Prof. Wisse
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for other (European) ri-
vals: "Dress me up just as
brightly/ and I'll prove just
as sightly." Yet even the
arguments in defense of
Yiddish seemed to provide
ammunition for the oppos-
ing side. When asked why
he preferred Yiddish to
Hebrew, Isaac Meir Dik,
the very popular and pro-
lific Haskalah novelist,'re-
plied that an old building
could only be demolished
by the blows of a crude
hammer, not by the deli-
cate prickings of a golden
needle. And Zederboym
himself, in a truly astonish-
ing 'defense" of Yiddish,
insisted that no other
means would be so effec-
tive in demonstrating the
ugliness of the language
and hence in convincing
its speakers of the
detrimental influence it
had upon them.
Yet however tentatively
they chose to write in Yid-
dish, and whatever the
reasons they gave, writers
who made the decision
were immediately claimed
by the challenge of the
task. Indeed, the initial
choice of Yiddish seemed
minor when compared
with the looming problems
involved in creating a
literary out of a spoken
language. What level of the
vernacular was the most
appropriate for literature,
which dialect, which mode
of orthography? A comical
prose would suit the fol-
kish depiction of fishmon-
gers and fruit peddlers,
but what of the omniscient
narrator? In what tone
ought he to address his
readers? Though linguists
had not yet distinguished
among Lithuanian, Ukrai-
nian, and Polish Yiddish,
basic regional variations
were widely recognized.
Should the author write in
his own dialect, thereby
enriching the flavor of his
prose but perhaps limiting
its readership to his own
immediate area? The ad-
vantage of Yiddish was its
vibrancy, but too much
local color might make a
work provincial. And what
of the spelling? Yiddish
was written phonetically,
but if each writer adopted
the sound patterns of his
region, "father" in one
usage (fitter) would come
out "fur coat" in another.
A • literary tower of Babel
was a distinct possibility.
The struggle for some
sort of standardization was
undertaken sometimes
haphazardly, at other
times in a highly self-
conscious manner. Even
the pages of Kol mevasser,
which was hardly in-
terested in the problem of
style, reflect the gropings
of both the editor and his
contributors for an ac-
ceptable norm. Each of the
three classic Yiddish mas-
ters — Mendele Mocher
Sforim, Sholom Aleichem,
and I. L. Peretz — devoted
much energy to the task of
creating a suitable Yiddish
literary prose style — suit-
able both for his own par-
ticular needs and as a
guideline for the literature
as a whole. In Mendele's
case, as even a superficial
study of his .manuscripts
reveals, the effort was bit-
terly painstaking. Between
one revision and the next,
Slavicisms were elimi-
nated, a combination of
northern and southern
dialect was distilled, and
elements of "high" and
"low" usage were blended
to create a middle style:
folksy, yet controlled.
Sholom . Yakov Ab-
ramovitch, the intellectual,
invented the persona of
Mendele the bookpeddler,
whose voice- was the ideal
vehicle of an intimate nar-
rative style and an "aver-
age" diction. The speech of
the bookpeddler, a man
who was constantly on the
move, was not required to
exhibit regional
peculiarities. Brought into
unremitting contact with
books and with men of
learning, the bookpeddler
enriched his essentially
homespun language with
Biblical and Talmudic
phrases. A simple man,
marginal, yet familiar, the
bookpeddler was clearly a
handy sociological choice
as a literary persona, but
his greatest merit seems to
have been that of project-
ing a believable and au-
thentic folk style.
Sholom
Rabinowitz,
whose nom de plume,
Sholom Aleichem, is
synonymous with spoken
idiomatic Yiddish, was
similarly intent on stabiliz-
ing the written language
while retaining its oral vit-
ality (his task had of
course been much
facilitated by the man he
called zeyde, grandfather
— Mendele himself). In an
early novel, Stempenyu,
which recounts the un-
happy love of a talented
fiddler for a young house-
wife, Sholom Aleichem sets
out to record the musi-
cians' jargon, a slang that
caught and fascinated his
ear. Passages in which
musicians speak among
themselves are carefully
footnoted for the "square"
reader, but in the body of
the book the author uses
only such vocabulary and
idiom as are widely
known. Shalom Aleichem's
prose appears to adapt it-
self utterly to each of his
monologists, yet there is
actually a carefully
selected "standard folk us-
age" from which a speaker
is allowed to deviate only
slightly, usually for pur-
Continued on next page
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