When Was It Spring ?
(Translated by Philip Davis.)
T IS already summer, and the soul is parched!
Erstwhile, only a few days ago, it was still winter. Erstwhile, the damp cold was still torturing us. Everywhere the stoves were kept hot and need on the East Side cried out loud: "Coal! more coal!! Ever more coal!!!"
And now it is already smothering hot, and poverty on the East Side pleads, "Ice, ice, oh, for a piece of ice!"
Spring? Beautiful, mild, lonely spring? It seems as though it passed unseen in our parts—in our Jewish New York ant-hill. Is there a bit of earth anywhere covered with green grass? Is there a garden patch where the roses and flowers have opened up? When was Nature's birthday young and fresh again? How was the great resplendent holiday celebrated? By whom? when? Spring! . . . When?
Heat and frost have interchanged places. The dampness of the street gave way to the sweat of the human body; the pail-full of coal to the ice-box with a bit of ice in it—that is all!
In our small, surging, seething, bubbling little world you will find everything under the sun: joys and woes, laughter and tears, fortune and misfortune, poverty and riches; dark, intense ignorance, knowledge deep and profound; hands, heads; industry and commerce; a whirlpool of elements!
One thing, one element only is missing—youth!
It matters not how long I looked for it, the beautiful, innocent, care-free face of divine youth, it is nowhere to be found. I never saw a face with the sign of youth upon it. The air of busyness, of mad intensity in the struggle for life is upon us all.
Poor and rich, young and old, there is no difference. On everybody's face rests the same stamp of "purpose," serious, cool, calculating, the purpose of gain through a struggle that is never-ending.
Here is a young man whose whole soul is in his books. But it is not the soul's pure craving for light and knowledge. No! It is the lower spirit of cool calculation, the spirit of getting on, of rising up, of geting on the top.
Here is another! He writes, he speaks, he studies, bent on setting the world on fire. But it is not the bright spirit of youth that is spurring him on. It is the spur of popularity, the passion of making oneself heard. It is not youth!
It is all care-worn age bridled and saddled and ridden to death by cool calculating judgment.
Not a sign of youth.
Little children fill the streets, burdened with care and spurred on by gain. The weight of old age is already upon them.
Other children are still in school—but already they contemplate the purpose of schooling, the object of study. What shall we study for? What achieve? What values can we extract from knowledge?