Allan Nadler wrote a review for a new book (by Ruth Wisse) about the American Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein - Summoned Home. The 1938 poem א גוטע נאכט, וועלט (read by the author??)
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Good night, wide world,
Great, stinking world.
Not you, but I slam the gate.
With the long gabardine,
With the yellow patch burning
With proud stride
I decide:
I am going back to the ghetto.
Wipe out, stamp out all traces of apostasy.
I wallow in your filth.
Blessed, blessed, blessed,
Hunchbacked Jewish life.
Go to hell, with your polluted cultures, world.
Though all is ravaged,
I am dust of your dust,
Sad Jewish life.
Prussian pig and hate-filled Pole;
Jew-killers, land of guzzle and gorge.
Flabby democracies, with your cold
Sympathy compresses.
Good night, electro-impudent world.
Back to my kerosene, tallowed shadows,
Eternal October, minute stars,
To my warped streets and hunchbacked lanterns,
My worn-out pages of the Prophets,
My Gemaras, to arduous
Talmudic debates, to lucent, exegetic Yiddish,
To Rabbinical Law, to deep-deep meaning, to duty, to what is right.
World, I walk with joy to the quiet ghetto light.
Good night. Its all yours, world. I disown
My liberation.
Take back your Jesusmarxists, choke on their arrogance.
Croak on a drop of our baptized blood.
And though He tarries, I have hope;
Day in, day out, my expectation grows.
Leaves will yet green
On our withered tree.
I dont need any solace.
I return to our cramped space.
From Wagners pagan-music to chants of sacred humming.
I kiss you, tangled strands of Jewish life.
Within me weeps the joy of coming home.
Translated by Richard Fein
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
thanks for that.
the most important thing is it was written 1938. so this is not part of the show business but of the show.
ben for the sake of the Jewish people we must do everything to keep this sort of thing out of the reach of abe foxman
It would be interesting to know when Jacob Glatstein wrote this, in America, on his way back to Lublin to see his dying mother or in Lublin. The world he describes is not to be confused with the Americana version of the ghetto, not then and certainly not now. In fact this Marc Chagall like mirage was already dying in Europe before the nazis pushed it over the cliff and there is nothing like that here in America, only the muzzled voices whispering, moonwalking.
I like how דאטש became “Prussian,” not German…
A little PC wouldn’t hurt and the Poles are free for all, naturally. Jacob Glatstein uses the name ‘Lyach’ (I guess abbreviation of Schlachta) only a Polish Jew would use that native name.
The place where I took the audio says that it’s read by the author. I have my doubts about that. Has Glatstein adapted a classical litvish so cleanly? Maybe the translator Richard Fein is reading?
Change it to German.
I didn’t translate it, Richard Fein did. I would consider changing it to Russian though…
it’s anyway an awful translation.
you can’t translate poetry, perhaps Yiddish poetry especially but it helps in understanding words I did’t know.
interesting that the two massachusetts jews refuse to use the word german.
I am glad you found another bag to fit people in.
nadler’s point is crucial. jg had been moving in the far western direction , trying to be a yiddish subjectivist, but then seeing europe in 38, turned him to this. it’s reminiscent of hillel zeitlin becoming very frum in the ghetto, though zeitlin was always a mystic, albeit of the chabad-secular school.
One can relate and understand Hillel Zeitlin’s and Jacob Glatsien’s trip back to the ghetto. It is also rather clear in what direction they both would have slammed that door today. And unlike the current defectors that crawl like a mouse from the basement hole, still crave the cheese crumbs of the ghetto, Hillel Zeitlin and Jacob Glatsien would have written an awesome poetry about the “guzzle and gorge pigs” and the “hate-filled Jew-killers” that reside in the ghetto today.
Ben, the poem and the audio are a great find. When I first read it, i was seduced by the lyricism and an overwhelming familiarity of sentiment into some state of pleasant satisfaction, a state often evoked by nostalgic poetry. It brought to my memory poems by Yesenin and Nekrasov, those about turning away from the crazed world, back to old “izbushka”, back to the primal serenity of innocent “nezhnos”t”. Then i thought of a passage in Herzog, where his friend Himmelfarb appeals to his guts: “come Moses, what do you need this for, we’ll find ourselves an orthodox shul, with a chazzan, like the old days”. Herzog runs from the gravity of this warm invite, he calls “potato love”. And that’s how i think about the poem now, as too easy to write, as already having been written by so many, as potato love, not to be trusted. Of course in 1938, it was different. I agree with you that today the poem has no meaning.
Radloh, i protest any comparision with Zeitlin. Glatsteins run to the “tzuhoykert” jewish life is mostly a denial of the goyim acting out to the sounds of the “Vagners getz mussik”, a classical case of “runnig back to the Josh” as our friend Brian calls it. Zeitlin is a diffrent league, his mindset is religious, not aesthetic, he affirms the Torah mystically and philosophically with or without the nazis.
Radloh, please email me the dichters email. i’d like to see an os chaim from you and him.
Ben, Liachy is Ukrainian for Poles. i think it comes from the the legendary founder of Poland, Lach. According to a Slavic legend, his two other brothers Rus and Czech founded the other two Slavic nations.
I could easily believe that the audio is from JG. The melody of his Yiddish is not classic litvish, rather classic Polish. The most recognizable sign is shortening of the ende nuns. dont be confused by the his tzeyreys and shuruks, many polish jews spoke like that(for instance Rav Hutner) and it was certainly the literary standard.
Comparison to Yesenin is very good. Although he lived in completely different time from Nekrasov. Broadly Yesenin represented the millions of peasants who flooded the industrialized metropolises at the turn of the century. He expressed their collective homesickness. Their drastic change of life could be compared to Gltasein moving to America at about the same time. And so is the natural expression of nostalgia for the beautiful village. Note that Glatsein doesn’t actually use “shtetle” but “gehttto” as he was going back to one of the big polish cities not to a village.
The expression “potato love” is very good, I am planning on using it.
If this is Glatsein himself reading than he picked up the literally Litvish Yiddish that was the norm in those days in America, just like Rav Hutner picked up his Litvish during his time in Slobodka (?).
R. Hillel Zeitlin returned to his frum roots long before the Holocaust. By the end of World war 1 he was frum and detested by the Agudaniks and the Gerer chassidim. In addition he was a mystic and wrote many books and artilces about Chassiduth long before the Nazi party was ever around. Some of his artilces in Ho-Hed about chabad are worthy of re-reading.
The poem is great but Glatstein never did become Orthodox and I do not judge him. In Germany many Jews also came home after 1933.
For the sake of honesty Jews in the Ghettos after 1940 sometimes returned to religion as did a leader of the YIVO circles in Vilna , but Rabbi Shimon Huberband reports that tens of thousands of Jews in Congress Poland – if not more – abandoned Judaism after the Nazis took control of Poland.
There are no easy answers.
Emotionally vilt sich a traske ton di tir and tell the Goyishe civilization to go to hell, but is frumkayt a substitute ?
i used the word “reminiscent”. yes, alpert, thous wikipedia denotes the return as being immediately post wwi, the literature that i read said otherwise.
kol, the little that i read of his early work were essays of trying to show the aesthetics of judaism fitting the motifs of western art. seemed very very secular to me.
i was only making the point that it reminded me of zeitlin. in my initial comment i noted that they were way different.
ben, wonder if you can find a gorging-pig poem from zeitlin or glatstein.
when slavs speak of their poetry stand back and shut up.
radloh, you did note that JG and HZ were different, i just wanted to make the contrast more visible. What i meant by ‘religious outlook” as opposed to aesthetic is that Zeitlin was interested in the Truth, the moral right and wrong. (forgive me for using dirty words), and not in capturing a proper poetic expression for his feelings. perhaps broadly speaking this the difference between serious prose and poetry. there is a short and beatiful biography of zeitlin written in the 50′s by someone orbach. i can send you guys a copy if you’d like
would like to read the biography very much.
would be most willing to read that. i.b. read his son aron’s words in the noble academy in the original yiddish.
these stories, poems and plays; this yiddish literature, is an untouched mighty treasure. much of the literature is online, and is an untapped resource, prudent to us now.
I do hope this conversation does not ends with this poem.
I am not sure you are going to like Hillel Zeitlin, I just read that his mother was Kunin.
Found some biographical details about Hillel Zeitlin here:
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Zeitlin_Family
these words renew themselves at every moment as the One recreates itself…