MORRIS ROSENFELD
An Appreciation
From East and West
May, 1915
That was in the beginning of things—fifteen, twenty years ago—when Yiddish playwrights peddled newspapers for a living, and Yiddish poets composed their songs while threading needles in the sweat shops. Literature then was a thankless task; and only their mutual encouragement and sympathy kept the Gods from abdicating en masse. In those rainy, chilly April days of Yiddish letters in this country, Morris Rosenfeld was the acknowledged poet of the ghetto. None contested that title, none begrudged it. He bemoaned the Ghetto's sorrows and pains; he ridiculed its pretentions and foibles; he glorified its strivings and ideals.
But times have changed since. In fact, as well as in myth, Gods don't dwell in peace very long. There came a moment when supremacy meant power, useful utilitarian power; and the Gods began to battle for position. The war extended over half a decade, and was carried on in the usual brutal manner. Reputations were dragged down into the mire. Holy books were torn into shreds by the merciless hand of criticism. In the general eruption none was spared. Each destroyed and was destroyed in turn. Thus do gods fight.
Rosenfeld shared the common fate. He was attacked and criticized. His genius was called into question; his personality was denounced. And though the battle has almost subsided, he is still being harassed and tormented.
No other Yiddish writer has suffered so much abuse, so much ridicule, at the hands of his colleagues. Each and every one of his faults, weaknesses and mistakes have formed themes for innumerable attacks and satires in the press. And defenders he has none, none but his own venomous pen. For the truth must be told, Rosenfeld has admirers, adorers, worshippers; but of friends, sincere, hearty friends, he has none.
And that is the tragedy of the poet, who for a quarter of a century has sung the tragedy of the most tragic nation in history.
Behold him pacing the street in the Yiddish newspaper row where he comes once or twice a week to see his editor. He is alone. In one hand a heavy cane, in the other a book or manuscript. There is a perceptible limp in his step, the result of an apoplectic attack that almost sent him to the grave ten years ago. Sometimes his face is calm and smooth. Other times it is filled with anguish that seems to express bodily pain as well as mental suffering.
In his greeting one cannot fail to observe an internal sick nervousness. It consists of an exaggerated bow, a piercing glance followed by a smile, a chuckle and a peculiar remark.
His forehead and skull are also striking. Thin silky hair, standing erect in disorderly array, cover a perfectly round head. Beneath is a high forehead, furrowed and almost always of ruddy tinge. You glance at it and you are struck. You know that enclosed in that skull lodges a restless, impulsive, fiery brain.
Hear him talk, or rather watch him talk. What expressiveness, what exaggerated emphasis, what passionate insistence. He nudges you with his elbow, demands approval of every remark, dictates your answers. You wonder, is he sincere? Is his soul on fire? One moment he pouts like a child, another he denounces like a prophet, the third he flatters like a lackey, the fourth he glories like a king. It's acting, you conclude, acting of the high artistic kind, that is full of soul and heart. Perhaps, but listen to the subject matter and you will be convinced that you are mistaken. He talks on a topic that is nearest and dearest to his soul, he speaks of the one thing in which his entire being is centered. Yes, he speaks of himself, always himself.
Vanity, the power and the weakness of the artist, has been Rosenfeld's good and bad angel in life. It was the desire of glory, the dream of renown and distinction, that marvelous passion that chained Bal- zac eighteen hours a day to his writing desk, which also made of the poor little sweatshop tailor a poet whose fame will endure for many, many years. But that same passion is responsible for the many prac- tical errors he has committed, for a great measure of suffering he has endured, for the utter destitution in which he is now placed.
One day his face is bright, his walk light, his head erect. Just stop him a while and you will know the reason. A critic in Hungary has praised his work, a publisher in Germany is preparing a new edition of his songs, or perhaps a letter from an admirer has offered some incense. On the next day his face is a sombre cloud, his eyes dull, his head and shoulders drooping a critic wrote favorably of another Jewish poet, a publisher undertook the publication of one of his colleague's songs. That and nothing more. *** Yiddish literature has just struck root. Its stem is hardly visible above ground. The destiny fate prepared for it no one can tell with absolute certainty. Every literary plant needs the firm soil of nationality for its roots, and the sunshine and moisture of national culture for its nourishment, and these elements are very uncertain with the Jewish people in spite of the fact that an intense wave of the national spirit has been agitating its most important centers in Europe and America.
However, if Jewish literature is destined to live and grow, Rosenfeld will undoubtedly occupy in it the rank of a classic. For Rosenfeld possesses the essential and peculiar qualities that assure for the literary man lasting memory.
To begin with, Rosenfeld is before all else a Jewish writer. His is the truly national genius. His pathos, his humor, his satire, his general outlook upon life, are all unmistakably Jewish. Like many of his colleagues, Rosenfeld had no liberal education, no European culture. He began to study English and read German after his genius had ripened. Since then, he has read widely in all poetry, but that only helped to develop him on the road he had started. It didn't broaden his view, it didn't enrich his ideas, it didn't corrupt his intensely Jewish individuality.
His second claim to classic prominence is his wide universal appeal. In the age of literary restlessness and iconoclasm, when the healthy commonplace passions are almost tabooed and all but adventitious growths fill the garden of letters, Rosenfeld remains faithful to the sound and sane school. He deals with the sorrow and joys that are known to all Jewish hearts the same emotions that thrilled their ancestors generations ago, and that will agitate the souls of their offspring for the generations to come. Symbolism, mysticism, decadence all these are foreign to him. He ridicules them in his writings and denounces them in his conversation.
And he is as simple and lucid in his style as in his substance. That is his third hold on classic survival. Rosenfeld helped to create and model a literary idiom in Jewish literature. Himself thoroughly saturated with the Jewish spirit, all his verbal inventions are characteristically Yiddish. His coinages are hardly ever rejected, hardly ever modified. He will forever remain an authority on style and idiom.
Speaking from a purely layman's standpoint, Rosenfeld should be thoroughly content with the conquest he has made, with the terrority that is universally conceded to him beyond dispute. To rise out of an obscure sweatshop, out of suffering and disappointment and misery, and to attain those glorious heights of literary fame, is indeed a happiness that befalls only the few chosen by the Gods. But Rosenfeld is not happy. His soul craves for tribute, for incessant worship, for constant reward, and this society refuses to grant him.