Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.046 June 24, 1993 1) Psevdonimen bay yidn (David Neal Miller) 2) Philologus (Bob Werman) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 24 09:49:39 1993 From: David Neal Miller Subject: Psevdonimen bay yidn I enjoy reading Ellen Prince's pointed and precise postings, but she is, atypically, off the mark when she characerizes the use of pseudonyms as "a custom usually reserved for advice-to-the-lovelorn columnists" (Mendele 3.040). The use of pseudonyms is, in fact, a Yiddish (also Hebrew) custom--or, rather, strategy--of long and honorable standing: we remember that only one of the classical triumverate (Y.-L. Perets) customarily signed his works with an orthonym. This practice lasted well into the present century. Consider, say, the core members of the _yunge_: Mani-Leyb [Brahinski], H. Leyvik [Leyvik Halper], Anna Margolin [Roze Lebensboym], Zishe Landoy [orthonym], and Ruvn Ayzland [orthonym]; this distribution of pseudonyms to orthonyms is (impressionistically: I've not done any formal tabulation) typical. Indeed, the 1978 Nobel laureate in literature published a single work--a forgettable fee-for-service translation from the German--under his orthonym, but literally thousands of works under one of several pseudonyms (Yitskhok Bashevis, Yitskhok Varshavski, D. Segal). Nor has the use of pseudonyms been limited to belletrists. From Kritikus [Shimen Dubnov] writing in _Voskhod_ to A. Forsher [Yosl and Khane Mlotek] writing in the _Forverts_, works of scholarship and haute vulgarisation have appeared pseudonymously. Two axes along which pseudonyms can relevantly (to our collective discussion of the Wexler affair) be plotted are those of the "transparency" of the pseudonym--that is, the extent to which the pseudonymous author's real-world identity is known to his or her readership--and the degree to which the pseunonym moves beyond mere signature toward autonymous psuedonymous persona. I'll touch on each in turn. There is marked diversity in the extent to which the Yiddish readership has been privy to the identity of the authors of pseudonymously attributed works. Some pseudonyms are, indeed, open: who did not know--was not _supposed_ to know--that Yitskhok Zinger stood behind the pseudonym Yitskhok Bashevis? (The problem with IBS is rather the reverse: one forgets that Bashevis is a pseudonym.) By contrast, the identity of Yitskhok Varshavski was not widely known until the constraints of (American!) copyright compelled an orthonymic signature to the English-language translations of Varshavski's works. Withal, East Broadway was a world of the open secret, and few readers who cared to know could not learn the secret of Varshavski's historical authorship (compare the secret of A. Forsher's identity before it, too, was revealed to the _Forverts_ readership). Finally, very, very few people indeed knew the identity of D. Segal. Singer kept it guarded for a number of reasons not relevant to the matter at hand; and the _Forverts_ kept it guarded lest the readership learn how very much of the editorial content was written by a single hand. I thought to--and did--astound my audience at a public lecture in the late seventies by revealing D. Segal's identity, only to learn that Leonard Prager had earlier revealed it (in the EJ, no less). [How, as an aside to Professor Prager, did you ever come by this closely-guarded information?] Singer continued to deny that he was Segal well into the 1980s. A second relevant axis along which to plot pseudonyms among Yiddish authors is the extent to which pseudonymous signatures become fictive personas distinct from those of their historical authors. The scholarly literature considers in detail the Sholem-Aleykhem persona, radically at odds with the historical Sh. Rabinovitsh; in an article on (non)closure in SA, I discuss how the author and his persona take opposing, incommensurable positions on the need for happy endings. And, in a delightful (for those in the know) bit of persona-play, Yitskhok Varshavski takes Farlag Matones to task in the pages of the _Forverts_ for having stiffed his colleague Yitskhok Bashevis of his royalties, the latter being too timid to assert his claim in an open forum. Nor, again, is this ploy the exclusive provenance of belletrists: the russophone Kritikus was more civil and less emotionally engaged than the yiddophone Dubnov--better the readership not know, as it did not for a certain time, that Kritikus and Dubnov were, extratextually, the same person. _Within the context of Yiddish literary and scholarly practice_, then, there is nothing the least bit unseemly about Philologus writing unter an opaque pseudonym, nor should one necessarily regard the scant autobiographical data as normative. I would not be surprised, and certainly not offended, to learn that Philologus made her home in, say, the United States--though most likely not in Philadelphia. David Neal Miller miller.3@osu.edu 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu Jun 24 09:19:55 1993 From: RWERMAN%HUJIVMS.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Philologus, detective [defective? in Upper Sorban] work. Z. Baker may have something reasonable in his speculations as to the identity of Adon or is it Herr Philologus? One of my spies tells me that Hillel Halkin, a translator to English of both Hebrew and Yiddish, reads Mendele [I do not remember seeing him post anything]. Could the shammas confirm? Hillel Halkin is not obviously subscribed to Mendele, BUT there are 4 "concealed" subscribers. Who can they be? On the other hand, he need not be subscribed; he could read other people's mail. His sister, Mimi, for example, is one of Mendele's readers. Respectfully submitted. Robert Werman, native speaker of pre-12th century Lower Sorban. aka __Bob Werman ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.046