Chapter XII: Prose Writers Since 1881: Spektor

In the short period of two years Judeo-German literature lost four of its most prominent writers: in 1891 there passed away the veteran poet, Michel Gordon; the next year J. L. Gordon followed him; and soon after death gathered in Dick and Zederbaum. Without having himself produced any works of a permanent value, without having in any way accelerated or retarded the course of its literature, Zederbaum is peculiarly identified with its development and has on two important occasions in the history of the Jews of Russia served as a crystallizing body for the literary forces in the vernacular. He was born in 1816, and in his youth enjoyed the intimate friendship of Ettinger and Aksenfeld. He had fostered the budding talents of Abramowitsch and Linetzki at a time when the efforts of the first disciples of the Haskala were about to be crowned by a success they had hardly dreamed would be realized so soon. And he lived to see all his hopes crushed in the occurrences of 1881, when his race was threatened to be cast back into darkness more dense than at his birth. During a lifetime thus rich in momentous experiences, he has in his person reflected the succession of events as far as they affected his race. In 1861 he founded a Hebrew periodical, the _Hameliz_, as a mouthpiece of the more advanced ideas of culture for that restricted class of the learned and educated who still clung to the sacred language as the only medium for the advancement of worldly knowledge. But he felt that the time had come when the masses who, on the one side, could not be reached by that ancient tongue, and who, on the other, had not yet had an opportunity of a Russian instruction, must be approached directly in their own mother-tongue. So, two years later, he started the Judeo-German supplement to his Hebrew weekly, the _Kol-mewasser_, which was for ten years the rallying ground of all who could wield a Judeo-German pen. Then the Government interfered in the publication, and for another decade there was no periodical published in Russia in that language. Nor was that to be regretted, for its usefulness had become very small. The Russian schools were crowded with Jewish young men and women, and there was not a science or an art to which the Jews had not given a large contingent, and this vanguard of the new culture, even if it had not broken with the traditions of the past, could be reached only by means of the Russian language. To fall in line with these changed conditions, Zederbaum founded two Russian periodicals for the discussion of Jewish affairs.

After a great deal of trouble, he succeeded in October of 1881 in getting the Government's permission to issue a Judeo-German weekly, the _Jüdisches Volksblatt_. He felt that his duty was once more with the masses, that they needed the advice of better-informed men in the impending danger, and at the advanced age of sixty-five he once more took upon his shoulders a publication in which he had no supporters. In the first two years the weekly was bare of literary productions. Except for an occasional poem by J. L. Gordon, and here and there a feuilleton, the rest was occupied by political news, for which Zederbaum had to supply the leaders. Abramowitsch and Linetzki had ceased writing, and no new generation had had time to develop literary talents. The tone of the new novel, to do any positive good, had to be different from those current before. Dick had been writing for the people with little regard to the people's familiarity with the scenes described, while Abramowitsch wrote of the people but not necessarily to the level of an humble audience. Now the author had to write both of and for the people, he had to be in touch with them not as a critic or moralizer, but as a sympathetic friend. In 1883, two such men made their debut in the _Jüdisches Volksblatt_: Mordechai Spektor, the calm observer of the life in the lower strata of society, and Solomon Rabinowitsch, the impulsive painter of scenes from the middle classes. Of these, the first came nearest to what Zederbaum regarded as requisite for a writer in those troublous times, and he called Spektor to St. Petersburg to take charge of the literary part of his weekly.

In the short time of his connection with the _Volksblatt_, and later as editor of several periodicals of his own, Spektor[94] has developed a great activity. He has written a large number of short sketches and more extended novels,[95] and his talent is still in the ascendant. All of his productions are characterized by the same melancholy dignity and even tenor. He is never in a hurry with his narration, and his characters are sketched with a firm hand and clearly outlined against the background of the story. He loves his subjects with a calm, dispassionate love, and he loves the meanest of his creations no less than his heroes. He likes to dwell with them and to inspect them from every coign of vantage. He fondly tells of their good qualities and suffers with them for their natural defects. And yet, though he loves them, he does not place a halo around them, he does not idealize them. The situations are developed in his stories naturally, independently of what he would like them to be.

Although he now and then describes the life of the middle classes, he more often treats incidents from the life of the artisans in the small towns, who have not been affected by the modern culture. Himself having had few advantages in life, he has been able to keep in closer touch with the men and women about whom and for whom he writes. He understands them thoroughly, and they like to listen to him. He does not sermonize to them, he does not attack them or their enemies; he merely speaks to them as their friend. The Khassid and the Anti-Khassid, the laborer and the man of culture, Jew and Non-Jew, can read him with equal pleasure. The student of manners finds in his faithful pictures as rich a store of information as in Schatzkes' or Linetzki's works, and he has the conviction that nothing is distorted or thrown out of its proper proportion, as the others sometimes have to do in order to strengthen their arguments. Spektor is a young man, having been born in 1859, and was a witness of the occurrences in the seventies and the eighties from which he draws the subjects for his stories. His style is simple, without any attempts at adornment, and his language, based on his native dialect of Uman in the Government of Kiev, is chaste and pure.

One of the most puzzling problems to the Judeo-German writers of modern times has been the treatment of love in the Jewish novel. They all agree that they have to follow Western models in that class of literature, and they are all equally sure that that passion does not exist among their people in any of the phases with which one meets elsewhere. The young woman's education in a Jewish home is such as to exclude a blind self-abandonment, with the consequent tragic results. Her desire to form family ties is greater than the natural promptings of her heart; her infatuation of the moment is easily smothered by a cool calculation of her future welfare, by the consideration of her duties towards her future husband and children. Unless the author uses the greatest caution in this matter, he is liable to fall into exaggerations and sentimentalities which would soon land him among the writers of the type of Schaikewitsch. But Spektor, not departing even in this from his usual candor, intermingles the most romantic passages with the cold facts of stern reality. His unrequited lovers do not commit suicide, or pine their lives away; they get over their infatuations in a manner prescribed by their religious convictions, get married to others, and rear happy families. Here is an example:

In 'The Fashionable Shoemaker' we are introduced to the sphere of a well-to-do shoemaker with no pretensions to any kind of culture. Having gotten on successfully in life, he is anxious to marry his daughter Breindele to Schlōme, the dandyish son of Sender Liebersohn, the rich man of the town. The latter looks favorably on the alliance in spite of the general disinclination of business men to enter into family ties with artisans, as he is desirous of feathering his son's nest before an impending bankruptcy sweeps away his fortune. Lipsche, Breindele's mother, in vain tries to dissuade her husband from the step, while Hirschel, the chief apprentice in the shop, is earnestly pleading with Breindele to marry him, for he loves her dearly. But she is too much attracted by the wealth of Schlōme and her future social position to listen to her father's simple-hearted, honest workman. The marriage is consummated, and soon a complete change takes place in the affairs of all concerned. Liebersohn loses his possessions. Hirschel, bearing in his heart his unrequited love, leaves his master and establishes a shop of his own. He works with great energy to forget his sorrow, and becomes a dangerous competitor of Susje, the shoemaker, whose hard-earned savings are slowly disappearing under the double obligation to support his family and that of his daughter Breindele. In vain some of the 'modern' girls of the town dress themselves in their best gowns and don fine silk stockings when Hirschel comes to take a measure of their feet for new pairs of shoes for them. Their machinations have no effect on Hirschel, who lives quietly for himself. But one day he notices Leotschke, Breindele's younger sister, in the street, and he is struck by her resemblance to his former love. When he left his master she was but a child, and now she is a pretty maiden. He cultivates her acquaintance, falls in love with her and is loved by her. There are no love scenes in the story. Hirschel goes to Leotschke's mother and gets her willing consent to the union. After the marriage he helps support Breindele and her family, for her husband, Schlōme, who has learned no trade, finds it hard to make a living.

One of his best sketches is the one entitled 'Two Companions.' It is a gem among the many good things he has written,--perfect in form and rounded off as few of his sketches are. It tells of two girls, Rōsele and Perele, who have grown up together as dear friends. When they reach the age of sixteen Rōsele notices that the young students of the gymnasium pay more attention to her beautiful companion than to her. She becomes jealous, suspects the seamstress of purposely favoring her friend with more carefully worked dresses, which enhance her natural beauty, accuses Rōsele of drawing away her gentlemen friends by unfair means, and finally when she finds herself more and more abandoned by her acquaintances, she completely breaks off her relations with the friend of her childhood. They lead a separate existence. At the age of thirty-five Perele is bowed down with sorrows: she has buried a husband and two children, has again married, and her days are taken up in the care of her family and unpleasant discussions with her jealous husband. Rōsele has married a sickly man with whom she has nothing in common. He married her only for her money. Their child is as frail as its father, and Rōsele's days are passed in sordid cares and worry.

"So passed another twenty-five years. After a long severe winter there came at last the young, fresh spring in all his glory, with his many attendants of all kinds who warble, whistle, chatter, and clatter, in the trees, in the air, on the earth, and in the grass. The streets are dry, the air is warm.... In an avenue of trees, on the sunlit side of it, two old women are walking together. They are dressed in old-fashioned, long burnouses, and hold umbrellas in their hands against which they lean. Their faces are wrinkled, their heads drooping to one side, and they stop every few steps they take, and speak with their toothless mouths:

"'My dear Perele, this has been a long winter!'

"'Yes, a frightful winter! Thanks to the Lord it is over. To-day it is good--the sun shines so warmly! But I have put on my burnous for all that! You, Rōsele, have done likewise! No, it is not yet warm enough for us.'

"They seated themselves on the nearest bench and continued their conversation:

"'I am getting tired; I think we had better go home.'

"'Yes, I am getting hungry, for I have eaten to-day only a broth. I cannot eat anything except it be a soft, fresh roll with milk or something like it.'

"'I, too....'

"And thus old age has again made peace among the two companions of long ago. They love each other again just as before when they were children, and they did not know that one was pretty and the other homely, ... for now they are again alike! Perele and Rōsele have both alike bent forms and wrinkled faces; both have no teeth in their mouths, and their heads droop alike. Only Perele has come to it from living too much, and Rōsele from not living at all. The two gowns, which the same tailor has made for them for the Passover from the same piece of cloth and according to the same fashion, have pleased them equally well, and they need not complain of the workmanship."

Of the many other shorter sketches we might mention the touching scenes in his 'Purim and Passover,' in which 'How Grandfather's Child put on her First Shoes' is the most pathetic. Not less pathetic is the one named 'The Uncle,' in which are contrasted the open-hearted reception of the wealthy uncle in the house of his poor nephew and the niggardly treatment of the nephew by his relative in the large city. Through all of Spektor's works passes the same melancholy strain, coupled with a strict objectivity of conception. This objectivity does not leave him even in cases where one would certainly expect him to express an opinion of his own. He has given us, for example, a most important series of sketches under the name of 'Three Persons,' in which the tendencies among the Russian Jews in the last quarter of a century are described with remarkable clearness; and he proceeds to point out their various modifications under the influence of the riots. Here, it seems, one would look for an individual conviction, for he must surely side with one of the parties discussed by him so thoroughly; and yet he does not once betray his personal preference. This series is indispensable to any one who wants to study the current of opinion among the Russian Jews, previous to the development of the Zionistic movement which now is uppermost in their minds. We are introduced successively to the Palestinian, the Assimilator, and the Neither-here-nor-there. A careful psychological study is made of all, with apparently negative results as to their respective merits. They are all three insincere with their fellow-sufferers and belong to their organizations only for personal advantage. The sad impression made by the reading of these interesting chapters is anticipated by the motto placed at the head of them: Laughing is not always in ridicule; laughing is sometimes a bitter weeping.

Among his best longer stories is 'Reb Treitel,' which gives a good insight into the life of a small town away from all railroads and off the highway of travel. One of the most necessary institutions in every Jewish town is the _Mikwe_, the bathhouse, not so much for sanitary purposes as for the ritual ablutions of the women. This mikwe is the centre of our story. Around it are grouped the various incidents which emanate from it like the arteries from the heart. The bathhouse is consumed by fire, and the town is all agog with excitement. There is no immediate outlook that a new one will be built, and in the interim Reb Treitel, the wagon-driver, who has been despairing of making both ends meet, is doing a splendid business by taking the women to the neighboring town for their ritual ablutions. He manages to keep all competition away and to lay a heavy tribute on the feminine population. Spektor has also begun a historical novel dealing on the life of the founder of the sects of the Khassidim. He does not represent him there as an impostor, but as a truly pious man, which he was, no doubt, in reality. So far he has published only chapters on his youth, but these promise a sympathetic treatment of which Spektor is eminently capable as an unbiassed author.

In 1887 Spektor severed his connection with the _Volksblatt_ and settled in Warsaw. The time now being ripe for a purely literary periodical, he started the first of the kind in Judeo-German literature. He was, however, delayed for various reasons, and another collective volume appeared in the South before he was able to issue his own. He named it _Der Hausfreund_ and intended it as an annual, but the Government having interfered on various occasions, there have appeared only five numbers so far. The annual reflects all of Spektor's peculiarities. Like his own writings, all of the articles and stories contained in it are adapted for the popular ear, and are written in a simple, comprehensible style. The scientific discussions are of a rudimentary character, and the criticisms of books and the Jewish theatre, which from now on becomes an important factor in Judeo-German literature, are intended more as guides to the reader than as correctives to the authors. Though somewhat primitive in its form, this periodical was calculated to advance the cause of letters among the masses of the people. Among his contributors we find in the first two numbers such names as Goldfaden, Zunser, Samostschin, Buchbinder, M. Gordon, Frug, Linetzki, Abramowitsch. Among the other writers there are some who had before written for the _Volksblatt_ but whose productions are insignificant. A few of them, however, begin to develop a greater activity, and deserve special mention. Among these are the novelists 'Isabella,' Dienesohn, the collector of legends Meisach, and the critic Frischmann.

'Isabella' is the pseudonym of Spektor's wife. She has written but a few sketches,[96] but some of them show remarkable talent. She unites her husband's objectivity with a fine discrimination of humor which is her own. She likes to dwell on comparisons between the older and the newer generation, and to point out the evil effects of a superficial modern culture. In 'The Orphan' she introduces us to the house of Schmuel Dāwid, who tries to keep himself occupied by teaching children penmanship. He is too simple-minded and good-hearted to battle with the world. The supporter of the house is his wife, Treine, who makes a living by usury. They shower their attentions on their only descendant, the peevish granddaughter Jentke. She is sent to the gymnasium and later is loved by a young scholar, a lank, consumptive-looking fellow, with whom she joins one of those narrower circles so common among the students of Russia, where they propose remedies for the betterment of the world and dream of the millennium near at hand. Their one desire is to identify themselves with the Russians at large. Then come the awful years 1881 and 1882. All of a sudden new ideals begin to animate the younger generation. Jentke's lover no longer calls himself Fyodor Sebastyanovitch, but his visiting card bears the homely Jewish name Peessach ben Schabsi, of which the former was only a Russified form. He becomes an ardent defender of his race. Later he marries Jentke, and a new career begins for them. They forget all their ideals of the period before the riots, to which they so readily subscribed; they do not persevere in their intention to devote their energies to their people. They live only for themselves. They begin to hoard money, and Jentke is much more hardhearted than her grandmother, for having abandoned the religious convictions of the older woman, she has not received any new moral basis for her actions. The grandmother dies, and the lonely, half-starved grandfather in vain tries to find a resting-place in their house. They send him away in a most cruel manner.

Her other sketches are of a similar character. In all of these, she points out the dangers from a superficial modern education, and the insincerity of the self-styled reformers who are ever ready to suggest a remedy for the ills that befall her people. Her characters are drawn from that new class of half-learned men and women who, receiving their training in the gymnasium, were just on the point of disappearing from the fold of the Jewish Church, when they were violently cast back into it by the persecutions from without. Of an entirely different tendency are the writings of Jacob Dienesohn, although akin to 'Isabella' in the sympathy he shows for the older generation. Dienesohn had begun his career in 1875, when he published a novel 'The Dark Young Man,' after which he grew silent. In 1885 he took up his literary work, since when he has produced two large novels and several shorter sketches. His first work was very popular. He depicted in it the machinations of an orthodox young man of the older type, who felt it his duty to lay stumbling-blocks in the way of one who strove to acquire worldly knowledge. Dienesohn occupies a peculiar place in Judeo-German literature. He is the only one who has attempted the lachrymose, the sentimental novel. He began writing at a time when Dick had prepared the ground for the romantic story, and Schaikewitsch had started on his sentimental drivel. But while these entirely failed to produce something wholesome, Dienesohn gained with his first book an unusual success. He drew his scenes from familiar circles, and his men and women are all Jews, with a sphere of action not unlike the one his readers moved in. Readers consequently were more easily attracted to him, and carried away a greater fund of instruction. His feminine audiences have wept tears over his work, and the author has received letters from orthodox young men, who assured him that although the description of the Dark Young Man fitted them, they would not descend to the vile methods of the hero of the book in pursuing differently minded men.

During his renewed activity, which began in the _Volksblatt_ ten years after his first novel had been printed, he dwelt on that period in the history of the Russian Jews when they were just commencing to take to the new culture, when it still meant a struggle and a sacrifice to tear oneself away from the ties which united one with the older generation. In the 'Stone in the Way' he describes the many hardships which his hero had to overcome ere he succeeded in acquiring an education. In 'Herschele' (still unfinished) the same subject is treated in the case of a young mendicant Talmudical scholar, who is beset, not only by the usual difficulties, but who is, in addition, trying to suppress his earthly love for the daughter of the woman who furnishes him with a dinner on every Wednesday. Dienesohn treats with loving gentleness all the characters he writes about.[97] Like Spektor, he attacks no one directly, and, like him, sarcasm has no place in his works. His most touching and, at the same time, the most perfect of his shorter stories is the one entitled 'The Atonement Day.'[98] He introduces us there to a scene in the synagogue where an old woman is praying fervently. Her devotion is interrupted by her thoughts of her daughter at home whom she had enjoined to fast on that awful day, although she had just given birth to a son. For a long time her religious convictions outweigh her maternal feelings, but, at last, her natural sentiment is victorious, and she hurries home to insist on her daughter's eating something. In this way the new-born babe is saved. Thirty years pass. The old woman has died, and her daughter Chane is brought before us on the same Atonement day. She has grown old, while her son has, in the meantime, finished at the university, and is a practising physician. She, too, is praying fervently, and thinking with awe of the day when young and old, the pious and the sinner alike, come to the synagogue and invoke the mercy of the Lord with contrition of spirit. Her eyes search in vain for her son among the crowd congregated below. The hours pass, and he does not appear. Faint with hunger from the long fasting and grieving at her son's apostasy, she falls sick and soon dies. In her last agony she makes her son promise her that he will, at least once a year, on the Atonement day, visit the synagogue. After that, one can see every year, on the awful day, the physician in deep devotion in the house of the Lord.

The circle which has Spektor for its centre is characterized by the use of Western literary forms for its productions, which yet are all of a distinctly Jewish type. The object of the authors is to create a sound literature for the masses. Incidentally, the literature is also to give positive instruction; but primarily, it is to draw away attention from the worthless books of the previous decade, and to create a decided taste for good works. These authors also intend to give the people a feeling for their racial solidarity, to acquaint them with the thought of the best of their race in an accessible form. This period has completely broken its connection with the older Haskala, for the writers no longer dream of substituting German culture for the ignorance of the masses. Nor do they preach of assimilation and Russian education, for that has signally failed to be of any use to the Jews in their struggle for recognition. In the nineties, the dream of Zionism was to haunt these writers, and many others who were to write then. But, in the meanwhile, they have no other definite purpose than to create a national consciousness, to instil in them the idea of human dignity, to develop individual character. While, on the one hand, they do not give them any new cultural ideals for those of the past generations, they have, on the other, no suggestions to make in regard to the religious faith of the orthodox, or the absence of religious convictions of the younger men and women. They do not attack the old Law, they do not side with any modern philosophy. Khassid and Misnaged, the unenlightened and enlightened, are the same in the scale of their judgment. It is not time, they think, to discuss about any such matters, but to gather in all the unfortunate ones into one brotherhood. The upper classes who have had many advantages in life, can shift for themselves in forming their convictions, but it is the lower strata that need guidance, and it is the duty of those who are better informed to devote their energies to the deliverance of their wretched brothers and sisters. Such is the doctrine of these writers. These sentiments are not alone the result of the riots of 1881. They are a reflex of the Russian _Narodniks_, who, at about the same time, were preaching the necessity of going among the people, of identifying oneself with the masses, of devoting all one's energies in the cause of the peasant, the artisan, the factory hand.

The Jargon is not represented in a contemptuous way, nor are apologies made for its use. On the contrary, the authors try to show the wealth of its expressions and to collect data for its history. Lerner writes a good essay on the folksong in a popular style; Dienesohn gives a review of the older writings and their authors; Spektor and Bernstein publish a large number of Judeo-German proverbs; Buchbinder collects popular superstitions; and Meisach writes a small book of Jewish folktales. The latter has also told in Judeo-German some of the legends from the Talmud and other sources. He has written some stories in the style of Dick, but like those they are disfigured by a disregard of style. The activity of these men still continues, independently of the new movements advocated by other writers and unimpeded by the new faith of Zionism.