Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.276 March 11, 1996 1) Sholem-Aleykhem's _Kenig Pik_ (Part 5) (Leonard Prager) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 21:42:39 IST From: rhle302@uvm.haifa.ac.il Subject: Sholem-Aleykhem's _Kenig Pik_ (Part 5) 5 The trilingual (and multidialectal) situation dramatized in _Kenig Pik_ and its more developed twin (or second act), _Shrage_, is not unique to these plays; but nowhere has Sholem-Aleykhem more exuberantly given comic expression to the complex linguistic realities of his world. Sholem-Aleykhem was a trilingual writer in an Eastern Ashkenazic trilingual intellectual community. This linguistic situation inevitably bred certain tensions, especially with the growth of Jewish national consciousness. In _Kenig pik_ the daughter Berte says to one of her parents' guests: "Kakaya blazhenstva"? Hot mir nit kin faribl nit, vos ikh vel aykh fregn: Lemay zolt ir zikh banutsn dafke nit mit ayer eygn loshn? Mir dakht, az s'iz fil glaykher redn rekht yidish eyder shlekht rusish...."(31) ('Kakaya blazhenstva'? Please forgive me, but I must ask you something: Why don't you speak in your own language? It seems to me that it makes far more sense to speak good Yiddish than bad Russian....') In homiletical writings (e.g. _Vayikra raba_ 32:5) one often encounters the claim that the Jews in Egypt survived because "they did not change their names." This is surely a "homily appealing for the retention or giving of Hebrew names, in view of the prevalent tendency of adopting foreign ones" [see "Names," _Encyclopaedia Judaica_ 12:807]. Sholem-Aleykhem, like the rabbis, is aware of the symbolic and real import of given and family names. In _Kenig Pik_, as in other plays (e.g. _In tsveyen a zeks-un-zekhtsik_ 'A Two-Handed Sixty-Six'), the matter of names is directly aired. Khane, the mother, hears the doorbell ring and says, "That must be Grisha." Berte replies, "Hersh loynt dir nit? Dafke Grisha?" ('Hersh isn't good enough? Does it have to be Grisha?') The onomastic struggle continues when Berte is addressed as _Bertetshka_. The following dialog ensues: Berte: Ershtns, nit Bertetshka. Ershter gast: To yest, vinovit, Berta Izrailevna... Berte: Un nit Berta Izrailevna, nor Bashe Bas-Yisroel. Nito vos tsu shemen mit an eygenem nomen. ('Berte: First of all, not Bertetshka. First Guest: That is, excuse me, Berta Izrailevna... Berte: And not Berta Izrailevna, but Bashe Bas-Yisroel [in speaking Hebrew with Grishe, she would, of cousrse, say Batya Bat-Yisrael -- LP]. No reason to be ashamed of one's own name.') Berte's various names reflect the linguistic complexity of her world. She has a traditional Yiddish name, _Bashe_ (< Hebrew _Batya_) with the additional diminutive forms _Bashke_ and _Bashenyu-; a parallel form of _Bashke_ is _Basye_. She also has a European Yiddish name, _Berte_. In the dramatis personae and in real life _Berte_ (which, according to emigrants from the former Soviet Union to whom I have spoken, is invariably borne by Jews) is the name she would have used most, being a city girl and somewhat sophisticated. She would also hear this name spoken in various diminutivized forms of Russian origin, such as _Bertetshka_ and _Bertusya_, as well as the somewhat russianized _Berta_ (as used by First Guest). In her Hebraist organization she is doubtless Batya (though conceivably some speakers may have said _Basya_. In insisting that she is _Bashe Bas-Yisroel_, Berte is identifying herself only as her father's daughter (his name is Yisroel), but as the daughter of the Jewish people - - in keeping with her nationalism. Berte here speaks not only as a nationalist but as a linguistic purist. She scorn First Guest's "bad Russian." Indeed, if our standard is literary, upperclass varieties of Russian, the guest's speech is substandard, therefore "incorrect." A few substandard usages suffice in a literary or dramatic work to color a character's entire speech. But we can hypothesize that _Jewish Russian_ (like _Jewish English or _Black English_) has its own norms. _Jewish Russian_ would encompass those varieties of Russian unique to certain though not all Russian-speaking Jews and its Jewish features woould not be uniformly present in all the registers of these speakers. First Guest's _kakaya blazhenstva_ is a typical Jewish-Russian pronunciation of the period. There is a large literature in Russian by Jews for Jews which can be regarded as Jewish-Russian by virtue of its themes, its points of view, its tone; this literature probably has distinct linguistic features as well and merits linguistic analysis. Sholem-Aleykhem was much aware of the interaction between the languages of his world. _Kenig Pik_ has a number of instances of heavily Slavic-influenced Yiddish. Second Guest's _Yak reydele to reydele, abi dobre meynele_ ('The intention counts, not the works') is a widely used Yiddish proverb which Ignatz Bernstein in his _Juedische Sprichwoerter un redensarten_ (Warsaw, 1908, p. 269, no. 16) traces to the Jews and peasants of Podolia. Bernstein cites the proverb in a slightly different form: _Redele yak redele, abi dobre meynele_. _Yak_, _abi_ and _dobre_ are good Yiddish words, but _yak_ and _dobre_ carry a stronger Slavic favor than _abi_, which has been more fully integrated. Uriel Weinreich in his _MEYYED_ gives _abi_ of course, does not give _yak_, and has _dobre_ only in the lexeme =dobre-mazl_ 'luck'. Fourth Guest's "Odnim slovom __ hashiveynu nazad!" is a perfect instance of Jewish Russian.(32) No Gentile speaker of Russian would understand this utterance, anymore than a Gentile American would grasp the Jewish English question, "What shul does your zeydi davn in on shabes?" Fourth Guest "blends" the Whole Hebrew liturgical _hashiveynu_ 'return us' with the Russian word _nazad_ 'backwards' to stress his views that the Hebraists are reactionary and obscurantist and endanger the assimilatory hopes of his class. The coupling of the Jewish and the general terms creates an original and distinct Jewish-Russian lexeme whose meaning has the emotional force of 'they're trying to put us back into the Middle Ages.' Examining the Goodblatt manuscript of _Kenig Pik_ we notice how Sholem-Aleykhem added more vowel signs in red to phonemic spelling of Hebrew in the "Sefardic" pronunciation to make certain the comic effect would not be lost.(33) If researchers had taken the pains to compare the Folksfond Edition of _Kenig Pik_ with the version in _Der groyser kundes_, they would have discovered the differences between them. Had they searched in the Sholem-Aleykhem Archives, they would have found letters explaining this difference. But without the Goodblatt manuscript, without additions and corrections in the author's own hand, we would not have been certain that _Der groyser kundes_ printed _Kenig pik_ as Sholem-Aleykhem wanted it __ funnier and livelier than when first conceived and, despite its Yehupetz (= Kiev) setting, appropriate even forthe Jews of New York City, whose heavily English-influenced Yiddish he would come to satirize no less than the Russian of his "aristocrats" in _Kenig Pik_.(34) Leonard Prager ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.276 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu ****Getting back issues**** 1. Anonymous ftp archives are available. ftp ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files A table of contents is also available, along with weekly updates. 2. Mendele archives can also be reached as follows: via WWW: http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/mewais.html via gopher: gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/../.pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele via ftp: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele