Books-New and Old
A Tale of an Abyss
Menschen im Abgrund, Roman von Jakob Fingermann. R. Lowitt Verlag, Vienna and Berlin.
The war has created so many scenes of horror, of terrible butchery, of man's inhumanity to man in the midst of universal inhumanity, all persisting in the memory of those who witnessed them, that it would not be surprising if their recording, in novel and poem and story should continue for another ten years.
Over in Europe war is still in the present tense and there a record of the state of mind induced by the condition of war is by no means an impertinence. This book forms part of that record. We use the word record advisedly, for, although this book is a novel, it is written with the cutting precision of a record. This may be taken as all the more commendatory on the part of Herr Fingermann when we consider that the theme and the figures with which he deals would excellently. His story moves rapidly. It is as if it came red-hot from a soul consumed with the anguish of a race. There is no halting on the way for sermonizing. Picture follows picture, event, event. The character delineated is clear, though none the less passionate. He sees the wrongs done to his own race and yet he cannot be silent concerning its faults. The book concerns itself largely with the condition of Jews in Poland, that part of Poland outside the war zone in the early part of the war, but not outside the range of its hectic fears and fevers. If the condition of war at the front is such that it serves to release from the restraints and inhibitions which men, in self-protection, have set up to keep in leash the manifestations of the beast that still reside in them, that condition prevails, in a lesser degree, in the rear. There is a terrible sucking of the juices of life among the people whom Herr Fingermann depicts as if death might overtake them at any moment. There is a complete reversion of past values. The good man becomes cynical and inhuman; the faithful wife gives herself to another. People do not care what they do, for death comes in the morning.
The Immigrant in America
A survey of the novels and autobiographies reflecting the life of the American Jew.
How can we fasten the American Jew into the mould of a definition? Manifestly, the thing seems impossible. A survey of the Jews' own records in autobiography and novel (assuming that one does not know Jews intimately in the flesh) reveals the difficulty of such a task, for there is not one Jew but there are many Jews, and although there might be a definition that might pass a cursory dress rehearsal, it could not sustain its validity upon close inspection.
Moissaye J. Olgin, the Jewish journalist, in his "A Guide to Russian Literature" says:
"A national literature may be viewed as a manifestation of a purely creative genius, or as a reflection on the spiritual life of a people, or as a picture of its national character and socio-political conditions."
The literature by and about the Jew in America can hardly be called a national literature, but it is sufficiently a thing in itself to be observed autonomously. Having admitted it to a personality, what does it manifest? A purely creative genius? Hardly. The character of the literature of the Jew in America partakes equally, I think, of the two other characters Mr. Olgin has noted. The literature of the Jew in America reflects the spiritual life and socio-political conditions operating on each other.
What are the types of Jews represented? Before we proceed,
however, we must observe that the record in novel and autobiography does not faithfully reflect all the types of the Jew in America with equal emphasis, as, for instance, Chekhev reflects all the types in Russia. Although Bertha Pearl's book, "Sarah and Her Daughter," for instance, includes a wider range of character and circumstances than is usually enclosed within the covers of such a book, the emphasis is put on the younger generation. The reason is evident. The younger generation is more conscious, more insistent and therefore more vocal. Demanding more from life, it is happy when it achieves and miserable and cast down when its illusions are shattered against fact. Each condition creates a mood which is an impulse toward creation. Cynicism and an acceptance of life are the characteristics of those who have passed their intellectual puberty; these moods are not conducive to creation.
Such, by and large, are the causes for the intellectual fertility of the young, the sterility of the middle-aged. In addition, the young are more apperceptiveto changed circumstances. The autobiographies of American Jews are largely autobiographies of times when the realization of contrast between the old life of European town and village and life in the American Ghetto hit most sharply, and contrast, as a form of dramatic conflict, is the mother of the intellectual novel and autobiography.
The first autobiographical record of the Jew in America that hit the fancy of the people was Mary Antin's "The Promised Land," a book in which youth's self-consciousness and vanity appeared most unashamedly. Rose Cohen's "Out of the Shadow," Elizabeth Hasanovitz's "One of Them," Marie Ganz's "Rebels," M. E. Ravage's "The Making of an American," Miss Stern's "My Mother," Elias Tobenkin's "Witte Arrives" and John Cournes, "The Mask," all express youth's feeling, its reaction in anger or joy in the face of American life. This would seem to invalidate the statement that American Jewish novels and autobiographies are a reflection of Jewish-American life. This might be so did not even the above-mentioned works, concerned as they are with the "I" and the "Me," show other types that enter into the life of Jewish America. And, besides, the above-mentioned books do not, by any means, exhaust the list. Where, for instance, could one find a finer and more complete picture of the American middle-class Jew than in Sidney Nyburg's "The Chosen People," and Abraham Cahan's record of "The Rise of David Levinsky" stands unchallenged for its view of the "arrived" American Jewish adult. And as for Bertha Pearl's book, it includes a wider range of character than in any of those heretofore mentioned, with the possible exception of Abraham Cahan's novel.
And what is it that these books show? They show youth in a hungry, angry, rebellious mood, ready for revolution, yet willing to accept a decent habitation and a name at the cost of apparent intransigeancy. They show the elders, sucked out like oranges by their sacrifices to the young; they show the "state of war" existing between the "emancipated" young and the "enslaved" elders. They show life from the condition of first arrival to the complete acceptance and absorption into American life.
The touching simplicity with which the young have laid bare their souls is perhaps the most vivid characteristic of these works. They speak with that touching simplicity, with that too naive frankness that bespeaks youth in its sweetest idealism. That is perhaps the outstanding characteristic of Miss Cohen's "Out of the Shadow." They do not shield their anger, they do not conceal their desires; they are not ashamed of their personalities or of their opinions. The books of our American-Jewish youth show that there are no standards so rigid as those which the idealism of youth sets up. Some of our young