Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.056 July 11, 1993 1) Nayevegn (Daniel Galay) 2) Reply to Kertesz on mauscheln,and to Prince (Neakh Zide) 3) Introduction (Cary Nathenson) 4) Epes in other Germanic dialects (Victor Bers) 5) Introduction (Andrew Kassel) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon Jul 5 12:48:40 1993 From: HISHTALMUT Subject: Nayevegn Tayere Mendelnikes, Der Hemsheck Dor Libhobers fun Yiddish hot aroisgegebn a literarishe publikatsie "Naye Vegn", vos anthalt shafungen fun a nayem dor yiddishe shraybers in Isroel. Ver es vil kon es bashteln araynshikndik a tshek fun $ 8 oifn nomen fun "Hemsheck Dor Lybhober fun Yiddish". Undzer farband hot oick aroisgegebn an Informator mit hunderter adresn un telefonen fun Yiddish profesionaln un institutsies in Isroel. Der prayz: $ 5. Ver es planirt kumen oif a bazuck in land, bite git undz tsu visn un mir konen zick bakenen un durchshmuesn, Hartsike grusn, Daniel Galay. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Jul 6 14:55:06 1993 From: n-zide@uchicago.edu Subject: reply to Kertesz on mauscheln,and to Prince To Yitzhak K: the book on Kafka that talks about mauscheln (rather differently than you did in your reply) is Marthe Robert, AS LONELY AS KAFKA, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, l982 (a translation of Seul, comme Franz Kafka, Calmann-Levy, l979).See the index under German language, particularly the section beginning at the bottom of p. 153: 'The only way Kafka could envisage of making his in every respect impossible writing possible was to demarcate the area of impossibility by creating a language without particular color, without local tone, without qualities, as it were. In his indictment of his Jewish colleagues, he freely admitted that the Mauscheln [speaking German with a Jewish accent] of which Karl Kraus was the uncontested master, - "an organic compound of bookish German and pantomime," as Kafka himself defined it ..." I haven't read (Prager's suggestion) Gilman, and I don't know if Kafka on mauscheln is congruent with, familiar to, and dealt with by Gilman. To Ellen Prince: I don't know where the Hall quotation comes from. I would have guessed Leave Your Language Alone. It was commonly - perhaps wrongly - attributed to him in the early fifties. I had no idea he had opinions - and that kind of opinions - on the Holocaust. He should have stuck to Rhaeto-Romance. No replies yet to my question about Kafekal. Another fictitious (I think), expressive placename I used to hear about (and would like to know more about), Shnipishok. Neakh/Norman Zide 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue Jul 6 22:20:20 1993 From: Cary Alan Nathenson Subject: introductory message Shalom allechem! I've just subscribed to Mendele. It caught my attention as I browsed through the list of groups available on e-mail. My command of Yiddish is, well, not so commanding (I took part in one session of the Oxford Summer Yiddish Program in England some years ago), but I would welcome the chance to keep up my knowledge of the language and culture. I'll probably be on the list only until September, when I will go to Berlin to conduct research on my dissertation topic, the Austrian writer Joseph Roth (1894-1939). I look forward to hearing from you. zaid gesunt! Cary Nathenson E-Mail: canathen@artsci.wustl.edu 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 11 13:05:24 1993 From: VBERS@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu Subject: Epes in other Germanic dialects I have heard it in Switzerdutsch (?-"deutsch") and Alsatian. Victor Bers 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun Jul 11 14:38:58 1993 From: ACASSEL@delphi.com Subject: introduction I'm no linguist, and have only recently begun an informal self-course in Yiddish. But over the past few years I've been trying to translate and edit my grandfather's Yiddish history of his native town, "di shtat Keidan," published in 1930 by the Keidaner Farein of New York. Among the things I learned from this was that zeyde (who died in 1941, nine years before I was born), had collected folk songs in his youth, and was a major contributor to the 1901 book published by Ginsburg and Marek. Baruch Chaim Cassel was a stolz Keidaner, and was quite put out that the G.-M. book credited the songs he had collected as merely from "Kovne gubernie" rather than Keidan. In 1990 I brought this to the attention of Chana Mlotek at Yivo, who put me in touch with Dov Noy at the Hebrew University. The result was a footnote on p. 85 of Noy's re-issued (1991) Ginsburg-Marek (Bar-Ilan U. Press), which corrects this 90-year literary mistake. Sadly, the 1901 Ginsberg-Marek contained only lyrics; the money apparently ran out before they could publish the accompanying music. I'm hopeful that someday I'll turn up at least some of the tunes; my dream is to resurrect zeyde's music for his great-grandchildren, now aged 4 and 2. I've also got some grist for any Sholem-Aleichem scholars out there, in the form of 6 letters from S-A to my grandfather in New York in the period 1906-1908. (Some of these were published last year by Itche Goldberg in Yiddishe Kultur.) They mainly concern an attempt to translate and publish several works, including "The First Jewish Republic" and "Motl Peyse dem Khazan's" in the U.S. Nothing ever came of it, so far as I can tell; probably it was one of many not-too-successful ventures my merchant-scholar-Zionist grandfather tried over the course of three decades. But they may be of some interest. For my part I'd like to find someone with detailed knowledge of S-A in that period, in the interest of establishing context and possibly shedding some light on my grandfather's early life. Anyway, I've got translations of the 1930 history, along with some delightful zichroines from other Keidaners of that period, available to be posted or emailed if anyone is interested.... Andrew Cassel ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.056