How To Read A Yiddish Poem
Wolitz, Seth
HOW TO READ A YIDDISH POEM The Poem Elyezer Shteynbarg (1880-1932) The transliteration Der Kush Yeder hot zikh zayne tnues un havayes. Un reb Nisi Yeshayes, tier gvir der sheyner, er gehat a...
...The kiss of the title is now only too ironic: the kiss of death...
...10) and "lording it" over the other "servants...
...Bone-no-longer\ At the end of the fable the thin glass remains intact but the marrowless bone is cracked open and vacant: the fate of boasting fools...
...Then, Mr...
...Thin glass [cups] 12...
...The name Reb Beynish is actually a pun on Beyn Nish(t), Bone-not or Mr...
...A Shteynbarg fable rips off the mask of social amiability, good form, protocol and civilization to reveal the bitter lot of the oppressed squabbling among themselves and eventually crushed from above...
...Bone...
...Relentless in its denunciation of social injustice, a Shteynbarg fable functions like a forlorn hope to change the human condition, if not human nature...
...Ir far kine kent dokh puken nokh, kholile...
...The second verse provides an exemplum of the generalization in the person of Reb Nisi Yeshayes, the master of the house and agent provocateur of the ensuing drama...
...The rich and powerful continue to rule, such is the human condition...
...Meanwhile Reb Nisi continues (v...
...With the loss of marrow, the bone's raison d'etre ceases as much for itself as for Reb Nisi...
...A rich complacent man comfortably seated at his dining table provokes "a tempest in a teapot" by repeatedly "sucking on bones" (v...
...Might even crack, God forbid...
...From envy you 14...
...Just look who's kissing me, the boss himself...
...Around this seemingly innocent habit, the drama begins...
...Buenos Aires: Besaraber landslayt-fareyn in Argentine, 1949), p. 36...
...As the marrow is scooped out of the bone, leaving it empty and useless as a nutshell, so the bowl, useful by having its cavity filled, sharpens the shared image but draws the opposite functional distinction...
...In the third person singular, the poetic narrator sets the stage, orders the props, places the protagonists in their battle positions and retires quickly, ending the exposition...
...What is the matter...
...Verse eight transposes the reader from the world of men to the lilliput world of animated objects...
...Move over glass...
...The last line, a pointe, reduces the opponent to humiliating silence...
...Usually Shteynbarg pits two or three against one another and eventually a master emerges...
...14) prepares the denouement...
...Its impact rests with the withering silence that trails the question mark...
...A fable helps to face a bitter truth indirectly...
...The short verses 17-19 mimic the heavy trochaic meter and rhyme of lines 11-14 in order to mock the bone's haughty style and to maintain the continuous gnawing rhythm of Reb Nisl's kisses...
...12) becomes hierarchical for the bone...
...Der balbos aleyn...
...The typical Shteynbarg fable mediates through humor and fantasy, the horror of a seemingly daily civilized dining scene transmogrified before our eyes into an abattoir and finally an ossuary...
...The rhyme, oysnogn, to gnaw away, juxtaposed to the rhyme nogt, to gnaw, of verse 7 subverts cruelly the high point of the bone's delusion of grandeur...
...The scorn increases in the language play of address...
...The animated objects do not converse...
...Ay, du shoyte, (entfert im a shisl) vart abisl, biz reb Nisi vet dem marekh dir oysnogn— Vos vet ir, reb Beynish, demolt zogn...
...In fact, the two rhymes, v. 20-21, recall the rhymes of v. 7-8, conjugated verbs of nogn and zogn, in order to dramatize the rapid descent...
...By having the bowl address the bone in the formal ir, you, the second person plural, as well as adding the title of respect, Reb, mister, to the bone, Shteynbarg suddenly raises the language register, recalls the bone's own use of the form (lines 10, 12, 13 zet, rukt, ir) and exaggerates the bowl's ironic use of "high tone" in order to reveal, through language play, the foolishness and megalomania of the bone at the moment of its final degradation and humiliation...
...Irony floats on every syllable—particularly on the Yiddish interjections...
...Oh you fool," 17...
...After dinner ("from soup to nuts"), it was traditional in Europe to "crack nuts" and eat the contents...
...Nisi may be a diminuative of Nissim but nisi is also a nut and Yeshayes is Yeshaye or Isaiah with the possessive: Isaiah's nut...
...will gnaw the marrow out of you, 21...
...The normally diminuative final /l/ in the rhyme adds a further "come-uppance" to the belittling mono-rhyme: shisl, bisl, Nisi...
...How our master loves to nibble me with lips so red...
...The prosody also helps underline the rebuking sarcasm...
...From envy...
...Bone, What will you say...
...Can a nut look upon its consumer as its salvation...
...Meanwhile Reb Nisi, unaware, is still blissfully consuming...
...The servant exists for Seth L. Wolitz is the Gale Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor in the French-Italian Department and Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Texas in A ustin...
...Shteynbarg uses free verse with calculated skill to speed or retard the delivery, building rich rhymes to further the sarcasm of the antagonists...
...In line 20 the bone is addressed as dir ("you"), the second person singular (indirect pronoun), which is used for intimacy but expresses here inferior status: the bowl now asserts authority...
...Once he sucked and licked a bone Which wanted known Its happy state: "Hey plate and platter, Big and small Just look who's kissing me: Our master...
...In our fable, The Kiss, the title beguiles with innocence and affirmation...
...Un reb Nisi Yeshayes, tier gvir der sheyner, er gehat a teve: tomid nokhn esn zikh baym tish gesesn un getsmoket beyner...
...Until Reb Nisi 20...
...But Isaiah means salvation...
...6-7...
...The narrative voice ushers in the fable with a trite generalization (v.l) more normally saved for the conclusion...
...The foolish bone, ignorant of the fatal attentions, usurps power and rights based on false premises...
...Each personage is typed by his language and rhythms...
...a bowl replies) 18...
...Wait a little 19...
...The fable becomes an aesthetic interlude and social protest: a mediation in time to resharpen the perception of social reality, a locus of renewal for psychic energies preparing to reenter the fray, a forum to denounce and laugh scornfully at the absurdity of life and an act of assertion to demand human dignity...
...The central image of "cracking" (v...
...Pardon me...
...Shteynbarg is unique among the world fabulists in preferring to animate objects rather than to anthropomorphize animals...
...The vocabulary Shteynbarg employs retrieves old Yiddish terms, quaint Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic words, folk expressions and idioms...
...A poetic attempt at translation The Kiss Each one has his quirk and grimace, And so does dear Reb Nisi Shayes, Rich, esteemed, who, after every meal Had a habit, I'll reveal, Of sucking bones piled on his plate...
...Why is the bowl the chief spokesman...
...Survival demands the recognition of power and the ability to bend...
...What willyou say then, Mr...
...Shteynbarg is the finest craftsman of fables in Yiddish...
...Glezlekh dine, rukt aykh op, mekhile...
...The heavy repetitive trochaic accent in Yiddish (long-short) of verses 11-14 with the rich monotonous alternating rhymes in short lines: dine, mekhile, kine, kholile, reveal Shteynbarg's virtuoso use of language and prosody to delineate the vaunting personality of the Bone...
...Verses 9-15 boom with the arrogance and false pride of the bone boasting of his service to the boss (v...
...The narrator retires as he animates the bone and table setting...
...Oh, you fool," Said the bowl: "Just wait a little 'Til Reb Nisi Will gnaw your marrow away...
...Reb Nisi obviously has his gestures and grimaces as well as habit, namely—a folk tradition—of gnawing bones after dinner...
...Names in Shteynbarg fables are never innocent...
...The underling pays with his life for the attentions of the master...
...In this world only the master counts...
...The intention and act, however, are the same...
...Verses 16-21 contain the rebuttal and savagely ironic resolution...
...There is neither mercy nor room for fools...
...Zet nor, ver se kusht mikh...
...Tsmoket er a beyn azoy un nogt, un der beyn derfreyt zikh un er zogt: —teler, shisl, groys un kleyn...
...Space (v...
...Move over, if you please, 13...
...By making animals and animated objects act human, the aesthetic distance permits the readers to observe and laugh at the human condition as superior beings while recognizing the inescapability of human nature...
...The name Reb Nisi Yeshayes contains, as it were, the meat of the fable...
...Eleazar Shteynbarg needed the aesthetic distance ^f a fable to present his vision of life: a world not built on justice but on power...
...You could crack and splatter (God forbid...
...they command, they order and argue...
...15) to "suck and lick with his red lips...
...5 10 15 20 SEffl WOUTZ The literal line by line translation The Kiss 1. Each one has his gestures and grimaces 2. And [so does] Reb Nisi Yeshayes, 3. The upstanding rich man, 4. [Who] He had a habit: always after the meal 5. [remained] seated by his place setting 6. and sucked on bones...
...Mesholim, I (Czernowitz: Komitet af aroystsugebn Elyezer Sheynbargs shriftn, 1932), p. 18 Rpt...
...16...
...But what happens to the shells...
...How he sucks [and] licks me with his red lips...
...Direct discourse develops immediately...
...Line 21 is the only interrogative sentence after the series of imperatives...
...The bowl speaks for all the place setting with the lesson that puts the bone back into its proper place— the fool...
...Like La Fontaine and Krylov, he treats the fable as drama, conflict and ironic resolution...
...Veiled threats to the fragility of the glass and its possible envy reflect, in fact, the mirror image of the bone's physical and psychological make-up...
...Vi er tsmoket, lekt mikh mit di lipelekh di royte...
...his pleasure...
...7. He sucked and gnawed a bone so [much] 8. [that] the bone took such pleasure and said 9. "Dish, bowl, big and small...
Vol. 1 • December 1981 • No. 7
