Jacob Dinezon, whose death is now being mourned not only by Yiddish writers but by the broad folk masses, and especially by thousands and thousands of Jewish children, did not enrich Yiddish literature with many works. But in art, quantity is less important than quality. In terms of quality, Dinezon’s service to Yiddish literature is immense, especially when looked at historically.
Jacob Dinezon was, generally speaking, one of the first Yiddish writers, and with that I mean to say that he was one of the first true artists of the Yiddish word.
His novels, such as Der shvartser yungermantshik (The Dark Young Man), Even negef, oder, A shteyn in veg (Stumbling Block, or, A Stone in the Road), Hershele, Yosele, and other writings were maskilic, sentimental, and one-sided. In their time, however, they were true literature compared to the many shund (trashy) story books that flooded the Jewish quarter and Jewish world that literally lived for a Yiddish word.
I don’t know if it’s well-known, but Dinezon was in fact one of the first Yiddish literary critics. His articles about literature by his contemporaries that appeared in the Hoyz-fraynd (House-Friend) and in other publications have a significant value even now, as material, in any case. He was one of the first to point out that the Shomers and [Oyzer] Bloshteyns and their followers do not belong to literature, as their influence on the Jewish public was not useful, but rather harmful, corrupting their taste and misleading and smothering the people.
If Sholem Aleichem’s sharper stand against Shomer and against the entire shund “school” in Yiddish literature marks a date in the newer history of the Yiddish word, we must not forget that he had in Dinezon an active, intelligent, and loyal colleague. The good, dear Dinezon had shown in his condemnation of the shund writers that he could be sharp and bitingly unsympathetic in his battle for a more authentic Jewish literature, not much less than David Frishman. In Dinezon, this was a result of the love that flowed in his heart, the love for Yiddish literature. Because if he was able to find merit in a Yiddish writer, he was overjoyed and spared no effort in helping him. For true talent, he would forgive ten faults. He had only to determine that so-and-so would be a writer, and he wouldn’t rest but would praise him and see that he found his way and rightful place.
Dinezon came to Yiddish literature primarily as a maskil. Writing in Yiddish was for him—insofar as he had a conscious position—an objective expedient and not a subjective artistic calling. He wrote in Hebrew for a time; however, he wished to be useful to the people. The people did not understand the language in which he wrote, therefore, he decided to write in Yiddish to provide an authentic literature in Yiddish.
In this respect, his attitude to the Yiddish language is interesting. In no other literature is there a “language question,” and in any case, in no other group of writers can there be such a thing as an attitude and position towards the language. For us, however, there is a struggle between languages, and Yiddish literature is completely permeated with this struggle. One of the most interesting chapters of the history of Yiddish literature, of its development, would be an evaluation of the positions of various writers towards the Yiddish language. In this manner, the attitudes of Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz show a great internal key difference. And this difference profoundly affected the literary creations of these old masters of ours, as well as the whole course of development of the Yiddish word.
But back to Jacob Dinezon. His attitude to Yiddish was at first scarcely that of an artist. The language was merely an instrument for him, not something alive, organic, not something closely tied to the whole creative, artistic “I.” Therefore, in the beginning, he really devoted no attention to the purity of the language and hardly considered the inherent spirit of Yiddish. Mendele, a much greater writer, also took to writing in Yiddish from a maskilic standpoint, as something useful for the people. However, as a greater artist, Mendele had a much more intimate relationship with the language than Dinezon. As a result, he took the intrinsic spirit of Yiddish firmly into account. Therefore, he constantly polished, perfected, and “created” the language. We are, therefore, correct to indicate that Mendele was the first to create a Yiddish style.
Dinezon understood nothing of this. In his attitude to the language, he was similar to Isaac Meyer Dik, who held one of his missions to be to “enrich the impoverished mother tongue” with Germanisms, German words, and even whole expressions in German. Like Dik, Dinezon at first wrote var [instead of iz geven for “was”] and geworden [instead of gevorn for “become”], and wondered at the enormous effort Mendele made to refine Yiddish, create a style, and write according to firm rules and laws that would be in harmony with the inner soul of the language.
Dinezon praised Mendele highly. When the “grandfather” first began to write, Dinezon spoke enthusiastically about Mendele’s great value and the important place he was destined to occupy in the literature just being created at that time. But why should one not write er var a guter mentsh (he was a good person) but rather er iz geven a guter mentsh? Why not freely drag into Yiddish as many German words and expressions as possible? Why is Mendele so particular? Does he actually think that Yiddish is a “systematic language?” These are the questions that Dinezon asked and could not stop pondering.
Naturally, Dinezon understood it very well later and wrote a pure Yiddish himself. But at the beginning, his approach to Yiddish was thoroughly maskilic, an approach that had little to do with artistry.
About the value of Jacob Dinezon’s own writing—in a second article.
Jacob Dinezon’s Writings
In his memoirs, the beginning of which appeared in Der pinkes (The Record Book, Vilna, 1913), Jacob Dinezon describes an episode from his childhood that appears to me to throw a bright light on all of the literary activity of that beloved, sympathetic writer. There, he relates how the story of Jephthah in the Prophets made a strong impression on him. When he read it in cheder, he was so moved that he could study no more. “It’s a pity, a pity,” he wailed, and could not conceive how God could be so unsympathetic to a young and presumably beautiful girl. Why, he complained, did God rescue Isaac at the last minute at the Akedah, but not Jephthah’s daughter?
As a child, the good Dinezon did not “accept” this with any less seriousness and certainly with no less sincerity than Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov refused to accept that aspect of the world order that allows children to suffer. And this exact episode, I say, is a key to understanding most of Dinezon’s literary works.
Love and compassion distinguish all of Dinezon’s novels and stories. Love for the people, love for the good and beautiful, for the refined and just, and as a result, hatred for the opposite of those qualities.
In that sense, Dinezon differs very strongly from the other Yiddish writers of the so-called Haskalah period to which he largely belongs, especially Isaac Meyer Dik. Dinezon began writing and remained for a long time under Dik’s influence. As I have already shown, Dinezon began to write—like Dik—as a maskil. His main objective was to teach the people, to lead them towards good morals and a more beautiful, useful life. But while Dik did it with the cold severity of a preacher, Dinezon did it with love and with faith, both in the people and in the better side of human nature. Even Mendele was still a stern moralizer. In Dinezon’s attitude towards the people, on the contrary, sympathy, compassion, and the principle of making allowances spring forth more than anything else.
His first known novel, Der shvartser yungermantshik, is maskilic, one-sided, and quite primitive in its descriptions and execution. The basic characteristics of Dinezon’s nature are already apparent. All the good and all the humiliated characters—who are incidentally too good and too pious—are portrayed in such bright and sympathetic colors that the ordinary reader, at whom the novel was indeed largely aimed, felt an involuntary desire also to be as fine, good, and pious. The immoral type, on the other hand, the “dark young man,” the informer, plotter, and just plain evil person, is described as black as the devil—as if to frighten the public away from such an ugly nature. We see the same in the later novels: Even negef and Hershele, which are already—especially the latter, as a matter of fact, where the life of the small, perpetual student of Talmud is portrayed—more developed artistically. Here too, the good are as good as can be, and must elicit in the naïve folk reader a desire to imitate and follow in their ways, and the evil—as evil as hell itself.
The purely artistic side of these novels obviously suffers from all of this. The purpose and the bias are too noticeable. But this is redeemed by two important qualities. Firstly, this exaggerated tone is accessible to the masses. Through his novels, Dinezon consequently helped create the Yiddish reader. Shomer and Bloshteyn did the same, but at the time when they exclusively wrote shund, telling far-fetched tales about princes, counts, and the like from a circle that had no connection at all with the Jewish public. Dinezon, after all, wrote pieces that were closer to literature and art. Also, he primarily drew his characters and events from the authentic Jewish environment, and with that, became the founder of realistic Yiddish literature.
Secondly, even in the cases where the exaggerated personality was strongest, Dinezon provided altogether fine minor characters who are artistically more enduring, and that now help us understand the period that served as his material a lot better. Also, from the standpoint of proper observation, of watching human nature, all of these types—assorted women, beadles, synagogue officials, coachmen, slaughterers, charity cases, idlers—are completely successful.
And furthermore: For the author of shund, there is an immutable law that the good must triumph in the end—after going through all Seven Circles of Hell, and the evil must bring a bad end upon themselves. Dinezon, who, as I mentioned, fought strongly against shund literature, obviously never adhered to these laws. For him, on the contrary, the good went under, and the evil prevailed.
Bending over too far in that direction is surely also a drawback. But we have to say that it is certainly more true-to-life. For the famous American humorist Mark Twain, precisely this killing off of the “good” was almost a credo, an ani ma’amin (“I believe”) [a Jewish affirmation of faith].
On the other hand, the same basic trait in Dinezon’s nature and writing is apparent: the desire to summon sympathy in the reader for the good, showing him that it is always persecuted and chased. Therefore—from Dinezon’s personal attitude and conviction—good is even more entitled to respect and affection. In the introduction to the second edition of his novel Der shvartser yungermantshik, Dinezon thanks the “dear reader” for the tears brought on by the suffering of the good heroes. He explains that with this, the eliciting of sympathy, he has fulfilled his task.
All of Dinezon’s writing characteristics are seen most clearly in his best novel, Yosele, which stands on a higher level both in terms of language and accuracy of realistic description.
Portrayed there is the life of a Jewish orphan, a boy who was by chance accused of theft, and suffered horribly as a result. He dies at the end, wretched, abandoned, and oppressed by the weight of biased, unjust trials and courts, from human evil and human unwillingness to understand. Yosele’s death is the most powerful moment in the whole story. The reader feels genuine pity. The reader terribly regrets the fate of the poor Jewish boy, and Dinezon’s mission is completely fulfilled: sympathy for the persecuted orphan is boundless. However, Dinezon believes ultimately in the goodness of human nature. He does not wish the reader to leave with the impression that the orphan found only cruelty everywhere. In the final scene, he describes a ritual slaughterer and a synagogue caretaker who sympathize with Yosele and do not allow his name to be sullied after his death.
Thanks to his sympathetic nature, thanks to his unlimited love, Dinezon succeeded best at portraying women and children, especially the latter. And his Yosele,Alter, and the series “Kindershe neshomes” (“Children’s Souls”), are all works lifted up with tenderness and sympathy, and among the best examples of our children’s literature.
In general, Dinezon’s work belongs to the category of folk novels and folk stories. From a purely literary standpoint, their value is primarily cultural-historical. With this, I do not intend to detract from Dinezon’s significance or importance. No writer can separate himself from his period or overcome his period and environment. Dinezon accomplished a lot in the time in which he wrote. The two most significant accomplishments were the development of a better literary taste in a poorly educated reader who was suffering from shund, and the raising of Yiddish literature in his period to a higher level, so that greater writers and more authentic artists could follow.
One cannot separate Dinezon’s work from his personality. Dinezon, the person, certainly concealed and eclipsed Dinezon the writer. And with his death, a person and personality who cannot be replaced was taken from us, and we will long feel his absence.
