettinger. He obtained his education in a curious
way. In his town there had lived a surgeon's assistant who, on becoming
rich, had collected a library on all kinds of subjects, numbering nearly
three thousand volumes. There came reverses to him, and his books were
stored away pell mell in the loft. Perez somehow got hold of the key to
that room, and without choice took to reading, until the whole library
was swallowed up by his omnivorous appetite. He read everything he could
get hold of, and he learned German through a work on physics which he
had discovered in the loft. Then he passed on from science to science,
all by himself. Then he studied Heine by heart, then Shelley, and then
he became a mystic. This history of his education is also the history of
his genius. There is reflected in it the subtleness of the Talmud, the
wisdom of the ancients, the sparkle of Heine, the transcendency of
Shelley, the mysticism of Hauptmann. He has treated masterfully the
Talmudical legend, has composed in the style of the Romancero, and has
carried allegory to the highest degree of perfection.
Perez is even less of a popular poet than Frug. He has entirely parted
company with the people. Although he started with the avowed purpose of
aiding his race to a better recognition of itself, yet his talents are
of too high an order, where language, feelings, and thoughts soar far
above the understanding of the masses. He can hardly be properly
appreciated even by those who enjoy the advantages of a fair school
education, not to speak of those who are merely lettered. It is only an
unfortunate accident, the persecutions of the Jews, that has thrown him
into so unpromising a field as that of Judeo-German letters, where to be
great is to be unknown to the world at large and to be subjected to the
jealous attacks of less gifted writers. He could easily gain a
reputation in any other language, should he choose to try for it, but,
like many of his predecessors, he is pursued by the merciless
allurements of the Jewish Muse. Her enchantment is the more powerful on
her devotees since she appears to them only in the garb of their own
weaving. They spend so much work in creating the outer form and
fashioning a poetic diction that they get fascinated by their creative
labor, and stick to their undertaking, even though they have but few
hearers for their utterances.
'Monisch' is the name of the ballad with which Perez made his debut ten
years ago.[66] It is the old story of Satan's recovery of power over the
saint by tempting him with an earthly love. But the setting of the story
is all new and original. The fourth chapter, beginning with
Andersch wollt' mein Lied geklungen
'ch soll far Goim goisch singen,
Nischt far Jüden, nischt Žargon
(My song would sound quite differently, were I to sing to Gentiles
in their language, not to Jews in Jargon)
is the best of all. He describes there the difficulty of singing of love
in a dialect that has no words for 'love' and 'sweetheart'; nevertheless
he acquits himself well of his task to tell of Monisch's infatuation,
for which, of course, a saint and a Jew can only become Satan's prey.
Perez has written a number of stories in verse. Some of them are mosaics
of gems, in which the unity of the whole is frequently marred by a
mystic cloud which it is hard to penetrate. Such, for example, is his
'He and She,'[67] a story of the Spanish inquisition, and 'Reb
Jossel,'[68] the temptation of a teacher of children by his hostess, the
wife of a shoemaker. The latter poem is very hard to grasp at one
reading, but the details, such as the description of the teacher, his
pale and ailing pupil with his endless school superstitions, the jolly
shoemaker, are drawn very well. Much more comprehensible are his 'The
Driver'[69] and 'Jossel Bers and Jossel Schmaies.'[70] The first is a
sad picture of a Jewish town in Poland, in which the inhabitants have
lost, one after the other, their means of subsistence after the railroad
had connected them with Warsaw. The drivers, the merchants, the artisans
who throve at their honest professions before, have become impoverished
and are driven to despised occupations, only to keep body and soul
together. It is a very sad picture indeed. In the other, the author
tells of two boys who had been fellow-students out of the same
prayer-book, but who soon separated at the parting of the roads. The
one, a faithful believer in all the teacher told him, becomes a Rabbi;
the other asks for facts and reasons to fortify the statements of his
mentor, and subjects himself to many privations in order to acquire
worldly wisdom in the gymnasium and the university. The final picture
is placed in Roumania (or Russia, had the censor permitted it), where
the student is driven through the streets by a mob, while the Rabbi,
unconscious of the outer world, is somewhere thinking hard over the
solution of a question of ritual.
The shorter poems are either translations from the Russian poet Nadson,
or imitations of Heine. They are well done, though some suffer somewhat
by their veiled allegory, at least at a superficial reading. The best of
these are those that deal with social questions, or describe the
laborer's sufferings. Preëminent among them is 'The Sewing of the
Wedding Gown.'[71] If Thomas Hood's 'Song of the Shirt' is to be
compared to a fine instrument, then this poem is a whole orchestra, from
the sounds of which the walls of Jericho would fall. Instead of a
criticism, a short review of the story will be given here. The scene is
at a dressmaker's; the cast: the modiste, two dressmakers, and
sewing-girls. The modiste tells of the care with which the wedding gown
has to be sewed. The choir of sewing-girls sing the song of the prison.
The first dressmaker speaks of the beauty of the gown, and compares the
bride to an angel from heaven, whereupon the choir sings of the misery
at home, of asking the 'angel' to advance a rouble on the work, of the
'angel's' cruel refusal, of the pawning of her silks for a loaf of
bread, and of the girl's arrest by the 'angel.' "And the angel has taken
care of me during the great frosts, and for three months has provided me
with board and lodging." The second dressmaker compares the rustle of
the silk to the noise made by her tired bones, speaks of the diamond
buttons that will be sewed on the gown "as large as tears of the poor,"
and bids the wheel of the machine to drown the noise of her breaking
bones. The choir sings the song of the grave, where no sewing is done,
where all go down in a shroud forever. The second dressmaker continues
the song, whereupon a girl, named 'Fond-of-Life,' protests, telling of
her good health, of her desire to pass her youth in pleasure. The choir
chides her with the Ragpicker's song, in which 'Fond-of-Life's' future
is portrayed, and the conclusion to the song is given by the first
dressmaker. The first dressmaker contrasts the luxury of the bride's bed
with her straw bed on the floor, the bride's splendor of light in her
parlor with the two candles at her head when she is dead. The modiste,
oppressed by the sad songs that portray their own unhappiness, bids them
sing of other people's happiness. To this the choir responds by singing
the happiness of the bride, but the modiste sees in this only the girls'
jealousy, whereupon the choir tells of the obedient daughter who is
advised by her mother to scorn sweetness, getting the promise of a
gilded nut if she behaves properly. When the nut is brought and cracked
it is found to be wormy and bitter. Of course, that is a picture of a
match made by the parents for their daughter. The modiste answers that
happiness does not always dwell in high places; and the first dressmaker
tells the story of labor, which is quite unique: There lived two
brothers happily together. A stranger, who is no other than the Biblical
serpent, visits them; he is clad in diamonds and costly stones, and
dazzles the older brother with his splendor. He, too, would like to be
rich. He follows the stranger out into the woods, and seats himself at
his side to inquire of the manner of acquiring such wealth. "What a fool
you are to allow your opportunities to slip by," says the serpent. "You
do not know that the sweat of your brother is nothing but diamonds, the
tears are brilliants, his blood pearls." The elder brother returns home,
beats his younger brother to elicit blood and sweat and tears. His
wealth grows, but not his happiness, for he suffers as much from fear of
his hoarded riches as his brother sighs under tears. They finally fall
to blows,--but here the poet purposely breaks his story, for he will not
undertake to tell the end of their hostility. The choir sings the ten
o'clock song, when all must go to rest: "You are rested, and at times
you dream of--a loaf of bread! The clock strikes ten, the work is
done,--good night, madame!" The modiste answers: "Be back early in the
morning!"
This is the bare skeleton of the poem, of whose painful beauties nothing
but a perusal in the original can give an adequate idea. There is the
making of a great poet in one who can sing like that; but Perez has
chosen, like Rabinowitsch, to devote his best energies to prose, and to
this part of his activity we shall return later. Of the minor poems of
this period there might be mentioned those by David Frischmann, Rosa
Goldstein, M. W. Satulowski, M. M. Penkowski, W. Kaiser, Paltiel
Samostschin. Frischmann has produced but a few poems, but they are all
of excellent quality. His best is a ballad, 'Ophir,'[72] but he has also
written some clever satires in verse. Samostschin,[73] who had begun
composing in the sixties, has translated several poems, especially from
the Hebrew of J. L. Gordon, and has written some clever feuilletons in
rhymes. Minchas Perel has published a small collection of poems on the
Fall of Jerusalem, of which the first, 'The Night of the Destruction of
Jerusalem,' is a very spirited and dramatic story of the event. Another
good book of poems is 'The Harp,' by G. O. Hornstein. Although some of
them are in the style of the coupletists, others betray original talent
that might be well developed. The best of these is the ballad, 'The Cat
and the Mouse,' an allegory of Jewish persecutions, in which the Jew is
represented as a mouse living on the fat of the oil candelabrum in the
Temple at Jerusalem, and the Romans and other nations are represented as
cats who drive the mouse out of her abiding place.
The riots of the early part of the eighties affected the whole mental
attitude of the Jews of Russia by rousing them to a greater
consciousness of themselves and by rallying them around distinctly
Jewish standards. For hundreds of thousands life had become impossible
at home, and they emigrated to various countries, but mostly to America,
where, under the influence of entirely new conditions, Judeo-German
literature, and with it poetry, developed in new channels.