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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, September 2, 183 11
Lewisohn's Writing Sucesses, Love Agonies Recalled
By CHARLES MADISON they deliver a lecture
Lewisohn met Edna Man-
ley, who was convalescing
from tuberculosis of the
bone, and fell passionately
in love with her. He began
to bombard her with love
letters, books, flowers and
telephone calls.
Although Edna was
still in love with a young
man in New York, she
could not help but feel
flattered by the courtship
of a .prominent writer. In
time his pressing pro-
posal of marriage won
LUDWIG LE WISOHN
her approval. She even
where
he assumed the
agreed to convert to
editorship
of The New
Judaism to save him from
the odium of his Jewish Palestine.
Never ceasing to write, he
associates. •
produced
several books,
He immediately arranged
for a separation from none having the freshness
Thelma — she offering no - and appeal of his earlier
objection when he agreed to work. After Mary's death in
provide her with a studio 1945, he was able to publish
apartment and to take com- the American edition of
plete control of Jimmy. But "The Case of Mr. Crum,"
when-she learned of his on- which sold quite widely,
coming marriage to Edna especially in the paperback
she became frantic with fear edition.
On the 200th anniver-
and insecurity and told re-
porters hysterically that sary of Goethe's birth
she was being abandoned Lewisohn prepared a
for another.
volume of choice selec-
The headline news tions from Goethe's writ-
shocked his admirers, and ings, some of them _ap-
the
Zionist Organization pearing in English for the
CHARLES MADISON
canceled the lectures ar- first time. At this juncture
difficulties of a union in ranged for him, thereby de- his aggressive personal-
which the woman insists on priving him of his main ity led to differences with
the primacy of her career — source of income. He was the Zionist Organization
Thelma was then trying to forced to sell most of his and he resigned as editor
become a concert singer — valuable Jewish artifacts to of The New Palestine.
and her unwilling reaction meet his increasing ex-
No longer able physically
to bearing a child at her penses. After much effort, to travel long distances to
husband's urging. -
however, he achieved a re- lecture, he gladly accepted a
Never quite overcoming conciliation with the organ- professorship in the newly
his rigid conventional up- ization and was able to re- established Brandeis Uni-
bringing, Lewisohn contin- sume his lecturing.
versity. There he wrote
ued to be troubled by his il-
During the early months "The American Jew: His
legitimate life with Thelma. of their marriage Lewisohn Character and Destiny,"
Added to his guilt was the and Edna kept diaries and and "The Magic Word:
birth of James Elias, who later published them in a Studies in the Nature of
had made him feel that book entitled "Haven." Poetry." His literary evalu-
fatherhood was "the best When Edna's tubercular ation of Homer, Shakes-
thing there is in life."
illness worsened, Lewisohn peare, and Goethe gave evi-
Eager to legitimize his took her westward in 1941, dence that at 68 he retained
son, he renewed his effort lecturing on the way to pay his highly perceptive criti-
to obtain a divorce from expenses, and settled in cal powers.
The last years of his life
Mary. He engaged Ar- Tucson, where he placed her
were generally untroubled.
thur Garfield Hayes, the in a sanitarium.
eminent legal libertarian,
Chronically short of His son James, after a very
to help him. When Hayes money, he translated difficult childhood, was
failed to budge Mary, he Franz Werfel's "The Song doing well as a student at
informed Lewisohn that of Bernadette" and Brandeis. Louise provided
she had no jurisdiction sought to sell some of his him with personal and in-
over him outside of the books to Hollywood pro- tellectual companionship.
state of New York and ducers. Failing to do so, Still writing, and having
that he could return to he resumed his lecturing. king felt an affinity with the
founder of modern Zionism,
the United States with
As the months passed, he he wrote "Theodor Herzl: A
this limitation.
began to realize.that he and
Lewisohn returned in Edna were not truly suited Portrait for This Age," in
1934, and was soon lectur- t o each other. Once his which he again stressed the
folly of assimilation and
ing from Boston to Califor- ardor had cooled, he
dwelt on Herzl's liberation
nia at attractive fees. His
temperamental dif-
life with Thelma remained ferences which seemed to from that delusion.
In his last novel, "In a
superficially congenial. Her him irreconcilable. Forced
Summer
Season," the char-
negligence of the child and ' t o leave her while on the
home forced him to devote road lecturing, he gathered acters again torture them-
himself to Jimmy when at from her letters that she too selves and others while in
search of personal fulfil-
home. Again busying him- was disappointed.
ment.
self with writing, Lewisohn •
While in Chicago he met
Like so many of his
published "Rebirth" and Louise Wolk, who had once
"The Trumpet of Jubilee," i nterviewed him, and an at- literary peers who had
novels with a Jewish con- t raction developed between gained prominence in the
tent and inspirational tone them. They began to corre- early decades of this cen-
and effect. s pond, and in 1944 Edna tury, Lewisohn in time
In 1937, Mary, now 75, fi- r ead a compromising letter joined them in the com-
nally agreed to a divorce in f rom Louise which came mon eclipse. Nor was he
return for additional sup- w hile Lewisohn was away.
The name Baum means
port and the destruction of 0 n his return she con-
"tree"
in German, but in
\"Crum." Thelma, however, fronted him with the letter
refused the responsibility of a nd they soon agreed to a Jewish life, the name is a
marriage because it might d ivorce with a minimum of shortened form for Schlag-
interfere with her career as p ublicity. Shortly thereaf- baum, the tollgate on a
highway or road, according
a singer.
er he married Louise and to "A Dictionary of Jewish
While in Rochester, N.Y.,
hey moved to New York, Names and Their History."
(Editor's note: Fol-
lowing is the conclusion
of Charles Madison's
full-length biography of
literary critic and Zionist
leader Ludwig
Lewisohn.)
Ludwig Lewisohn's mind
was too active and his im-
agination too fertile to con-
fine himeself to one project
at a time. During this period
he wrote "This People," five
stories stressing the conse-
quences of assimilation
among Jews in various
parts of the world.
Prodded also by his re-
pressed thoughtS concern-
ing his as yet subconscious
estrangement from Thelma,
he wrote "An Altar in the
Fields," which depicts the
an exception in feeding
his imagination and
using his literary gift to
capitalize on his early
traumatic experiences.
Growing up in a
Methodist environment
and accepting it without
question, he found him-
self again and again pain-
fully colliding with the
prejudice of anti-
Semitism. It was only in
his adulthood that he be-
came fully aware of his
Jewish origin and the fal-
lacy of trying to live as a
Christian.
By that time his imagina-
tion had become haunted by
the cruel suffering of his
youth and caused him to
dwell repeatedly on the
theme of being a Jew in a
Christian world.
His psyche was even mere
egregiously wounded by his
naive acquiescence in a
marriage that crippled his
existence for nearly four de-
cades. The agony of this ex-
cruciating experience gave
an erotic and unconven-
tional content to much of his
fiction. And once he ac-
cepted his "born-again"
Jewishness, he became
proud of his roots and
tended to demean Jewth who
sought to lose themselves in
their Christian milieu.
Always idealistic, he be-
came caustic and critical of
shoddy thinking wherever
he came upon it. Impatient
of opposition and pursuing
A trifling debt makes a
man your debtor, a large
truth as he saw it, he had a one makes him your enemy,
solid confidence in himself
as a writer, and a good share
of his published work has
entered the history of
COLOR
American literature.
PASSPORTS
(Editor's note: This
ID. & VISA
final installment of a spe-
cial essay prepared for
PHOTOS
The Jewish News is a
PROFESSIONAL
mere summary of a full-
PORTRAIT LIGHTING
scale biography of Lud-
wig Lewisohn by Charles
Madison to be published
soon.)
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