The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
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Contents of Vol. 09.005 [Sequential No. 157]
Date:
TMR Eighth
Anniversary Issue
1) In this issue (ed.)
2) On Henryk Berlewi (David
Mazower)
3) Coming issue: Menke
4) Coming book reviews
5) Books and Journals Received
1)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: In This Issue
Starting with this issue of TMR, which
is an 8th anniversary issue, we are introducing a new regular column
on Yiddish and the Graphic Arts. It will be written by David Mazower, a journalist with BBC radio in
We will highlight in particular the visual
dimension in Yiddish book publishing, focussing on modern Yiddish illustrated
books. In all the leading centres of
Yiddish book production, from
It is hoped that this column will help stimulate
wider interest in the field of Yiddish and the graphic arts. The subject remains relatively unexplored,
although in recent years a growing number of scholarly publications and library
exhibitions have added to our knowledge to some of the key figures. [1]
However, much basic work remains to be done, especially in the fields of
bibliography and attribution, essential building blocks for future scholarship.
Our new feature in TMR will provide some of that basic scholarship, in
particular by assembling a bibliography of Yiddish illustrated books, beginning
with some of the major artists working in this field.
Our first article looks at the work of the
Polish Jewish artist Henryk Berlewi
[Berlevi], a leading illustrator of Yiddish books in
1920s
2)-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:
From: David Mazower
Subject: On Henryk Berlewi
A. HENRYK BERLEWI [ HENRIK BERLEVI ]
(1894 – 1967) (2)
More than most artists, Henryk
Berlewi resists easy categorisation. He was active
for six decades as a painter, graphic designer and theorist of art and design,
but above all he was a restless innovator, active in many fields, experimenting
with radically different styles, and switching between Jewish and non-Jewish
artistic circles with apparent ease.
Today he is mostly remembered as an abstract artist, who paved the way
for later trends like optical art. All but forgotten is his impressive
contribution to Yiddish book design and Yiddish typography in the early
1920s. This work, although limited to a
small number of items, is of outstanding quality and represents one of the high
points of Polish Yiddish modernism.
Berlewi was born in
His flowing draughtsmanship is evident in the
cover drawing for Sh. Londinski’s
poetry collection Flamen (Flames) of
1920. A buxom Venus rises naked from the
waves, her full-length tresses falling in shimmering ripples behind her against
an Art Deco sunburst. With its wholesome
eroticism and fluent curves, the effect is reminiscent of another
draughtsman-typographer, the English artist Eric Gill.
But Berlewi
reserved his most striking and avant-garde Yiddish graphics for his
collaborations with the leading Khalyastre
poets Markish and Grinberg
in the early ‘20s. For the cover of Markish’s poem Di Kupe (The Heap),
published in 1921, Berlewi devised a striking
gold-on-black composition in which the massive stone-like blocks of the title
letters rise organically and almost imperceptibly out of a stylised landscape
of mountain peaks. Equally imaginative
and even more abstract is Berlewi’s extraordinary
design for the cover of Markish’s Radyo
(Radio). Here the Yiddish letters of the
title have mutated into radio waves, lightning flashes of jagged and fractured
forms which are almost unrecognisable as individual letters. And in somewhat
more figurative vein, for Grinberg’s Mefisto (Mephistopheles) Berlewi
produced a cover illustration combining his trademark geometric Yiddish
lettering and a portrait of Grinberg smoking a pipe.
1921 marked the beginning of Berlewi’s acquaintance with the pioneering avant-garde
artist, illustrator and typographer El Lissitsky, a
formative influence on the younger man. Berlewi moved to
From 1928 until the late 1930s, Berlewi spent most of his time in
B. BERLEWI’S
DYBBUK CARTOON
A number of important paintings and drawings
by Berlewi came to light recently at the auction of
the personal collection of a good friend of the artist, the Yiddish writer and
painter Mendel Mann. Among the sketches several portraits of
Yiddish cultural figures stood out - the singer, writer, photographer and
folklorist Menakhem Kipnis
(1878 – 1942), the painter Maurycy Minkovski (1881 - 1930), and the writer Yosef
Opatoshu (1886 – 1954). Also included was a cartoon by Berlewi which provides an insider’s satirical view of perhaps the defining moment in the cultural
life of post-WW1 Yiddish Warsaw, the sensational success enjoyed by the Vilna
Troupe’s production of Ansky’s mystical drama Tsvishn tsvey veltn, oder der
dibek (Between Two Worlds, or The Dybbuk.
(6)
Berlewi had been closely involved with the genesis of the Vilna Troupe’s
production. He was among a small group of actors, writers and theatre folk who
listened to Ansky giving one of his first readings of
the play in
In Berlewi’s cartoon,
a large cow labelled Dybbuk stands with its
legs wide apart. Underneath the cow are
a group of actors in costume; four of them are drinking milk direct from the
cow’s teats while the fifth directs a jet of milk into a bucket. Under the group is the caption Di vilner trupe (The Vilna Troupe), and several of the figures
are clearly recognisable as characters from the play, particularly the young
lovers Khonen and Leye. The
cow has a crooked smile and a nasty glint in its eye and has turned its head to
stare at the sixth figure in the picture.
This downcast man sitting by
himself in the corner is the only figure Berlewi
identifies by name - the director of the Vilna Troupe’s 1920 premiere of Ansky’s play, Dovid Herman.
Let us note at this point that Berlewi’s design parodies and pays homage to one of the
great works of classical antiquity: the Etruscan bronze sculpture known as Lupa Capitolina, the she-wolf
that protected and suckled
Berlewi’s original sketch is undated and lacks a caption; fortunately however
both are included in a reproduction of the cartoon in an obscure volume of
memoirs published several decades later by the Polish Yiddish journalist Ber Kutsher. This gives a date of 1921, a title - A melkndike ku (A Milking Cow)
- and a caption, as spoken by Dovid Herman: “Tsugegreyt zey a ku….s’rint in di
piskes…..nu, un ikh?” (“I got them a cow….the milk’s pouring into their
mouths…but what about me?”)
What is not yet clear is exactly what
prompted Berlewi’s jaundiced reaction to the runaway
success of the Dybbuk and also perhaps to the
mania for mysticism and the Dybbuk craze which
the production set off. That the
production was a smash-hit is undeniable - according to one account, the company gave 390 performances of the play
in its first year to an estimated
200,000 theatregoers and the play itself took Jewish Poland by storm. (9) Many observers believed that much of the
premiere production’s extraordinary appeal was due to the conception of its
director Dovid Herman, who was brought in to inject
into the production some of the atmosphere of his own traditional Hasidic
background.
It is more than likely that Berlewi produced his cartoon in response to a particular
episode or set of circumstances. Perhaps the original contract was drawn up in
such a way that Herman failed to reap his share of the profits from the play’s
unforeseen success? It is also possible that the cartoon was itself a
commission from one of the many Yiddish newspapers, cultural journals or satirical
magazines of the time. Romulus and Remus fell out and
the Vilna Troupe was also to suffer inner discord and undergo several
metamorphoses. But even without knowing all the circumstances behind its
creation, we can enjoy the sense of mischief and the artistic skill manifest in
Berlewi’s Dybbuk milkcow, and feel thankful that this most ephemeral of
sketches has resurfaced after so many years.
C. YIDDISH BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY BERLEWI -- A PRELIMINARY CHECKLIST
This list is based on information from various sources, including library
listings and booksellers’ catalogues. It
is almost certainly far from being comprehensive. Further contributions to this and future
bibliographic listings would be welcomed and acknowledged in any future
published versions.
Akerman, Rivke, Poemen un lider fun payn.
Paris, 1957, 96 pp.
Grinberg, Uri-Tsvi [Greenberg, Uri Zvi]. Mefisto,
Warsaw: Literatur-fond baym fareyn fun yidishe literatn un zhurnalistn in
varshe, 1922, 85 pp.
Hagay, Berele, A bisl rekhiles: vegn shrayber,
kinstler, un shimi-tentser, Warsaw: 1926, 15 pp. (not seen).
Kope, Rivke, Toy fun shtilkeyt: lider,
1946-1950, Paris: Oyfsnay, 1951, 91 pp.
Kutsher, B., Geven amol varshe, zikhrones,
Paris: Kultur-opteylung fun der dzhoynt in frankraykh, 1955, 331pp. (In
addition to the cover graphic, this includes reproductions of Berlewi’s
portrait sketches of Kutsher, Boez Karlinski, Alter Katsizne, Hilel Tseytlin,
Shloyme-Leyb Kave, Dovid Herman, Zusman Segalovitsh, Yoysef Tunkel, Berlewi
himself, Itshe-Meyer Vaysnberg, Efroym Kaganovitsh, Maurycy Minkovski (wrongly
attributed to Feliks Frydman), and Aleksander Farbo. Berlewi’s ‘Dibek’ [Dybbuk]
cartoon is reproduced on page 143.)
Londinski, Sh. Y., Flamen, Warsaw: Di
tsayt, 1920, 115 pp.
Markish, Perets, Di kupe, Warsaw:
Kultur-lige, 1921, 32 pp. Edition: 1500
Markish, Perets, Radyo,
Segalovitsh, Z, Kaprizen:
lider,
Segalovitsh, Z, Tsaytike troybn,
Zak, Avrom, In
onheyb fun a friling: kapitlekh zikhroynes,
----
Periodicals:
Albatros,
Khalyastre, vol 1,
Ringen, Warsaw: Kultur-lige,
1921- 1922
----
Publisher’s logo:
The logo used by the
----
NOTES
1. Yiddish
literary scholars who have featured the work of Yiddish book illustrators in
their own publications include David Roskies and
Benjamin Harshav.
Recent exhibitions include the Spertus
Institute of Chicago display: Made in
2. Berlewi usually signed his name ‘H Berlewi’
or ‘Henryk Berlewi’using
Latin letters. However in Yiddish, he
uses ‘Henrik Berlevi’.
3. Biographical
information about Berlewi is drawn from a number of
sources, including : Nadine Nieszaver, “Peintres Juifs a Paris 1905 - 1939”, Paris, 2000; the Encyclopaedia Judaica; Meylekh Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon, vol 2, Montreal, 1947; and the exhibition catalogue ‘Berlewi - Retrospektive Austellung, Berlin,
1964’, for the loan of which I am indebted to Professor Chimen
Abramsky.
4. The phrase
is Sol Liptzin’s. See his A History of Yiddish
Literature p. 251 ff. for a discussion of the Khalyastre
poets.
5. See the
article by Avidov Lipsker
in the Israeli journal of Yiddish studies Khulyot,
no1 (Winter 1993).
6. The auction
was held at the Hotel Drouot, Paris, on 23 March
2005.
7. See Ber Kutsher, Geven
amol varshe, Paris, 1955,
p.136.
8. My thanks to
Leonard Prager for pointing this out.
9. See Yidisher teater in eyrope / tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes, edited by Itsik Manger, Yonas Turkov, and Moyshe Perenson, New York, 1968, p41.
3) ----------------------------------
Date:
From: ed.
Subject: Coming issue: Menke
A coming issue of TMR will be devoted to a compendious volume of Menke Katz's Yiddish verse translated into English by the
celebrated translator-team Barbara and Benjamin Harshav.
Menke. The Complete Yiddish Poems.
Edited by Dovid Katz and Harry Smith. Maps
by Giedre Beconyte.
Published by The Smith: New York 2005, 914 pp. For ordering
information: artsend@sover.net.
4)--------------------------------------------------------------
Date:
From: ed.
Subject: Coming Book Reviews
Dovid Katz's Lithuanian Jewish Culture (Vilna: Baltos Lankos,
2004, 398 pp), will yet be reviewed in TMR, as will be Nancy Sinkoff' s Out of the Shtetl
(
5)------------------------------
Date:
From: ed.
Subject: Books
and Journals Received
Books and Journals Received
Itzik Manger, Dunkelgold;
Gedichte. Jiddisch
un deutsch. Herausgegeben, aus dem Jiddischen ueberzetst und mit einem
Nachwort versehen von Efrat Gal-Ed. Mit Umscrift des Jiddischen, Abbildungen
und mit CD. Frankfurt am Main: Juedischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag,
2004. [ISBN 3-633-54198-5]. A tastefully produced
book published by the distinguished century-old Juedischer
Verlag, with felicitous translations and a cd that reproduces with outstanding fidelity the author
reading a selection of his own work.
Na vaNad; Zikhronot shel Yekhezkel Kotik.
Kheylek sheyni. Mahadura meturgemet uMevueret beYedey David Assaf . Tel Aviv:
Bet Shalom-Aleykhem / HaMakhon lekheyker toldot Polin veYakhesey Yisrael-Polin
/ HaMerkaz lekheyker haTefutsot al shem Goldshteyn-Goren /
Universitat Tel-Aviv, 2005. [English title-page:
Wanderer; The Memoirs of Yechezkel Kotik. Volume Two. Edited and translated into Hebrew with
an Introduction by David Assaf. Tel Aviv: Beth Shalom
Aleichem / The Institute
for the History of Polish Jewry and Israel-Poland Relations / The
B. Yeushzon (Moyshe Yustman) Lezikhro,
Yiddish South of the
Border. An
Anthology of Latin American Yiddish Writing. Edited by Alan Astro with
an Introduction by Ilan Stavans.
Volume 3, Number 1 (January 2005) of the
prize-winning Partial Answers, "a semiannual
journal sponsored by the School of Literatures of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem... devoted to the interdisciplinary study of literature and the
history of ideas" includes Yechiel Szeintuch's exploration of a central motif in the
works of Ka-Tzetnik: "The Myth of the Salamander
in the Work of Ka-tzetnik," 101-132. This essay
is part of the author's comprehensive study of Ka-Tzetnik.
[ISSN 1565-3668]
The major essay in the latest Jiddistik Mitteilungen
(Nr. 32, November 2004) is Roland Gruschka's
preliminary study of the language of Mendel Lefin's
bible translations: "Einige Beobachtungen zur Grammatik im Jiddisch von Mendel Lefin Satanovers Bibeluebersetzungen," 1-23. Interest in Lefin has been growing and we can look forward to further
studies.
Lebns-fragn; sotsyalistishe khoydesh-shrift far politik, gezelshaft un
kultur num.
629-630 (55-ster yor) (merts-april 2005). David
Roskies has been reminding us that the Yiddish press
never stopped writing about the Shoa. This issue of
the veteran Bundist journal edited by the versatile Yitskhok Luden continues this
endless probe. [
----------------------------------------------
End of The Mendele Review Vol. 9005
Editor, Leonard Prager
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