The writer as the people's therapist: Der Nister's last decade, 1939–49

ABSTRACT

World War II and the Holocaust caused profound changes in the style and themes of Der Nister's writing. He reevaluated his symbolist legacy and emerged as one of the most powerful and tragic voices in Soviet Yiddish literature. His transformation from a respected but marginal literary figure into a self-styled national leader became complete with his adventurous journey to the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan in the Soviet Far East, which he envisioned as a site of new Jewish revival. His illusions were crushed by his arrest in 1949.

KEYWORDS:

• Soviet Yiddish literature
• Holocaust
• Der Nister
• mysticism
• symbolism

Notes on contributor

Mikhail Krutikov, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and The Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Ph. D. in Jewish Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary (1998); author of Yiddish Fiction and the Crisis of Modernity, 1905–1914 (Stanford UP, 2001) and From Kabbalah to Class Struggle: Expressionism, Marxism and Yiddish Literature in the Life and Work of Meir Wiener (Stanford UP, 2011), and co-editor of nine collections on Yiddish culture published by Legenda Press, Oxford. Cultural columnist for the Yiddish Forward.

Notes

1. For more details see Mikhail Krutikov, “‘Turning My Soul Inside out’: Text and Context of The Family Mashber,” in Uncovering the Hidden: The Works and Life of Der Nister, ed. Gennady Estraikh, Kersing Hoge, and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2014), 111–44.

2. For a more detailed analysis of that episode, see Mikhail Krutikov, From Kabbalah to Class Struggle: Expressionism, Marxism and Yiddish Literature in the Life and Work of Meir Wiener (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 242–6.

3. Krutikov, “‘Turning My Soul Inside out',” 116.

4. Der Nister, Dertseylungen un eseyen, ed. Nakhmen Mayzel (New York: YKUF, 1957), 279.

5. Ibid., 283.

6. Ibid., 283–4.

7. Ibid., 288.

8. Ibid., 289.

9. Ibid., 290.

10. Ibid.

11. Krutikov, “‘Turning My Soul Inside out',” 130.

12. The Moscow collection has been translated, not always accurately, into English: Der Nister, Regrowth: Seven Tales of Jewish Life before, during, and after Occupation, trans. Erik Butler (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011). Der Nister, Dertseylungen un eseyen; Der Nister, Vidervuks.

13. Der Nister, Regrowth, 190.

14. Ibid., 191.

15. Ibid., 196. The English translation is corrected according to the Yiddish original. The Yiddish quote here follows the Moscow editions of 1943 and 1969; in the New York 1957 edition the appeal to Heaven is more pronounced: “un zol men oybn dort visn … zol men dort zen un zikh mien” (and let them up there know … let them there see and try to do something).

16. Der Nister, Regrowth, 196.

17. Harriet Murav, Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 141.

18. Ibid., 142.

19. For a summary of the debates and their contemporary relevance see the paper of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, February 10, 2010. Rabbi Kassel Abelson, Rabbi Loel M. Weiss, Burial of a Non Jewish Spouse and Children.

20. Ruth Wisse, ed., The I. L. Peretz Reader, trans. Hillel Halkin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 230.

21. Der Nister, Korbones (Moscow: Emes, 1943), 22. English translation by Joseph Sherman, in From Revolution to Repression: Soviet Yiddish Writing 1917–1952, ed. Joseph Sherman (Nottingham: Five Leaves, 2012), 203.

22. Ibid., 209.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., 226.

25. Ibid., 227.

26. Der Nister, Regrowth, 217.

27. Published by Khone Shmeruk, “Arba igrot shel Der Nister: letoldot sifro ‘Di mishpokhe mashber’ vedfusotav,” Bekhinot 8–9 (1977–8), 238.

28. In the 1957 New York edition this story is subtitled “About a Fourth Case in the Formerly Occupied Poland,” but in the Moscow edition of 1969 the subtitle is changed to “Third Case in the Provisionally Occupied Poland of the Past,” reflecting the editorial decision to remove “The Grandfather and the Grandson.”

29. Der Nister, Regrowth, 219.

30. Ibid., 221.

31. Ibid., 233.

32. Ibid., 241.

33. “Flora” is analyzed in detail by Erik Butler in his afterword to Der Nister, Regrowth, 279–85.

34. Ibid., 134.

35. Like some other pseudo-historical characters in Der Nister's fiction, this one is composed out of several real figures who lived in different times. One is the famous Jewish scholar Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591–1665), who studied medicine in Padua but never set foot in Poland or wrote a medical treatise; the other is Moyshe Markuze (1743–?) from Poland, the author of the first popular medical handbook in colloquial Yiddish: Sefer refues (1790). Apparently, some of Delmedigo's descendants lived in Belarus: http://ha-historion.blogspot.com/2007/09/colorful-jewish-historical-figure.html

36. Der Nister, Regrowth, 109.

37. Ibid., 134–5.

38. Ibid., 145.

39. Ibid., 148.

40. Ibid., translation slightly modified.

41. Ibid., 150.

42. Ibid., 157.

43. Der Nister, Vidervuks. Dertseylungen, Noveln (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1969), 159.

44. Der Nister, Regrowth, 153.

45. Gennady Estraikh, “Jews as Cossacks: A Symbiosis in Literature and Life,” in Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering, ed. Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 100.

46. On Der Nister's varied use of dance motifs in different contexts, see Uncovering the Hidden, 40, 41, 83, 85, 135–6, 140, 170.

47. Ellen Koskoff, Music in Lubavitsher Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 99–100.

48. Born Brendel, she married in her second marriage the famous German Romantic writer Friedrich von Schlegel and changed her name to Dorothea after their joint conversion to Catholicism.

49. Der Nister, Regrowth, 16.

50. Ibid., 90.

51. Ibid.

52. Der Nister, Meotsar sipurey hanistar, trans. Shalom Luria (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2006), 277.

53. Joshua Karlip, The Tragedy of a Generation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 78–9.

54. Interestingly, Karlip's study of Kalmanovitch's political activity similarly skips the period between the early 1920s and 1939.

55. An unfinished draft of the novel was published in Sovetish heymland in 1964. On different interpretations of the novel, see Mikhail Krutikov, “Writing between the Lines: 1905 in the Soviet Yiddish Novel of the Stalinist Period,” in The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews, ed. Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 212–23; Daniela Mantovan, “The ‘Political’ Writing of an ‘Unpolitical’ Yiddish Symbolist,” in Uncovering the Hidden: The Works and Life of Der Nister, ed. Gennady Estraikh, Kersing Hoge, and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2014), 73–90.

56. Der Nister, Meotsar sipurey hanistar, 282.

57. Ibid., 281.

58. Butler's identification of the protagonist with Der Nister (Regrowth, 298) seems not justified by the text.

59. Der Nister, Regrowth, 247.

60. Ibid., 256–7.

61. Ibid., 257.

62. Ibid., 258.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid., 260.

65. Ibid., 272.

66. Ibid., 273.

67. Ibid., 155.

68. Ibid., 165.

69. Ibid., 167.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid., 171.

72. Der Nister, Vidervuks, 171.

73. Der Nister, Regrowth, 168.

74. Ibid., 169.

75. Ibid., 179.

76. Der Nister, Vidervuks, 181.

77. Ibid., 10.

78. Ibid., 11.

79. Ibid.

80. For a detailed reconstruction of this trip see Ber (Boris) Kotlerman, “We Are Lacking ‘A Man Dieth in a Tent’: Der Nister's Search for Redemption in the Summer of 1947,” in Uncovering the Hidden: The Works and Life of Der Nister, ed. Gennady Estraikh, Kersing Hoge, and Mikhail Krutikov (Oxford: Legenda, 2014), 174–84.

81. Ibid., 176.

82. Der Nister, Dertseylungen un eseyen, 257.

83. Ibid., 258.

84. Ibid., 270.

85. Ibid., 271.

86. Yosef Kerler, Geklibene proze (eseyen, zikhroynes, dertseylungen) (Jerusalem: Yerusholaymer almanakh), 111–12.

87. Yisroel Emiot, In mitele yorn (eseyen, dertseylungen, lider) (Rochester, NY: Jewish Community Council, 1963), 12.

88. Emiot, In mitele yorn, 10.

89. Ibid., 10.

90. Uncovering the Hidden, 175.

91. Ibid., 179.

92. Emiot, In mitele yorn, 11.

93. Der Nister, Dertseylungen un eseyen, 267.

94. Ibid., 278.

95. Arkadi Zeltser, “How the Jewish Intelligentsia Created the Jewishness of the Jewish Hero: The Soviet Yiddish Press,” in Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering, ed. Harriet Murav and Gennady Estraikh (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 116.

96. Ibid., 117–18.