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THE SOUTHERN 1SR A E L 1 I E
Jewish Art In Russia
How Stalin Revolutionized The Yiddish Sta 3 e
By JOSEPH ROTH
It had been fifteen years since I had
seen a Yiddish theatre for the first time.
It had come to Leopoldstadt from Vilna.
I still remember the posters. They were
different from the announcements of the
other houses, because of their glaring sim
plicity and their improvised crudity. There
was about them a primitive uncouthness.
The text was set up haphazardly, obviously
on a handpress. Printed in a cheap and
tasteless yellow without a border, pasted
indiscriminately on walls and not on the
official bill boards, hung up in corners
which smelled badly, they nevertheless had
a more powerful appeal than the
more sedate placards. They were
composed in a language which
could often be heard in the small
coffee houses in the Jewish neigh
borhoods, but which seemed to con
sist of sounds rather than of words
that lent themselves to writing. On
these posters the Yiddish was writ
ten with Latin Letter. It was a gro
tesque German. It was coarse and
sensitive at the same time. Many
of the words were German but had
Slavic diminutive endings. If one
spoke them rapidly, they had a
rather pleasant tone.
In the evening, on the stage, the
language was spoken quickly. An
operetta was being performed, one
of those productions out of the in
fancy of the Yiddish theatre, which
used to be called “a tragedy, with
song and dance." I never found
that phrase absurd. It never seem
ed to me to be a paradox, espe
cially when I recalled the ancient
tragedies. It was enough just to
think of the Jewish routine, which
is a sort of tragedy, with song and
dance. These operettas, of which I
saw more later, were by turns gay
and tearful, but always true. The
methods of solving the problem—
for each of these productions sym
bolized a problem—were crude; the
direction fortuitous; the persons
only faintly resembled the types they were
supposed to represent; the situation seem
ed to have been created only to provide a
place for the songs. But it was these songs
which gave artistic meaning to the Yid
dish theatre. It was these songs (folk-tunes
mostly, with oriental and Slavic melodies,
sung by untrained voices, with the heart
rather than with the voice, and repeated
at the end of each performance) which
justified the existence of the Yiddish the
atre. The ballads which sprinkled the text
gave dramatic unity to the proceedings,
which had been played rather aimlessly!
Beneath the theme, not as part of it, rang
the melody, whose words portrayed the
events. Behind th music there stretched far
beyond it, opaque and nebulous, another
world, which, one sensed, contained the
One of the moat penetrating dramatic
critics of Germany took a trip to Russia to
study Jewish art, with particular attention
to the theatre. In this article he illumi
nates a phase of the New Jewish culture
in Sovietland which most observers are not
aware of.
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tragedy, to whose accompaniment the song
and dance had been sent from the wings,
but which had not yet revealed itself. What
stood behind the primitive Yiddish stage
was high, tragic Art and the vindication
of Drama.
Later, in the course of the years, I had
an opportunity to observe three or four
different Y iddish repertory groups in va
rious cities of the West. I deplored the
Europeanization which the Yiddish the
atre seemed to be undergoing. I was snrrv
to note that it had begun to yield to the
European trend of the so-called dramatic
currents, that it had acquired the ambition
to produce pure Tragedy,” and that it
sought to imitate the Western theatre-
without having the Western tradition
. j 6 i ac that Shalom Asch could be
produced on the German stage without anv
changes and without adaptation seemed to
!T 6 J- n 6 Jhe clearest indication of the
° f Yiddish theatre, rather
than of its advance, as is commonly as
sumed. I have never ceased to regard
om Asch as the Jewish brother of Suder-
man. But it seemed to me to be the height
of absurdity that a Western-civilized, shal
low, diluted group of emancipated Jewry
could find its European ambitions satisfied
merely to see a “modern" Jewish, drama
turgy that had been constructed according
to the rules of Western playwriting.
I could not understand this point of
view, which called itself national, but
which was merely environmentally imita
tive. Why not “a tragedy with song and
dance?" Why not the crude, yellow posters
set up on a hand press, which looked poor
but nevertheless attractive? Why not an
unpunctual beginning; why not the
wraps and babes in the audito
rium; why not the long intermis
sions? Why, all of a sudden, this
staid European assurance, these
police hours, this prohibition
against wearing a hat in the the
atre, and against smoking and
eating oranges?
Only once again—and that in
the Jewish quarter in Paris—did
I see an eastern, unregulated the
atre. It only gave several per
formances. It was a poor wander
ing trope. They sang the songs
that I had heard fifteen years be
fore in Leopoldstadt. They pre
sented tragedies with song and
dance; the audience interrupted
the actors in the middle of their
speeches; one performer strode
forward, pushed the actors aside,
delivered a little speech, and the
play resumed. The seats in the
house weren’t marked; baby car-
'riages stood in the aisles; suckling
children filled the auditorium with
their wailing.
* * *
Several weeks later the Habimo.
came to Paris. I did not see this
Hebrew troupe. When out of fif
teen million Jews only a limited
number can understand Hebrew,
and those few are scattered
throughout the world, I cannot
understand the existence of a Hebrew the
atre. Quite a number of experts were lav
ish in their praise of Habima. I can undei*
stand how one might admire it from the
point of view of a luxury. It migh' tnen
have a cultural value. But, as I see it.
only the necessary is artistic.
* * *
And then I visited the Yiddish t heat it
in Moscow. After the first act, Granowsk}
(the director) asked me to tea. (Thu in
termissions in the Russian play houses aie.
fortunately, so long that one gets a cl
to drink tea) I was at that time inca • J
of formulating my impression. If Cl
had permited me to be frank, rather
forced me to indulge in pleasanti
would have said the following:
I am deeply (Please turn to pag !
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