SOURCE: "Levinsky and the Language of Acquisition," in The Monological Jew: A Literary Study, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988, pp. 84-92.

[In the following essay, Dembo discusses Cahan's use of language and dialogue in The Rise of David Levinsky.]

What does the rise in The Rise of David Levinsky actually mean? We know what it means in The Rise of Silas Lapham by that author whom Abraham Cahan admired as a realist, William Dean Howells, but the question of Cahan's attitude toward his hero is more complex and more fraught with ambiguity. Even though Levinsky is in many ways a projection of his creator and often serves as his spokesman, the novel is far from being autobiographical. For one thing, the author was a life-long socialist, the character a business tycoon, portrayed as having, whatever his faults, a great deal of sensitivity and insight.

Why has Cahan chosen, in his one important novel, to omit the struggles of the Jewish socialist movement in America, in which he himself played no mean part, and instead to concentrate on the personal problems of a single, bourgeois man—to take as his central concern not the class struggle in the period of rapid industrialization after the Civil War but the vicissitudes in the life of an ambitious but essentially nonpolitical Russian immigrant? His reading of Plekhanov, Marx, and Engels, not to mention his personal experiences as a propagandist and agitator, does not shape with any real consistency Cahan's conception of the virtues and flaws of American society or his view of the life of the Jewish immigrant.

Atheistic socialism and monotheistic Judaism have, perhaps, a common denominator in the belief that self-fulfillment is possible only in social terms, in contrast with individualistically centered theories, which state that perfectability lies only with the single man and that self-fulfillment cannot be transcended. David Levinsky is neither a socialist nor, in his adulthood, a Torah-reading Jew; he is philosophically, as well as literally, on his own. He must, in essence, create his own values or at least act without any sanction of authority or possibility of confirmation. His values and ideals are therefore an assemblage drawn from the various layers of his experience and they ultimately satisfy psychic needs rather than claim universality.

It is precisely the preoccupation with language—with the perpetual confrontation encounter, or meeting expressed in and by dialogue—that makes the theories of Martin Buber so valuable as a perspective on Cahan's novel. The world of individuality—the existential world in which the predatory Other and the I-It relations among men prevail—appears here in sharp definition. It is a world that Cahan cannot condemn or exonerate, neither rebel against as militant socialist or disillusioned Jew nor wholly embrace.

Whatever its defects, America is the Golden Land and that faith underlies and is expressed in this outburst in a Catskill resort during a dinner concert (Levinsky is caught up in the emotion and so, we can assume from the absence of irony, is Cahan, himself):

[The audience has joined in with the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner"] Men and women were offering thanks-giving to the flag under which they were eating this good dinner, wearing these expensive clothes. There was the jingle of newly-acquired dollars in our applause. But there was something else in it as well.… It was as if they were saying: "We are not persecuted under this flag. At last we have found a home."

Love for America blazed up in my soul.… we all sang the anthem from the bottom of our souls.

I do not think it is coincidental that Thackeray should be mentioned as one of Levinsky's favorite writers, for Levinsky's world, if not one of upheaval in the socialist sense, is a Vanity Fair in which the struggle for survival is carried out with chiefly verbal weapons and nothing succeeds like eloquence.

Now, Buber classifies dialogue into three forms, the last of which is of particular interest to us here. I shall not insist that the description is applicable in all its technical details to Cahan's novel, but it does give us an insight into the relation between speech and character when the ideal cannot be reached. Buber calls the first variant debate and says that in this form,

thoughts are not expressed as they existed in the mind but in speaking are so pointed that they may strike home in the sharpest way and moreover without the men that are spoken to being regarded in any way present as persons; [then there is] conversation characterized by the need neither to communicate something, nor to learn something, nor to influence someone, nor to come into connexion with someone, but solely by the desire to have one's self-reliance confirmed by marking the impression that is made, or if it has become unsteady to have it strengthened. (my italics)

Buber concludes the list with "friendly chat," in which each speaker regards himself as an absolute and the other as relative, and lovers' talk, in which each partner enjoys only his own soul and "precious experience." I do not propose, at this point, to seek out passages in the novel that best illustrate these categories. I'm sure very few would exist in the pure state. They are most useful when taken suggestively rather than literally. Monologue disguised as dialogue is, I daresay, the primary expression of the moral vulnerability of the fictive America that Cahan has created and peopled.

"We are all actors, more or less," says Levinsky. "The question is only what our aim is, and whether we are capable of a 'convincing personation'." This principle underlies social discourse in a culture founded upon competition, and competition not just for material gain or "success" but for psychological and spiritual fulfillment as well. The real crisis of dialogue in Levinsky's America does not stem from the simple antagonism of material and spiritual values; it stems from bringing spiritual values under the aegis of the principles of acquisition. Thus Levinsky is neither morally nor culturally insensitive; he fully recognizes the values of education, family life, religion, art—indeed, without them, he has found that, despite all his commercial success, his life is empty and lonely. His yearning for love and a family eventually outweighs his financial ambition, though he never captures the happiness he so avidly pursues. Like the pursuit of love or God, the pursuit of happiness is fraught with deception and contradiction. Manifested in dialogue, it reveals or yields nothing more than the vanity of the speaker, his inability to transcend the logic and rhetoric of materialism, and thereby his definitive failure to attain the wholeness and communion with another that he seeks throughout a lifetime.

Consider the episode in which, desperate for cash to hire a talented designer that can make his cloak factory prosper, Levinsky approaches an old girl friend, Gussie, to ask for a loan. The conversation, held in a quiet place in a park, rapidly turns into a "fencing contest" in which Gussie, stung before by Levinsky, smartly counters all his arguments. Midway through, Levinsky finds himself being carried away by the beauty of the spring night and the sounds of a nearby band:

We fell silent, both of us, listening to the singing. Poor Gussie! She was not a pretty girl, and she did not interest me in the least. Yet at this moment I was drawn to her. The brooding plaintive tones.… filled me with yearning … filled me with love. Gussie was a woman to me now. My hand sought hers. It was an honest proffer of endearment, for my soul was praying for communion with hers.

"An honest proffer of endearment"—as though endearment were a commodity over which one entered into negotiations. And although the religious rhetoric of "My soul was praying …" is sincere, its very sincerity betrays a shallow idea about the true meanings of "soul," "praying," and "communion," all of which Levinsky has trivialized by associating them with what he admits are "temporary" feelings. "I swear to you you're dear to me," he argues, forgetting that if she really were dear to him, he wouldn't have to "swear" to the fact. But the lady yields and there follows, sure enough, a "delirium of love-making" (passionate embraces and kisses) at the conclusion of which both are left sober and depressed. That Levinsky had at one point been ready to marry Gussie all the more underscores his confusion of motives. Whether spiritual or material, all things are to be attained by the techniques of acquisition. Even the genuine intimacy of an I-Thou relation is diluted by exploitation as the it, to which the Thou is more and more reduced, begins to emerge. The subject is no longer regarded as a whole human being and a "partner-in-dialogue" but as an object to be pursued and acquired.

Levinsky's real attitude toward Gussie is one of condescension and pity, and there is little room left for genuine love or even romance. His relation with Dora Margolis, wife of his friend Max, is another matter. Whatever the sincerity of his love—indeed all the more so because of it—Levinsky never stops calculating. Attempting to seduce Dora, he slips into Yiddish, a language regarded as being suitable only for personal or family matters. It's not that he is fundamentally apathetic toward her as he was to Gussie; we can believe him when he says, "I really loved her." On the other hand, he knows all too well exactly what he is doing:

"Dearest, I whispered.

"I must go out," she said.…

"Don't. Don't go away from me, Dora. Please don't," I said in Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. "I love thee. I love thee, Dora," I raved, for the first time addressing her in the familiar pronoun.… "Dost thou love me Dora? Tell me. I want to hear it from thine own lips."

This appeal ends in a kiss mat sends Levinsky into ecstasy. But is it physical or spiritual ecstasy—lust or love, thrill of conquest or intimacy, egocentricity or genuine sharing with another? These are the very questions that Levinsky was capable of asking himself:

My heart was dancing for joy over my conquest of her, and at the same time I felt that I was almost ready to lay down my life for her. It was a blend of animal selfishness and spiritual sublimity. I really loved her.

It will remain a "blend" until Levinsky is able to give himself without there being anything for him to pursue and acquire—until no longer wanting anything, he ceases "personation," and speaks to the lady in his own voice and in his wholeness as a human being. Circumstances, however, will not let him break the pattern. In regard to Max Margolis, Dora's husband, with whom he wishes to keep cordial relations, he tells us:

I consulted Max, as I did quite often now. Not that I thought myself in need of his advice, or anyone else's, for that matter.… I played the intimate and ardent friend, and this was simply part of my personation.

Levinsky may seem close to entering into a "dialogical event" with Meyer Nodelman, who, he says,

was a most attractive man to talk to, especially when the conversation dealt with one's intimate life. With all his illiteracy and crudity of language he had rare insight into the human heart and was full of subtle sympathy. He was the only person in America with whom I often indulged in a heart-to-heart confab.

It is to his credit that Levinsky recognizes that "crudity of language" can be as valuable as, if not more than, the eloquence with which he himself invariably speaks. Ironically, Nodelman, recognizing Levinsky's loneliness, tries unsuccessfully to act as a marriage broker for him and leaves Levinsky no better off than he was. The more he seeks an escape from the materialist and philistine world, the more confirmed he becomes in his acquisitive habits: "I had no creed, I knew of no ideals. The only thing I believed in was the cold, drab theory of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest."

This is, of course, not enough for Levinsky (we have heard him say things like this before) and he tells us: "This could not satisfy a heart that was hungry for enthusiasm and affection, so dreams of family life became my religion. Self-sacrificing devotion to one's family was the only kind of altruism and idealism I did not flout." If we are suspicious of such a declaration, it is with good reason, for Levinsky continues.

I was worth over a million, and my profits had reached enormous dimensions, so I was regarded as a most desirable match, and match-makers pestered me as much as I would let them, but they found me a hard man to suit.

The assumption here is simply that old cliché that money can buy anything, a family no less than a factory—and that money coupled with eloquence are the main implements for acquiring whatever one yearns for or dreams of. Levinsky tries to perform his "public duty" in the same way and describes his philanthropic activity, proudly citing that he gave so much that they put his picture in the newspaper. Vanity is so obviously mixed with altruism here, we don't know whether to praise his efforts or decry their motives.

Levinsky's narration reveals that his rise was to wealth and a greater awareness of the refinements of American civilization and human nature, in general. It also reveals that the very elements that gave him his wealth and led to a certain sophistication are the ones that kept that sophistication limited and subverted his sense of values. Wooing Anna Tevkin, the daughter of a well-known but now neglected poet, he shows us how little he has learned about the love and family life that he has never stopped pursuing:

I loved her to insanity. She was the supreme desire of my being. [This does not assure us of Levinsky's maturity, nor, considering his expectations, does it bode well for the lady who is the object of all this supercharged feeling.] I knew that she was weaker in character and mind than Elsie, for example, but that seemed to be a point in her favor. [A point in her favor to be of weaker character and mind? This is not the case of man and woman entering into an I-Thou relation as partners-in-dialogue and other, more physical, forms of communication; it is the precondition of an I-It relation, in which the woman tries to be whatever her husband's values dictate that she should be.] "She is a good girl," I would muse, "mild, kindly, girlish." As for her 'radical' notions, "they really don't matter much.

I could easily knock them out of her. I should be happy with her. Oh, how happy!" [Is comment necessary?]

Levinsky's assumptions about marital relations, about women as a whole, and about Anna Tevkin in particular are perfectly in keeping with his assumptions about the way of life in America. His egoism, his chauvinism, the materialism by which he measures all things are not an eccentricity but representative of an entire society. In his own way Levinsky has succeeded in assimilating where so many others (like Stern, for example) have failed.

His is not a story of the contradictions of being a Jew in America. True, Levinsky clings to Judaism and from time to time goes to temple. He longs for the old days when he read Talmud, but this is mere nostalgia, for his actual practice of Judaism is a matter of philanthropy and has little to do with any spiritual belief. He suffers no crisis of faith on his way to becoming an American and experiences very little anti-Semitism to test his belief. Here is how he resolves the age-old problem:

[The cloth merchant] was well disposed toward me.… he addressed me as Dave. (There was a note of condescension as well as of admiration in this "Dave" of his. It implied that I was a shrewd fellow and an excellent customer, singularly successful and reliable, but that I was his inferior, all the same—a Jew, a social pariah. At the bottom of my heart I considered myself his superior, finding an amusing discrepancy between his professorial face and the crudity of his intellectual interests; but he was a Gentile and an American, and a much wealthier man than I, so I looked up to him.) (my italics)

Thus, after scoffing at the cloth merchant for thinking him inferior, Levinsky reverts to the same anti-Semitic logic and ends up agreeing with him. And he can agree with him precisely because anti-Semitism is not an important factor in his life. It enters the narration only once again—in the episode in which Levinsky gives up any idea of marrying a gentile woman with whom he has much in common, because he is frightened by that "medieval prejudice against our people which makes so many marriages between Jew and Gentile a failure." But Levinsky gets over this loss with little grief just as he gets over the loss of all the Jewish women with whom he sought matrimony. His real agony comes from "loneliness" and that is a hazard of individualism in general and not an evil experienced just by exiled Jews.

In other words, Levinsky is not alone in his loneliness; he is lonely because he lives by the values of a society atomized by competition—a society oriented to the marketplace and not the hearth. His tragedy is that, though desperate in his loneliness to enter the hearth, he cannot do so without bringing the values of the marketplace with him.