Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.280 January 17, 1995 1) Introduction/Glatshteyn (Janet Hadda) 2) Yaakev Glatshteyn (Morrie Feller) 3) Yaakev Glatshteyn (Larry Rosenwald) 4) Mendele un Gogol (Jay Lee) 5) Kenen and konen (Mikhl Herzog) 6) Kenen and konen (Rick Gildemeister) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Jan 95 17:50 PST From: ibenbfx@mvs.oac.ucla.edu Subject: Introduction/Glatshteyn My name is Janet Hadda and I already know many of you. I am a professor of Yiddish at UCLA, a practicing psychoanalyst--and, I confess, a Mendele lurker. But I am encouraged to write now because of Dan Leeson's request to know more about Yankev Glatshteyn, one of my great loves. Glatshteyn (1896- 1971) was a founding member and theorist of the literary group In Zikh, which flourished in New York during the 1920's and 1930's. A native of Lublin, Poland, Glatshteyn immigrated to New York in 1914 and spent the rest of his life there. In addition to his poetry, Glatshteyn wrote novels and was a prolific literary journalist. He is often remembered for his riveting Holocaust poetry, but he deserves recognition as well for his vibrant exper- imentation with the Yiddish language, which started in his days with the In Zikhistn (or Introspec- tive Poets) but went far beyond those tenets. I've written a book about him (Yankev Glatshteyn, G.K. Hall, 1980) which details his poetic development. My current work is a biography of Isaac Bashevis Singer and I would welcome any first-hand anecdotes about meetings with him, etc. Janet Hadda 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 06:43:24 -0700 (MST) From: feller@pcef.pc.maricopa.edu Subject: Yaakev Glatshteyn For Dan Leeson: The poem about Mozart is to be found in _The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse_ (1987) Ed. Howe, Wisse, & Shmeruk. Biography on P.425, poem on P.438(English), P.439(Yiddish). Morrie Feller 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 15:16:28 -0500 (EST) From: lrosenwald@wellesley.edu Subject: a query and a note, on reading Glatshteyn's essay on Richard Wright One answer to Dan Leeson's query re Glatshteyn is: Glatshteyn was among the greatest American Yiddish poets, and a great critic also. (For another translation of the "Mozart" poem, by the way - which I also love - see Cynthia Ozick's translation in the Penguin Anthology). In any case, though, I was reading G's essay on Richard Wright (from _In Tokh Genumen_, 1945-47). Right at the beginning of the essay he says that he became acquainted with the Negro problem when he was ten or eleven. He says that through reading a certain book he "gave to the Negro race eyes full of childlike tears." My problem is in figuring out what the book is that he means. Transcribed, it would be "Kizshina Diadi Toma." Does anyone know what this might be? Later in the same paragraph, he speaks of reading Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin in Hebrew - is "Kizshina etc." the same book in a different language? That's my query. My note concerns a remark he makes that I found interesting, and thought others might too. G says that "Tom in Hebrew was for me heymisher and closer; the Hebrew meaning [and the Yiddish one too, hence my posting here] of his name made him an ish tsadik tamim." So Uncle Tom becomes an ancestor of Singer's Gimpl Tam, I guess. Larry Rosenwald 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 09:45:42 -0500 From: jmlee@ucs.indiana.edu Subject: Mendele un Gogol Soon I will be writing my undergraduate thesis and I thought a good theme would be to compare the degree of satirical bite in the works of Mendele Moykher Sforim and Nikolai Gogol', and how each were received by the public for whom they wrote. I am now at the earliest stages of research, and I would greatly appreciate any reference to articles or books anyone might be able to give me. A sheynem dank! Jay Lee 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Jan 95 17:31 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Kenen and konen Yiddish doesn't seem to distinguish these words. Where they cooccur in someone's speech, they are, possibly, chronological variants. Still to be mapped but, my _khush_ tells me that _konen_, is most persistent in the Northeast, although even there it may be/have been passing into obsolescence. In other words, both can serve to mean 'to be acquainted with' and 'to be able'. As you might guess, a problem for Yiddish speakers learning German (on a par with some of the other modals). Mikhl Herzog 6)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Jan 95 08:51:45 EST From: eeglc%cunyvm.bitnet@yalevm.cis.yale.edu Subject: Kenen and konen Peter Klues brought up the question of kenen and konen. If I were a pro- fessional linguist I'd have the word for the phenomenon occurring here at my finger tips, but I don't, so someone help me out and give the linguistic term for this. What's happened is that in German you have: 1) Ich kann 1) Wir koennen 2) Du kannst 2) Ihr koennt 3) Er kann 3) Sie koennen In an attempt to regularize the conjugation, one speech group has regularized the conjugation totally in favor of Konen, so you have Ikh kon and Mir konen. In the standard taught in College Yiddish, the conjugation has regularized itself toward kenen. There is also the German kennen, which means "To know, to be acquainted with". The 3rd singular is "er kennt". In Yiddish the verb is "kenen". The conjugations are different, though, in the 3rd singular, where "er ken" means he can, and "er kent" means he knows. So strong, though, is the attraction of the two verbs, that one sometimes sees "er ken" meaning he knows. Other examples are ton/tin, where the verbs have "migrated" toward harmony and consistency not found in the older language. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always associated "konen" with Polish Yiddish, and "kenen" with (at least) Northeastern Yiddish, and that like nit/nisht, either is correct in the klal shprakh. I hope this helps. Rick Gildemeister P.S. I'd like to interject that I'm not a linguist/scholar but I'm a widely read lover of language, and I was able to answer the query, using non-technical terms. If anything, I really *want* the scholars' input. This is an academic language and literature list and I need to be careful not to swim in shallow waters and steer people in the wrong direction. I learn a lot from the khakhomim. I liked Ellen Prince's discussion of "clitic" because it really tied the loose ends of the "zhe" frage together very well. ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.280 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. Sign your article (full name please) A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Send change-of-status messages to: listserv@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele nomail b. To resume delivery: set mendele mail c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu