s! , 2 Friday, August 11, 1979 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Purely Commentary Maxwell Geismar's Notable Contribution as a Literary Critic . . . His Expose of Anti-Semitism of Henry James, the Point-by-Point Facts About the James' Prejudices By Philip Slomovitz Literary Legacy of Maxwell Geismar: His Expose of Anti-Semitism of Henry James (Copyright 1979, JTA, Inc.) Maxwell Geismar left many legacies. The eminent author and literary critic was a leading authority on Mark Twain's works and his several volumes on the subject have added invaluably to the Samuel Clemens-Mark Twain bookshelves. Earlier in his career, Geisman frequently criticized the self-hating tendencies of prominent Jewish authors whose works were viewed as abominations in Jewish ranks. His most important literary contribution was his ex- pose of the anti-Semitism of Henry James. In "Henry James and the Jacobites (Houghton-Miflin) he delved into all available sources to prove his point. Maxwell Geismar, who died July 24 at the age of 70, was a member of a distinguished American Jewish family. As son-in-law of the late James N. Rosenberg, the nation- ally famous attorney, leader in JDC and many national movements, who gained world fame when he abandoned law for the arts and had his paintings exhibited in major world art galleries, he became deeply interested in the American Jewish Congress and other national movements. Henry James had become the king of writers, the ac- cepted ruler in his literary domain. Few dared to expose him. Geismar accomplished the task, and his five-year ef- fort in gathering his data, in collecting the facts, in un- covering the prejudicial tones in James' works, made the Geismar criticism one of the immensely powerful critical works in American literature. Uncovering the central flaw in James' "The Awkward Age," Geismar charged that "here James bore down more heavily on what has been only the prevailing and 'polite' anti-Semitism of his class and his period." It is in this novel that James referred to "the Jew man, so gigantically rich," and Geismar posed the question: "Wasn't the concept of the Jew-man himself, 'sogigantically rich," another nightmare symbol?" Geismar stated, at thi-s point: "This 'Jew man,' who is also physically deformed, figures in the works of the American literary imagination increasingly strongly from Henry James and Edith Wharton to T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound — from the dispossessed, alienated side of the 'Old Republic,' I mean, which is hardly ever mentioned as such in the criticism of the Jacobite cult; and from a diseased literary spirit which was projecting its own impotence upon an obvious scapegoat." The Genocide Convention: Remembering Raphael Lemkin and a Sacred Need What has happened to the Genocide Convention Resolution in the U.S. Senate? Who remembers the historic contribu- tion to humanity of the proposal to outlaw mass murders of peoples? Must the name of Raphael Lemkin be forgotten? Leon Ilutovich, the scholar and Zionist leader, raised the issue anew in a letter to the New York Times, Aug. 10, which de- mands widest circulation and is therefore offered here in its totality: The Neglected Legacy of Raphael Lemkin To the Editor: A significant anniversary has just passed unnoticed. Thirty years ago, on June 16, 1949, President Truman submitted to the Senate for ratification the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide — the UN's first human- rights document, adopted a year earlier by the General Assembly. Aug. 28 will mark another' an- niversary — 20 years since the death of Dr. Raphael Lemkin, a prominent jurist from prewar Po- land, who coined the term "genocide" and was responsible for making it part of international law. A Jewish refugee from Nazi per- secution, Dr. Lemkin, by now a forgotten man, was the prime mover in winning support of the Western powers for Genocide Convenetion and thus succeeded in having it placed on the agenda of the UN General Assembly. At the invitation of the UN Social and Economic Council, he prepared the draft of the convention, and major elements from it were sub- James' prejudices are reflected again as Geismar indi- cated, in "Roderick Hudson." Then dealing with "The Ambassadors," Geismar charged in a footnote: "In the Jamesian domain of antique-collecting, it appears that the Jews have all the valuable pieces, for which the noble Christians must 'Jew them down.' " James' "The Golden Bowl" essay contains the reference to "the touch of some mystic rite of old Jewry," and Geismar con- demned it as being a "back- ground of Jewish an- tiquarianism, or of Oriental fertility, duplicity and guile." Geismar took exception to James' resort to "the little swindling Jew" in "The Golden Bowl." debunked Geismar James' bias in "The Ameri- can Scene." He showed how James derided the Jewish MAXWELL GEISMAR immigrants and stated that "by contrast, Theodore Dreiser, as the spokesman for the new immigrant strains in American culture, would recog- nize, accept, identify with and celebrate his own 'lowly' and `alien' and outcast social origins." Geismar proceeded to state: "Meanwhile, in New York's East Side, Henry James' worst fears are confirmed, since these new Americans were not only gross avl greasy, but apparently they were almost all Jewish. 'There is no swarming like that of Israel when once Israel has got a start, and the scene here bristled, at every step, with the signs and sounds immitigable, unmis- takable, of Jewry that had burst all bounds.' He went on to describe this 'New Jerusalem' in terms which were even more lurid. He remembered the 'dark, foul, stifling Ghettos' of European cities, while the New York whirlpool testified only to a 'Jerusalem disinfected,' filled everywhere with `insistent, defiant, unhumorous, exotic faces.' Unhumor- ous: and here this portly, well-groomed, constrained, fas- tidious, supersensitive Anglo-American' tourist deprived sequently incorporated into the final version passed by the UN. To a large extent, it was due to his personal efforts over the years that the Genocide Convention came into being. This was an his- toric accomplishment by a single individual who did not represent any government, not even a non- governmental agency, but whose relentless struggle for a great idea has made a dream come true. Although by the time of Dr. Lem- kin's death more than 80 countries had ratified the convention, he died a bitter man, deeply disil- lusioned with the one country to which he looked for moral leader- ship in the postwar world — the United States of America, whose Senate balked at ratification. Today the convention has still not won Senate approval. These lines are not merely an ex- pression of tribute to the memory of an old friend who devoted a lifetime in the defense of human- ity. They are a reminder to our government and leaders in Con- gress that perhaps the coming 20th anniversary of Dr. Lemkin's death would be an appropriate occasion for the United States to take a long overdue, if only symbolic, step and ratify the Genocide Convention. In the days of the new holocaust on the seas in Southeast Asia and in the bloody shadow of genocide in Cambodia, the Senate's vote would carry our message to the world. Leon Ilutovich Executive Vice Chairman Zionist Organization of America New York, July 30, 1979 The emerging issue as outlined here is self-evident. A great cause received the endorsement of 80 nations, but the leader of them all, the United States, is missing from these ranks. the immigrants of perhaps their greatest single spiritual resource: the Jewish humor itself." It is in such powerful fashion that Geismar tore apart the bigotry of an author so widely acclaimed. Geismar continued: "In one of those extended passages of imagery, so much praised by a later generation of formalist poet- critics, he compared 'the Hebrew conquest of New York' — the alien children, the alien old people swarming everywhere in those streets, all for the purposes of 'race rather than reason' — to some species of snakes or worms who, 'when cut into pieces, wriggle away contentedly and live in the snippet as completely as in the whole.' " Is it ar wonder that Geismar was so outraged by the bias of "f. king" who needed to be shorn of his crown of indecency': There is another devastating condemnation of James' bigotries, in which Geismar thus showed how "the great James cult" is rooted in prejudices. To quote Geismar: "Proceeding south . . . in the later sections of 'The American Scene,' James delivered, quite majestically from his own orotund and pontifical presence, his commentary of the race problem. For he had never before met the 'African types' that he now began to encounter, such as the group of `tatterdemalion darkies' who lounged and sunned them- selves at one of the railroad stations quite within his range . . . Thus the 'musing moralist' (shades of John Brown) has become the tactful mind, which feels no 'urgency' — seeing at a glance the true nature of the Southern Negro, realizing then the error of the unfortunately deluded Northern mind; joining perhaps in its own musing way the beastlike Negro to the slow aliens, the swarming JewS who had taken over his country: no indeed, James felt no urgency to preach southward even a sweet reasonableness about the Negro question. (I translate these Jamesian passages, exactly, perhaps repetitiously, because the high gloss and delicate sensitivity of his later prose may sometimes obscure the real meaning — the vulgar and trite prejudices — of his modulated sentences.) Shades of the whole Abolitionist movement! Perhaps this was Henry James' most profound betrayal of his democratic American heritage — since it had been also the deepest social experience, presumably, of his own youth." Thus we have a devastating portrayal of the mind of a great writer who turned bigot and hater of men. Geismar rendered a great service to American culture by exposing , the arch-bigot Henry James. It was under -the leadership of President Harry S. Truman that the Genocide Con- vention authored by Raphael Lemkin first received recognition and endorsement. Yet it still is being ignored by the U.S. Senate. It has been charged that the American Bar Association was responsible for the shelving of such endorsement by the high- est legislative body of this country. It is not too late to rectify a serious error. Let there be action now, on the anniversaries al- luded to by Mr. Ilutovich, to assure a great human act by our legislators. Arafat is Coming ... With Poison for the UN, Fortified by Oil-Tinged Blackmail Arafat is coming! Get ready for the poison fumes from the United Nations General Assembly! Be prepared for the ef- fects of blackmail at UN Security Council sessions and even in this nation's D.C. cap- ital! These are realities, and prophets of doom have even predicted that when Arafat comes he will have the ear of U.S. officials. Even Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has been portrayed as the top American official who will give an ear to Arafat when he comes here. In view of President Carter's and Vance's statements in recent days, with denials of flirting with the PLO, such speculations should be written off. It'll be a very miserable day for the U.S. if Vance or Carter meet with Arafat. Nevertheless, it is necessary to prepare the decent people everywhere for the danger stemming from blackmail from the oil-infected Arab world and their allies, the undermining of Is- rael's existence being the price of oil. It is probably already outdated, in view of what the President had to say as a reas- surance of American opposition to deals with the PLO, yet the letter from Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, pub- lished in the New York Times, had much merit. He wrote in part: _ A New York Times story (Aug. 2) reports "an American assessment that the stalemate in the Palesti- nian talks must be broken by late October." No reason is offered for such a deadline except the threat that "the Saudis could de- cide to cut production in the fall if they were dissatisfied by a lack of negotiating progress on the Pales- tinian issue." This is blackmail, pure and sim- ple. What is worse, it is being ped- dled to the country by "high Ad- ministration officials." What it means is that the United States State Department, by lending its authority to the blackmail and by even setting the date when the ex- tortionist's price must be paid, is sabotaging President Carter's own goal of energy independence for our country. This warning relates to the blackmail which has been too much in evidence re- / cently. From Saudi Arabia, from quarters related to the Arab dynasties, come flatter- ing offers of oil benefits, provided . . this is where the rub comes in. The vision is that the United States must wor for a Palestinian state, and that means giv- ing sovereignty to Arafat and the PLO. Thanks to the American Jewish Com- mittee's research department, a compila- tion of Arafat-PLO threats and crimes, forwarded to the President, exposes the menace stemming from blackmail. Let it be heeded! Of major importance is the need for the Americanpeople to be alerted tothe growing menace and for what is to be ex- pected from Arafat and his allies at the Arab-Communist dominated UN General Assembly. Indeed, be ready for the poison! Unfortunately, the terrorists, who do not hesitate to condone their vile acts, are all- too-often given ammunition for their tac- tics. For example, there was that slip-of- the-tongue — let that stand as an exonera- tion! — by the President, equating civil rights with the Palestinians.