594
PARTISAN REVIEW
tell if you are simply hungry and would like a bite to eat, or if you
arc really starving."
Sholom Aleichem's stories are written in what might be called Basic
Yiddish. He uses a sparse and remarkably contrdled vocabular) ; the
suggestiveness of the colloquialisms, proverbs, and proverbs twisted with
deliberate ironic intent is enriched by the several layers of meaning
which the Yiddish reader finds in them. (It is this of course which makes
the translation, skilled though it is, lose so much of the original flavor.
To translate
zu schlimazl darf man auchet haben maze[
as
it takes a
special kind -of luck to be unlucky
is unavoidably to dehydrate the juices
of the idiom.) Sholom Aleichem's imagery is in constant harmony with
his thought: there is a noticeable lack of nature imagery, for nature
seldom was within the Ghetto Jew's area of awareness. The imagery
rather is based on an integral perception of the Ghetto life; describing
the sadness heard in a wheezing old clock, Sholom Aleichem writes of it
as "a sadness like that in the song of an old, worn-out cantor toward
the end of the Day of Atonement.... "
·
Admirable spokesman for his people though he was, and suited as
was his style to his purpose, Sholom Aleichem still leaves one with a cer–
tain sense of incompleteness. His stories frequently collapse at the end
and he finds it necessary to introduce direct remarks as narrator, like a
father who entrances a child with a fairy tale but upon finding himself
unable to complete it informs the child that it is just ... a fairy tale.
I suspect that this difficulty may have been due to Sholom Aleichem's
own awareness of his position of conscious artist in touch with the folk.
There must have been occasions, as can be seen in the stories, when he
was tempted to go beyond the bounds of his self-imposed limits, when
he was tempted to develop deeper and more individualized character as
well as more explicit tragedy. For irony too can become a rut, an atti–
tude of relationship instead of a mode of perception.
As-is evidenced in some recent reviews, it is a temptation for intel–
lectuals who are keenly aware of the modern desolation to exaggerate
the degree of spiritual integration of Sholom Aleichem's world. They
have allowed their nostalgia to betray them into finding an occasion for
it in Sholom Aleichem. But we have every reason to suspect the yearn–
ings towards simplicity and central belief by contemporary intellectuals
who really do not wish to surrender their complexity of vision. For Sholom
Aleichem's world was in dissolution; it could not persist against the in–
roads of modern civilization and thought. I.t was a world of internal
stratification, of terrible misery and deprivation which narrowed its mem–
bers, even as it narrowed its artists, Sholom Aleichem included. To
play Henry Adams to the Jewish Ghetto may be interesting for the
gentile reviewer but is merely sad for the Jew.
