Yiddish literature in Poland at the beginning of the 20th century was fighting a losing battle against Polish literature. Uri Zvi Greenberg, the great Hebrew poet, once said that the sons of the Yiddish writers read better Polish than Yiddish. The most popular literature in Yiddish during that time was the Shund literature. I’m tempted to describe it as the ‘B-movie’ version of Yiddish literature, but some might presume it was more close to an Ed Wood film. A typical plot would tell about a Jew falling in love with Napoleon’s mistress and eventually she comes back with him to his hometown, becomes a Jew and marries him. Many honorable writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer? had to take part in this sort of literature to make ends meet. There were even voices in Poland at the time who called to take the license to write from those who took part in this literature.

 

Israel Rabon’s answer to Shund literature is his book, The Street, which describes the city of Lodz during the depression of the 1920’s, following the Russo-Polish War of 1921-22. The novel is about a soldier who tries to build a life in Lodz and fails miserably. Inspired by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, Israel Rabon’s point of view isn’t realistic. The situations he describes lack compassion for most of the time and there are descriptions that are fully imagined like a dream, including one where the soldier becomes a loaf of bread. But, as Picasso once said, “Art is a lie that is needed to emphasize the truth”. And one of the biggest lies in literature is to speak in the other sex’s voice and we shall deal with this subject next week.