Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 97 November 12, 1992 1) Various (Leonard Prager) 2) An-ski (Bob Rothstein) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 14:28:41 IST From: Leonard Prager Subject: various Re "Itsik is witsik". Tendlau No. 1004 writes: "Als Spott gegen einen schlecht en Witz, vielleicht auf einem besondern Falle beruhend, vielleicht auch nur des Reimes wegen gebildet." I would bet on the rime-origin. And in making the rime Itsik:shpitsik I was trying mainly to point to the Standard Yiddish Romanization, which does not use the NHG-influenced -ig spellings, such as, unfortunately we have in that excellent if orthographically flawed dictionary by Harkavi (Y.-Heb.-Eng., New York, 1928, reprinted recently with intro by Dovid Katz). NHG gives us _herzig_ and Harkavi gives us the cognate _harzig_, but the word should be transcribed _hartsik_. Reb Itsik tells us he is getting used to the idea that Yiddish is a language. The phonetic differences between NHG _herzig_ and Y. _hartsik are not the only ones. There are the semantic differences as well: the German word means 'sweet, lovely, nice' wheareas the Yiddish word seems to carry a certain ethical force: 'sincere, kind' as well as the core idea of 'hearty, cordial', which is close to but not the identical to the ordinary NHG uses. Yiddish is certainly Germanic but it is not German. I was trying to make a similar point in correcting _Deytshen_ to _daytshn_, which in the SYR has a pasekh under tsvey yodn and therefore regardless of pronunciation must be written (except in phonetic notation): _daytshn_. It is of course true that in CY it rimes approx. with GenAmerEngl _botch_, though you can hear a Dzigan (from Lodz) stretch out and nazalize the vowel considerably. To sum up: -ik and -dik, not -ig and -dig; syllabic n = _n, not -en. And, of course, welcome back Itsik. Lomir ale zayn vitsik, un afile shpitsik, ober nisht -- khas vekholile -- hitsik! 2) Re Anski: I have translated and commented on two folktales which Ansky retold in Yiddish. See "Two Yiddish Tales About Sir Moses Montefiore (Text and Commentary," :HP1.Jewish Language Review:EHP1. 5 (1985), 64-84 {cf. later version in :HP1.The Jewish Quarterly:EHP1. (London), 34:1 (1987), 37-44.} "Moses Montefiore in Ashkenazic Folklore," :HP1.The Jewish Quarterly:EHP1. (London), Vol. 34, No. 1 (125) {1987}, 37-44. 3) Tonsorial Judaism is a fascinating subject which we will have to go into more deeply. I recall that Reb Avrom Hersh took off his Jewish headgear at the German border and put on his _kapelyush_ so as not to embarass his fashionable wife at the spas where they stayed. I'm referring to Y.Y.Zinger's Brider ashkenazi, which I've been dipping in lately. 4) Re khasidic geography. I don't have the Mendele no. before me, but I believe someone asserted that most of the x and y khsidim lived in a particular place in Galicia. I was quoting the journalist Shoshkes, who was being somewhat whimsical but must have known what he was talking about. Most chasidic courts were in small towns. Again, from Brider ashkenazi: The Warsaw magnate Kalmen Ayzn (NHG Eisen) asks his private matchmaker Shmuel Zaynvil: "Un tsu vemen fort er, der Avrom Hersh?" He is told: "Ka aleksander. Ba vorkers lebn, iz er geforn tsum vorker." "Alekdander... Vorke... hot der alter farkrimt." The last line warns us that there is a lot of mythology about the various courts and we always need to know the source of an utterance on this or that rebe or tsadik. But chasidim traveled to their rebes and thus came from all over. It is true that over two-thirds of the Jews in Galicia lived in the Eastern part, in what is not Ukraine. 5) Thanks for the -Polin- notice. It is a truly first-rate publication. I have to read it in the library because it is so expensive, but it is worth what the library pays. Leonard Prager (Haifa) 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 16:54:35 -0500 From: ROBERT.ROTHSTEIN@SLAVIC.umass.edu Subject: An-ski Chana and Yosl Mlotek's column in the _Forverts_, "Perl fun der yidisher poezye," which I heartily recommend to all Mendelnikes, ran an article on An-ski on August 16, 1992 on the occasion of his 70th yortsayt. They published some comments from readers on October 19 and some additional comments of mine on November 2. For Sarah Stein and Alice Nakhimovsky (privet!) and anyone else interested, here is the information that I supplied. An-ski lived for several years among coal miners in the area of Slavianoserbsk (near present-day Voroshilovgrad, then Lugansk [perhaps renamed again as of 1992?], in what was then the Ekaterinoslavskaia guberniia) in Ukraine. He was so appalled by the living conditions of the miners that he wrote an article entitled "Miners' Life" ("Shakterskaia zhizn'") and tried unsuccessfully to get it published. In 1888 he sent the article to the Russian writer Gleb Uspenskii, who encouraged him and ultimately helped to get a revised version of the article published in _Russkoe Bogatstvo_ in 1892 under the title "A Sketch of the Coal Industry" ("Ocherk kamenno-ugol'noi promyshlennosti"). Uspenskii was one of the few people in 19th-century Russia to take an interest in contemporary folklore and to call for its collection alongside of the collection of survivals of old folklore. His 1889 essay "New Folk Verse" ("Novye narodnye stishki") is often mentioned as one of the first treatments of workers' folklore, and he is credited with popularizing the term _chastushka_ for the ditties that were then becoming popular. In his essay he made use of An-ski's material, quoting from the last chapter of his manuscript article, which consisted of seven miners' songs. Uspenskii credited them to "S. Z. Vit'bin," a variant of his correspondent's pseudonym "S. Vid'bin." An-ski's manuscript notebook containing the songs, dated August 20, 1887, is preserved in the Uspenskii archives in Russia; it was first published as part of an article by N. V. Alekseeva, "G. I. Uspenskii, russkaia narodnaia pesnia i ee sobirateli" in _Uchenye zapiski Leningradskogo gos. univ._, 1949, no. 122, pp. 184-223. Thus alongside of his contributions to Yiddish folkloristics, An-ski was apparently the first collector of Russian miners' songs and one of the first collectors of Russian workers' folklore more generally. Bob Rothstein ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.97