Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 6.171 December 29, 1996 1) Prokofiev's Yiddish music (Dan Leeson) 2) Tevye fardreyt Hilels a posek (Bob Rothstein) 3) Yiddish present perfect in the U.S. (Glenn Levine) 4) Grine verem (Mechl Asheri) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 27 Dec 1996 17:15:05 EST From: leeson@aspen.fhda.edu Subject: Prokofiev's Yiddish music There have been a whole host of stories about how Prokofiev got the melodies for the Overture. Both have been suggested in notes: (1) Bellison got them for him; (2) Tomashevsky got them for him. There are at least 3 others stores and I have no idea which, if any, is true. Bellison (who played clarinet in Moscow and them came to America where he was 1st chair in the NY Philharmonic for years and years) was supposed to have composed them to sound like Jewish melodies even though (according to several sources which I now doubt based on the informed postings) they were original compositions by him. I had no idea that the big slow melody (played by the cello in what sounds like a slow passage but really is fast as can be) was a real Yiddish tune. Live and learn. I played the work for the last time (I no longer play) at a Yiddish folk festival here in Palo Alto at which there must have been 300 Russian immigrants. And when they heard the opening measures, their smiles lit up the room. However, one thing is for certain. Exactly what was Prokofiev's source for those tunes is a story that need straightening out. There are simply too many contradictory versions. Dan Leeson Los Altos, California 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 00:02:14 -0500 (EST) From: rar@slavic.umass.edu Suubject: Tevye fardreyt Hilels a posek Khayem Bochner's citation of a 1602 antecedent for the play- ful proverb "Bemokoym she'eyn ish iz a hering (oykh a) fish" (6.161) deserves some additional commentary. The original quotation from Hillel (_Pirke avos_ 5:6) expresses a moral imperative: "In a place where there are no men, endeavor to be a man." (In Yehoash's Yiddish translation: "Un in an ort vu es zaynen nito keyn mentshn, mi zikh du tsu zayn a mentsh.") The Yiddish "paraphrase" converts this into an expression of the relativity of values, something that has a variety of proverbial formulations in the languages of Europe (and undoubtedly beyond). One version is the Russian proverb that Khayem alluded to, _Na bezryb'e i rak ryba_ 'In the absence of fish even a crayfish counts as a fish'. Perhaps the best-known formulation is (in various languages) "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Accord- ing to the 1989 _Macmillan Dictionary of Quotations_ it is one of the 479 commonest American proverbs (cited by Gregory Titelman in his _Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs & Sayings_, [1996]). Cf. French _Au pays (au/dans le royaume) des aveugles, les borgnes sont roi_ and German _Unter den Blinden ist der Ein- augige Konig_. Titelman (and others) cite John Skelton (c. 1460- 1529) as the earliest English source, and Erasmus (c. 1469-1536) has Latin and Greek versions in his _Adagia..._. The earliest German attribution is to 1541. Some other formulations: Russian _V temnote i gnilushka svetit_ 'In the dark even a piece of rotten wood shines'; _Na bezliud'e i Foma dvorianin_ 'In the absence of people even Foma [a typical peasant name] counts as a nobleman'; Polish _Na bez ludziu i pop czlowiek_ 'In the absence of people even an orthodox priest counts as a human being'; Ukrainian _De ne maesh spivtsia -- poslukhaesh horobtsia_ 'If you don't have a singer, you can listen to a sparrow'. The distinctiveness of the Yiddish proverb lies in its use of a canonical text (the beginning of Hillel's admonition) to introduce a typically proverbial dose of realism about the way of the world, thus giving an extra "kick" to the proverb. Bob Rothstein 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 10:56:16 -0500 (CDT) From: levineu@uthscsa.edu Subject: Yiddish present perfect in the U.S. I would like to request information from anyone who can provide insight on the following questions: In exactly which dialects of Yiddish could the Yiddish present perfect be heard using only the single auxiliary _hobn_ (e.g. _ikh hob gegangen, ikh hob geven, er hot geshtorbn_ etc.)? To what extent was this grammatical reduction (to the single auxiliary _hobn_) found in the Yiddish speech of 1) immigrants to the U.S. who formerly used a 2-aux system, and 2) the children of immigrants? The period of time in which I am interested covers roughly the period of immigration from the 1880's through the 1920's. The larger question I am investigating concerns whether it was ever 'grammatical' here in the U.S. to speak in the past tense using only 'hobn' as the auxiliary. I do not mean 'grammatical' in the prescriptivist sense, as I am aware that no grammar (book) of Yiddish would consider this reduction acceptable. 'Grammatical' refers here to what people actually _do_ while they are talking, what is acceptable within speech communities. Any information, whether anecdotal, or based on actual examples, would be greatly appreciated! Glenn Levine PS: With regard to the above-mentioned period of time, if any recordings whether written or on tape) are extant of immigrants' _children_ speaking Yiddish prior to WWII, I would be grateful for any information. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 20:20:16 +0200 From: donnom@netvision.net.il Subject: Grine verem (fe!) Regarding Sema Chaimovitz Menora's question [6.169] concerning the phrase, "Es kumt mir on mit die grine verem", it definitely has the meaning of something very difficult and was explained to me some fifty years ago asd stemming from a (probably imaginary) gastric condition, involving not only green worms, but cramps, bellyaches and great and painful difficulty in doing what one had sat down to do. I have always heard it as, simply, "s'kimt mit grine verem", but it is interesting to note that "fun ale grine verem" is even more common and is the equivalent of "aldos shvartze yor", meaning everything unpleasant. It is heard as "Zol ikh visn fun ale grine verem vos ikh veys in...". I myself, finding this somewhat indelicate (and being a known khniok) say, "Zol ikh visn fun shvartze kholoymes vos ikh veys etc." In fact, lomir ale visn fun shvartze kholoymes vos mir vaysn fun grine verem, v'imru: "omeyn"! Mechl Asheri ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 6.171 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.cis.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.cis.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