The
Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
---------------------------------------------------------
Contents of Vol. 12.017 [Sequential No. 208]
Date: 28 September 2008
*** ìùðä èåáä úëÌúáå! ***
àÇ âåèÎéàÈø! ***
(taken from úôåæ, click to enlarge)
1) This issue of The Mendele Review
2) Letters to the
Editor from Leonard Fox and Meyer Wolf.
3) "The
Jerusalem Conference: A Century Of Yiddish 1908-2008"
4) "A mayse iber
a mayse" from Dos vintshfingerl (
bilingual edition edited by Shalom
Luria,
5) Portrait of Mendele
by H. Inger
6) Mendele's fictive
title page of (4) above.
7) Title page of
Ayzik-Meyer Dik's Judaized adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin, Vilna: Rom, 1887.
8) Bibliographic Note
on Dik's adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
9) "Der
kremer": Lyrics, Score and Notes (ed., Eleanor Mlotek)
10) Sidor Belarsky, Leibele Jinich and Menakhem Bernstein
each sing "Der kremer".
1)
---------------------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: ed.
Subject: This issue of TMR
***The
principal content of this issue of TMR is a too little known early (by
scholarly consensus 1866) Sholem-Yankev Abramovitsh [ = Mendele Moykher-Sforim]
Yiddish work, Dos vintshfingerl (The Wishing Ring'). Following the history-making serial
publication (1864) of the immensely popular Dos kleyne mentshele ('The
Little Man'), the author's second Yiddish production looked more like a
pamphlet than a story. About 40 pages long, it appeared in the guise of a
German book which the teller, an itinerant bookseller, had arranged to be
translated into Yiddish. In three parts, the text given here is the first. The
Yiddish original has been edited by Shalom Luria to conform to modern spelling
standards. The remaining two parts will be given in future issues of TMR.
Dos
vintshfingerl is one of several
Mendele creations which grew from story to novel, growing in linguistic
virtuosity and moral depth as they metamorphosed into major works. From 1888 to
1909, Dos vintshfingerl, like its author, matured, moving from a
simplistic maskilic belief in the power of education to transform the
backward Jewish masses to a realistic and rational world view in which science
figured largely.*** The song featured in this issue of TMR is "Der
kremer," a song that both sounds the age-old Zionist hope and paints the
storekeeper's pathetic existence. The song condenses Avrom Lyesin's (Abraham
Walt's) 25-stanza poem (composed in
|
Oy, volt ikh
gehat nor di oytsres! |
|
|
|
|
àÕ, ÔàÈìè
àéê âòäàÇè ðàÈø ãé àåöøåú! |
[from Lider un poemen,
2) ---------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: Leonard Fox; Meyer Wolf
Subject: Letters to the Editor:
a. Leonard Fox
writes:
Readers may be
interested to know that 2 copies of the recording of this concert are available
on cd
from Amazon .
b. Meyer Wolf
writes:
A few weeks
ago, the lines "vos geyt mikh on di naye kozatske, az tantsn, tants ikh zi
nit" began playing in my head and I could not recall where they came from.
Thanks to TMR I have now put them to rest. But something about the
song "Shvartse karshelekh / karshn" began bothering me -- I recalled
it as a children's ditty of some sort, not as part of a waltz-time song. Thanks
to Ruth Rubin's Voices of a People, I found the second stanza of the
ditty "Kumt der liber zumer":
Shvartse karshn raysn mir,
Royte lozn mir shteyn.
Sheyne
bokherim nemen mir,
Miese lozn mir geyn.
She also
includes a waltz song, that begins:
Vos toyg mir di polke-mazurke,
Az tantsn, tants ikh zi nit.
Vos toyg mir di sheyne figurke,
Az nemen, nemt zi mikh nit.
With the
chorus:
Eyns-tsvey, eyns-tsvey-dray,
Ay, vey iz tsu mir,
Vey iz tsu mayne yor.
A libe hob ikh gefirt
Felike dray fertl yor.
Perhaps the
waltz time of the song explains the oddity of a 3/4 year love affair (if that's
actually what the words are). Also
unexplained is the connection with a song in Mark Slobin's Old Jewish Folk
Music which begins:
Vos zhe toyg mir dayn sheyner vayngortn,
Az flantsn kon ikh im nit.
Vos zhe toyg
mir mit dir a libe shpiln,
Az nemen konnen mir zikh nit.
It seems that
the musical standard "Shvartse karshn" is a pastiche (in a good
sense) of folk material.
3) ---------------------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: ed.
Subject: "The
The Joint
Research Conference of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the
4)
-------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: Shalom Luria
Subject: "A mayse iber a mayse" from Dos vintshfingerl (
(left click to enlarge text, and use arrows to turn page)
5)----------------------------------
Date: 28 Sepember 2008
From: Shalom Luria
Subject: Portrait of Mendele by H. Inger
6)
--------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: Shalom Luria
Subject: Mendele's fictive title page of
(4) above.
(click to enlarge)
7)------------------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: ed.
Subject: Title page of Ayzik-Meyer Dik's
Judaized adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Vilna:
Rom, 1887.
(click to enlarge)
8)--------------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: ed.
Subject: Bibliographic Note on Dik's adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The first
(Vilna: Rom, 1868) edition [or printing?] of the book whose title page is
illustrated above is very scarce but easily traced if one can identify the
author. Checking in Berl Kagan's useful Leksikon fun Yidish-Shraybers
(New York, 1986) quickly informs us – if the anagram of the first professional
writer in modern Yiddish literature is not familiar to us – that Alef,
Mem" Daled is, Ayzik-Meyer Dik. From here we can go to David Roskies'
invaluable bibliography of Dik's works (in The Field of Yiddish 4,
"Di shklaveray oder di laybeygnshaft (podanstvo)
(Slavery or Serfdom). Pseud. AMaD. Vilna: Rom, 1868, part
I: 88 pp., [part II: ----- pp.] Reprinted, Vilna: Rom, 1887, I: 56 pp., II: 77 pp.
(NL)"
Roskies
directs us to the repository he has consulted: the National and University
Library of the
Are there
discrepancies between the 1868 and 1887 issues? My own copy of 1887 has a
"forbericht [hakdome]" paginated in Roman numerals III-XIV. If one
includes the title page as [I-II] and divides by two, then perhaps we get an
"8-page" introduction.
9)-----------------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: Eleanor Mlotek
Subject: "Der kremer": Lyrics,
Score and Notes (ed., Eleanor Mlotek)
(left click to enlarge)
[from Eleanor & Joseph Mlotek, eds. Songs
of Generations: New Pearls of Yiddish Song.
10)--------------------------------------------------
Date: 28 September 2008
From: Robert Goldenberg
Subject: (1) Sidor Belarsky, (2) Leibele Jinich and (3) Menakhem Bernstein each
sing "Der kremer".
|
(1) Sidor Belarsky. About the artist see bio
and tribute by daughter. Click on the gramophone to hear Belarsky
sing, as recorded in The Jewish Music Archive. |
|
|
(2) Cantor Leibele Jinich.
Click
on the gramophone to hear Jinich sing, as recorded in The Jewish
Music Archive. |
|
|
(3) Menakhem Bernshteyn
[Menachem Bernstein]. About the artist, see TMR 12.014. Accompanist:
Haggai Spokoiny; Recording Technician:
Tal Israel; Click on the gramophone to
hear Bernstein sing, as recorded in Di velt fun yidish. |
----------------------------------------------------------
End
of The Mendele Review Issue
12.017
Editor, Leonard
Prager
Editorial Associate, Robert Goldenberg
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***