SHLOYME
ETINGER (SOLOMON ETTINGER) (1802-December 31, 1856)
He was born in Warsaw, Poland, into
a scholarly, merchant family. His
grandfather, Itshe Ettinger, was said to have been a rabbi in Khelm (Chełm). His father, Yaske Ettinger,
received ordination into the rabbinate. People wanted him to take up a rabbinical
post in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, but he did not wish to leave Poland. He died young and Ettinger was raised by his
father’s young brother, Mendl Ettinger, a rabbi in Lentshne (Łęczna)
who acquired a reputation for his knowledge of German. Thus, from his childhood on, Torah and worldly
knowledge were securely united in Shloyme Ettinger, and he did not have to
experience the rupture between traditional Judaism and secular education, as
this was often the rule for other writers and leaders in the era of the Jewish
Enlightenment. When Ettinger was fifteen
years old, his uncle arranged a marriage for him with the youngest daughter of
the wealthy Yude-Leyb Volf in Zamość. He lived with
his in-laws, spending all day in the synagogue study hall, and he was a
frequent visitor to the home of Yoysef Tsederboym, the meeting point for
followers of the Jewish Enlightenment in the city, such as Shimen Blokh and
Yankev Aykhenboym, among others. Ettinger
was a big success in this circle for his cheerfulness and vitality, for his
ditties and aphorisms. After the death
of his father-in-law, Ettinger’s wife opened a shop of glassware, but it was a
difficult time and he was compelled to ponder a serious response to their fate. He left for Odessa which at the time was
flourishing as a business center and where his brother-in-law Volf was living,
but Ettinger was not a good fit for business and, after spending several months
there with relatives, they decided that he would go to Lemberg, study there,
and they would support him. In 1825 he ceased
wearing his traditional Jewish garb and entered the Lemberg medical institute,
having earlier prepared himself in German and Latin. University life was appealing to him, and he
acquired a reputation among his fellow students and Lemberg followers of the
Jewish Enlightenment as the “cheerful Solomon.”
In particular he befriended his university pal Arnold Zhelinski, later a
medical doctor in Vienna (thanks to him the only image we have of Ettinger was
preserved). In early 1930 Ettinger
completed his studies and returned to Zamość where he acquired the title
“doctor,” though he was not supposed to practice without having passed the
state examinations given at Warsaw University.
Meanwhile, the November Uprising erupted in Poland, and as Zamość was a
fortress and one could anticipate a siege of the city, Ettinger settled with
his family in the glassworks of his brother-in-law, Yankev Gold, near Yanove
(Jonava). During the cholera epidemic,
which the Russian military brought to Poland (summer 1831), Ettinger was lured
by the Polish lords into medical relief work, which he performed with greatest diligence. Thanks to this, he never faced any
disturbances, after the uprising, on the part of the authorities to engage in
his medical practice and was even appointed to a position at the Zamość
Municipal Hospital (in the division of venereal diseases). He also worked in the Jewish hospital for the
poor, while at the same time preparing for the state examinations. Around 1834 he traveled to Warsaw to sit for
the examinations, but fell dangerously ill, went to the examination poorly
prepared, and received only the title “doctor of the second level”—without the
right to treat internal diseases. Later,
in the 1840s, a man now burdened with seven children, the semi-legal doctor Ettinger
was compelled to think again about the state examinations. In 1847 he went to take to examinations at
Kharkov University, but due to a missing formality with his Lemberg papers, he
had to return home with nothing to show for it.
He tried to continue practicing medicine, but soon thereafter he
purchased a piece of land in Zhdanov, some four kilometers from Zamość, and
settled down there with his family. His
lived the rest of his life there—aside from a short time when he was, as a
doctor, summoned once again by the authorities in the face of a cholera
epidemic in July 1855—and so he took up agriculture, much improved his material
condition, and often entertained guests in his home, but the friction that he
sensed with his wife impeded his calm.
In one of his letters from that time, he complained: “I make no great
demands of life; I wish only for a bit of family happiness, and fortune has not
brought this to me. I’m a husband, a
father, a homeowner, a farmer, but destiny has brought me sorrow from all of
these.”
He began writing during his student
years in Lemberg. At that time he also
had the ambition to become a painter, something that had aroused his interest
and capacity when quite young (only one painting of his has been preserved,
which he [painted from memory of his friend Yankev Aykhenboym]. In Lemberg he became acquainted with Mendl
Lefin’s Yiddish translation of Tanakh, as well as two Yiddish-language books: Di genarte velt (The cheated world), a
reworking of Molière’s Tartuffe; and Alteli, a reworking of Robinson Crusoe. His first literary efforts were parables and
epigrams. He probably also wrote his
comedy Serkele at this time. He was already carrying around the idea of
publishing this work in 1836-1837, while at the same time he had numerous plans
for literary works in Yiddish, such as a mythology and a world- and nature-history. On May 24, 1843, his good friend, the famous
Antoni Eisenbaum, submitted a request to the curator of a Warsaw learned
society, that Ettinger’s Serkele and Mesholim (Parables) be permitted to be
published, pointing out that “these works are accessible to all classes of
Jews; they bring out in living colors faults and risible qualities, as they
picture pointedly and comically the complete Jewish condition, and they thus
may have a salutary effect on their minds.”
In this endeavor, Ettinger also hoped for the patronage of his friend
Yanev Tugenhald (1794-1872), the Yiddish censor in Warsaw at that time, but the
censor so distorted his writings with cuts that he could under no circumstances
allow them to be publish in that form.
With such new worries hanging over him, nothing ultimately came about of
his plans. Unable to publish he work in
book form, Ettinger recited and read them before people at every opportunity,
and he made dozens of copies by hand himself.
While still alive, he became widely known, both in his city and
throughout Poland, but not seeing a line of his work published, on the one
hand, and his unhappy family life, on the other, caused him a great deal of
aggravation. Ettinger died suddenly on
his small estate. The entire city
accompanied him to his final rest. An
epitaph in Hebrew is engraved on his tombstone in Zamość, which he prepared
himself. Several years after his death,
for the first time his writings began to see the light of day in book
form. In 1861 in the Prussian town of
Johannesberg, a man by the name of Gonsharovski published Ettinger’s play
entitled Komedya in 5 akten fon serkele
oder di falshe yortsayt geshen in lemberg (Comedy in five acts of Serkele
or the false anniversary of the death that took place in Lemberg). Serkele
was republished from the error-ridden Johannesberg edition (Warsaw, 1875; there
is a Lemberg edition as well). Better
luck was experienced by Ettinger’s work in verse, published by his son Wilhelm
under the title Mesholim, lidlekh, kleyne
mayselekh un kesuveslekh, eygene un nokhgemakhte (Parables, ditties, short
stories, and aphorisms, originals and imitations) (St. Petersburg, 1889), 254
pp., second edition (1890). Some of
these parables were published earlier in: Kol
mevaser (Herald), from 1863; Varshever
yudishe tsaytung (Warsaw Jewish newspaper); and Yudisher folksblat (Jewish people’s newspaper). A new edition solely of Mesholim appeared in 1920 (Warsaw: Nayer farlag), 145 pp. Only in 1925 were Ettinger’s works properly
revised into a thorough critical edition: Ale
ksovim fun dr shloyme etinger (Collected writings of Dr. Shloyme Ettinger),
published according to manuscripts with biographical and bibliographical
introduction and with annotations by Dr. Max Weinreich, in 2 parts (Vilna: B.
Kletskin, 1925), 64 pp. + 516 pp. This
edition included items by Ettinger that had never been published, among them:
two unpublished theatrical works, “Der feter fun amerike” (The uncle from
America) and “Di freylekhe yungelayt” (Carefree youth); and a number of his
letters; among other items—Weinreich made use of the poet’s bequest. Ettinger’s other writings in book form
include: Serkele, oder di yortsayt
nokh a bruder, gor a nay teater-shtik in finf oyftsien (Serkele, or the
anniversary of the death of a brother, an entirely new theatrical piece in five
acts) (Vilna: Naye yidishe folksshul, 1929), 24 pp.; Geklibene verk (Selected works), with a literary-historical
introduction by Maks Erik, with the text prepared, commentaries, and
bibliography by M. Dubilet (Kiev: Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, 1935), 387
pp.; Mesholim (Kiev: Ukrainian State
Publ., 1938), 99 pp.; Oysgeklibene
shriftn, komedye, mesholim, kesuveslekh
(Selected writings, comedy, parables, aphorisms), introduced and edited by
Shmuel Rozhanski (Buenos Aires: Yoysef Lifshits Fund, World Jewish Culture
Congress, 1958), 259 pp. In 1863
Ettinger’s Serkele was staged for the
first time by students at the Zhitomir rabbinical seminary at a Purim
celebration (among the student was the twenty-two-year-old Avrom Goldfaden who
played the main role). The first
production of Serkele in a theater
was staged by Y. Y. Lerner in Odessa on August 11, 1888. In 1923 Serkele
was staged in Warsaw’s Central Theater under the direction of Zigmunt
Turkov. This production became a great
boon for the Yiddish theater and aroused enthusiastic reviews throughout the
Yiddish press. Serkele was also staged in the Yiddish theater in Communist Poland.
“Ettinger had the talent,” wrote Shmuel Niger,
“of a painter and a poet. And he
possessed an extraordinary talent in writing Yiddish. He thus found it necessary to write in a
plain Yiddish and not in Hebrew or German.
He had no need of justifications.
He felt no guilt, as a bird feels no sense of guilt for singing, the
flower when it blooms. And, it is truly
something to admire that in the full bloom of the Jewish Enlightenment, when
Yiddish or ‘zhargon’ as it was then dubbed was, in the best of cases, a means
to enhancing the level of maturity of the Jewish masses, as A. M. Dik expressed
it, a lame one, a broken cane, to break down the walls of the ghetto—it is a
remarkable thing to find such a man at that time—and this was Shloyme Ettinger,
who wrote Yiddish not like his friend from that era in Ukraine, Yisroel
Aksenfeld, ‘from simple Jewish women who know no other languages,’ but for
everyone, and for those enlightened and educated people, as he was
himself…. If Shloyme Ettinger had left
us nothing else but the drama—or, better put, the melodrama—Serkele and fragments of two other
plays, one unfinished and one only just begun, he would occupy a place solely
in the history of Yiddish drama and the Yiddish language. However, he has succeeded in transcribing a
valuable chapter in the entire history of Yiddish literature, although
especially the art of verse, and in this chapter he utterly excelled. No one has as yet written such poems,
parables, and epigrams as his in Yiddish.
Ettinger had a cultivated sense for sound, rhythm, and form…. He is there in in his poetry—not only his
generation, the generation of the Enlightenment. He is there and, like every creative person,
he carries with him other, earlier generations as well, not solely his own
generation. It happens that people
actually forget that he was a follower of the Enlightenment…. If in the longer parables which are mostly
short stories, we see Ettinger’s shrewdness, his wisdom of life, and life’s
learning, his artistry with words becomes clear to us in the short parables and
in the even shorter epigrams, his mastery of the word.”
“What is there to writing,” observed
Meylekh Ravitsh, “whose author, Shloyme Ettinger, who throughout his entire
mature life wrote, recited, read aloud before people, copied in dozens of
manuscript copies, prepared them for publication—and yet never saw a single
line [of his work] published; these were tidy, lovely, naïve, melodic, vivid,
well-rhymed, well-formed—with all manner of stanzas—poems, several dozen in
number. This includes fables in a
flexible language, the topics on the whole taken from the ancient treasury of Aesop,
and always with a lovely, golden middle-of-the-road moral, over one hundred in
number. There are several poems with
greater volume. The motifs in general
are taken from the classical German ballad literature. Among these poems is one, thirty-three pages
in length, with the title “Dos lekht” (The candle). This is a paraphrasing of Friedrich Schiller’s
world-renowned poem “[Das Lied von] die Glocke” (The song of the bell). And just as this is a poem of a man’s life,
the refrain of which is the bell which rings all the time—birth, holidays,
weddings, celebrations, sad events, funeral,…so too in the Yiddish version of
Shloyme Ettinger, “The Candle” is the eternal companion of Jewish life…which is
a brilliant notion. At birth a candle,
at circumcision a candle, holidays a candle, Sabbath a candle, Havdalah a
candle, a wedding candle, and after death a yahrzeit candle. All of this together in a poem that begs us
to teach it in Jewish schools and read it at every opportunity…. Why Shloyme Ettinger, a man with considerable
European knowledge, an official European education, and in general a follower
of the Jewish Enlightenment from head to toe, evinced some ninety years before the
Czernowitz Language Conference such a great feeling for the Yiddish language
and philological intuition, which led him to create dozens of new, technical
literary terms in Yiddish never before seen in the language, remains a secret. Unless it’s the genius of our mother tongue,
unless it was his love of ordinary people.
Unless—God only knows—what!
That’s how it is. His poems
written 130 years ago, read so freshly, as if they were written yesterday. One must admit that—judging from the great
minds of his era in the world, Shloyme Ettinger was not a particularly talented
poet. However, we measure him with a
special gauge, a time-gauge, an environmental gauge, a gauge of familiarity—and
according to such a gauge he becomes ever more beloved to us. Beloved like family. We do not place him on the world market of
literature. We are friends with him,
love him in our home. And he brings us great
ethnic and artistic joy.”
Zalmen Reyzen had the following to
say: “Ettinger’s artistic talent is most stunningly revealed in his works in
verse. Displayed in them for us is not
only the most significant Yiddish writer before Mendele Moykher-Sforim, but
also the first artist in the Yiddish language in the modern sense of the
word. Especially extraordinary were Ettinger’s
parables, which are still considered until today among the best specimens of
Yiddish fable poetry…. Wise to the ways
of the world, rich in experience, a fine observer who delineates in his own
allegiance both to the good and to the bad in people and phenomena, we see also
in Ettinger the author of aphorisms and epigrams—pleasantries which excel by
virtue of their playful humor and genuine Jewish wit, remaining equally
European in their short, poignant form….
Objective describer of Jewish life, artist, not a publicist of the
Enlightenment ideals, this was Ettinger in his drama Serkele. We sense the
Enlightenment tendencies here only in the exaggerated idealization of the
representative of the new generation in the person of the ‘enlightened’ student
Redlikh. In general, though, we have in Serkele a lively, realistic comedy,
written in a fluent and, for its era, an extraordinarily popular language, and
also in its construction at a level of dramatic art of the early nineteenth
century…. This consciousness in
Ettinger’s connection to the Yiddish language is truly remarkable. Fluent in German, he nonetheless avoided
every trace of Germanisms in his Yiddish writings. If he felt the absence of words in Yiddish
for a known concept, he tried to create them in the spirit of the language, and
his constructions were often very successful—for example, oyftsi (instead of oyftsug
or akt) for an act in the theater; araynkim (instead of oyftrit) for a scene in a play; zukhtsetl (instead of inhalt-fartseykhenish or register) for index; and the like. Ettinger’s great mastery as a Yiddish stylist
is also apparent in the surviving fragments of his translations of prayers,
etc., which can serve until today as magnificent examples for this sort of work
and attest to Ettinger’s fine sensibility for a style and tone and language.”
“In Yiddish literature of the
nineteenth century,” wrote Meyer Viner, “Ettinger was the first artistic
stylist prior to Mendele…. One must
first of all take into consideration the impact of Volfzon’s Laykhtzin un fremelay (Frivolity and piety).
More important was the immediate impact of Di genarte velt, in which Ettinger found the literary prototype for
his figure of ‘Serkele’…whose relevant borrowings from foreign language literatures
one must first attribute to the fact that Ettinger was familiar with Molière’s
comedy Tartuffe which was extremely
popular at the time in Enlightened circles….
Ettinger drew the most important influence in Yiddish from the anonymous
Di genarte velt.”
“Serkele
gave no indication,” noted B. Gorin, “that it was written almost two
generations before Goldfaden laid the cornerstone for Yiddish theater. To this day on the Yiddish stage a hundred
similar plays are performed. They are
cast in the mold of Serkele—no more,
though, for Serkele possesses a
language fresher, more vivid, more Yiddish.
Serkele is written in a
modern, pure Yiddish. Serkele was a pattern for subsequent
Yiddish playwrights, and, to be completely honest, they imitated it poorly.”
“When all is said and done,” Dr. Max
Weinreich claimed, “Ettinger’s influence is slight, limited to narrow
circles. Had he had the temperament of a
subversive, he might have become the grandfather of our literature. He possesses the literary eligibility
thereto. If he is behind Mendele in
terms of talent, he was certainly above him in respect to a sense of form,
although he wrote thirty years earlier.
However, given who he was and one cannot change one’s character, he
remained the great-grandfather of Yiddish literature, the little known,
half-forgotten great-grandfather, whom one must by means of research introduce
for contemporary readers.”
“Ettinger’s dialogue,” wrote Nokhum
Oyslender, “is psychologically consistent and never veers from the framework of
typicality. Ettinger was the first to
break the unity of ‘psychology’ and typicality in Yiddish literature.”
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2, with
a bibliography; Reyzen, Fun mendelson
biz mendele, hantbukh far der
geshikhte fun der yidisher haskole-literatur mit reproduktsyes un bilder
(From Mendelssohn to Mendele, handbook of the history of the Yiddish
Enlightenment literature with reproduced texts and pictures) (Warsaw:
Kultur-lige, 1923), pp. 271-85; Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon
fun yidishn teater
(Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1934), with a
bibliography; Dr. A. Kapel (Mukdoni), in Der
pinkes (Warsaw) (1913), pp. 37-48; Mukdoni, in Morgn-zhurnal (New York) (February 15, 1935); B. Gorin, in Di tsukunft (new York) (August 1914);
Gorin, Yidishe dramaturgn in rusland
(Yiddish playwrights in Russia), vol. 1 (New York, 1929), pp. 89-131; M. Basin, 500 yor yidishe poezye (500
years of Yiddish poetry), vol. 1 (New York, 1917), pp. 128-38; Shmuel Niger, in
Di tsukunft (May 1922); Niger, in Yidishe literatur (Yiddish literature),
a reader (Kiev, 1928), pp. 176-79; Niger, in Der tog (New York) (December 14, 1930; December 21, 1930; January
29, 1956; February 5, 1956; February 12, 1956; February 20, 1956); N. Mayzil,
in Unzer folkstsaytung (Warsaw)
(September 24, 1923); Mayzil, in Yidishe
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1924); Dr. Max Weinreich, in Literarishe
bleter (August 14, 1925); Weinreich, Bilder
fun der yidisher literatur geshikhte (Studies in the history of Yiddish
literature) (Vilna, 1928), pp. 280-91; A. Fridkin, Avrom-ber gotlober un zayn
epokhe (Avrom-Ber Gotlober and his
epoch) (Vilna: Kletskin, 1925), pp. 176-78, 304-10, 337; Yoyel Entin, Yidishe poetn (Yiddish poets) (New York,
1927), pp. 39-41; Gershom Bader, Draysik
doyres idn in poyln, fun der ershter tsayt vos idn zaynen ahin gekumen
(Thirty generations of Jews in Poland, from the first time that Jews came here)
(New York, 1927), pp. 474-77; Nokhum Oyslender, Di eltere yidishe drame un ir kinstlerishe oysshtatung (The old
Yiddish drama and its artistic materials) (Kiev, 1927), pp. 46-54; Oyslender, Etapn fun der literatur-antviklung in onheyb
19tn yorhundert (Stages in the development of literature in the beginning
of the nineteenth century) (Kiev, 1928), pp. 30-33, 35; Tsugobn un onmerkungen (Additions and annotations), vol. 1 (Kiev,
1928), pp. 104-20; Oyslender, Folks-idyomen
un regyonele dyalektn in der literatur-shprakh (Folk idioms and regional
dialects in the literary language), vol. 1 (Kiev, 1928), pp. 120-26; Dr. Yankev
Shatski, in Pinkes fun amopteyl fun yivo (Records of the
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(March 30, 1928); Tsinberg, Di geshikhte
fun der literatur bay yidn (The history of Yiddish literature) vol. 8
(Vilna, 1937), pp. 230-48; M. Viner, Shriftn
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yidisher literatur in 19th yorhundert (On the history of Yiddish
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derklerungen tsu yedn shrayber (The older Yiddish literature, a literary
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36-71; Dr. Y. Shiper, in Yivo-bleter
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glaykhbarekhtigung in kanade un finf un tsvantsig yor keneder odler
(Commemorative volume, souvenir publication to honor the jubilee of one hundred
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1933); M. Erik, Geklibene verk (Selected
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Reyzen, in Di prese (Buenos Aires)
(July 23, 1950); Y. Botoshanski, Mame
yidish (Mother Yiddish) (Buenos Aires, 1949), pp. 84, 90-93, 108, 109, 145;
Sh. Mendelson, Shloyme mendelson, zayn lebn un shafn (Shloyme Mendelson, his life
and work) (New York, 1949), pp. 115-25; Sh. Lastik, Di yidishe
literatur biz di klasiker (Jewish literature
until the classics) (Warsaw: Yidish bukh, 1950), pp. 183-96; Zigmunt Turkov, Shmuesn vegn teater, geshikhtlekher iberblik, gedanken un
derfarungen (Talks about theater, historical overview, thoughts, and
experiences) (Buenos Aires: Unzer bukh, 1950), pp. 134-50; Meylekh Ravitsh, in Letste nayes (Tel Aviv) (January 27,
1956); Sh. Trunk, in Unzer shtime
(Paris) (March 29, 1956); Trunk, in Dos
yidishe vort (Santiago de Chile) (June 1, 1956); Sh. Izban, in Der amerikaner (New York) (June 22,
1956); Izban, in Kender odler (Montreal)
(July 4, 1956); Izban, in Naye yidishe
tsaytung (Munich) (July 22, 1956); Sh. Rozhanski, in Idishe tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (September 30, 1956); Y. Varshavski
[Bashevis], in Forverts (November 2,
1958); Y. Glants, in Der veg (Mexico
City) (August 26, 1961; September 2, 1961); A. Goldberg, Undzere dramaturgn (Our playwrights) (New York, 1961), pp. 53-82;
Sh. Belis, in Folksshtime (Warsaw)
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Yekhezkl, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New
York) (August 9, 1964); Simkhe Lev, in Svive
(New York) (September 1964), pp. 29-34.
Leyb
Vaserman
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