Thursday 7 March 2019

SH”Y KATSENELEBOGEN


SH”Y KATSENELEBOGEN
            He was a poet, journalist, and playwright.  Few of his biographical details are known—even the initials Sh”Y are unclear.  We only know that he descended from a Vilna follower of the Jewish Enlightenment named Hirsh Katsenelenbogen, that he was born in the 1840s or 1850s, and that he lived into the mid-1880s in Odessa.  He wrote poetry, plays, and fables.  He began writing poems in the 1860s, as we can see from his note to the poem “Dos yudel” (The little Jew), that “this poem is not like the ‘Yudel’ of Goldfaden.”  Goldfaden’s poem was published in a book in 1869 (and earlier in Kol mevaser [The herald]).  Two of his poems were published in Tsederboym’s Yudishes folksblat (Jewish people’s newspaper) (1884-1885).  His poems differ according to content: ethnic, lyrical, satirical, some of them poetic renditions of work by Heine, Lermontov, Krylov, as well as from prayers and Sabbath melodies.  On the frontispiece of his first book, Yudishe melodyen oder folks lieder (Jewish melodies or folksongs), it reads after the title: “Written by R. Sh”Y Kattsenellenbogen.  Selected songs, couplets, and fables from his written theatrical work: R. Sh”Y, Elkhonen (Elanan), Dos ferlorene kind (The lost child), Yudes (Judith), Der fayner kaptsn (The fine pauper), A sheyne mase vematn (A beautiful transaction), Kamlet prints gnilopyatski (Kamlet, prince of Gnilopiat [?]), and more.” (Vilna: Avrom-Hersh Katsenelenbogen, Publ., 1887) 11 pp. + 86 pp.  The same publisher brought out in 1914 a second edition under the title Lieder zamlung (Song collection), thirty-eight selected songs and theatrical pieces.  The listed plays, it seems, were not performed, but they did stage his other two plays: Menakhem ben yisroel (Menakhem son of Israel), by Goldfaden in Odessa and also Y. Y. Lerner; and Sh”Y (in several places the drama was called Rsh”Y), by a Yiddish troupe in Paris in 1889.  The latter was also published.  As Zalmen Reyzen wrote: “In fact, Katsenelenbogen’s songs excel in their thoroughly regulated verse structure, an exceedingly rare benefit in Yiddish song of that era, before Frug began composing Yiddish songs following the rules of tonic meter.”  He himself thought very highly of his own material.  In the preface to his Yudishe melodyen, he wrote: “Much better than these songs are exceedingly few which other authors have composed until now in our zhargon [Yiddish], because they have been assembled according to the laws and rules…of the poetry….  Unlike this, others of our poor poets write that their works must only rhyme, so that as long as they are adjusted externally, they ignore them internally—they just need to rhyme.”[1]  Leo Wiener notes that Katsenelenbogen “was the most original and literary playwright of his time, including A. Goldfaden.”  In 1861 there was published by Yoysef Ruvn Rom a booklet entitled Mishle muser oder krilovs fabelen (Musar proverbs or the fables of Krylov), 49 pp.  The Russian subtitle was provided by “S. Katsenelenbogen.”  Zalmen Reyzen assumes that this is the same person as Sh”Y Katsenelenbogen.  The fact that the latter translated many of Krylov’s fables into Yiddish corroborates Reyzen’s assumption.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Reyzen, in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) 2 and 3 (1932); Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 6 (Mexico City, 1969); Leo Wiener, Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1899), pp. 76, 99-100, 238.
Berl Cohen



[1] Translator’s note. Katsenelenbogen actually rhymes this last sentence in two places, apparently mocking those he is criticizing.  This is not reflected, unfortunately, in my translation. (JAF)

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