of a young Jew who had married in the old country and had come to New
York alone to make his fortune. If he had remained in Russia, he would
have lived happily with his wife, but in America he acquired new ideas
of life and new ideals of women; and, therefore, felt alienated from
her when she joined him in the New World. Many children came to them,
his wages as a tailor diminished and his wife grew constantly less
congenial. He remained with her, however, from a sense of duty for
eleven years, when, after insuring his life, he committed suicide.
A SATIRIST OF TENEMENT SOCIETY
Leon Kobrin stands midway between Libin and Levin, on the one hand,
and Gordin on the other. He carries his Russian traditions more
intimately with him than do Libin and Levin, but more nearly
approaches to a saturated exposition in fiction form of the life of
Yiddish New York than does Gordin. Unlike the latter, he has the
pretence rather than the reality of learning, and the reality rather
than the pretence of realistic art. Yet he never quite attains to the
untutored fidelity of Libin. Many of his sketches are satirical, some
are rather burlesque descriptions of Ghetto types, and some suggest
the sad "problem" element which runs through Russian literature. He
was born in Russia in 1872 of poor parents, orthodox Jews, who sent
him to the Hebrew school, of which the boy was never very fond, but
preferred to read Russian at night surreptitiously. He found some
good friends, who, as he put it, "helped me to the light through
Ghetto darkness." Incidentally, it may be pointed out that the
intellectual element of the Ghetto--the realists and Socialists--think
that progress is possible only in the line of Russian culture, and
that to remain steadfast to Jewish traditions is to remain immersed in
darkness. So Kobrin struggled from a very early age to master the
Russian language, and even wrote sketches in that tongue. He, like
Gordin, refers to the fact of his being a writer in Yiddish
apologetically as something forced upon him by circumstances. Unlike
Gorin, however, he believes in the literary capacity of the language,
with which he was first impressed when he came to America in 1892 and
found stories by Chekhov translated by Abraham Cahan and others into
Yiddish and published in the _Arbeiterzeitung_. It was a long time,
however, before Kobrin definitely identified himself with the literary
calling. He first went through a course somewhat similar to that of
the boy mathematician in the sketch by Libin, described above. He
tried the sweat-shop, but he was a bungler with the machines; then he
turned his hand with equal awkwardness to the occupation of making
cigars; failed as distinctly as a baker, and finally, in 1894, was
forced into literature, and began writing for the _Arbeiterzeitung_.
One of Kobrin's sketches deals with a vulgar tailor of the east side,
who is painted in the ugliest of colors and is as disagreeable an
individual as the hottest anti-Semite could imagine. The man, who is
the "boss" of a sweat-shop, meets the author in a suburban train,
scrapes his acquaintance, fawns upon him, offers him a cigar and tells
about how well he is doing in New York. In Russia, where he had made
clothes for rich people, no young girl would have spoken to him
because of his low social position; but in the new country young women
of good family abroad seek employment in his shop, and are often
dependent on him not only for a living, but in more indescribable
ways. Mr. Kobrin and his wife refer to this sketch as the "pig story."
A subtler tale is the picture of a domestic scene. Jake has returned
from his work and sits reading a Yiddish newspaper. His wife, a
passionate brunette, is working about the room, and every now and then
glances at the apathetic Jake with a sigh. She remembers how it was a
year ago, when Jake hung over her, devoted, attentive; and now he goes
out almost every evening to the "circle" and returns late. She tries
to engage him in conversation, but he answers in monosyllables and
finally says he is going out, whereupon she weeps and makes a scene.
"He is not the same Jake," she cries bitterly. After some words
intended to comfort her, but really rubbing in the wound, her husband
goes to the "circle," and the wife burns the old love-letters one by
one; they are from another man, she feels, and are a torture to her
now. As she burns the letters the tears fall and sizzle on the hot
stove. It is a simple scene, but moving: what Mr. Kobrin calls "a
small slice out of life." An amusing couple of sketches, in which
satire approaches burlesque, represent the infelicities of an old
woman from Russia who had recently arrived in New York. One day,
shocked at her children's neglect of a religious holiday and at their
general unholiness, she goes to visit an old neighbor, at whose house
she is sure to have everything "kosher" and right. She has been
accustomed to find the way to her friend by means of a wooden Indian,
called by her a "Turk," which stood before a tobacco shop. The Indian
has been removed, however, and she, consequently, loses her way.
Seeing a Jew with big whiskers, who must, therefore, she thinks, be
orthodox, she asks him where the "Turk" is, and repeats the question
in vain to many others, among them to a policeman, whom she addresses
in Polish, for she thinks that all Gentiles speak that language, just
as all Jews speak Yiddish. On another occasion the old lady goes to
the theatre, where her experiences are a Yiddish counterpart to those
of Partridge at the play.
Some of the best sketches from the life form portions of the plays
which are produced at the Yiddish theatres on the Bowery. In the
dramas of Gordin there are many scenes which far more faithfully than
his newspaper sketches mirror the sordid life and unhappy problems of
the poor Russian Jew in America; and the ability of the actors to
enforce the theme and language by realistic dress, manner and
intonation makes these scenes frequently a genuine revelation to the
Gentile of a new world of social conditions. Kobrin and Libin, too,
have written plays, very few and undramatic as compared with those of
Gordin, but abounding in the "sketch" element, in scenes which give
the setting and the _milieu_ of a large and important section of
humanity. Some of the plays of Gordin have been considered in a
previous chapter, and those of Kobrin and Libin merely add more
material to the same quality which runs through their newspaper
sketches. Libin is the author of two plays, _The Belated Wedding_ and
_A Vain Sacrifice_, for which he was paid $50 apiece. They are each a
series of pictures from the miserable Jewish life in the New York
Ghetto. The latter play is the story of a girl who marries a man she
hates in order to get money for her consumptive father. The theme of
_The Belated Wedding_ is too sordid to relate. Both plays are
unrelieved gloom and lack any compensating dramatic quality. In
Kobrin's plays--_The East Side Ghetto_, _East Broadway_ and the
_Broken Chains_--the problem element is more decided and the dramatic
structure is more pronounced than in those of Libin. In _East
Broadway_ a young man and girl have been devoted to each other and to
the cause of Nihilism in Russia, but in New York the husband catches
the spirit of the American "business man" and demands from his
father-in-law the money promised as a _dot_. The eloquence of the new
point of view is opposed to that of the old in a manner not entirely
undramatic.
The fact that there are a number of writers for the Yiddish newspapers
of New York who are animated with a desire to give genuine glimpses of
the real life of the people is particularly interesting, perhaps,
because of the light which it throws on the character of their Jewish
readers and the breadth of culture which it implies. Certainly, there
are many Russian Jews on the east side who like to read anything which
seems to them to be "natural," a word which is often on their lips. It
would be misleading, however, to reach conclusions very optimistic in
regard to the Ghetto Jews as a whole; for the demand which makes these
sketches possible is practically limited to the Socialists, and grows
less as that political and intellectual movement falls off, under
American influences, in vitality. To-day there are fewer good sketches
published in the Yiddish newspapers than formerly, when the
_Arbeiterzeitung_ was a power for social and literary improvement.
Quarrels among the Socialists, resulting in many weakening splits, and
the growth of a more constant commercial attitude on the part of the
newspapers than formerly are partly responsible for the change. The
few men of talent who, under the stimulus of an editorial demand for
sincere art, wrote in the early days with a full heart and entire
conviction have now partly lost interest. Levin has given up writing
altogether for the more remunerative work of a typesetter, Gorin has
become largely a translator and literary hack on the regular newspaper
staff, and Gordin and Kobrin have turned their attention to the
writing of plays, for which there is a vital, if crude, demand. Libin
alone, the most interesting and in a genuine way the most talented of
them all, remains the poorest in worldly goods and the most devoted to
his art.
Chapter Eight
A Novelist
Altho Abraham Cahan began his literary career as a Yiddish writer for
the Ghetto newspapers his important work has been written and
published in English. His work as a Yiddish writer was of an almost
exclusively educational character. This at once establishes an
important distinction between him and the Yiddish sketch-writers
considered in the foregoing chapter. A still more vital distinction is
that arising from the relative quality of his work, which as opposed
to that of the Yiddish writers, is more of the order of the story or
of the novel than of the sketch. Cahan's work is more developed and
more mature as art than that of the other men, who remain essentially
sketch-writers. Even in their longer stories what is good is the
occasional flash of life, the occasional picture, and this does not
imply characters and theme developed sufficiently to put them in the
category of the novel. Rather than for the art they reveal they are
interesting for the sincere way in which they present a life
intimately known. In fact the literary talent of the Ghetto consists
almost exclusively in the short sketch. To this general rule Abraham
Cahan comes the nearest to forming an exception. Even in his work the
sketch element predominates; but in one long story at least something
more is successfully achieved; in his short stories there is often
much circumstance and development; and he has now finished the first
draft of a long novel. His stories have appeared from time to time in
the leading English magazines, and there are two volumes with which
the discriminating American and English public is familiar, _Yekl_ and
_The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories_. As well as his work
Cahan's life too is of unusual interest. He had a picturesque career
as a Socialist and an editor in the Ghetto.
Abraham Cahan was born in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, Russia, in
1860. He went as a boy to the Jewish "chaider," but took an early and
overpowering interest in the Russian language and ideas. He graduated
from the _Teacher's Institute_ at Vilna, and was appointed government
teacher in the town of Velizh, Province of Vitebsk. Here he became
interested, altho not active, in the anarchistic doctrines which
filled the intellectual atmosphere of the day; and, feeling that his
liberty and activity were endangered by a longer sojourn in Russia, he
came to America in 1882, when a time of severe poverty and struggle
ensued.
From the first he, like most Russian Jews of intelligence, was
identified with the Socialist movement in the New York Ghetto; he
threw himself into it with extraordinary activity and soon became a
leader in the quarter. He was an eloquent and impassioned speaker,
went twice abroad as the American-Jewish delegate to Socialist
congresses, and was the most influential man connected with the weekly
_Arbeiterzeitung_, of which he became editor in 1893. This paper, as
has been explained in a former chapter, for several years carried on
an aggressive warfare in the cause of labor and Socialism, and
attempted also to educate the people to an appreciation of the best
realistic Russian writers, such as Tolstoi, Turgenieff and Chekhov. It
was under Cahan's editorship of this weekly, and also of the monthly
_Zukunft_, a journal of literature and social science, that some of
the realistic sketch-writers of the quarter discovered their talent;
and for a time both literature and Socialism were as vigorous as they
were young in the colony.
Literature, however, was at that time to Cahan only the handmaiden of
education. His career as an east side writer was that primarily of the
teacher. He wished not merely to educate the ignorant masses of the
people in the doctrines of Socialism, but to teach them the rudiments
of science and literature. For that reason he wrote in the popular
"jargon," popularized science, wrote Socialistic articles, exhorted
generally. Occasionally he published humorous sketches, intended,
however, always to point a moral or convey some needed information. In
literature, as such, he was not at that time interested as an author.
It was only several years later, when he took up his English pen, that
he attempted to put into practice the ideas about what constitutes
real literature to which he had been trying to educate the Ghetto.
The fierce individualism which in spite of Socialistic doctrine is a
characteristic of the intellectual element in the Ghetto soon brought
about its weakening effects. The inevitable occurred. Quarrels grew
among the Socialists, the party was split, each faction organized a
Socialist newspaper, and the movement consequently lost in
significance and general popularity. In 1896 Cahan resigned his
editorship, and retired disgusted from the work.
From that time on his interest in Socialism waned, altho he still
ranges himself under that banner; and his other absorbing interest,
realistic literature, grew apace, until it now absorbs everything
else. As is the case with many imaginative and emotional men he is
predominantly of one intellectual passion. When he was an active
Socialist he wanted to be nothing else. He gave up his law studies,
and devoted himself to an unremunerative public work. When the fierce
but small personal quarrels began which brought about the present
confused condition of Socialism in the Ghetto, Cahan's always strong
admiration for the Russian writers of genius and their literary school
led him to experiment in the English language, which gave a field much
larger than the "jargon." Always a reformer, always filled with some
idea which he wished to propagate through the length and breadth of
the land, Cahan took up the cause of realism in English fiction with
the same passion and energy with which he had gone in for Socialism.
He became a partisan in literature just as he had been a partisan in
active life. He admired among Americans W. D. Howells, who seemed to
him to write in the proper spirit, but he felt that Americans as a
class were hopelessly "romantic," "unreal," and undeveloped in their
literary tastes and standards. He set himself to writing stories and
books in English which should at least be genuine artistic transcripts
from life, and he succeeded admirably in keeping out of his work any
obvious doctrinaire element--which points to great artistic
self-restraint when one considers how full of his doctrine the man is.
Love of truth, indeed, is the quality which seems to a stranger in the
Ghetto the great virtue of that section of the city. Truth, pleasant
or unpleasant, is what the best of them desire. It is true that, in
the reaction from the usual "affable" literature of the American
book-market, these realists rather prefer the unpleasant. That,
however, is a sign of energy and youth. A vigorous youthful literature
is always more apt to breathe the spirit of tragedy than a literature
more mature and less fresh. And after all, the great passion of the
intellectual quarter results in the consciously held and warmly felt
principle that literature should be a transcript from life. Cahan
represents this feeling in its purest aspect; and is therefore highly
interesting not only as a man but as a type. This passion for truth is
deeply infused into his literary work.
The aspects of the Ghetto's life which would naturally hold the
interest of the artistic observer are predominatingly its
characteristic features--those qualities of character and conditions
of social life which are different from the corresponding ones in the
old country. Cahan came to America a mature man with the life of one
community already a familiar thing to him. It was inevitable therefore
that his literary work in New York should have consisted largely in
fiction emphasizing the changed character and habits of the Russian
Jew in New York; describing the conditions of immigration and
depicting the clash between the old and the new Ghetto and the way the
former insensibly changes into the latter. In this respect Cahan
presents a great contrast to the simple Libin, who merely tells in
heartfelt passionate way the life of the poor sweat-shop Jew in the
city, without consciously taking into account the relative nature of
the phenomena. His is absolute work as far as it goes, as straight and
true as an arrow, and implies no knowledge of other conditions. Cahan
presents an equally striking contrast to the work of men like Gordin
and Gorin, the best part of which deals with Russian rather than New
York life.
If Cahan's work were merely the transcribing in fiction form of a
great number of suggestive and curious "points" about the life of the
poor Russian Jew in New York, it would not of course have any great
interest to even the cultivated Anglo-Saxon reader, who, tho he might
find the stories curious and amusing for a time, would recognize
nothing in them sufficiently familiar to be of deep importance to him.
If, in other words, the stories had lacked the universal element
always present in true literature they would have been of very little
value to anyone except the student of queer corners. When however the
universal element of art is present, when the special conditions are
rendered sympathetic by the touch of common human nature, the result
is pleasing in spite of the foreign element; it is even pleasing
because of that element; for then the pleasure of easily understanding
what is unfamiliar is added to the charm of recognizing the old
objects of the heart and the imagination.
Cahan's stories may be divided into two general classes: those
presenting primarily the special conditions of the Ghetto to which the
story and characters are subordinate; and those in which the special
conditions and the story fuse together and mutually help and explain
one another. These two--the "information" element and the "human
nature" element--struggle for the mastery throughout his work. In the
most successful part of the stories the "human nature" element
masters, without suppressing, that of special information.
The substance of Cahan's stories, what they have deliberately to tell
us about the New York Ghetto, is, considering the limited volume of
his work, rich and varied. It includes the description of much that is
common to the Jews of Russia and the Jews of New York--the picture of
the orthodox Jew, the pious rabbi, the marriage customs, the religious
holidays, etc. But the orthodox foreign element is treated more as a
background on which are painted in contrasting lights the moral and
physical forms resulting from the particular colonial conditions. The
falling away of the children in filial respect and in religious faith,
the consequent despair of the parents, who are influenced only in
superficial ways by their new environment; the alienation of
"progressive" husbands from "old-fashioned" wives; the institution of
"the boarder," a source of frequent domestic trouble; the tendency of
the "new" daughters of Israel to select husbands for themselves in
spite of ancient authority and the "Vermittler," and their ambition to
marry doctors and lawyers instead of Talmudical scholars; the
professional letter-writers through whom ignorant people in the old
country and their ignorant relatives here correspond; the falling-off
in respect for the Hebrew scholar and the rabbi, the tendency to read
in the Astor library and do other dreadful things implying interest in
American life, to eat _treife_ food, talk American slang, and hate
being called a "greenhorn," _i. e._, an old-fashioned Jew; how a
"Mister" in Russia becomes a "Shister" (shoemaker) in New York, and a
"Shister" in Russia becomes a "Mister" in New York; how women lay
aside their wigs and men shave their beards and ride in horse-cars on
Saturday: all these things and more are told in more or less detail in
Cahan's English stories. Anyone who followed the long series of Barge
Office sketches which during the last few years Cahan has published
anonymously in the _Commercial Advertiser_, would be familiar in a
general way with the different types of Jews who come to this country,
with the reasons for their immigration and the conditions which
confront them when they arrive. Many of these hastily conceived and
written newspaper reports have plenty of life--are quick, rather
formless, flashes of humor and pathos, and contain a great deal of
implicit literature. But the salient quality of this division of
Cahan's work is the amount of strange and picturesque information
which it conveys.
Many of his more carefully executed stories which have appeared from
time to time in the magazines are loaded down with a like quantity of
information, and while all of them have marked vitality, many are less
intrinsically interesting, from the point of view of human nature,
than even the Barge Office sketches. A marked instance of a story in
which the information element overpoweringly predominates is "The
Daughter of Reb Avrom Leib," published in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_
for May, 1900. The tale opens with a picture of Aaron Zalkin, who is
lonely. It is Friday evening, and for the first time since he left his
native town he enters a synagogue. Then we have a succession of
minutely described customs and objects which are interesting in
themselves and convey no end of "local color." We learn that orthodox
Jewish women have wigs, we read of the Holy Ark, the golden shield of
David, the illuminated _omud_, the reading platform in the centre, the
faces of the worshippers as they hum the Song of Songs, and then the
cantor and the cantor's daughter. We follow the cantor in his
ceremonies and prayers. Zalkin is thrilled by the ceremony and
thrilled by the girl. But only a word is given to him before the story
goes back to picturing the scene, Reb Avrom Leib's song and the
actions of the congregation. In the second division of the story
Zalkin goes again the next Friday night to the synagogue, and the
result is that he wants to marry the girl. So he sends a "marriage
agent" to the cantor, the girl's father. Then he goes to "view the
bride," and incidentally we learn that the cantor has two sons who are
"American boys," and "will not turn their tongues to a Hebrew word."
When the old man finds that Zalkin is a Talmudic scholar he is
startled and delighted and wants him for a son-in-law. They try to
outquote one another, shouting and gesticulating "in true Talmudic
fashion." There is a short scene between the two young people, the
wedding-day is deferred till the "Nine Days" are over, for "who would
marry while one was mourning the Fall of the Temple?" And it is
suggested that Sophie is not quite content. Then there is a scene
where Zalkin chants the Prophets, where the betrothal articles, "a
mixture of Chaldaic and Hebrew," are read and a plate is thrown on the
floor to make a severance of the ceremony "as unlikely as would be the
reunion of the broken plate." Then there are more quotations from the
cantor, a detailed picture of the services of the Day of Atonement, of
the Rejoicing of the Law, blessing the Dedication Lights, The Days of
Awe, and the Rejoicing of the Law again. The old man's character is
made very vivid, and the dramatic situation--that of a Jewish girl
who, after the death of her father, marries in compliance with his
desire--is picturesquely handled. But the theme is very slight. Most
of the detail is devoted to making a picture, not of the changing
emotions in the characters and the development of the human story, but
of the religious customs of the Jews. The emphasis is put on
information rather than on the theme, and consequently the story does
not hold the interest strongly.
Many of Cahan's other short stories suffer because of the learned
intention of the author. We derive a great deal of information and we
generally get the "picture," but it often requires an effort to keep
the attention fixed on what is unfamiliar and at the same time so
apart from the substance of the story that it is merely subordinate
detail.
In these very stories, however, there is much that is vigorous and
fresh in the treatment and characterization; and a vein of lyric
poetry is frequent, as in the delightful _Ghetto Wedding_, the story
of how a poor young Jewish couple spend their last cent on an
elaborate wedding-feast, expecting to be repaid by the presents, and
thus enabled to furnish their apartment. The gifts don't turn up,
only a few guests are present, and the young people, after the
ceremony, go home with nothing but their enthusiastic love. The
_naïveté_ and simplicity of the lovers, the implicit sympathy with
them, and a kind of gentle satire, make this little story a gem for
the poet.
_The Imported Bridegroom_ is a remarkable character sketch and
contains several very strong and interesting descriptions. Asriel
Stroon is the central figure and lives before the mind of the reader.
He is an old Jew who has made a business success in New York, and
retired, when he has a religious awakening and at the same time a
great longing for his old Russian home Pravly. He goes back to Pravly
on a visit, and the description of his sensations the day he returns
to his home is one of the best examples of the essential vitality of
Cahan's work. This long story contains also a most amusing scene where
Asriel outbids a famous rich man of the town for a section in the
synagogue and triumphs over him, too, in the question of a son-in-law.
There is in Pravly a "prodigy" of holiness and Talmudic learning,
Shaya, whom Reb Lippe wants for his daughter, but Asriel wants him
too, and being enormously rich, carries him off in triumph to his
daughter in America. But Flora at first spurns him. He is a
"greenhorn," a scholar, not a smart American doctor such as she has
dreamed of. Soon, however, Shaya, who is a great student, learns
English and mathematics, and promises Flora to become a doctor. The
first thing he knows he is a freethinker and an American, and Flora
now loves him. They keep the terrible secret from the old man, but he
ultimately sees Shaya going into the Astor Library and eating food in
a _treife_ restaurant. His resentment is pathetic and intense, but the
children marry, and the old man goes to Jerusalem with his faithful
servant.
The book, however, in which there is a perfect adaptation of
"atmosphere" and information to the dramatic story is _Yekl_. In this
strong, fresh work, full of buoyant life, the Ghetto characters and
environment form an integral part.
_Yekl_ indeed ought to be well known to the English reading public. It
is a book written and conceived in the English language, is
essentially idiomatic and consequently presents no linguistic
difficulties. It gives a great deal of information about what seems to
me by far the most interesting section of foreign New York. But what
ought to count more than anything else is that it is a genuine piece
of literature; picturing characters that live in art, in an
environment that is made real, and by means of a story that is vital
and significant and that never flags in interest. In its quality of
freshness and buoyancy it recalls the work of Turgenieff. None of
Cahan's later work, tho most of it has vital elements, stands in the
same class with this fundamentally sweet piece of literature. It takes
a worthy place with the best Russian fiction, with that school of
writers who make life actual by the sincere handling of detail in
which the simple everyday emotions of unspoiled human nature are
portrayed. The English classic novel, greatly superior in the rounded
and contemplative view of life, has yet nothing since Fielding
comparable to Russian fiction in vivid presentation of the details of
life. This whole school of literature can, I believe, be compared in
quality more fittingly with Elizabethan drama than anything which has
intervened in English literature; not of course with those maturer
dramas in which there is a great philosophical treatment of human
life, but in the lyric freshness and imaginative vitality which were
common to the whole lot of Elizabethan writers.
_Yekl_ is alive from beginning to end. The virtuosity in description
which in Cahan's work sometimes takes the place of literature, is here
quite subordinate. Yekl is a sweat-shop Jew in New York who has left a
wife and child in Russia in order to make a little home for them and
himself in the new world. In the early part of the book he is becoming
an "American" Jew, making a little money and taking a great fancy to
the smart Jewish girl who wears a "rakish" hat, no wig, talks "United
States," and has a profound contempt for the benighted pious
"greenhorns" who have just arrived. A sweat-shop girl named Mamie
moves his fancy deeply, so that when the faithful wife Gitl and the
little boy Yossele arrive at the Barge Office there is evidently
trouble at hand. At that place Yekl meets them in a vividly told
scene--ill-concealed disquiet on his part and naïve alarm at the
situation on hers. Gitl's wig and her subdued, old-fashioned demeanor
tell terribly on Yekl's nerves, and she is shocked by everything that
happens to her in America. Their domestic unhappiness develops through
a number of characteristic and simple incidents until it results in a
divorce. But by that time Gitl is becoming "American" and it is
obvious that she is to be taken care of by a young man in the quarter
more appreciative than Yekl. The latter finds himself bound to Mamie,
the pert "American" girl, and as the book closes is in a fair way to
regret the necessity of giving up his newly acquired freedom. This
simple, strong theme is treated consistently in a vital presentative
way. The idea is developed by natural and constant incident,
psychological or physical, rather than by talk. Every detail of the
book grows naturally out of the situation.
[Illustration: A SWEAT-SHOP GIRL MOVES HIS FANCY DEEPLY]
"Unpleasant" is a word which many an American would give to _Yekl_ on
account of its subject. Strong compensating qualities are necessary to
induce a publisher or editor to print anything which they think is in
subject disagreeable to the big body of American readers, most of whom
are women. Without attempting to criticise the "voice of the people,"
it may be pointed out that there are at least two ways in which a book
may be "unpleasant." It may be so in the formal theme, the characters,
the result--things may come out unhappily, vice triumphant, and the
section of life portrayed may be a sordid one. This is the kind of
unpleasantness which publishers particularly object to; and in this
sense _Yekl_ may fairly be called "unpleasant." Turgenieff's _Torrents
of Spring_ is also in this sense "unpleasant," for it tells how a
young man's sincere and poetic first love is turned to failure and
misery by the illegitimate temporary attraction of a fascinating woman
of the world. But Turgenieff's novel is nevertheless full of buoyant
vitality, full of freshness and charm, of youth and grace, full of
life-giving qualities; because of it we all may live more abundantly.
The same may be said of many another book. When there is sweetness,
strength and early vigor in a book the reader is refreshed
notwithstanding the theme. And it is noticeable that youth is not
afraid of "subjects."
Another way in which a book may be "unpleasant" is in the quality of
deadness. Many books with pleasant and moral themes and endings are
unpoetic and unpleasantly mature. Even a book great in subject, with
much philosophy in it, may show a lack of sensitiveness to the vital
qualities, to the effects of spring, to the joy in mere physical life,
which are so marked and so genuinely invigorating in the best Russian
fiction. The extreme of this kind of unpleasantness is shown in the
case of some modern Frenchmen and Italians; not primarily in the
theme, but in the lack of poetry and vigor, of hope; in a sodden
maturity, often indeed combined with great qualities of intellect and
workmanship, but dead to the little things of life, dead to the
feeling of spring in the blood, to naïve readiness for experience. An
American who is the antithesis of this kind of thing is Walt Whitman.
His quality put into prose is what we have in the best Russian novels.
In the latter acceptation of the word unpleasant, too, it cannot be
applied to _Yekl_; for _Yekl_ is youthful and vital. There is buoyant
spring in the lines and robust joy in truth whatever it may be.
[Illustration: GITL]
_Apropos_ of Cahan's love of truth, and that word "unpleasant," a
discussion which took place a few years ago on the appearance of
Zangwill's play, _The Children of the Ghetto_, is illuminative. That
poetic drama represented the life of the poor Ghetto Jew with sympathy
and truth; but for that very reason it was severely criticised by some
uptown Israelites. Many of these, no doubt, had religious objections
to a display on the stage of those customs and observances of their
race which touched upon the "holy law." But some of the rich German
Jews, practically identified with American life, and desiring for
practical and social purposes to make little of their racial
distinction, deprecated literature which portrayed the life of those
Jews who still have distinctively national traits and customs. Then,
too, there is a tendency among the well-to-do American Jews to look
down upon their Ghetto brethren, to regard the old customs as
benighted and to treat them with a certain contempt; altho they spend
a great deal of charitable money in the quarter. Feeling a little
ashamed of the poor Russian east side Jew, they object to a serious
literary portrayal of him. They want no attention called to what they
deem the less attractive aspects of their race. An uptown Jewish lady,
on the appearance in a newspaper of a story about east side Jewish
life, wrote a protesting letter to the editor. She told the writer of
the sketch, when he was sent to see her, that she could not see why he
didn't write about uptown Jews instead of sordid east side Jews. The
scribe replied that he wrote of the Ghetto Jew because he found him
interesting, while he couldn't see anything attractive or picturesque
about the comfortable Israelite uptown.
Abraham Cahan's stories have been subjected to criticism inspired by
the same spirit. Feeling the charm of his people he has attempted to
picture them as they are, in shadow and light; and has consequently
been accused of betraying his race to the Gentiles.
The attitude of the east side Jews towards writers like Zangwill and
Cahan is in refreshing contrast. The Yiddish newspapers were
enthusiastic about _Children of the Ghetto_, in which they felt the
Jews were truthfully and therefore sympathetically portrayed. In the
literary sketches and plays now produced in considerable numbers in
the "jargon," a great pride of race is manifest. The writers have not
lost their self-respect, still abound in their own sense and are
consequently vitally interesting. They are full of ideals and
enthusiasm and do not object to what is "unpleasant" so strenuously as
do their uptown brethren.
Chapter Nine
The Young Art and its Exponents
On Hester Street, east of the Bowery, the poor Jew is revealed in many
a characteristic way. It is the home of the sweat-shop, of the crowded
tenement-house. Old pedlers, as ragged as the poorest beggars, stand on
street corners. In long uninterrupted lines are the carts--containing
fruit, cake, dry goods, fish, everything that the proletarian Jew
requires. Behind these tower the crowded tenement-houses, with
fire-escapes for balconies. Through the middle of the street
constantly moves a mass of people. No vehicle can go rapidly there,
for the thoroughfare is literally alive. In the least crowded part of
the day, however, tattered little girls may sometimes be seen dancing
with natural grace to the music of a hand-organ, the Italian owner of
which for some strange reason has embedded himself in the very heart
of poverty. Between the lumbering wagons which infest the street at
the less busy part of the day these little children wonderfully sway
and glide and constitute the only gladsome feature of the scene. Just
as Canal Street, with its cafés where the poets, Socialists, scholars
and journalists meet, is the mind of the Ghetto, so Hester Street
represents its heart. This picturesque street has recently become the
study of several young Jewish artists.
The last few years have brought the earliest indications of what may
develop into a characteristic Ghetto art. In the course of their long
civilization the Jews have never developed a national plastic art.
Devoted to the things of the spirit, in an important period of their
history in conflict with the sensuous art of the Greeks, they have
never put into external forms the heart of their life. There have been
occasional painters and sculptors among them, but these have worked in
line with the Gentiles, and have in no way contributed to a typical or
national art. With the slackening of the Hebraic religion, however,
which prohibits images in the temple--that fertile source of
inspiration in Christian art--the conditions have been more favorable,
and the beginning of a distinctive Ghetto art has already made its
appearance in New York.
On the corner of Hester and Forsyth streets is a tumble-down rickety
building. The stairs that ascend to the garret are pestiferous and
dingy. In what is more like a shed than a room, with the wooden ribs
of the slanting roof curtailing the space, is the studio of an east
side artist. A miserable iron bedstead occupies the narrow strip of
floor beneath the descending ceiling. There is one window, which
commands a good view of the pushcart market in Hester Street. Near the
window is a diminutive oil-stove, on which the artist prepares his tea
and eggs. On a peg on the door hang an old mackintosh and an extra
coat--his only additional wardrobe. About the narrow walls on the
three available sides are easels, and sketches and paintings of Ghetto
types.
Jacob Epstein, the name of the artist, has a melancholy wistful face.
He was born in the Ghetto twenty years ago, of poor Jews, who were at
first tailors and afterwards small tradespeople, and who had emigrated
from Poland. He went to the public schools until he was thirteen years
old. Since then he has worked at various jobs. Until recently he was
an instructor in the boys' out-door gymnasium near the corner of
Hester and Essex streets. For one summer, in order to get a vacation,
he became a farm laborer. His art education as well as his education
in general is slight, consisting of two terms at the Art Students'
League. But for so young a man his intellectual, as well as his
artistic activity has been considerable. He belongs to a number of
debating societies, and is now hesitating in his mind whether to
become a Socialist or an Anarchist, altho he is tending towards a
humane socialism.
Two things, however, he seems definitely to have settled--that he will
devote himself to his art, and that that art shall be the plastic
picturing of the life of his people in the Ghetto. He seems to rejoice
at having lost his various pot-boiling positions.
"I was not a gymnast," he said cheerfully, explaining why he left the
last one, "and now they have a gymnast."
Now he lives alone on his beloved Hester Street and the studio, where
he sleeps and eats. For that modest room he pays $4 a month, and as he
cooks his own meals, $12 a month is quite sufficient to satisfy all
his needs. This amount he can usually manage to make through the sale
of his sketches; but when he does not he "goes to bed," as he puts it,
and lies low until one of his various little art enterprises brings
him in a small check. Withal, he is very happy, altho serious, like
his race in general; and full of idealism and ambition. On one
occasion the idea occurred to him and to his friend, Bernard Gussow,
that men ought to live closer to nature than they can in the Ghetto.
It was in the winter time that they were filled with this conviction,
but they nevertheless packed off and hired a farmhouse at Greenwood
Lake, and stayed there the whole winter. When their money gave out
they cut ice in the river to pay the rent.
"We enjoyed it very much," said Epstein, "but there were no artistic
results. The country, much as I love it, is not stimulating. Clouds
and trees are not satisfying. It is only in the Ghetto, where there is
human nature, that I have ideas for sketches."
With a kind of regret the artist spoke of the beauty of Winslow
Homer's landscape. He called it "epic," and was filled with sorrow
that such an art could not be in the Ghetto.
"There is no nature in the sweat-shop," he said, "and yet it is there
and in the crowded street that my love and my imagination call me. It
is only the minds and souls of my people that fill me with a desire to
work."
It is this ambition which makes Jacob Epstein and the other young
artists to be mentioned of uncommon representative interest. Epstein
is filled with a melancholy love of his race, and his constant desire
is to paint his people just as they are: to show them in their
suffering picturesqueness. So he goes into the sweat-shop and
sketches, induces the old pedlers of Hester Street to pose in his
studio, and draws from his window the push-carts and the old women in
the street. It is thus a characteristic Ghetto art, an art dealing
with the peculiar types of that Jewish community, that Epstein's
interest leads to; a national plastic art, as it were, on a small
scale.
In the studio and at an exhibition at the Hebrew Institute Epstein had
two years ago a number of sketches and a few paintings--the latter
very crude as far as the technique of color is concerned, and the
sketches in charcoal rough and showing comparatively slight mastery of
the craft. But, particularly in the sketches, there is character in
every one, and at once a sympathetic and a realistic imagination. He
tells the truth about the Ghetto as he sees it, but into the dark
reality of the external life he puts frequently a melancholy beauty of
spirit. Portraits of old pedlers, roughly successful as Ghetto types,
in order to retain whom as models the artist was frequently forced to
sing a song, for the pedlers have a Jewish horror of the image, and
it is difficult to get them to pose; one of them with an irregular,
blunted nose and eyes sad and plaintive, but very gentle; an old Jew
in the synagogue, praying "Holy," "Holy"; many sweat-shop scenes,
gaunt figures half-dressed, with enormously long arms and bony
figures; mothers working in the shops with babies in their arms; one
woman, tired, watching for a moment her lean husband working the
machine--that machine of which Morris Rosenfeld sings so powerfully in
"The Sweat-Shop"; a woman with her head leaning heavily on her hands;
Hester Street market scenes, with dreary tenement-houses--a kind of
prison wall--as background; one pedler with a sensitive face--a man
the artist had to catch at odd times, surreptitiously, for, religious
to an extreme, the old fellow would hastily trundle off whenever he
saw Epstein.
[Illustration: A LITTLE GIRL OF HESTER STREET]
A characteristic of this young artist's work is the seriousness with
which he tries to get the type as it is; the manifest love involved in
the way it takes his imagination. With his whole soul he hates
caricature of his race. Most of the magazine illustrations of Ghetto
characters he finds distorted and untrue, many of them, however, done
with a finish of technique that he envies. A big and ugly nose is not
the enthusiastic artist's idea of what constitutes a downtown Jew. The
Jew, to him, is recognized rather by the peculiar melancholy of the
eyes. In the nose he sees nothing particularly typical of the race. It
is a forcible illustration of how, while really remaining faithful to
the external type, his love for the race leads him to emphasize the
spiritual and humane expressiveness of the faces about him; and so
paves the way to an art imaginative as well as typical, not lacking
even in a certain ideal beauty.
Bernard Gussow, Epstein's friend and fellow-worker in the attempt to
found a distinctive Ghetto art, is in a still earlier stage of
development. His essays in the plastic reproduction of Hester Street
types are not yet as humanly interesting as those of the younger man,
who, however, has been working longer and more assiduously. It is only
for the past year or two that Gussow has definitely espoused this
cause.
Unlike Epstein he was not born in New York. The town of Slutzk, in the
government of Ulinsk, Russia, is his birthplace, where he stayed until
he was eleven years old. His father is a teacher of Hebrew, and young
Gussow consequently received a much better education than Epstein;
and also became much more familiar with the religious life of the
Orthodox Jews. For that reason Epstein urges his friend to take the
New York Orthodox synagogue and the domestic life of the religious Jew
as his distinctive field in the great work in hand. For this, too,
Gussow hopes, but in the present condition of his technique he limits
himself to Hester Street scenes.
In New York Gussow continued to build up an education uncommonly good
in the Ghetto. He went through the High School, entered the City
College, which he left for the Art School, and spent one season at the
League and two at the Academy of Design. He has for many years given
lessons in English; to which occupation he, unlike his more emotional
friend, prudently holds on. But Gussow, also, is deeply if not
emotionally interested in the life of the Ghetto, and in a broader if
less intense form than is Epstein. With the contemporary Yiddish
literature and journalism of New York he is well acquainted. His mind
is more conservative and judicial than that of Epstein; but his
sketches lack, at present at least, the touch of strong sympathy and
imagination which is marked in the art of the younger man.
[Illustration: THE PUSH-CARTS OF HESTER STREET AND THEIR GUARD AT
NIGHT]
Gussow lives with his father's family, where he keeps his
sketches--but to work, he goes to a room on the corner of Hester and
Essex streets occupied by a poor Jewish family. Here the artist sits
by the window and watches the poor and picturesque scenes in the big
push-cart market directly beneath him. The subjects of his sketches
are roughly the same as those of Epstein, altho he draws rather more
from the street and Epstein from the sweat-shop. Groups standing about
the push-carts, examining goods and bargaining; an old woman with a
cheese in her hand, and an enormous nose (which Epstein reproachfully
calls a caricature); several sketches representing men or women
holding eggs to the sun, as a test preliminary to buying; carpenters
waiting on the corner near the market for a job; an old Jew critically
examining apples; a roughly indicated, rather attractive Jewish girl;
a woman standing by a push-cart counting her money; a confused Hester
Street crowd, walled in by the lofty tenement-houses; a wall-painter
with an interesting face, who peddles horse-radish when not occupied
with painting; a pedler out of work, just from the hospital, his beard
straggling in again, with the characteristic sad eyes of his race;
this rather small list comprises the greater part of Gussow's work,
and most of it is of a distinctly sketchy nature.
"You see," said Epstein sympathetically, "Bernard has until recently
been working for the tenement-house committee, and has only just got
away from his job." Both of these young men seem to think it a piece
of good luck when they are discharged by their employers.
These artists both recognize that the distinctive Ghetto art is in its
earliest stage; and that whatever has yet been done in that direction
is technically very imperfect. But they call attention even to the
crayon art stores of the Ghetto as crudely pointing in the right
direction. In those chromos, which contain absolutely no artistic
quality, is represented, nevertheless, the religious and domestic life
of the Jews and their physical types. And whatever art there is at
present is supported by the popularity with the people of this crayon
work. On the basis of that the artist proper may work out the type
into more truly interpretative forms.
For this young art, the object of which is to give a realistic picture
of the life of the Ghetto, it is easy to conceive an unduly
sentimental interest. It is not unnatural in this time of great
attention to east side charitable work to give greater value than it
deserves to an art which represents the sordidness and the pathos of
that part of the city. Against this attitude, which they also call
sentimental, Epstein and Gussow earnestly protest, and maintain that
unless the Ghetto art becomes some day technically excellent it will
have no legitimate value. They want it judged on the same basis that
any other art is judged; and they are filled with the faith, or at
least the enthusiastic Epstein is, that the time will come when the
artists of the Ghetto will paint typical Jewish life, and paint it
technically well.
It is true, of course, that the ultimate value of this little art
movement in the Ghetto will depend upon how well the attempt to paint
the life is eventually carried out. But, nevertheless, even if nothing
comes of it, it is important as suggesting an interesting departure
from what is the prevailing limitation of American art. In Epstein's
work something of the typical life of a community is expressed; of
what American painter from among the Gentiles can this be said? Where
is the typical, the nationally characteristic, in our art? Our best
painters experiment with all kinds of subjects; they put talent,
sometimes genius, into their work, but at the basis of it there is no
simple presentation of well-recognized and deeply felt national or
even sectional life; merely essays in art, of more or less skill,
showing no warm interest in any one kind of life.
There are many other artists, besides these two, in the Ghetto, some
of whom also occasionally paint a distinctive Ghetto type. But for the
most part, trained as they have been in the uptown art schools, they
experiment with all sorts of subjects in the approved American style.
They paint girls in white and girls in blue, etc., as Epstein
expressed it scornfully; and put no general Ghetto quality into their
work. They do not seem deeply interested in anything except painting.
Many of them are technically better educated than Epstein and Gussow;
tho it is probably safe to say that no one of them has the sympathetic
imagination of Epstein. It is to this eclectic, experimental tendency
of the artists in the Ghetto in general that Epstein and Gussow
present a contrast--in their love of their people and their desire to
paint them as they are.
A typical representative of this less centred art is Samuel Kalisch,
twenty-six years old, who came to this country from Austria twelve
years ago. Older than the two young enthusiasts, Kalisch has had more
experience and has developed a more efficient technique. He works in
oils to a greater extent than the others and has a number of
comparatively finished pictures; but his studio resembles that of any
rather undistinguished uptown artist in point of diversity of subject
and artistic impulse. There is an Oriental scene of conventional
character; a portrait of himself taken from the mirror; a number of
examples of still-life, apples, flowers, a "cute" scene of children
playing on the beach; a landscape, etc. Of distinctive Ghetto things
there are two old men, one just from the synagogue, with pensive eyes,
a long beard and a Derby hat; the other, ninety-four years old, who
sits in the synagogue, with a long white beard, a black cap on his
head, a cane in one hand and the Talmud in the other. These two
portraits show considerable technical skill, but are faithful rather
than interpretative, and indicate that the artist's sympathy is not
absorbed in the life of the Ghetto. They are merely subjects, like any
other, which might come to his hand.
Now in full sympathy with what may be called the "movement" is
Nathaniel Loewenberg, a little, black-haired, sad-eyed, sensitive and
appealing Russian Jew of twenty-one years of age. It is only recently,
however, that he has turned from landscape to city types, of which he
has a few sketches, very incomplete with one exception, that also
unfinished but unusually promising; it is in oil and represents a Jew
fish pedler of attractive countenance and shabby clothes trying to
sell a fine fish to three Ghetto women; these latter cleverly
distinguished, one who will probably buy, another who apparently would
like to if she could reduce the price, and the third indifferent.
Loewenberg was born in Moscow, of parents who were then and are now in
business. He is enthusiastic at present over two things: Russian
literature and the life of the Jews. On his table are two books--one a
history of the Hebrews, the other Tolstoi's "Awakening," in Russian.
His newest interest is the Ghetto; "for," he said, "the Ghetto is full
of character. There the people's life is more exposed than anywhere
else, and the artist can easily penetrate into it."
The type Loewenberg hopes to delineate is of different character from
that of Hester Street, where Gussow and Epstein work. His field is
mainly at the corner of Rivington and Attorney streets, where the Jews
are Hungarians and Poles and have a distinctive type. That is the
location of another push-cart market, and altho the human types are
different from those of Hester Street, the peddling occupations are
identical. Loewenberg's fancy runs largely to the young Jewish girl of
this quarter, and she is represented in several half done sketches.
The New York Ghetto is constantly changing. It shifts from one part of
town to another, and the time is not so very far distant when it will
cease to exist altogether. The sweat-shop will happily disappear with
advancing civilization in New York. The tenement-houses will change in
character, the children will learn English and partly forget their
Yiddish language and peculiar customs. In spite of the fact that the
Jews have been at all times and in all countries tenacious of their
domestic peculiarities and their religion, the special character of
the Ghetto will pass away in favorably conditioned America. The
picturesqueness it now possesses will disappear. Perhaps, however, by
that time an art will have been developed which will preserve for
future generations the character of the present life; which may thus
have historical value, and artistic beauty in addition. Epstein and
Gussow, devoted to this result as they are, are yet quite eager to see
present conditions pass away. To them the art they have selected seems
of trifling importance in comparison with a general improvement of the
people they seem genuinely to love. They would be glad to have the
present picturesqueness of the Ghetto give place to conditions more
analogous to those of happier sections of New York.
But in the meantime these few young artists, two or three particularly
interested in Ghetto types, five or six others, perhaps more, who
occasionally contribute a sketch of the Ghetto, are in a fair way to
get together a considerable body of pictures which shall have the
distinction of portraying the Jewish community of the east side with
fair adequacy. Certainly the interest of that Hester Street life, and
of the tenement-houses that line it, is deep enough to inspire some
serious man of plastic genius. And then it is not improbable that some
great sombre pictures will be painted. The conditions for such a
significant art are ripe, and it may find its master in one or another
of the young men who are passionately "doing" Hester Street.
Chapter Ten
Odd Characters
No matter how "queer" are the numerous persons whom one can meet in
the cafés of the quarter they are mainly redeemed by a genuinely
intellectual vein. It is reserved for this final chapter to tell of
some men who do not well fit into the preceding categories, but whose
lives or works are, in one way or another, quite worthy of record.
AN OUT-OF-DATE STORY-WRITER
Shaikevitch is the author of interminable, unsigned novels, which are
published in daily installments in the east side newspapers. He is so
prolific that he makes a good living. There was a time, however, when
he gladly signed his name to what he wrote. That time is over, and the
reason for it is best brought out by a sketch of his history.
He was born in Minsk, Russia, of orthodox Jewish parents. He began to
write when he was twenty years old, at first in pure Hebrew,
scientific and historical articles. He also wrote a Hebrew novel,
called the _Victim of the Inquisition_, to which the Russian censor
objected on the ground that it dealt with religious subjects.
Compelled to make his own living, young Shaikevitch, whose _nom de
plume_ has always been "Schomer," began to write popular novels in the
common jargon, in Yiddish. At that time the Jews in Russia were, even
more than now, shut up in their own communities, knew nothing of
European culture, had an education, if any, exclusively Hebraic and
mediæval and were outlandish to an extreme. The educated read only
Hebrew, and the uneducated did not read at all. Up to that time, or
until shortly before it, the Jew thought that nothing but holy
teaching could be printed in Hebrew type. A man named Dick, however, a
kind of forerunner of Shaikevitch, had begun to write secular stories
in Yiddish. They were popular in form, intended for the ignorant
populace who never read at all. Shaikevitch followed in Dick's lines,
and made a great success.
He has written over 160 stories, and for many years he was the great
popular Yiddish writer in Russia. The people would read nothing but
"Schomer's" works. The ignorant masses eagerly devoured the latest
novel of Schomer's. It goes without saying that, under the
circumstances, these books could be of very slight literary value.
They were long, sentimental effusions, tales of bad Christians and
good Jews, with a monotonous repetition of stock characters and
situations; and with a melodramatic and sensational element. They
probably corresponded pretty closely to our "nickel" novels, published
in some of our cheapest periodicals, and intended for the most
ignorant element of our population. Some of their titles are _A
Shameful Error_, _An Unexpected Happiness_, _The Princess in the
Wood_, _Convicted_, _Rebecca_.
"Schomer" was so successful that he had many imitators, who never,
however, succeeded so well. The publishers sometimes tried to deceive
the ignorant people into thinking that a new novel of Schomer's had
appeared. On the cover of the book they put the title and the new
author's name in very small letters, and then in very large letters:
"In the style of Schomer." But it did not work. The people remained
faithful to the books of the man whom they had first read.
When Shaikevitch, or "Schomer" himself, describes the purpose and
characters of his work he talks as follows:
"My works are partly pictures of the life of the Jews in the Russian
villages of fifty years ago, and partly novels about the old history
of the Jews. Fifty years ago the Jews were more fanatical than they
are now. They did nothing but study the Talmud, pray and fast, wear
long beards and wigs and look like monkeys. I satirized all this in my
novels. I tried to teach the ignorant Jews that they were ridiculous,
that they ought to take hold of modern, practical life and give up all
that was merely formal and absurd in the old customs. I taught them
that a pious man might be a hypocrite, and that it is better to do
good than to pray. My works had a great effect in modernizing and
educating the ignorant Jews. In my stories I pictured how the Jewish
boy might go out from his little village into the wide, Gentile world,
and make something of himself. In the last twenty-five years, the
Jews, owing to my books, have lost a great deal of their fanaticism.
At that time they had nothing but my books to read, and so my satire
had a great effect."
Shaikevitch is not entirely alone in this good opinion of his work.
Dr. Blaustein, superintendent of the Educational Alliance, said that
he owed his position as an educated and modern man to reading novels
when he was a boy. Dr. Blaustein lived in a small Russian village, and
one day he read a story of "Schomer's" which represented a Jewish boy
going out into the world and criticizing his Hebraic surroundings.
That was the beginning of Dr. Blaustein's "awakening." Other
intelligent Russian Jews probably had this same experience, altho now
as mature men they would all, no doubt, grant only a very small, if
any, artistic quality to the famous Yiddish writer.
A few years after Shaikevitch's great popularity two men began to
write in Yiddish stories which really had value for the intelligent
and educated--Abramovitch and, particularly, his pupil Rabinovitch. It
was this work which, in some sort of form, did intelligently for the
more educated Jews what Shaikevitch had done for the lowest stratum.
Rabinovitch published a book in which he brought Shaikevitch to trial.
He literally "tore him up the back" as far as literature is
concerned--pointed out the tasteless, cheap, sensational character of
his work, and held him up generally to ridicule.
[Illustration: N. M. SHAIKEVITCH]
As the Jews became better educated this critical feeling about
Shaikevitch's work grew more general. It is significant of the
progress towards modern things made by the Jews that even the very
ignorant no longer admire Shaikevitch's work as much as formerly. He
is "out of date," so much so that he now does not sign the stories
he publishes in the Yiddish newspapers, which, nevertheless, are still
popular among the most ignorant.
The intellectual Socialists of the Jewish quarter in New York also had
their fling at the popular writer, and helped to put him into
obscurity. Now it is a common thing in the Ghetto to hear a Socialist
say that Shaikevitch wielded a more disintegrating and unfavorable
influence on the Jews than any other writer. But, nevertheless, the
calm old man, who has a wife and several grown children, who are
making their way in the new world, still sits quietly at his desk,
drinking Russian tea and doing his daily "stunt" of several thousand
words for the Yiddish newspapers.
The reason given by Mr. Shaikevitch for coming to America is that he
began to be interested in play writing, when the Yiddish stage was
prohibited in Russia. The actors left Russia then and came to America,
and some of them later wrote Shaikevitch, who was one of the earliest
Yiddish playwrights, to join them in New York. He did so, and has
written twelve plays, which have been produced in this city. Some of
the better known of them are: _The Jewish Count_, _Hamann the Second_,
_Rebecca_ and _Dreyfus_. Shaikevitch is interesting mainly as
representing in his work an early stage of the popular Yiddish
consciousness.
A CYNICAL INVENTOR
The "intellectuals" who gather in the Russian cafés delight in
expressing the ideas for which they were persecuted abroad. Enthusiasm
for progress and love of ideas is the characteristic tone of these
gatherings and an entire lack of practical sense.
Very striking, therefore, was the attitude of a Russian-Jewish
inventor, who took his lunch the other day at one of the most literary
of these cafés. Near him were a trio of enthusiasts, gesticulating
over their tea, but he sat aloof, alone. He listened with a cold,
superior smile. He neither smoked nor drank, but sat, with his thin,
shrewd face, chillily thinking.
It is common report in the community of the intellectual Ghetto that
Mr. Okun made a great invention connected with the electric arc lamp.
It resulted in lengthening the time before the carbon is burnt out
from four or five hours to 150 hours or thereabouts. He might have
been a millionaire to-day, both he and his acquaintances maintain,
but, with the usual unpractical nature of the Russian Jew, he was
cheated by unscrupulous lawyers. He was a shirt maker, and for six
years saved from his $10 a week to buy the apparatus necessary for the
task. At last it was completed, but he was robbed of the fortune, of
the fame, of the prestige to which his great idea entitled him. As it
is, he gets only $1,250 a year for the great deed, spends much of his
time silently in the cafés, and dreams of other inventions when not
engaged with criticizing his kind.
An American, who sometimes visited the place for "color" and for the
unpractical enthusiasm which he missed among his own people, sat down
by the inventor, whose face interested him, and entered into
conversation. He spoke of a Yiddish playwright whom he admired.
"I do not know much about him," said the inventor. "I am not a genius,
like the others."
He sneered, but it was so nearly imperceptible that it did not seem
ill-natured.
"But I am told," said the American, "that you are a great inventor.
And that is a kind of genius."
"Yes, perhaps," he replied, carelessly. "It takes talent, too, to do
what I have done. But I am not a genius, like these people."
Again he smiled, sarcastically.
"I find," said the American, "a great many interesting people in these
cafés."
"Yes, they are what you call characters, I suppose," he said,
dispassionately; "but I find them interesting only for one reason--no,
no, I won't tell you what that reason is."
"You don't seem to be as enthusiastic about the people as I am," said
the American, "but whenever I come into a café down here I find
serious men who will talk seriously. They are different from the
Americans who amuse themselves in bars, at horse races and farces."
The inventor smiled coldly.
"I do not call serious, what you call serious," he said. "It is not
necessary to talk seriously to be serious. Serious men do things. The
Russians don't do things. If they were gay and did things, they would
be more serious than they are. But they are solemn and don't do
anything."
"I don't agree with you," said the American, warmly. "Doesn't Blank,
who writes so many excellent novels, do anything? Don't the actors,
who act so truthfully, without self-consciousness, do anything? Don't
the journalists, who spread excellent ideas, do anything?"
The inventor nodded judicially and remarked that there were some
exceptions.
"But," he added, "you are deceived by the surface. There are many men
in our colony who seem to be stronger intellectually than they really
are. In Russia a few men, really cultivated and intellectual, give the
tone, and everybody follows them. In America, however, the public
gives the tone, and the playwright, the literary man, simply expresses
the public. So that really intellectual Americans do not express as
good ideas as less intellectual Russians. The Russians all imitate the
best. The Americans imitate what the mass of the people want. But an
intellectual American is more intellectual than these geniuses around
here whom you like. Of course, they have some good things in them, as
everybody has."
"What is it that you find to like in this Russian colony?" asked the
American.
"I find," replied the inventor, "that when they come over here they
lose what is best in the Russian character and acquire what is worst
in the American character."
"And what do you deem best in the Russian character?"
"Well, in Russia they are warm hearted and friendly. They are envious
even there, but not nearly so envious as they are here."
"And what do you find that is worst in the American character?"
"Oh, you know; they do everything for money. But yet there is more
greatness in the American character. They are mechanical. They are
practical. They don't get cheated by unscrupulous lawyers.
"Are you married?" asked the American, sympathetically.
"No, thank God!" he replied, with more energy than he had yet shown.
"But you have no friends?"
"No."
"Some men," commented the American, "find a friend in a wife."
"That depends on a man's character. It increases the loneliness of
some men," replied the inventor, smiling in spite of what he was
saying.
"You seem to me to be rather pessimistic," remarked the American.
"No, I am not pessimistic. I understand that a pessimist thinks life
is worse than it is, but I see things just as they are; that is all.
When I came to New York I was enthusiastic, too; I was an optimist. I
saw life as it is not. But the mists have passed from before my eyes,
and I see things just as they are."
AN IMPASSIONED CRITIC
He loves literature with an absorbing love, and is pained constantly
by what he deems the chaos of art in the United States. The Americans
seem to him to be trivial and immature in their art, lacking in
serious purpose.
"It is a vast and fruitful land," he will say, "but there is no order
and little sincerity as far as art is concerned. Your writers try to
amuse the readers, to entertain them merely, rather than to give them
serious and vital truth. Why is it that a race which is clever and
progressive in all mechanical and industrial matters, which in such
things has no overpowering respect for the past, is weighed down in
art by a regard for all the literary ghosts of bygone times? Look at
the books put forth in any one year in the United States! What a
senseless hodgepodge it is! Variety of all kinds, historical novels,
short stories, social plays, costume plays, bindings, illustrations,
_editions de luxe_, new editions of books written in all ages
alongside of the latest productions of the day. The Americans have
great tact in most things. They are the cleverest people in the world,
and yet they are very backward in literature.
"Indeed the whole Anglo-Saxon race, great economically and practically
as it is, is curiously at sea and chaotic in all that pertains to
literary art. There are men of genius, great artists among them, but
they are artists only in part, fragmentarily, artists without being
aware of it, with no consistent and clear understanding of what art
is. Your great men are hindered by their environment. America and
England are the most difficult countries in the world for real art to
get a hearing, for all the people insist on being amused by their
authors. They treat them as they do their actors, merely as public
servants whose duty it is to amuse the public when it is tired. But
art is a serious thing, instinct with sincerity, and should never be
lightly approached either by the artist or the reader.
"Another indication of what I mean is the way you all talk about style
over here, as if the style had anything to do with art. Some of the
great Russian realists have no style, but they are great artists.
There was a time when to write well was an exception, and people who
did it were supposed to be great. Now so many write well that it
constitutes no longer any particular distinction. Real art consists in
the presentation of ideas in images, and in the power of seeing in
images, and of reproducing imaginatively; what is thus seen is wholly
independent of style. And, more, words often stand in the way of art.
A man writes a pretty style. There may be no idea or image beneath it,
but you Anglo-Saxons say: 'Ha! Here is a man with a style, a great
artist!' But he is no artist. He is a mere decorator, trivial and
empty. He doesn't seize earnestly upon life and tell the truth about
it. Now and then, indeed, I see indications of real art in your
writers--great images, great characters, great truth, but all merely
in suggestion. You don't know when you do anything good, and most of
you don't like it when you see it. You prefer an exciting plot to a
great delineation of character. Sometimes you throw off, often in
newspapers, something that indicates great talent, real art, but you
cover it up with an indistinguishable mass of rubbish. You don't know
what you are after. You have no method. Every writer goes his single
way, confused, at cross purposes. There is no school of literature.
Consequently, there is great loss of energy, great waste of material;
great richness, but what carelessness, what deplorable carelessness,
about the deepest and noblest and most serious things in life! I love
you; I love you all; you are clever, good fellows, but you are
children, talented, to be sure, but wayward and vagrant children, in
the fields of art. Sincerity, realism, purpose and unity are what as a
race you need, if you wish ever to have a consistent and genuine art.
"The Russian, the Frenchman, the German, knows what he wants. He is
after the truth. He is serious about life. He doesn't try to dodge the
facts for the sake of a little false cheerfulness and optimistic
inanity."
Thus talks the Russian prophet. He is a robust, earnest man, who is
trying to make head and tail out of contemporary English literature.
He finds no great mainspring of impulse or principle behind it, but an
infinite pandering to an infinitely diversified public taste. He
thinks it is a kind of vaudeville of art, full of compromises, vulgar
in its lack of principle. It makes him sad in much the same way that
skepticism and profanity sadden a deeply religious person. Wisdom and
truth he wants, and doesn't find them. What he finds is haste, greed,
incompleteness and waste, and his soul abhors anything which takes
away from the deepest nature of the soul. He is really a religious
man, profound and sincere, sad at the wasteful, foolish lightness in
art of the Anglo-Saxon world. Like his great countryman, Tolstoy, he
writes stories, and, again like Tolstoy, as he grows older the more he
sees in art and life which he would like to reform and deepen. Economy
of the heart, soul and brain, the direction of them to a constant
end--the feeling of the necessity of this is now an altruistic passion
with this man. Like all reformers, he is sad, but, again like all
reformers, he is robust and calm, self-sufficient.
THE POET OF ZIONISM
Naptali Herz Imber is known to all Jews of any education as the man
who has written in the old Hebrew language the poems that best express
the hope of Zion and that best serve as an inspiring battle cry in the
struggle for a new Jerusalem. Zangwill has translated into English the
Hebrew "Wacht Am Rhein," the most popular of Imber's poems, which is
called _The Watch on the Jordan_. It is in four stanzas, the first of
which is:
Like the crash of the thunder
Which splitteth asunder
The flame of the cloud,
On our ears ever falling,
A voice is heard calling
From Zion aloud;
"Let your spirits' desires
For the land of your sires
Eternally burn
From the foe to deliver
Our own holy river,
To Jordan return."
Where the soft flowing stream
Murmurs low as in dream,
There set we our watch.
Our watchword, "The sword,
Of our land and our Lord,"
By the Jordan then set we our watch.
Mr. Imber is a peculiar character and is said to be the original of
the poet Pinchas in Zangwill's _Children of the Ghetto_.
At a Russian-Jewish café on Canal Street he may often be found. Not
long ago I met him there and discovered that the dignified Hebrew poet
had as a man many of the more humorous and less impressive
peculiarities of the character in Mr. Zangwill's book. It is difficult
to take him seriously. He was sitting opposite an old "magid," or
wandering preacher, whose specialty is to attack America, and he
consented to tell about his work and to confide some of his ideas.
"I am the origin of the Zionistic movement," he said. "It is not
generally known, but I am. Many years ago I went to Jerusalem, saw the
misery of the people, felt the spirit of the place and determined to
bring my scattered people again together. For twelve years I struggled
to put the Zionistic movement on foot, and now that I have started it
I will let others carry it on and get the glory. For long I was not
recognized, but when my Hebrew poems were published our whole race
were made enthusiastic for Zion.
"If you wish to know what the spirit and purpose of my Hebrew poems is
I will tell you. For two thousand years Hebrew poetry has been
nothing but lamentations--nothing but literature expressing the spirit
of Jeremiah. There have been no love songs, no wine songs, no songs of
joy, nothing pagan. There have been no poets, only critics in rhyme.
Now what I did in my Hebrew verses was to do away with lamentations.
We have had enough of lamentations. I introduced the spirit of love
and wine, the pagan spirit. My theme, indeed, is Zion. I am an
individualist. It is the only 'ist' I believe in, and I want my nation
to be individual, too. I want them to be joyously themselves, and so I
am a Zionist. Therefore I did away with critical poetry and with
lamentations and led my people on to an individual and a joyous life."
Altho Mr. Imber's best work is in Hebrew poetry, he is yet a very
voluminous writer on science, economics, medicine, mysticism, history
and many other subjects.
"I have written on everything," said the poet, "everything. I know
almost nothing about the subjects on which I write. I don't believe in
reading. I believe in knowing myself. In that way we learn to know
others. Psychology is the only science. All others are fakes, and I
can fake as well as anybody. Why read, or why seek amusement in the
theatres or elsewhere, when one can sit in a café and talk to a man
like that?"
He pointed in the old "magid" opposite him.
"Whenever I want to amuse myself," he said, "I talk to a man like
that, and I cannot amuse myself without learning more about
psychology."
With the exception of his poems most of the poet's work was written in
the English language.
"I began to write English late in life," he said. "Israel Zangwill
helped me to begin. He said he would correct what I wrote, but I wrote
so much that Mr. Zangwill stopped reading it and told me to go ahead
on my own hook. So I did. I have written infinitely in English, some
of which has been published--_Music of the Psalms_; _Education and the
Talmud_, which was issued by the United States government in the
report of the commissioner of education; many articles on mysticism
and other subjects in the magazine _Ariel_; _The Mystery of the Golden
Calf_, _The Music of the Ghetto_, and many other works on the
cabalistic mysticism. I have also written, _Who Was Crucified?_
wherein I prove that it was not Jesus. If I kept on all day I could
not tell you the names of all I have written. I have published many
articles in the Jewish-American papers satirizing the rabbis, who
consequently hate me. Much of my work, indeed, is satirical. The
world needs cleaning up a little, particularly the rabbis. Put the
reformed and orthodox rabbis together and some good might come of
them. I am not afraid of these people, whom I call silk-chimney
rabbis, because they wear tall hats instead of knowing the Talmud. It
was my own invention--'silk-chimney rabbis.'"
Mr. Imber is evidently very fond of this phrase, for he repeated it
many times. Indeed, he does not seem to be a very pious Jew. He
himself admits it, for he said:
"I do not think they will say 'Kaddish' for my soul when I am dead.
And yet I am not a skeptic, exactly. I have a principle, Zionism. And
beyond Zionism I have another great interest. I have now perfected
Zionism, so I am free to pass on to Mysticism, in which I am deeply at
work. The mystics are all bluffers. I am a mystic, but my mysticism is
simple and plain. My aim is to present a perfectly simple view of
occultism. It is difficult to persuade Americans to become mystics.
They care nothing for Hegel and Kant. Their philosophy I call
Barnumism."
[Illustration: NAPTALI HERZ IMBER]
Mr. Imber has largely given up writing Hebrew now, but lately he wrote
a Hebrew poem comprising 200 closely printed pages. He did it, he
said, to spite a man who said the poet had forgotten Hebrew because of
his penchant for English.
Not long ago Mr. Imber wrote a _Last Confession_ in Hebrew. He was
very sick in a St. Louis hospital with blood poisoning, and thought he
was going to die. They wanted him to confess his sins. So he did it,
in Hebrew verse, which he translated to me, evidently on the spur of
the moment, thus:
When my day will come
To wander in distress,
Call the priest to my room,
My sins to confess.
The sins which I have committed
With deliberation,
They will by the Lord be omitted,
Who promised us salvation.
The evils I have done,
Not conscious of the action,
Have passed away and gone
Without satisfaction.
I see near me the green table:
The gamblers play aloud,
And I am sick and unable
To mix up with the crowd.
There are still beautiful roses,
With aroma blessed;
There are still handsome maidens,
Whose lips I have not pressed.
This has me affected,
I am full of remorse,
That of late I have neglected
The girl and the roses.
Written on what the poet thought was his deathbed, this satirical poem
is almost as heroic as _The Watch on the Jordan_.
Mr. Imber has also written many original poems in English, which,
however, he fears will not live. Many of them are satirical poems
about American life and politics. When in Denver before the Spanish
war he wrote some verses beginning:
Our flag will soon be planted
In a land where we do not want it.
It was, the poet said, through the simple, clear character of his
mystical attainments that he was able to predict the results of the
war with Spain.
Mr. Imber looks upon America as the "land of the bluff" and as such
admires it. But he disapproves of our reform movements. He thinks the
recent attempt to reform the east side was due to the desire of the
rich to divert attention from their own vices. He doesn't approve of
reform any way.
"We have been trying to reform human nature," he said, "for 2,000
years, and have not done it yet. The only way to make a man good is
to remove his stomach, for so long as he is hungry he will steal, and
so long as he has other desires he will commit other wicked actions.
Moses and Jesus were smart men and knew that evil could not be rooted
out, and so they tolerated it."
Mr. Imber has recently made his last will and testament. It is in
Hebrew prose and runs thus in English:
"To the rabbis I leave what I don't know; it will help them to a
longer life. To my enemies I leave my rheumatism. Between the
Republican and Democratic parties I divide the boodle which they have
not yet touched. To the Jewish editors I leave my broken pen, so that
they can write slowly and avoid mistakes. My books--those intended for
beginners--I leave to the eight professors, so that they can learn to
read. As an executor there shall be appointed a man who knows Barnum's
philosophy through and through. Written on my deathbed. Witness, Mr.
Pluto of the Underground and his Famulus, the doctor. As an
afterthought I leave to my publishers the last bill unpaid by me. They
can frame it and keep it as an amulet to ward away that class of
authors."
"Is it sarcastic?" asked Mr. Imber, chuckling delightedly.
Some time ago Mr. Imber sent the news of his own death to the various
Hebrew and Yiddish publications. Many long obituaries--"very fine
ones," said the poet--appeared.
"In that way," said Mr. Imber, "I learned who were my enemies. It had
one evil consequence, however. When I afterward asked the editor to
publish one of my articles he said:
"'You are officially dead, and as such cannot rush into print.'
"That reply really gave me a grievous moment," said the poet, with a
shrewd, Voltairian smile.
AN INTELLECTUAL DEBAUCHEE
Four men sat excitedly talking in the little café on Grand Street
where the Socialists and Anarchists of the Russian quarter were wont
to meet late at night and stay until the small hours. An American, who
might by chance have happened there, would have wondered what
important event had occurred to rasp these men's voices, to cause them
to gesticulate so wildly, to give their dark, intelligent faces so
fateful, so ominous an expression. In reality, however, nothing out of
the ordinary had happened. It was the usual course of human affairs
which kept these men in a constant glow of unhappy emotion; an
emotion which they deeply preferred to trivial optimism and the
content founded on Philistine well-being. They were always excited
about life, for life as it is constituted seemed to them very unjust.
It was nearly midnight, and the men in the café, altho they had drunk
nothing stronger than Russian tea, talked on, seemingly intoxicated
with ideas. One was the editor of a Yiddish newspaper in the quarter
and a contributor to the Anarchistic monthly. He was a man of about
forty years of age, lighter in complexion than his companions, but yet
dark. Like them he was dressed carelessly and poorly. In his
melancholy eyes shone a gentle idealism. He spoke in a voice lower and
softer than those of his fellows. He was deeply liked by them, for he
was capable of sweet and beautiful ideas about the perfect humanity,
some of which he had put into a play which had a short life on the
Bowery, but lived in the hearts of these warm intellectuals.
Non-resistance to evil was the favorite principle of this gentle
Anarchist, whose name was Blanofsky.
His companions were younger and more heated and violent in speech, tho
their attenuated bodies and thoughtful and sensitive faces did not
suggest reliance on physical force. On the Bowery the Irish tough
fights after a word, but an all day dispute between two Jews on Canal
or Hester Street is unaccompanied by the clenching of a fist. A dark,
thin young man, whose closely shaven face seemed somehow to fit his
spirit, given over entirely to the "movement," sat at Blanofsky's
right hand. At almost any hour of the day or night Hermann Samarovitch
could be found at the Anarchist headquarters on Essex Street, poring
over the books of the propaganda and engaging in talk with other
bright spirits of the "movement." Now, as he talked or listened in the
café on Grand Street, his pale, smooth face seemed dead to all the
ordinary interests of youth. The spirit of life was represented in him
only by the passion for the cause, which burned in his black eyes. He
had no other function than to worship at the shrine. How he lived,
therefore, was a mystery.
Of the other two men, one, Jacob Hessler, a labor leader in the
Ghetto, an eloquent speaker, of more commanding presence, but less
sensitive and impressive at short range than either Blanofsky or
Samarovitch, was silent, for the most part. He talked only to crowds,
partly because it was exciting, but mainly because his limited
intelligence put him at a disadvantage in intimate talk with men of
concentrated intellectual character. The fourth man in the café,
Abraham Gudinsky, was a simple admirer of Blanofsky. He was born in
Jerusalem, had studied law in Constantinople, had lived in Paris as a
bohemian, and, after a few years passed in the commonplace, dissipated
gayety of youth, had come to New York, where his sympathetic and
idealistic character had come under the influence of the quiet charm
of Blanofsky. He had small, live, eyes and a high forehead, and his
body perpetually moved nervously.
"I do not believe," said Blanofsky, in Russian, "that anything can be
accomplished by force. Our cause is too sacred to tarnish it with
blood, and it is too strong in logic and justice not to conquer
peaceably in the end; and that, too, without leaving behind it the
ill-breeding weeds of a violent course. I have nothing but pity for
the misguided wretch who took the life of King Humbert, thinking he
was acting for the cause. It is the acts of such madmen as he that
make us appear to the public as merely irrational monsters."
"Nevertheless," said Samarovitch, his dark eyes glowing, "it is
natural that the crimes of society against the individual should
irritate us sometimes into violent acts. I am not sure but that it is
good that it should be so. Those devoted men, in the great movement
in Russia, at the time the Czar was killed, were as clearheaded as
they were devoted; and they felt that the governmental evil pressing
in Russia could be relieved only by a kind of terrorism. And they were
right," he concluded, with gloomy emphasis.
[Illustration: A YOUNG MAN AND A YOUNG WOMAN JUST ENTERED THE CAFÉ]
Blanofsky shook his head, and was about to speak of Tolstoy, whom he
regarded as the great interpreter of genuine anarchy, when he was
interrupted by the approach of a young man and a young woman who had
just entered the café. Sabina, as she was familiarly known to the
faithful, dark and slender, with very large, emotional eyes and a
mobile mouth, had just come from her lecture to a crowd of workingmen,
to whom she had spoken eloquently of their right to lead a life with
greater light and beauty in it. The emotions expressed by her
eloquence, and stirred by it, still lay in her deep eyes as she
entered the café. Her companion, who had walked with her from the
lecture, was a young poet, whose words followed one another with
turbulent energy. His head was set uncommonly close to his compact,
stout shoulders, seeming to have a firmer rest than usual on the
trunk, and thus better to support the strain of his thick-coming
fancies. His habitual attitude was to hold his closed fist even with
his shoulder, and punctuate with it the transitions of his thought.
Even in winter the perspiration rolled down his face as he spoke, for
thought with him was intense to the point of pain. He was the perfect
type of the intellectual debauchee of the Russian-Jewish colony. He
drank nothing but tea and coffee, but within him burned his ideas. He
made his living by writing an occasional poem or article for a Yiddish
paper, and when he had gathered together a few dollars he repaired
again to the cafés, seeking companions to whom he could confide his
exuberant thoughts, which were always expressed in poetic images. He
slept whenever and wherever he was tired, but he slept seldom, and
unwillingly. Unrest was his quest and unhappiness his dearest
consolation. The type of his mind was as Russian as his name, which
was Levitzky. The girl looked and listened to him, fascinated. They
sat down at the table with the others, and while the waiter was
bringing their tea and lemon, Levitzky continued his discourse:
"No, I do not like America. The people here are satisfied. Things seem
frozen here--finished. Great deeds have been done, great things have
been created. Wall Street and Broadway fill me with wonder. The
outside is great, showing energy that has been. But at the core, all
is dead. The imagination and the heart are extinguished. Content and
comfort eat up the nation. New York seems to me an active city of the
dead, where there is much movement, but no soul. Russia, which I love,
is just the opposite. There nothing is done, nothing finished. One
sees nothing, but feels warmth and vitality at the heart. In love it
is the same way. The American wants a legal wife and a comfortable
home, but the Russian wants a mistress behind a mountain to whom he
can not penetrate but towards whom he can strive, for whom he can long
and dream. It is better to hope than to attain."
Sabina looked at him, her bosom heaving. His last words seemed to
trouble her, but she sat in silence and appeared to listen to the
conversation, which turned on a recent strike in the Ghetto. Finally
she got up to go home, refusing Levitzky's offer to accompany her.
Leaving the Anarchists still engaged in talk, she went into the
street, which, altho it was after one o'clock, was still far from
deserted.
Instead of going to her poor room in the tenement-house on Hester
Street she walked slowly along Grand Street, towards the Bowery, deep
in reflection. She was thinking of Levitzky and of her life. Ten
years before, as a child of twelve, she had come to New York from
Russia, with her father, a tailor, who had worked for several years in
the sweat-shops. He had died two years before, and since then Sabina
had worked in the sweat-shops in the day time and in the evening had
devoted herself to the cause. At first she had gone to the Socialistic
and Anarchistic meetings merely because they were attended by the only
society in the east side which at all satisfied her growing
intellectual activity. These rough workingmen sometimes seemed to her
inspired, and her ardor and youth were soon deeply interested in the
cause of Socialism, partly because of the pity inspired by the sordid
poverty about her, but mainly because of the strong attraction any
earnest movement has for a young and emotionally intellectual person.
As was quite inevitable, she went from an unreserved love for the
group of ideas called Socialistic to the quite contrary ones of
Anarchy. And this change was not founded on intellectual conviction,
but was due to the simple fact that the Anarchistic cause was more
extreme and gave greater apparent opportunity for self-sacrifice; and
for the reason, too, that the most interesting man she had met,
Levitzky, was at that time an Anarchist. These two made, very often,
passionate speeches on the same evening to a crowd of attentive
laborers, and after the meeting walked the street together or sat over
their tea in the café discussing high ideals, not only Anarchy, but
all noble subjects that detach the soul from the sordid business of
life.
Of course, Sabina loved Levitzky. His robust intellect and exuberant,
poetical nature, a nature constant to passion, but inconstant to
persons, made her beloved ideas seem real, gave a concrete seal to the
creations of her imagination.
Neither Levitzky nor Sabina were conscious of the strong feeling that
he was arousing in the girl's soul. He poured his mind out to her. His
rich nature unfolded in her sympathetic presence. She loved him for
the mental crises he had passed; and he loved merely the mental images
his words aroused in him when she was present.
It was not until the evening of the scene in the café that she had
fully understood that she was eternally in love with Levitzky. On the
walk from the lecture to the Grand Street café they had for the first
time spoken of love between man and woman, and Levitzky had launched
forth into an eloquent tirade against satisfied desire, a speech which
was concluded in the café, with the remark about how a Russian loves
an inaccessible mistress, a beautiful creature separated from her
lover by a mountain, while the despised American wants a legal wife
whom he can enjoy and be sure of.
The sentiment fitted in beautifully with Sabina's habitually
enthusiastic habit of mind. But to-night she was ashamed of herself
because his words filled her with fear and pain. Irrational emotion
drove her theories from her head, and struck her dumb with grief for
what she looked upon as a betrayed ideal. She, who had devoted herself
to the "movement"; she, who had chosen an intellectual career, a life
devoted to the cause of humanity; she, who had been proud of her
independence and had confidently looked forward to a life of celibacy;
this superior person was in love, and loved as passionately and as
personally as any commonplace woman. She devoutly believed in the
worth of Levitzky's ideas against human love between the sexes, and
the fact that her nerves and imagination went against her head
overwhelmed her with remorse. She was unfaithful not only to her own
ideals, but to the ideals of the man she loved. She knew that Levitzky
felt no love for her. If he had, she would not have loved him. She
longed to tear this feeling, which she felt to be unworthy of her and
in the nature of an insult to him, from her heart; but she knew she
could not.
After leaving Levitzky and the Anarchists in the café, Sabina walked
slowly towards the Bowery, suffering with love and humiliation,
thinking of Levitzky and of the past, the devoted past which now
seemed deeply wronged. Her despair can perhaps be understood by the
fanatical nun whose years of devotion to her vows are rendered vain by
a sudden impulse of the heart which is yielded to; or by the ambitious
man of affairs who betrays a governmental trust because of the
repeated frenzy of an emotion which wears out his resistance and leads
him to the woman who has charmed and deceived him.
As Sabina passed through the street her attention was mechanically
caught by the notice in a shop window, which was still dimly lighted,
of an important labor meeting, to take place in a couple of days, at
which a famous German Anarchist was to speak--a man who was coming
from Europe to join the "Movement" in New York, whose books she had
read and loved. Such notices always arrested her eager attention, and
even now habit led her to stop by the window and dully read the entire
poster. The thought of the coming event, which would once have been of
palpitating interest to her, increased her remorse and despair. Of
such great activity as this she had rendered herself incapable. To go
to any such meeting now would be hypocrisy, she felt. The cause she
wanted to love and serve and still did love she could yet never again
be wholehearted about. She bore with her a burden. She seemed to
herself to be a sinful creature, and the devoted life she had led
seemed poisoned by this terrible passion which controlled her. She
felt she never again could look Levitzky in the face; for a terrible
impulse in her was about to drag her from the pedestal where he had
helped to place her; and to drag with her the man she loved from the
impersonal height at which he stood.
Her passionate nature rebelled at the thought of any compromise with
the ideal. She could not endure life otherwise than as her imagination
dictated--and here was a passion which threatened the existence of all
she approved. What in a colder nature would have been a mere
intellectual phase was with her an unbearably emotional upheaval; and
on the spot she made a resolution conceived in despair but carried out
with logical coolness. As the rebellious thought surged over her and
filled her being with hot emotion she became aware that the shop was
that of an apothecary on East Broadway, whither she had unconsciously
wandered. With set lips she entered, aroused the sleeping clerk, a
Socialist whom she knew, and bought that which soon allayed her
problem without solving it. Early the next morning the clerk found her
lying near the doorway, with an expression of impulsive energy on her
dark face.
About three days later Blanofsky and his three friends were sitting in
the café on Grand Street, drinking their eternal Russian tea and
talking about Levitzky.
"I never saw a man so broken," said Blanofsky in his soft voice, "as
Levitzky was by the death of that girl. For a week I feared for his
life, he was so desperate. It seems he met Lefeitkin's clerk, who told
him. He disappeared from the quarter for several days, and no one knew
where he went. Four days ago he came to my room looking like a madman.
His hair was full of mud and his clothes torn and filthy. His eyes
burned in his pale face, and his speech, more voluminous than ever,
was broken and incoherent. He stayed all day, refused to eat, but
talked all the time of Sabina, of her mind, of her rare personality,
of her devotion to the cause. He was interrupted by fits of sobbing. I
did not know that this man of intellect was capable of so great
personal feeling."
"Levitzky is weak," said Herman Samarovitch, "and inconstant. He has
vivid ideas, and imagination, but he never really cared for the cause.
He was a Socialist before he was an Anarchist. Before that he was an
atheist, which followed a period of religious mysticism. At one time
he was a conventional capitalist in principle, with the English
government as his model. He is easily moved by an idea or an emotion,
but he easily passes to another. He will soon forget this girl's
death, to which he should have been superior. He has no steadfastness,
and is not one of us."
At this point, Levitzky entered the café. With him was the new
arrival, the German Anarchist. To him Levitzky was talking with great
animation. His words rolled over one another with enthusiasm.
"Do you know," he said eagerly, his face beaming, to Blanofsky and his
companions, "that our distinguished friend here has consented to
debate to-morrow night with our Socialist friend, Jacob Matz, that
mistaken but able man, on the nature of individual right as
interpreted by the Anarchist on one side and the Socialist on the
other. I have written a poem on liberty which I intend to read at the
meeting. Do you wish to hear it?"
He drew a manuscript from his pocket and read enthusiastically a poem
in which a turbulent love for man and nature, for social equality and
foaming cataracts was expressed in rich imagery. His face glowed and
he seemed transported. He had forgotten Sabina.
[Illustration]
_Charles Dana Gibson says_: "It is like a trip to Paris."
THE REAL LATIN QUARTER OF PARIS
By F. Berkeley Smith
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THE INSANE ROOT
By Mrs. Campbell Praed
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JESUS THE JEW
_AND OTHER ADDRESSES_
By Harris Weinstock
Introduction by Prof. David Starr Jordan
Ten straightforward talks by a broad-minded student of the Jewish
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Spirit of the Ghetto, by Hutchins Hapgood