SOURCE: "On Sholem Aleichem's Humor," in Prooftexts, Vol. 6, No. 1, January, 1986, pp. 41-54.

[In the following excerpt, which was originally published in 1941, Wiener discusses Aleichem's unique brand of humor.]

The Victory over Human Fear

Brave children, when fearful upon entering a dark room at night, sing cheerful songs to themselves. Like most metaphors, this one is only partially applicable, but there is a kind of humor that depends, in part, on this sort of spunky singing in the dark. So too, in Sholem Aleichem's humor we find not only laughter and tears, but the sort of merriment that comes from having overcome and tamed the fear of chaos, the fear of a maimed, confused and falsely-ordered life. This conquest of fear of the tragic in life ennobles and deepens humor, lending it an aspect of nobility.

Sholem Aleichem presented the poverty of the great masses of Jews in the shtetl and the city during the period of imperialistic capitalism, but without yielding to the spirit of depression and lament. When Motl Peysi's impoverished family reached the point of having to sell all of its possessions, Sholem Aleichem had Motl describe this in the following way: "Of all the household things we sold, none gave me more pleasure than the glass cupboard." After this cupboard was sold, there were some "technical problems" in removing it from the house. Motl says: "For a moment I was afraid for the cupboard"—he is actually afraid that it may remain in the house!

Motl describes his mother crying because everything was being sold. His sick, dying father calls from the next room to ask what is going on. "'Nothing,' mother answers, wiping her red eyes, and the way her lower lip and her whole face quiver you'd have to be made of stone not to burst out laughing." When everything is sold, and they are down to their last possessions, Motl [looking forward to rolling about on the floor] says, "the joy of joys was when they got to my brother Elye's sofa and to my cot."

The tsarist pogroms were the culmination of horror and dread in the lives of the Jewish masses. Sholem Aleichem was very shaken by these occurrences; it is, therefore, remarkable to note how he handled this subject in his work. The tragedy of the pogroms is frequently dealt with, yet in his literary works he avoided direct descriptions as much as possible, and rendered them, when he did, in an oddly "lighthearted," almost humorous manner.¹

There were not a few writers who relished and lingered over the horror of pogrom descriptions. Certain passages of Bialik's work set the tone for this; its end-product was Lamed Shapiro's pogrom story "The Cross." But at whom was their rage directed? On close consideration, it is clear that to a large degree, it was directed at the victims of the pogroms themselves. This sort of Bialikian "Pain and Outrage" emphasizes the national contradictions. Sholem Aleichem's art, on the other hand, stirs the conscience, because it is addressed to that which is most human in our humanity, and is imbued with faith in man and his future. It diverts us from a fruitless, misanthropic fear and guides us towards a purer vital spirit, toward that crucial striving for a better sort of life. Here, too, Sholem Aleichem's humor is ennobling and purifying.

Motl says: "At first when I heard people talking about 'a pogrom' I was all ears. Now when I hear the word 'pogrom,' I run! I prefer happy stories." Sholem Aleichem says "I dislike sad stories. My muse does not wear a black veil; she is poor but happy." There is so much love for the oppressed in this "hatred of the black veil," and so much sadness in this "happiness in poverty."

Sholem Aleichem reports a conversation between two children emigrating to America with their parents after a pogrom:

I ask him, what's a pogrom? I hear all the emigrants talking about 'pogrom' but I have no idea what it is. Kopl gloats over me:

"You don't know what a pogrom is? Gee, are you dumb! Pogroms are everywhere these days. They start from nothing, but once they start, they go on for three days."

"But what is it," I ask, "a fair?"

"Some fair! They break windows, smash furniture, tear up pillows—feathers fly like snow."

"What for?"

"What for? For nothing! A pogrom isn't only against houses, it's against stores too. They smash all the stores, throw everything out into the streets or steal it, push things around, douse everything with kerosene, strike a match, and burn it up."

"Don't be funny."

"What do you mean, y'think I'm kidding? Then, when there's nothing left to steal, they go from house to house with axes and sticks, followed by the police. They sing and whistle and shout 'Hey, guys, kill the dirty Jews!' They smash, kill, stab with spears . . ."

"Who?"

"What do you mean who? Jews!"

"What for?"

"What for? 'Cause it's a pogrom!"

"So it's a pogrom, so what?"

"Get away, you're an ass. I don't want to talk to you," Kopl says to me, pushes me away, and puts his hands in his pockets like a grownup.

These are supposedly children talking like children, but the words are pure Sholem Aleichem. And the proof of this is his treatment of the subject of the pogroms in other works, for example in his study "Digroyse behole fun di kleyne mentshelekh" ("The Great Hulabaloo of the Small Folk"). The story's bitter irony borders on the grotesque: the inhabitants of Kasrilevke escape from a pogrom to Kozodoyevke, and those of Kozodoyevke to Kasrilevke, because where else should they run? (It is interesting to note, that in his final version of this story Sholem Aleichem omitted or softened those parts that had provided a more detailed realistic treatment of the pogroms.)

The same motif reappears some years later (1906) in the chapter "Shprintse" of Tevye. "It seems that the 'Constitution' [an ironic euphemism for the pogroms—MV] must be more powerful there than here in Yehupetz, because they are on the run, they are all on the run. You may ask: why are they running to us? But then, why do we run to them? It has become a local custom, praise God, that at the first rumor of pogroms, Jews start running from one place to another, as it says in the Scriptures: And they set forth, and they encamped, and they encamped and they set forth—which means, 'you come to me, I'll go to you.' ''

And then, years later, we find the same tone in the cited pogrom passage of Motl, Son of Peysi, the Cantor, where the seemingly naive, childish conversation exposes the senseless brutality of the murderous Black Hundreds with much greater bitterness than in the "prophetic" ranting of Bialik. There is also more anguish in these words, more love for the folk and more attachment to it.

The assumption behind Bialik's censure is a belief in a "Black-Hundred"-quality of mankind, a belief that the reactionary forces constitute an eternal law of nature. Bialik's censure-and-insult pathos leads ultimately to petty nationalism, to a gloomy, pessimistic view of the world.

Sholem Aleichem's comical-ironic pathos is immeasurably more realistic and more humane. Its deepest assumption is a faith in the progress of the human race, a hope for a better, more intelligent social order. He exhorted his readers to strive hopefully, not to submit to the obstacles before them, but to grasp hold of life, to work and demand their due.

Remarks about Tevye

At first glance, the subject of Tevye the Dairyman is a homey Jewish one, "the problem of child-rearing." Actually, this cycle of "portraits from private life" depicts not simply the misfortunes of one family, and the conflicts between generations, but also the very way in which the foundations of society are eroded in a period of transition from one historical age to another.

The family here is simply a microcosm of the basic characteristics of contemporary society as a whole. Family feelings play a large part in this work, "because the curse of children is the worst of the biblical litany of curses," ("Shprintse"), but the ideals of the family do not stem from the normal bourgeois tendency toward individualization and atomization of society; they are the historic consequences of persecutions and oppression which have persisted through the generations and have resulted in a withdrawal to the family as the sole source of consolation. Tevye's life, which forces him out of his family and back into the real world in violent and tragic fashion, reflects the fundamental social forces of that period.

The plot of Tevye is simple enough, even transparent. Collisions and catastrophes occur, but never any complicated events or actions: great humor cannot support over-subtlety. The end of each chapter is fairly predictable from the beginning; there are no great surprises. After the first half of this unique poem there is no doubt about how it will end, and yet there is so much innovation, so much of the unexpected. The great classical outline of the work is discernable in the simplicity of its construction.

The basic plots, from the chapter "Modern Children," to the end, are not new. A daughter chooses a husband against the wishes of her parents (the obstacles are social or ideological); the conflict with her parents ensues with tragic results. This subject is varied five times.

The narrative core of these variations is also not new: misalliance (Tseytl, Shrpintse, Beylke); difference in background and even religion, between parents and the daughters' beloved (Hodel and Khave). By the time Sholem Aleichem wrote these chapters, all these subjects had already been treated by others. Even the motif of wandering, "Lekh-lekh" ("Go Forth"), written in 1914, was familiar in Yiddish literature.

This did not bother Sholem Aleichem: his purpose was not to invent new plots. Certain plots are almost unavoidable and self-evident if one wants to depict the primary characteristics of an age, and not its secondary features. They are so typical, that simply finding them is no accomplishment; they are, as it were, the natural plots of the time. The challenge is to treat these plots in a lively and profound manner. Otherwise, the result is banal, although in real life these issues are far from banal. Raising these run-of-the-mill stories to such a magnificent level, risking five variations on the same theme in a single work—this required Sholem Aleichem's plain genius.

Tevye is a solemn work, yet it exudes a high degree of lyricism. Amazing how Sholem Aleichem leads Tevye into the woods, against a background of "nature," a forest landscape, hardly a typical setting for the Jewish man of the soil. This poor shred of an idyll is indispensable to the characters of Tevye and his daughters.

Sholem Aleichem treated the old subject of the ignorant, hardworking hick in an extremely novel manner. What Sholem Aleichem saw in him! Who else could see these things? Incidentally, it often appears to me that Tevye's proverbs and biblical quotations are not as ignorant as he pretends, that his "translations" are purposefully contorted, in a sort of spirited wittiness. It often seems as if Sholem Aleichem himself was stylizing the matter here.

Description

Dickens and Mendele had a great influence on Sholem Aleichem's style, but when we compare their work, certain differences are obvious. Dickens loved description and portraiture; Mendele indugled in it willingly, occasion permitting; Sholem Aleichem rarely paints or describes and then only in hasty strokes.

Details interested Sholem Aleichem too, but from an acoustic rather than an optic point of view: how does a character respond verbally to a private or social event.

It is widely acknowledged that Sholem Aleichem in two or three strokes can sketch a character with complete accuracy. It used to be said that he could do portraits, but not landscapes. That is not so:

And the wagon, as if out of spite, crept slowly along. Before you can reach the Dnieper you have to cross one sand dune and then another, thick yellow sand, knee-deep; slowly, step by step, the horses drag themselves forward, barely able to pull their legs out of the sand. The wheels sink and the wagon groans, as the Dnieper appears closer and closer, in all its breadth and beauty.

On the banks of the river tall green rushes, speckled with yellow, spread their long, sharp leaves, which are reflected in the water, lending the old river a special charm. All is still.

The river spreads far and wide, like the sea, in all directions: the waters flow quietly by. Where to? It's a secret. The blue sky looks down from above and catches its reflection in the water along with the sun, which is not about to set. The sky is clear. The water clear. The sand clear, and the air. And a divine stillness reigns, reminiscent of the Psalms: "The expanse is the Lord's." Suddenly, a bird streaks from the rushes with a cry, cuts like an arrow through the pure still air, soaring away in a zigzag. But then, apparently, thinking better of it, the bird zigzags back and disappears once more into the yellow-green rushes.

(From the Fair, chap. 37)

This is a very delicate and beautiful landscape, a sort of Japanese graphic. Sholem Aleichem could paint and describe nature as well, but did so seldom, it was not his style. Sholem Aleichem shared Dickens's passion for description only with regard to speech; his artistic attention concentrated for the most part on the nuances of emotions as expressed in words.

The Garrulousness of Sholem Aleichem's Characters

Sholem Aleichem's humor constitutes a unique category in world literature: it is possible to locate the various influences on the development of his style of humor, but with Sholem Aleichem, a new division of the poetics of comedy begins, a category known as "Sholem Alechemian humor" to go alongside Aristophenian laughter, Dickensian humor, Heinesque irony, Gogolesque satire, and so on.

If the reflection of reality in art is connected in some way with imitating and reproducing reality, then Sholem Aleichem's style, both directly and indirectly, is extremely mimetic in all its details, even to the gesticulations which are hinted at by the words themselves.² In every successful story of Sholem Aleichem, an actor is there, playing his part, even when the story is read silently.

Sholem Aleichem has a special sort of "comic" prose style. All the usual poetic devices are transformed into elements of verbality: the comedy derives not so much from the stories as from the style in which they are recounted—from the various styles of garrulousness of the characters. These are, so to speak, his metaphors, tropes, stylizations, and so forth.

His sentences are directed in the first place not to the eye, but to the ear; dialogues or monologues are his favorite forms. His stories are comedies in prose, and are easily transformed into stage comedies.

In "If I Were Rothschild" (1902), Sholem Aleichem even inserted two bits of stage directions, "comes to a halt," and "reflects for a moment," which are aimed at the reader as well as the recitateur. These stage directions are vestigial remnants of the umbilical cord which links Sholem Aleichem's prose style to comedy itself.

No Yiddish writer has a style as close to the language and narrative manner of the "ordinary Jew" as Sholem Aleichem. No one so accurately reproduced the language of the toiler, the common man, the artisan, coachman, pauper, maid, all the varied inhabitants of Kasrilevke, the bohemian luftmentsh and the ordinary luftmentsh; the speech of the Menakhem-Mendlian maniac, the happy pauper, the bitter, oppressed housewife, the feverish, nervous talk of the market women and the sedate, tranquil talk of intelligence and experience: Tevye's language; the language of little children, unhappy mothers, actors, pious Jews, cardplayers, the talk of all sorts of professions, districts, dialects: tremendous treasures of language, reflecting the enormous diversity of life.

This is one side of the issue. It is quite wrong to assume, however, that Sholem Aleichem actually reproduced the language of "real life" in its raw form. His language so closely resembles colloquial speech that the "experts" were led to conclude that this was not literature at all, but something simultaneously greater and less than literature, something "snatched" from life and therefore, life itself. Because of this claim, naive people think that there is nothing simpler than writing like Sholem Aleichem, record what you hear, and there you have it. The results of such limitations are well known.

Actually, the transformation of language in Sholem Aleichem's works occurred by means of an extension of the idiosyncracies in the styles of the real Menakhem-Mendl, the real Tevye, the actual prototypes of various groups and regions, etc. to their logical conclusions, the point at which they assume the form which they would have taken had they existed in the exact same circumstances for many more generations. In this sharpened state, their speech is transmuted by the author's affectionate and poetic personality until they assume a lyrical smoothness, an artistic polish, charm and beauty, and became Sholem Aleichem's own style.

The characters and events decribed in Sholem Aleichem's From the Fair are in effect, prototypes of characters and events in many of his other depictions of Kasrilevke and Mazepevke. But although this fictional autobiography is very far from historical accuracy, there is nonetheless a very definite difference between these characters and events and those in his other works. This same difference applies between actual, colloquial speech and Sholem Aleichem's style.

Wordplays

Sholem Aleichem's humor is linked with "speech" to a greater degree than that sort of humor which emphasizes the comedy of antics or events. The essence and meaning of Sholem Aleichem's characters also emerges, of course, from the facts and situations in which they operate, but these are for the most part more tragic than comic. The comic situation is less compelling than the words in which it is related. Sholem Aleichem humorized mostly through speech, or more precisely by allowing his characters to speak. The funniest situations in his works achieve their comic appeal mostly through the way in which they are related by his characters, by their verbal reaction to events.

The social and economic rootedness of Sholem Aleichem's characters is illusory, the entire milieu, its behavior, psychology, its mode of thinking and of feeling are affected by this illusoriness. Thus the verbosity, the talkativeness of his characters—as opposed to their actual deeds—assumes a special significance (as a substitute) for their actions.

This verbosity, with all the by-products of such intense speech, repetition, and digression—gesticulation, voice modulation, facial expression—has no effect in actual life and is rather "unreal" or "fantastic." These elements, which Sholem Aleichem noted and absorbed, were singularly important in the formation of his style. When he attempted to exceed the limits of this style—especially in his novels—he fell short of mastery; only when he himself adopted the tone of one of his characters did he make even the most "imaginary" facts, events and situations become compelling and realistic.

It is not paradoxical, therefore, to claim that the reality which Sholem Aleichem portrayed was "imaginary": his realism consisted of discovering the "imaginary" aspects of the life he describes, as well as its objective bases and ideas.

This explains Sholem Aleichem's proclivity for dialogue, monologue and for the verbal, essentially comic form. It also accounts for his attraction to the would-be feuilletons, in which the conversations of his characters are supposedly overheard by the author. Even his true feuilletons, where he takes a direct stand on contemporary problems, were generally not written in a direct, fully personal manner, but were stylized, composed of various narrative mannerisms of his different characters. Style is not simply a means, but an integral part of the subject matter itself: it reflects the subtleties of life.

The modulation and intonation of words is therefore as crucial to his style as their meaning: the words must themselves indicate how to reproduce the entire illusorily-expressive, artful wordplay of busy self-importance. Correctly understood, the words of the text signal the intonation and gesticulations that should accompany them. Sholem Aleichem constructed his sentences so that the naked words would project how everything should look and sound.

This Sholem Aleichem did consciously. As early as 1884 he wrote: "Our jargon has more scope for satire than other languages: with a small shrug, an aside, a nickname, the slighest stroke of emphasis, a sentence turns satirical and evokes a spontaneous smile from the reader. Not to mention imitations of the individual speaker (practically every Jew has his own language with all his varied gesticulations)."³

Here Sholem Aleichem attributes to the language his own artistic skill, and substitutes the speaking-style of his major characters for that of the Yiddish language itself. But these words clearly show that even at this early stage Sholem Aleichem realized the possibility of transmitting with the word, through the word, the entire range of accompanying gestures to suggest the emotional impulse that called the word forth.

Sholem Aleichem wanted to present speech in its full dramatic scope, in order to communicate its illusory sources. The act of speaking, after all, plays such a major role in this life, where a Menakhem-Mendl can do and accomplish so little. The comedy of Sholem Aleichem's stories derives not only from the meaning of the words, but also from the gesticulations with which the reader associates them.

For this reason Sholem Aleichem's masterpeices do not have their greatest impact when read, but rather when declaimed: Sholem Aleichem's works are directed, in fact, not only to the factual imagination but to the verbal "imagination," if such imprecise terminology may be used. (It is imprecise because both forms of imagination proceed from a concrete, essentially similar basis in the "facts of reality.")

Speech, as such, can only be appreciated aurally, just as dramatic works must be staged, so Sholem Aleichem's stories must be declaimed, acted out. Sholem Aleichem himself made a habit of reading his stories publicly, and it is no coincidence that of all the Yiddish writers (and certainly most of the non-Yiddish writers), his works are most often publicly recited and read.

Sholem Aleichem's works, even the smallest of his master-stories are therefore a sort of wordplay, depicting an illusory, playacting world. This is a new genre in world literature. On the surface it appears to be prose, but in essence, it resembles high comedy.

The Tragedy of Illusions

"What is there about Jewish singing and playing, that always evokes only sad thoughts?" It embodies the life of the people.

Sholem Aleichem's "happy stories" are one large satirical elegy on the oppressed nature of man, his abasement through hunger, through the hatred of one people for another, the backwardness of life and thought, and the disablement of his creative powers, all of which results from the cruel order of things which condemns one man to be exploited by another. The free creative spirit thrives only from plenty; when subject to exploitation, people sink into pettiness; they become "little people with little notions."

Even the bodily movements of such "little people" are funny, they seek and strive and bustle about, show the most strenuous exertions, work themselves to death—over a trivial, joyless shred of "bliss" which is either fabricated or worthless. These figures are far from heroic, but they proceed along their quixotic adventures with unusual, almost heroic courage.

The pettiness of their ideas is tragic in itself, but more tragic is the fact that their superhuman energies are expended in vain. The comedy lies in their external appearance, in the movements, words the details of their predicaments; the tragedy lies in the content, in the conclusion which in the works of Sholem Aleichem is almost always tragic.

In Sholem Aleichem's major characters there is always a bit of the shlimazl: sometimes the character is good-hearted, charming, decent and sometimes simply sad and foolish, but he is always a shlimazl. Sholem Aleichem almost never depects happiness, fulfilled goals.

Tevye's nobility raises him qualitatively above anything laughable: certain deliberately humorous aspects of his garrulousness are only meant to intensify the tragic essence of the story. Here too the laughter does not derive from plenty, because there is not the smallest measure of joy, of happiness.

No one evoked as much laughter as Sholem Aleichem, and yet no one so exclusively chose the joylessness of Jewish life as the subject of his work. Perhaps this is why Peretz disliked Sholem Aleichem, while admitting his artistic power. Peretz praised Sholem Aleichem for this ability to "scrape off the mould," that is, educate through satire, or more specifically, to destroy illusions.

Sholem Aleichem was constantly demonstrating to the masses that their happiness in their social condition was illusory, that this sort of life was itself almost illusory. In his works he always asked the seemingly "happiest people" of all the "Kodnis": What are you so happy about? The illusoriness of their entire luftlife, of their crippled and damaged existence, is the main theme of his work.

Sholem Aleichem disliked "happy endings," they would be a distortion, contradicting the essence of his work, they would trivialize his humor.

The story of the bewitched tailor, which is constructed like a sunny joke, and suffused with a lyrical, idyllic tone is actually a melancholic, marvellous poem with an infinitely tragic ending, or more precisely, with no ending at all, for the tragedy is limitless. It ends with the poet's shrug.

The reader will ask, "And the fate of the tailor? the moral? The purpose of the story?" Don't make me continue, children! The ending was not a happy one. The story began well enough, but ended, as most happy stories do, alas, very sadly . . . and because you know that the author of this story is not given to bouts of sadness—in fact you know how he hates to "point a moral" and prefers jolly tales to gloomy plaints, he therefore bids you farewell with a smile, and blesses both Jews and people at large with more of laughter than tears. Laughter is healthy, doctors prescribe laughter.

The bitter irony of this last, famous dictum of Sholem Aleichem must be evident from its context, even to the most thick-skinned reader. . . .

Sholem Aleichem's critics have made intelligent but also some foolish observations about him. Once I wrote that Sholem Aleichem was a "consoler." What nonsense! How simple it would have been for him to round out at least some of his works with happy endings, instead of with misery, and often crude misery to boot. This would not have detracted from the comedy of the works, and would have soothed and comforted the spirits of his readers. But it would have banalized his work, being more suitable for the role of a great jester, which several of his critics have attempted to apply to him, but which is as completely foreign and contrary to his tragic consciousness. It would have been more genial, but not realistic—it would have undermined the truth about the life of the masses at that time, that their desires, lusts, dreams, had to remain unfulfilled and unrealized in those given social conditions. The oppressed classes were always abused, aggrieved, deceived; so it was and so Sholem Aleichem depicted it.

Characters and Passions

Comic genres generally deal with fools, shlimazls, dreamers, maniacs: with miserable, unsuccessful, false, or evil people and deeds. As soon as the characters or their deeds cease to exhibit such qualities, they also cease being comical. One might therefore assume that there is nothing much to seek in the satiric-comic genres, no meaningful figures, no heroic passions, and of course, no problems. The truth is very different of course: in Aristophanes' comedy even philosophical themes were broached; Don Quixote is a fool, a shlimazl, a dreamer, a maniac, but it cannot be denied that apart from these comic elements of his character, there are qualities that command respect. In his crazy actions we catch glimpses of "heroic" passions, and in his striving we can see, as in a crooked mirror, something approaching lofty goals and spiritual concerns.

Our Mendele's Benjamin III is an unfortunate fool, a shlimazl, a dreamer and maniac: his behavior is clumsy, his goal is delusional, but one cannot dispute the nobility of his intention, and the existence of distinct—though convoluted and comical—elements of the "heroic" in his quixotic striving. All these and similar comic-satiric characters are more or less broken and crippled, but they nonetheless possess significant qualitities of character and something oddly heroic in their passions and quests.

A character normally attains significance through passions which exhibit something of greatness, albeit in a comical-distorted, contradictory form. Tevye is a character of significance,⁴ but we see in him more pathos than passion—the pathos of a bitter, wise, passive resistance to raging forces of life.

Sholem Aleichem's artistic heroes, Stempenyu, Yosele Solovey, Rafalesko, all possess some sublime qualities, but they are not Sholem Aleichem's master characters, nor are they developed comically.

In general, Sholem Aleichem did not encourage the contradictory play of loftiness and worthlessness in his characters: the situation, the event rather than the individual stands at the center of Sholem Aleichem's stories. His characters—usually some variation of the Menakhem-Mendl type—are invidivualized only as much as is necessary to vary his eternal theme.

Whether it is a fault or not, Sholem Aleichem did not imbue his characters with sublime passions, which echo—accurately or distortedly—ideological battles of the time; he did not give us characters who could be spokesmen for the contemporary world-views.

Sholem Aleichem's humor is based on a profoundly accurate idea: that the prevailing social conditions oppressed and cripped man until he became not only miserable but ridiculous. The comedy inherent in the senseless and passive suffering during the period of imperialism is depicted through characters who, with the exception of Tevye, are so crushed by the old and new economic, social and national oppression and so removed from normal consciousness that the roar of the struggle for the liberation of the world does not even reach them.

The tragedy of the Menakhem-Mendl type lies also in the absence of noble—be they illusory or convoluted—strivings: the mad hustling and get-rich scheming is not a passion in the true sense of the word. Menakhem-Mendl is actually a slight though fanatic competitor, and if by some chance he were to meet with success, we know from the monologue, "If I were Rothschild," what he would be likely to do. Nervous zest is not the same thing as passion.

Passions must somehow be rooted in real life: they may be mistaken, confused or confounded, but unless they have some basis in reality, they are simply madness. Don Quixote's fantasies are no longer realistic, at least they were once so, in part: a hundred or two hundred years earlier he would have been much less comical. The distance between Don Quixote's fantasies and reality is much smaller than in the case of Menakhem-Mendl; Don Quixote's mistaken judgment in his ideals is considerably less than that of Menakhem-Mendl.

From the the very outset, Menakhem-Mendl's goal lacked even a grain of realism. But beyond that, the goal itself was so very pitiful. The fate of all of the Menakhem-Mendls evokes in the reader, among other responses, a gnawing dissatisfaction with the immensity of the effort, the fervency of the enthusiasm, that have been expended in the pursuit of such a negligible goal, one which is not even achieved as the character loses everything he has. The reader, too, feels somewhat cheated in his expectations.

At first glance, there is nothing to be regretted in the frustration of such a goal, nor anything tragic in itself. Even the comedy remains superficial until we grasp its essence, the conditions which condemned people to such fates. Only at that point can we be moved by the wretched sort of life which turns people into Menakhem-Mendls, and only at that point can we discern the writer's full intent, the comic tragedy of his characters.

The presence of sublime qualities in his comic figures would have destroyed the uniqueness of Sholem Aleichem's humor. The tragedy of Menakhem-Mendl would not emerge as graphically were he imbued with "tragic" (heroic) qualities. In humor, every minor sin against realism is much more serious, and is punished much more swiftly, than in any other genre: it loses its humor. An essential feature of Menakhem-Mendl's comedy is the fact that both his ambition and his goal are so dismal and trivial, that he lacks any lofty goals. Sholem Aleichem told things as they were, and this gives no joy to a poet. The misfortunes of the groups which Sholem Aleichem depicted extended to some extent to his own creation: we detect in them something of the petit-bourgeois outlook on life.

Notes

First published in 1941, Vegn Sholem-Aleykhems humor was reprinted in vol. 2 of Wiener's Tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur in 19tn yorhundert [On the History of Nineteenth-Century Yiddish Literature] (New York, 1946), pp. 281-378. The translation is from chaps. 5-10, 12, and was done by Ruth R. Wisse.

¹ He did write publicistic "letters" with detailed descriptions, but refused to lecture about the pogroms. See Dos Sholem-Aleykhem-bukh, ed. Y. D. Berkovitsh (New York, 1926), HP. 213.

² The words "mime," "inimical" etc. come from the Greek "mimesis," i.e., imitation, and relate to any artistic reproduction, but most particularly to that of the actor.

³ "In the Junkheap—Among the Rags" [Yiddish], an unpublished review, in Dos Sholem-Aleykhem-bukh, p. 326.

⁴ Sholem Aleichem tried to create a sort of scholarly variation of Tevye in the character of Reb Yuzifl. This poor, oppressed, hurt and deeply wounded creature crawls into a deep lair—the "other world"—no longer wants to see the sunshine, and exhibits much senseless courage, extraordinary stubbornness and quiet but wild determination in his withdrawal from life. "There is nothing funny about us," says Reb Yuzifl. "My God, one must cry and learn our lesson about what we are and what we have become."