Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 154 January 30, 1992 1) Ludic Yiddish, part 2 (Yude-Leyb Proger) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 30 Jan 92 13:34:45 IST From: leonard prager Subject: ludic yiddish My thesis in "Ludic Yiddish (Note One)" was that as Yiddish as an everyday language declines among non-ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim, its LUDIC uses are stressed at the expense of others. I also point out that a counter-movement to this trend exists and has been gaining strength as the second and third generation of Eastern European-origin Jews gives way to the fourth. It is surely significant that our beloved Noyekh Shames writes in one of the numbers of his and our favorite electronic periodical that he cherishes "the playfulness and self-irony in Yiddish" and that "that is what makes Yiddish Yiddish" (the quotation may not be exact). There is nothing wrong in indicating one's likes, but defining anything for everybody seems invalid. There is surely something inherently wrong with the essentialist implication that Yiddish must possess a certain set of properties and no others in order to be Yiddish, that characteristics a and b are quintessential whereas c to z are accidental, incidental, inessential. Noyekh's statement tells us a lot about our generation, but it is hardly adequate as a description of Yiddish. The vast majority of Yiddish-speakers in the past millenium would not have pointed to playfulness and self-mockery or self-derision as the salient qualities of their mother tongue. Moroever, there is no language in the world -- nor could there be -- without playfulness, however defined, and there may not be any languages around without self-irony as well. For unadulterated playfulness we can read James Joyce's _Finnegan's Wake_, which combines the comic spirit and high seriousness (including irony) with incredibly imaginative multilingual word-games. Shakespeare, too, is no slouch for verbal playfulness (often with an acid sting): "A little more than kin and less than kind." No, play is the basis of all language and all peoples play with sounds and groups of sounds in songs, ballads, curses, dirges and orations. Playfulness of various kinds -- it would take a monograph to define them -- is one of many registers all languages possess in one way or another to this or that degree and Yiddish is no exception. It is not playfulness per se that makes Yiddish Yiddish. Nor could it be irony, self-irony or any kind of irony that makes Yiddish Yiddish, since much of Yiddish thought, speech, expression, proverbs, phraseology is pathetic, pietistic, solemn, wise, sober, cautionary, exuberant, mawkish, sentimental, vulgar, insipid, romantic -- almost anything but ironic. Yiddish to most Yiddish speakers is Yiddish because it is theirs and was their parents'. (The same holds for strong haters of Yiddish). It is an extremely personal possession. Once you love someone, it is not hard to ask "How do I love you? Let me count the ways...." Here are the first three stanzas of Moris Roznfeld's {Morris Rosenfeld's} "Yidish": "Ir fregt, oyb yidish iz a shprakh, / Gramatish un negidish -- / Ikh ken aykh zogn nor eyn zakh: / Dem yidns shprakh iz yidish. Tsu zukhn -- ligt nisht in mayn fakh -- / Fun vanen verter shtamen. / Ikh veys nor, az ikh lib mayn shprakh, / Dem loshn fun mayn mamen. Ot vi zi hot geredt tsu mir, / Azoy reyd ikh atsinder, / Far mir iz yidish groys on shier / Un vunder iber vunder {pronounced /vinder/}. To get some notion of what Yiddish-speakers value in Yiddish, take a look at what itself is an incredible phenomenon, one which exists for few other languages: an anthology of poems all of which have as their central theme the Yiddish language. Hungarian poets have written poems celebrating the vowels of the Magyar tongue, which is said to be vocalically very rich. French and Turkish poets have done the same with their languages. But, especially because of the tragic dimension in Jewish history, particularly in the past century, there may be no precise parallel to the position Yiddish has held and holds in the hearts of its writers and readers and, to an extent difficult to measure, its speakers. Browse through _Yidish in lid; Antologye; 169 lider fun 74 poetn_, ed. Shmuel Rozhanski (Buenos-Aires: Literatur gezelshaft bam Yivo in argentine, 1967 {= Musterverk fun der yidisher literatur 33}), which by no means has garnered more than a fraction of this genre. Froyim Oyerbakh's "Yidish" summarily demolishes the notion that Yiddish is any one thing: "Far mir bistu a regnboygn fun kolirn, / Gemish fun klang, gezang, geveyn un freyd, / Ikh her in loyterkeyt fun dayne reyd / Mayn mames poshet, kosher harts vibrirn." When Note Manger's brother read Yehoyesh's translation of the Bible he sent his brother Itsik the only poem he ever wrote, "Shprakhn": "Di kleyne feygl afn dakh / Gibn op tsu got a shvakh -- / Tshirik, tshirik -- in zeyer shprakh. Di grine zhabes funem taykh / Gibn-op tsu got a shvakh -- kvo, kvo, kvo -- in zeyer shprakh. "Ikh leyen yehoyeshes tanakh / Un gib tsu got borkhu a shvakh -- / In mame-loshn -- undzer shprakh." The charming lyricist, Itsik Manger, begins his poem "Yidish": "Yidish, sheyne printsesin, azoy sheyn vi loshn koydesh, / Nor yinger." We sophisticates have to look for irony and wordplay in Yiddish, but many Yiddish writers looked and found -- beauty, to use an old-fashioned word. Manger's Yiddish is a princess, ours a standup comedian. Mani Leyb, in his "Yiddish" makes clear that one loves one's native language because only through it can we communicate to oneself and others the shape of one's feelings and intuitions, the living experiential substance of one's inner life: "Un yidn redn yidish / Un yidish iz dokh sheyn / Un gring a tsveytn yidn / Farshteyn vi zikh aleyn." Just as language makes us human, connecting us to ourselves and others, so does Yiddish, this very Jewish language, bind Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic Jews (only a half-century ago almost 90% of the Jewish people) to the Yiddish past and to Yiddish culture. Especially since the Shoa, Yiddish for many is tied to _yidishkeyt_ in its various constellations, religious, national, communal, familial. Again and again the theme of continuity, of the chain of tradition, is raised by the poets who survived the Hitler period. Thus the imagery of Yoysef Yofe's "Kidesh" is sacramental: "Du gis mir on a bekher vayn / Un ikh vel makhn kidesh; / Un du, mayn kind, zog OMEN hoykh / In reynem, gutn yidish. Ikh gib dir fun mayn kos a trunk, / Un du verst nay geborn; / Mit tener yidishe in harts -- / Af lange, lange yorn." Let me conclude this second sermon on the evil of ludicizing Yiddish (which, granted, one is not quite doing simply by admiring the playful and the self-ironic in Yiddish) with the last two stanzas of Kehos Kliger's 4-stanza poem "Yidish": "Yidish, yidish, iz mayn shprakh, / Afile ven ikh veyn un lakh / Tu ikh es af yidish. Alts vos ba tog ikh trakht / Un alts vos ikh troym ba nakht / Iz vider nor af yidish. Iz far yidish -- undzer shprakh, / Lomir ale shteyn af vakh / Un kegn ale sonim. Zi vet lebn nokh a sakh / Lange doyres undzer shprakh -- / Tsu lehakhes ale sonim." (End of Part 2) Yude-Leyb Proger ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 1.154