Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 4.094
August 26, 1994

1) Papirosn (Rick Gildemeister)
2) Papirosn (Sheldon Benjamin)
3) Papirosn (Bob Rothstein)
4) Sholem Asch: The War Goes On (Jay Lee)
5) Self-deprecation (Meyshe Alpert)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 94 16:22:22 EDT
From: EEGLC%CUNYVM.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: Papirosn

I saw Bob Poe's posting on Papirosn. In a book I never tire of
discussing, Stefanesti: portrait of a Romanian shtetl, there was an
interesting version; they sang "Koyftshet, koyftshet papirosn".

I have heard a Gypsy version of the song, an instrumental, which backs up
Bob's idea that this may be a Balkan melody. The Gypsy version strays
quite a bit, but it's unmistakably the same tune. Gypsy and Jewish
musicians, I've heard, shared tunes with each other. These particular
Gypsies were Hungarian/Romanian, I think.

Rick Gildemeister

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 94 23:37:54 EDT
From: sbenj@MIT.EDU
Subject: Papirosn

Although I am sure Bob Rothstein will leave a message with the history of
the tune Yablokoff used in Papirosn, I know that the tune was popular in
Russian folk song long before Papirosn was written.  My grandmother used
to sing a song in Russian about the (Jewish) draft. Although she related
it to me among a group of songs about the Russo-Japanese War (mostly
Yiddish songs), I believe it to be from an older war and may date back to
the Cantonist period since there are no precise geographical references
in the song.  The song began, "Uvnasei Russiya Matushki adin lesh
razgavor...

Sheldon Benjamin

3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 16:43:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: rar@slavic.umass.edu
Subject: Melody of "Papirosn"

In 4.093 Bob Poe asked about the melody of Herman Yablokoff's "Papirosn."
In May, 1987 I sent the following information to Yosl and Khane Mlotek,
who used some of it in their column "Perl fun der yidisher poezye" in the
_Forverts_ of August 28, 1987. (BTW, for anyone interested in Yiddish
song, it's worth subs- cribing to the _Forverts_ for that column alone.)
In their column of May 31, 1985 they had quoted a reader who recalled
hearing _chastushki_ (Russian four-line ditties) sung to the melody of
"Papirosn" in Minsk in 1915.

[From my letter to the Mloteks of May 28, 1987]:  "Herman Yablokoff
writes in his _Arum der velt mit dem yidishn teatr_ that he wrote the
song in Kovno in 1922, but did not perform it until some ten years later
in New York, when his radio broadcasts helped make the song an
international hit.  Although both the words and music of 'Papirosn' are
always attributed to Yablokoff, he does not in fact say specifically in
his memoirs that he wrote the music, and there is some further evidence
to support your reader's memory of having heard the tune before its
supposed composition by Yablokoff in 1922.

	"In his book _Bulgarski gradski pesni_ (_Bulgarian Urban Songs_,
Sofia, 1968), the noted Bulgarian folklorist Professor Nikolai Kaufman
includes a song called 'Az sum Gosho khubavetsa' ('I am Gosho, the
Handsome One').... [T]he melody of the Bulgarian song is nearly identical
to that of 'Papirosn.' Although Professor Kaufman recorded the song from
an informant in 1965, he indicates that it goes back to about 1918.  In
the introduction to his book Professor Kaufman cites the song as an
example of songs song to Romanian urban melodies and popularized in
Bulgaria by the circus _kupletist_ [singer of (usually satirical) cabaret
songs] Dzhib, whose real name was Iakob Goldshtain.

	"In response to a letter from me asking him about the Bulgarian
song, Prof. Kaufman writes that his informants mention 1922 or 1925 as
the time when Dzhib popularized 'Az sum Gosho khubavetsa.'  They all
agree, however, that by 1932 (when Yablokoff started singing 'Papirosn'
on the radio in New York) the song had been displaced in Bulgaria by new
songs.  (Prof. Kaufman adds that the melody is still used as a folkdance
tune in northern Bulgaria, where it is considered to be a Bulgarian folk-
song.)

	"He further writes:  'Dzhib created many songs that were met with
interest by the folk (_narod_) and were sung by them after the first
hearing.  He wrote "Az sum Gosho khubavetsa" together with his friend,
the _kupletist_ Cherven Liliak.  The melody, like all his other melodies,
came from Romania, his birthplace. He came to Bulgaria around 1919....
Dzhib sang all his songs to Romanian, or rather Romanian-Jewish melodies.
Jewish _kupletisty_ in Romania at the end of the last century created
merry songs, which they sang in cabarets, restaurants, circuses, etc.
Dzhib in effect brought this practice to Bulgaria.... Yablokoff's song
"Papirosn" probably had the same origin as Dzhib's songs---his own text
set to a familiar Romanian-Jewish melody.'"

Bob Rothstein

4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 94 15:56:16 EST
From: JMLEE@ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: Sholem Asch: The War Goes On

I've been reading Asch's The War Goes On.  For those of you unfamiliar
with the work it details the lives of Jews and Gentiles in the Weimar
Republic during the period of hyperinflation when a handful of profiteers
made life unbearable for millions &c., &c.  The novel's historical aspect
is what first got me interested, but something in the narration itself
has struck me as fascinating. Although he investigates Jewish
self-hatred, he so far (p.160) never deviates from the nonsensical
Jewish-Aryan dichotomy.  He also paints blacks as Negro savages and
homosexuals as symptoms of decay in a decadent society.

Normally such narrow-mindedness would cause me to put a book down, but
there's something more going on under the surface.  One character in
particular is the scholar Heinrich Bodenheimer.  He advocates a sort of
Socialism without Socialists, a paradisical community similar to the
nicest vision Christianity can muster.  In fact, he advocates
Christianity, labelling Judaism as "superfluous."  Although he writes on
this uptopia, he does not transfer these tenets into his daily life,
rather he uses his pen to agitate against the French, playing right into
the hands of the notorious profiteer, the Man with the Black Beard,
explaining away his contradictory behaivor by claiming it is necessitated
by patriotism and duty to the liberal Fatherland created by the November
revolution.

The interesting thing is that the narrator, in pointing out Jewish
self-hatred and antisemitism in the Weimar Republic, but exhibiting
racism of his own, he parallels the obviously disengenuous character of
Bodenheimer.  I enjoy such subtleties in novels.

Blaybt gezund!

Jay Lee

5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 94 03:55:42 EDT
From: Meyshke@aol.com
Subject: Re: Self-deprecation

As those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer once more give way to the Days
of Awe, it may again be time to relate the classic Jewish joke on the
aforementioned subject:

*****************************************************************
During the final, fervent minutes of the concluding Nile portion of the
Yom Kippur service, the rabbi, overcome with repentant devotion, falls to
the floor and prostrates himself, crying out, "I am nothing, O Lord! My
presence in your mighty universe is insignificant!"

Witnessing him, the khazn is likewise moved to devotional rapture,
prostrating himself and exclaiming, "I too am nothing, O Lord! I am a
mere grain of sand, a tiny speck in the vastness of Your being!"

Finally, the humble shames (Gib akhtung, Reb Noyekh!), inspired by the
example of the previous two, also falls to the floor proclaiming his
insignificance, at which point the rabbi turns to the cantor and remarks,
"NOW look who thinks he's nothing..."

*****************************************************************

Needless to say, I hesitated for a long time before posting the above,
since I didn't think it was important.

Hot mir ale a gutn un a gezuntn yor, ful mit mazl, brokhe, parnose,
hatzlokhe un khotsh a kapitske nakhes. Dertsu a laykhtn tones and a
healthy sense of humor, sheyn opgeredt cultural identity.

Meyshe "Maykele" Alpert

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