A YIDDISH POET

MARY BROWN SUMNER

Whither, whither, pretty child? The world is not yet open. Oh, see how quiet is all around! ’Tis before daybreak, the streets are mute, whither, whither, do you hurry? ’Tis now good to sleep, and do you see, the flowers are still dreaming; every bird’s nest is still silent? Whither pray are you driven now? Whither do you hurry, tell me, and what to do?

To earn a living.

Whither, whither, pretty child walking so late at night? Alone through the darkness and cold? And everything is at rest, the world is silent. Whither does the wind carry you? You will yet lose your way. Scarcely has day smiled on you, how can the night help you? For it is mute and deaf and blind. Whither, whither, with easy mind?

To earn a living.[5]

Thus, ten year before vice commissions began to probe into the connection between white slavery and low pay, wrote Morris Rosenfeld, the Yiddish poet. In March the fiftieth anniversary of his birth was celebrated in Carnegie Hall by a great gathering of the Jewish East Side, under the auspices of the JewishDaily Forwards, to which he is a contributor.

Morris Rosenfeld, as a boy a fisherman on the shores of a Polish lake, early an emigrant from home, and until his health broke down a few years ago a worker in the sweatshops of London and New York, expresses in verse the cry of suffering from persecuted and broken Jew and from exploited and broken worker.

He is no pitiful East Sider struggling for expression, “found” by a Harvard scholar. He is a poet offering no halting rhymes for which apologies are necessary. Yiddish literature has many poets of real genius, but the major part of Rosenfeld’s verse alone, in his Songs from the Ghetto, has been presented to us in English prose, in the translation of Leo Wiener, instructor in Slavonic literature in Harvard.

Through the medium of a language in which, in the expression of Mr. Wiener, German, Polish, Russian and English—the tongues of all countries through which the Jew has passed—contend with Hebrew for the possession of each word, Rosenfeld expresses his meaning with the note of inevitableness and the adaptation of form to thought that is seen only in the work of a great poet.

MORRIS ROSENFELDFrom an etching by Herman Struck

His poems are cries of pain out of his own life interpreted in terms of the life of his class. He is always lyric, he is always personal, but he is never egotistical. The story runs that at his machine in the midday hour he would write a lyric of the workshop instead of eating his meager lunch. The song to the working-girl prostitute is one of these workshop poems which like a flash reveal working and living conditions such as in less revealing form have been put before us by investigators.

The twelve-hour day may be said to be the subject of My Boy. The tailor’s baby was always asleep when his father got home from work:

I have a little boy, a fine little fellow is he! When I see him it appears to me the whole world is mine.

Only rarely, rarely I see him, my pretty little son, when he is awake; I find him always asleep, I see him only at night.

My work drives me out early and brings me home late; oh, my own flesh is a stranger to me; oh, strange to me the glances of my child!

I come home in anguish and shrouded in darkness—my pale wife tells how nicely the child plays.

I stand by the cradle.

I stand in pain and anguish and bitterness, and I think: “When you awake some day, my child, you will find me no more.”

Seven-day labor is the burden of the song Despair:

DESPAIR

Is it not allowed to rest even one day in the week and to be at least one day free from the angry growl of the boss, his gloomy mien, his terrible looks; to forget the shop and the cries of the foreman; to forget slavery, to forget woe? You wish to forget yourself and be rested? Never mind, you will soon go to your rest!

Soon the trees and flowers will have withered; the last bird is already ending his song; soon there will be cemeteries all around! Oh, how I should like to smell a flower and feel, before the grass is dead, the breath of zephyr in the green fields! You wish to be in the fields where it is airy and green? Never mind you will be carried there soon enough!

The brook is silvery and glistens beautifully; the waves are covered with a heavenly grace. Oh, how good it is to bathe there! How I should enjoy leaping into it! My body is weakened from the dreadful work,—how they both would refresh me! Oh, you wish to make your ablution in the brooks? Be not frightened, you will soon receive your ablution!

The sweatshop is dark and smoky and small. How can my white blouse be clean there? In the dirty shop cleanliness is unknown to me. How a pure white shirt adorns a man! How proper for a noble body it is, in order to be free to work humanely and be clean withal! You wish now to dress yourself in white? They will dress you, and dress you quickly enough!

The woods are breezy, in the woods it is cool. How good to dream there quietly! The little birds sing pleasantly; but in the shop there is noise, and the air is suffocating! Oh, you wish to be cool?

Of what avail is a forest to you? It will not be long before you will be cold.

’Tis good to have a dear companion. In adversity he gives hope, in misery—courage. A dear companion sweetens your being, and he gives you a zest for life. And I am orphaned alone like a stone, there are no companions, I am all by myself—you will soon have companions without end; they swarm already and are waiting for you!

The Pale Operator gives a hint of the ravages of tuberculosis in the garment trade:

I see there a pale operator all absorbed in his work. Ever since I remember him, he has been sewing and using up his strength.

Months fly, and years pass away, and the pale faced one still bends over his work and struggles with the unfeeling machine.

I stand and look at his face; his face is besmutted and covered with sweat. I feel that it is not bodily strength that works in him but the incitement of the spirit.

And the tears fall in succession from day break until fall of night and water the clothes and enter into the seams.

Pray how long will the weak one drive the bloody wheel? Who can tell his end? Who knows the terrible secret?

Hard, very hard to answer that! But one thing is certain: when the work will have killed him another will be sitting in his place and sewing.

A desire for life—if it is a feast, he would sit at it; if it is a dream he would have it a beautiful one—a love of the outdoor country life which he knew as a boy and which he believed all should enjoy, mingled with a sense of impotence and despair, varying with outbursts of wailing and outbursts of hate, these things characterize the poetry of Morris Rosenfeld. For all his power to vizualize and voice the world about him, he is never constructive, never militant, and seldom even virile.[6]In few poems does he express any hope for the future. In a mood of despair he writes the beautiful workshop poem:

I groan and cough and press, and thinkMy eye grows damp, a tear falls; the iron is hot,My little tear it seethes and seethes and will not dry up.

I groan and cough and press, and think

My eye grows damp, a tear falls; the iron is hot,

My little tear it seethes and seethes and will not dry up.

I feel no strength, it is all used up; the iron falls from my hand, and yet the tear, the silent tear, the tear, the tear boils more and more.

My head whirls, my heart breaks. I ask in woe: “Oh, tell me, my friend in adversity and pain, O tear, why not dry up in seething.”

“Are you perhaps a messenger and announce that other tears are coming? I should like to know it; say, when will the great woe be ended?”

I should have asked more of the turbulent tear; but suddenly there began to flow more tears, tears without measure, and I at once understood that the river of tears is very deep.

In a mood of mingled longing and hate, he writes the Flowers of Autumn, whose splendor is only for the well-to-do—

Therefore I do not care if I see you dying now.

There is more virility, though nothing really purposeful in the Garden of the Dead, where the dead worker rises up to claim the flowers on the rich man’s grave:

Not only the flowers are mine, nay, even the boards of the coffin are mine!

And not only the boards of the coffin—you shrouds, you, too, are mine! He has it all through my work, my poor work—oh, all and all is mine!

Then the dead one passed away in the air with cries:

“You will pay for it yet! And he clenched his fist and threatened the world.”

The poet’s love for nature, the human longing of the worker imprisoned in the city for the country, which he has known but which is now beyond his reach, is expressed in the nightingale’s challenge to the laborer:

“Summer is here, summer is here! I shall not sing to you eternally, for finally my hour too will strike—a dark crow will occupy my branch, the holy song will cease. How long must I sing to you from the tree of the golden dream of freedom and love? Rise and let me not urge you any longer! The heaven will not remain eternally blue! Summer is here, summer is here! Now one can pass a merry time, for just like you who are fading at your machine, everything will in the end wither and be carried away.”

The Nightingale illustrates, as Professor Wiener points out, the poet’s command over poetic form as well as poetic thought. Even in the English prose translation we can feel the repetition of notes, the intricate weaving of melody in the bird’s song.

Another poem which is an example of the same power of combining matter and manner is that drama of the garment worker’s lift, The Sweatshop, which deserves to be quoted in full:

The machines in the shop roar so wildly that often I forget in the roar that I am; I am lost in the terrible tumult, my ego disappears, I am a machine. I work and work and work without end. I am busy and busy and busy at all time. For what and for when? I know not, I ask not! How should a machine ever come to think?

There are no feelings, no thoughts, no reason; the bitter bloody work kills the noblest, the most beautiful and best, the richest, the deepest, the highest, which life possesses. The seconds, minutes and hours fly; the nights like the days pass as swiftly as sails; I drive the machine just as if I wished to catch them; I chase without avail, I chase without end.

The clock in the workshop does not rest; it keeps on pointing and ticking and waking in succession. A man once told me the meaning of its pointing and waking—that there was a reason in it; as if through a dream I remember it all; the clock awakens life and sense in me, and something else—I forget what; ask me not, I know not, I know not, I am a machine!

And at times, when I hear the clock, I understand quite differently its pointing, its language; it seems to me as if the unrest[7]egged me on so that I should work more, more, much more. In its sound I hear only the angry words of the boss; in the two hands I see his gloomy look. The clock, I shudder—it seems to me it drives me and calls me machine, and cries out to me “sew”!

Only when the wild tumult subsides, and the master is away for the midday hour, day begins to dawn in my head, and a pain passes through my heart; I feel my wound, and bitter tears and boiling tears wet my meager meal, my bread; it chokes me, I can eat no more, I cannot! O, horrible toil! O, bitter necessity.

The shop at the midday hour appears to me like a bloody battlefield where all are at rest; about me I see lying the dead, and the blood that has been spilled cries from the earth. A minute later—the tocsin is sounded, the dead arise, the battle is renewed. The corpses fight for strangers, for strangers, and they battle and fall and disappear into night.

I look at the battlefield in bitter anger, in terror, with a feeling of revenge, with a hellish pain. The clock now I hear it aright. It is calling: “An end to slavery, an end shall it be”! It vivifies my reason, my feelings and shows how the hours fly; miserable I shall be as long as I am silent, lost, as long as I remain what I am.

The man that sleeps in me begins to waken—the slave that wakens in me is put to sleep. Now the right hour has come, an end to misery, an end let it be! But suddenly—the whistle, the boss, an alarm! I lose my reason, forget where I am; there is a tumult, the battle. Oh, my ego is lost! I know not, I care not, I am a machine!

The prose translation reproduces the thought alone; the Yiddish original reproduces also the loud insistent stitching of the machines, and the persistent nagging of the hateful clock. The machine beats out these lines:

Ich arbeit, un’ arbeit, un’ arbeit ohn’ Cheschben.

Es schafft sich, un schafft sich, un schafft sich ohn’ Zahl.[8]

To what he feels to be the hopeless tragedy of the worker is added in Rosenfeld’s verse the hopeless tragedy of the Jew—the wanderer who has lost the power to laugh. In Sephira[9]as well as in other poems, he brings out the fact that the Jew has set his Passover and the period of mourning following it, in the happiest time of the year. This poem, which has been really adequately translated into verse by Alice Stone Blackwell, is one of his saddest and most beautiful:

Methinks I fain would call upon my lyreTo laugh a little, but in vain the call!For to begin with, ’tis Sephira now.Tell me, besides, can a Jew laugh at all.Oh, God, you laugh? A wail is in the laugh!Brothers, what is there of realityIn a Jew’s pleasures? Is his laughter real?’Tis but the mingling of a sob and sigh.No savor now has Jewish life, no graceHas Jewish Joy! Above, in heaven’s deepThe silvery clouds are floating; and the woodsAre full of life, but we sit down and weep.Spicy the forest is, the garden green;How fresh and cool spring’s breezes blowing by!But what concern is that of yours, O Jew?’Tis now Sephira; you are mute and sigh.The lovely summer, comfort of men’s lives,Passes in sobbing and in sighs away.What hopes into the Hebrew can it give?To him what comfort summer or the May?A mendicant who has no place to restWith whom all men make sport—each day, each week, each hour,Oh, is it meet for him to think of joys,Of gardens with their balm, of tree or flower?And if the Jew at times break forth in song,Does his song seem to breathe of mirth to you?I, in his music hear but “Roam and Roam!”In every note I recognize the Jew.If one who is well versed in music’s artShould chance to listen to a Jewish song,His eyes against his will would gush with tears,Each note would shake him with emotion strong.The ram’s-horn call to penitence and grief,Oh, that is now the Hebrew’s favorite strain—A strain that makes but feelings for the tomb,A strain to break a heart of steel with pain.The song of the Atonement, and the DirgeFor the great temple and the Suppliant’s Psalm;These are his sweetest music, since his joyWas shattered in his holy land of balm.Since his foe broke the sweetest instrumentsOf music in his Temple, ever dear,Only the plaintive ram’s-horn to the JewIs left, on which he sobs but once a year.Of drums and cymbals, organs, harps and lyres,Flutes and guitars, all with their dulcet strains,The gloomy ram’s-horn, withered, sad and dry,Is all that now to the poor Jew remains.Whate’er he sing, however he may laughHowever gay he seeks to make the strain,There suddenly awakens in his songThe suppliant’s psalm that rends the heart with pain.Me thinks I fain would call upon my lyreTo laugh a little, but in vain the call!For to begin with, ’tis Sephira now,Tell me, besides, can a Jew laugh at all?

Methinks I fain would call upon my lyreTo laugh a little, but in vain the call!For to begin with, ’tis Sephira now.Tell me, besides, can a Jew laugh at all.

Methinks I fain would call upon my lyre

To laugh a little, but in vain the call!

For to begin with, ’tis Sephira now.

Tell me, besides, can a Jew laugh at all.

Oh, God, you laugh? A wail is in the laugh!Brothers, what is there of realityIn a Jew’s pleasures? Is his laughter real?’Tis but the mingling of a sob and sigh.

Oh, God, you laugh? A wail is in the laugh!

Brothers, what is there of reality

In a Jew’s pleasures? Is his laughter real?

’Tis but the mingling of a sob and sigh.

No savor now has Jewish life, no graceHas Jewish Joy! Above, in heaven’s deepThe silvery clouds are floating; and the woodsAre full of life, but we sit down and weep.

No savor now has Jewish life, no grace

Has Jewish Joy! Above, in heaven’s deep

The silvery clouds are floating; and the woods

Are full of life, but we sit down and weep.

Spicy the forest is, the garden green;How fresh and cool spring’s breezes blowing by!But what concern is that of yours, O Jew?’Tis now Sephira; you are mute and sigh.

Spicy the forest is, the garden green;

How fresh and cool spring’s breezes blowing by!

But what concern is that of yours, O Jew?

’Tis now Sephira; you are mute and sigh.

The lovely summer, comfort of men’s lives,Passes in sobbing and in sighs away.What hopes into the Hebrew can it give?To him what comfort summer or the May?

The lovely summer, comfort of men’s lives,

Passes in sobbing and in sighs away.

What hopes into the Hebrew can it give?

To him what comfort summer or the May?

A mendicant who has no place to restWith whom all men make sport—each day, each week, each hour,Oh, is it meet for him to think of joys,Of gardens with their balm, of tree or flower?

A mendicant who has no place to rest

With whom all men make sport—each day, each week, each hour,

Oh, is it meet for him to think of joys,

Of gardens with their balm, of tree or flower?

And if the Jew at times break forth in song,Does his song seem to breathe of mirth to you?I, in his music hear but “Roam and Roam!”In every note I recognize the Jew.

And if the Jew at times break forth in song,

Does his song seem to breathe of mirth to you?

I, in his music hear but “Roam and Roam!”

In every note I recognize the Jew.

If one who is well versed in music’s artShould chance to listen to a Jewish song,His eyes against his will would gush with tears,Each note would shake him with emotion strong.

If one who is well versed in music’s art

Should chance to listen to a Jewish song,

His eyes against his will would gush with tears,

Each note would shake him with emotion strong.

The ram’s-horn call to penitence and grief,Oh, that is now the Hebrew’s favorite strain—A strain that makes but feelings for the tomb,A strain to break a heart of steel with pain.

The ram’s-horn call to penitence and grief,

Oh, that is now the Hebrew’s favorite strain—

A strain that makes but feelings for the tomb,

A strain to break a heart of steel with pain.

The song of the Atonement, and the DirgeFor the great temple and the Suppliant’s Psalm;These are his sweetest music, since his joyWas shattered in his holy land of balm.

The song of the Atonement, and the Dirge

For the great temple and the Suppliant’s Psalm;

These are his sweetest music, since his joy

Was shattered in his holy land of balm.

Since his foe broke the sweetest instrumentsOf music in his Temple, ever dear,Only the plaintive ram’s-horn to the JewIs left, on which he sobs but once a year.

Since his foe broke the sweetest instruments

Of music in his Temple, ever dear,

Only the plaintive ram’s-horn to the Jew

Is left, on which he sobs but once a year.

Of drums and cymbals, organs, harps and lyres,Flutes and guitars, all with their dulcet strains,The gloomy ram’s-horn, withered, sad and dry,Is all that now to the poor Jew remains.

Of drums and cymbals, organs, harps and lyres,

Flutes and guitars, all with their dulcet strains,

The gloomy ram’s-horn, withered, sad and dry,

Is all that now to the poor Jew remains.

Whate’er he sing, however he may laughHowever gay he seeks to make the strain,There suddenly awakens in his songThe suppliant’s psalm that rends the heart with pain.

Whate’er he sing, however he may laugh

However gay he seeks to make the strain,

There suddenly awakens in his song

The suppliant’s psalm that rends the heart with pain.

Me thinks I fain would call upon my lyreTo laugh a little, but in vain the call!For to begin with, ’tis Sephira now,Tell me, besides, can a Jew laugh at all?

Me thinks I fain would call upon my lyre

To laugh a little, but in vain the call!

For to begin with, ’tis Sephira now,

Tell me, besides, can a Jew laugh at all?

For the Rosenfeld of the Songs from the Ghetto, the present is terrible and the future hopeless; there is always an aching desire for beauty and happiness, but to him beauty and happiness themselves wait upon toil and suffering and death—the nightingale groans “upon the great cemetery of the world.”

But Songs from the Ghetto was written some fifteen years ago. Some of his later poetry is lighter—some hope and the joy of living appear to have crept into it. Of these, a hitherto unpublished poem in English called “If,” has but a gentle melancholy:

If hope would fly and sorrow stay,If stars were dark and days were gray,If love would vanish like a breath,What would be life? What would be death?If songs would die out in the nests,And pleasure to the human breasts,If flowers were to lose their hue,—Oh! What would be I, What would be you?

If hope would fly and sorrow stay,If stars were dark and days were gray,If love would vanish like a breath,What would be life? What would be death?

If hope would fly and sorrow stay,

If stars were dark and days were gray,

If love would vanish like a breath,

What would be life? What would be death?

If songs would die out in the nests,And pleasure to the human breasts,If flowers were to lose their hue,—Oh! What would be I, What would be you?

If songs would die out in the nests,

And pleasure to the human breasts,

If flowers were to lose their hue,—

Oh! What would be I, What would be you?

Stealings is full of personal joy:

I steal a smile from thy fair faceAnd hide it deep within my heart;I steal a shadow of thy graceAnd hide it deep within my soul;I steal a ray from thy bright eyesAnd hide it deep within my mind;I steal the echo of thy sighsAnd weave them softly in my dreams;A word from thy sweet lips I stealAnd hide it deep within my thoughts;I steal the rapture of thy thrillAnd drown it deep within my blood;And from these thefts, these sacred stealingsAre born the bright flames of my love,And the fountain of all sweet feelings,And the stream of my life’s joy.

I steal a smile from thy fair faceAnd hide it deep within my heart;

I steal a smile from thy fair face

And hide it deep within my heart;

I steal a shadow of thy graceAnd hide it deep within my soul;

I steal a shadow of thy grace

And hide it deep within my soul;

I steal a ray from thy bright eyesAnd hide it deep within my mind;

I steal a ray from thy bright eyes

And hide it deep within my mind;

I steal the echo of thy sighsAnd weave them softly in my dreams;A word from thy sweet lips I stealAnd hide it deep within my thoughts;

I steal the echo of thy sighs

And weave them softly in my dreams;

A word from thy sweet lips I steal

And hide it deep within my thoughts;

I steal the rapture of thy thrillAnd drown it deep within my blood;

I steal the rapture of thy thrill

And drown it deep within my blood;

And from these thefts, these sacred stealingsAre born the bright flames of my love,

And from these thefts, these sacred stealings

Are born the bright flames of my love,

And the fountain of all sweet feelings,And the stream of my life’s joy.

And the fountain of all sweet feelings,

And the stream of my life’s joy.

But even if he can for a time forget the toil and trouble of the world in a personal joy, his first love is with the workers and with them he asks to have his Resting Place—

Seek me not ’mid blooming meadows,Not there my spirit you can trace,Where workers toil like spectral shadows,’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.Seek me not where birds are singing,Not there my spirit you can trace;A slave am I—where chains are ringing,’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.Seek me not ’mid fountains dashing,Not there my spirit you can trace,Where tears are falling, teeth are gnashing,’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.And lov’st thou me with love’s true passion,Thy steps unto my spirit trace,Bring joy with thee; in love’s true fashion,Make sweet to me my resting place.

Seek me not ’mid blooming meadows,Not there my spirit you can trace,Where workers toil like spectral shadows,’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.

Seek me not ’mid blooming meadows,

Not there my spirit you can trace,

Where workers toil like spectral shadows,

’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.

Seek me not where birds are singing,Not there my spirit you can trace;A slave am I—where chains are ringing,’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.

Seek me not where birds are singing,

Not there my spirit you can trace;

A slave am I—where chains are ringing,

’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.

Seek me not ’mid fountains dashing,Not there my spirit you can trace,Where tears are falling, teeth are gnashing,’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.

Seek me not ’mid fountains dashing,

Not there my spirit you can trace,

Where tears are falling, teeth are gnashing,

’Tis there you’ll find my resting place.

And lov’st thou me with love’s true passion,Thy steps unto my spirit trace,Bring joy with thee; in love’s true fashion,Make sweet to me my resting place.

And lov’st thou me with love’s true passion,

Thy steps unto my spirit trace,

Bring joy with thee; in love’s true fashion,

Make sweet to me my resting place.

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