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Sholem Aleichem, 1859-1916 : MENAHEM-MENDEL

Varsha: Progres, 1909

Paper wrappers, 4to. , 178 pages. In Yiddish. Edition: Yubileum-oysgabe. 2nd Edition. Series: Sholem Aleichem, ; 1859-1916.; Works, Volume 4. On title page verso: Copyright 1909 by J. Lidski, Washington U. S. A. As well as title in Russian. Sholem Aleichem (Shalom Rabinovitz; 1859–1916) was “one of the founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature. A supreme Jewish humorist, Sholem Aleichem tapped into the energies of the East European, spoken-Yiddish idiom and invented modern Jewish archetypes, myths, and fables of unequaled imaginative potency and universal appeal. Born in the provincial town of Pereyaslav (Ukraine) to a middle-class family of timber merchants, Rabinovitz spent a happy childhood in Voronkov. Here he was suffused with impressions and experiences that he would later utilize artistically, sublimating memories of his tiny childhood hamlet into the literary image of Kasrilevke, the archetypal shtetl...The years 1883–1890 formed a distinct part of Sholem Aleichem’s career, during which he produced much work (in three languages) , the majority of which was never to be included in his official oeuvre, or was thoroughly rewritten later. Sholem Aleichem’s literary activity during these years was divided between the gentrification and “Europeanization” of Yiddish literature and the writing of sequences of feuilletons. When he began writing in Yiddish, literature in that language lacked cultural status and artistic respectability…Most of its writers hid behind pseudonyms, saving their real names for their productions in other languages...In 1890, Sholem Aleichem entered a literary limbo. He no longer had the time or the financial resources to maintain the same level of literary productivity as in the 1880s...Nevertheless, it was during this decade that Sholem Aleichem devised two critical literary inventions. The first, the character Menakhem Mendl, had briefly appeared in an epistolary feuilleton in 1887 as a young husband still living with his in-laws. Now Menakhem Mendl, already the father of several children, found himself in Odessa, experimented as a small-time stock investor, and forgot about returning to his family. One immediately sensed that the reappearance of Menakhem Mendl in this work marked a sublimation of the habitual hilarity of the author’s earlier farces and satires. The character gained semiautobiographical importance in terms of Sholem Aleichem’s own disastrous penchant for speculation, as well as a depth of significance emanating from the projection of the character as a Jewish “hero” of a comic myth. This archetype was at once a version of the modern homo economicus, as well as a representative for henpecked Jewish manhood celebrating its freedom from repressive cultural and familial institutions. The development of this figure was of the greatest symbolic significance, and Menakhem Mendl was to follow Sholem Aleichem throughout his creative life, with new sequels of epistolary exchanges between the speculator and his wife finally occupying two volumes in the author’s collected writings” (Miron, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe) . Responsibility: Sholem-Aleykhem. Hinges repaired. Light edgewear to covers. Pages uncut. Good condition. (YID-17-20)

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