Mendele Mocher Sforim (“Mendele the Bookseller”) was the pen name of Shalom Jacob Abramovitch, who is commonly regarded as the father of modem Yiddish literature. How recent that literature is may be gathered from the fact that Mendele was born only one hundred and ten years ago (about 1836). His birthplace was Koplyn, in Lithuania; his father was a rabbi and a pillar of the local community, and Mendele was given a good education that included Hebrew grammar. A precocious student, he attended various yeshivas until he was sixteen, when he left school to join a band of beggars and go wandering about the Pale.
After a time he escaped from the beggars and took refuge in the town of Kamenets Podolsk, where he met a well-known Hebrew and Yiddish poet, Abraham Baer Gottlober, who took an interest in him and brought him in contact with the Haskalah movement.
He began to write in 1857 with an essay in Hebrew on education. Shortly afterwards he moved to Berdichev, where he remained eleven years, working hard at his writing, but in Hebrew alone. In 1864, however, he changed to Yiddish, and it is from this time on that his fame as a writer dates. A series of satirical novels and tales poured from his pen that changed Yiddish into a medium of world literature and opened up perspectives for its artistic exploitation which contemporary writers are still pursuing. In 1886 Mendele returned to Hebrew, this time more successfully, and here, too, he laid the foundation of a modem literature. After the pogroms of 1905 he traveled in Western Europe for the first time. He died in Odessa in 1917 at the age of eighty-one.
The excerpt we print below constitutes the introduction to Mendele’s famous masterpiece The Nag (or The Dobbin). It was published in Vilna in 1873 and is a sort of novel that recounts the adventures of an old mare harassed by her acquaintances and their ideas. The translation below was made from the Yiddish by Moshe Spiegel.—Ed.
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This is Mendele the Book-Peddler speaking.
Glory be to the Creator for that, after having created all this enormous Universe, He did thereafter take counsel with the host of heavenly Angels and, at the very last, did make a universe-in-little—by which you may understand Man, who is justly styled olam katan [a microcosm], inasmuch as man, if you do but look closely at him, combines in himself all species of creatures and creations. You will find in him all possible wild beasts, as well as different breeds of cattle. You will find in him the lizard, the leech, the Spanish fly, the Prussian cockroach, and on top of that, a devil and a werewolf, a clown, a Jew-baiter, and other uncanny foes of man and scourges of God. You will see, as well, among these universes-in-little all sorts of amazing scenes. Here’s a tomcat, for instance, playing with a babymouse; here’s a polecat making its way into a hencoop and twisting the necks of the poor little things; here’s a jocko, mimicking and mocking everybody it comes across; here’s a dog standing up on its hind legs and wagging its tail for anybody who may throw it a crust; here’s a spider, leading a fly astray, enmeshing it, strangling it, and sucking all the juices out of it; here are midges, overtaking a passer-by and humming all sorts of secrets in his ears; here are thousands of things no less amazing.
However, that’s not at all what I’m leading up to.
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Glory to the Holy Name (I have said) Who contemplates in silence all that is going on in this universe-in-little and still doth not give it the quietus, and for long puts off his wrath, and tolerates transgressions, and evinces not a little mercifulness toward man the imperfect. Properly speaking, I was about to tell you, at this point, of a certain great favor bestowed upon me right after He had, at first, chastised me just a little.
My little nag, kind masters of mine, is no more. My faithful horse, who passed all the days of her life in righteous toil, who served me faithfully and truly, who knew no other books save ours, who could have given pointers in topography to the natives of all the tiny hamlets and cross-road settlements, who was a remarkable connoisseur as to pothouses and little wayside inns, who had, in my company, criss-crossed almost all the pales of Israel, who was personally known to almost all of our Orthodox communities—this horse departed her life one fine day on Lag Beomer, in the town of Glupsk. It is painful to give the reason; poverty, however, is no disgrace; the poor little thing pegged out simply from starvation. Her daily fodder consisted of chopped straw, and only on rare occasions would there fall to her lot a few dry bread-crusts that I bought from beggars who wandered about with sacks over their shoulders. Ah, woe to the horse that falls into the hands of a Jewish bookseller! A wanderer, it wanders without end and labors in all probability more than its mates who draw wares more choice than ours; yet it is supposed to eat practically nothing. A Jewish bookman lives all his life on practically the same footing and, one may say, he himself, with his wife and children, dies from hunger ten times a day. . . .
However, that’s not at all what I’m leading up to.
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The Lord (I have said) hath sent me a visitation: I was left without a horse, had nothing to buy another with, and yet right then I had to get to the fairs in time. In short, I was up against it.
And so, there I was, sitting all by myself in the House of Prayer, in low spirits, when suddenly a friend of mine walked in, headed straight for me, and asked:
“Reb Mendele, would you like to buy a nag, maybe?”
“I’d buy it with pleasure,” I answered with a sigh, “but where would I get the money?”
“Bah!” said he. “That’s no trouble at all. You won’t have to pay a copper right now. It’s quite possible they’ll lend you a little something besides—never fear, they know you’re an honest man.”
“In that case,” I broke in on him, “I’m very willing to buy your nag, and that right now, without any further beating around the bush. Well, let’s go, if you please—we’ll have a look at what you’re selling.”
“Why, there’s no need of putting yourself out. I have the nag right here, with me—”
“What do you mean, you have it here, with you?” I voiced my astonishment.
“Why, right here—under my coat,” my friend smiled.
“Are you laughing at me, or what?” I asked in vexation. “Look for someone else to grin at—your little jokes don’t entertain me at all right now.”
“God forbid! I’m not joking at all,” said the other, and took out from under his coat a whole heap of papers. “You see, Reb Mendele, all this belongs to a certain gentleman, a crony of mine—you’ll find his name right on the things which he made up. And, you understand, it is precisely one of his things which bears the name of The Nag. The man who made it up is, at the present time—and may this never be said of you!—he is—well, how am I to put it to you? There’s nobody home with him, as they say; but nonetheless, we who are his good friends would very much wish to see his stories in print, all right and proper. Whom else were we to turn to in this matter save to you, Reb Mendele, who enjoy so deserved a celebrity in our region? We’d ask you to look through these notebooks quite thoroughly and put them in order; we rely upon you in this respect; you might, however, print The Nag first of all. We’ll talk over the terms later; I can assure you you won’t be out anything. If you need some trifling sum right now, why, we won’t hold back over a small amount. Well, now, do you want to do it. Reb Mendele?”
“Do I? What a question, really! I do want to, with all my heart,” I answered, and almost launched into a dance, so overjoyed was I.
Having attended to my trifling affairs, I tackled The Nag with full zeal; I looked it over, currycombed it, whipped it together, divided it into chapters and gave each chapter a tide of its own, in keeping with its content; in short, I did such work over it as, all by itself, has enabled certain others to put their names on the wrappers of books which weren’t theirs, and thus most safely pass for honest-to-goodness authors. In a word, I spared no labor and did my work properly.
And now, gentlemen, just a word or two concerning The Nag.
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The Nag is written in a high-flown manner, after the fashion in which the ancients wrote. Each man will understand it in his own way and in keeping with his common sense. For honest folks who don’t go grabbing at the stars in the sky, it will be simply a fairy tale, or it’s just the story itself that will please them; as for those who fly higher, they, like as not, may find in it a nod at us sinners as well. If you take me, now—well, I with my puny powers have discovered in it all our Jewish little souls and have grasped the secret of their existence in this world. I’m ready to wager that, in turning the pages of this book, many of us, gentlemen—each according to his degree—will exclaim vehemently: “Ouch! Why, this is a parable about our Reb Yossi”; while another will exclaim: “Ouch! Why, this is aimed at our Nusen Reb Heikes”—or “Zalman Yukele Reb Moteles,” or “Hershke Reb Abeles,” while a third will say: “Ouch, ouch! He has discovered the secret of our poor-box collections, of our benevolent city fathers and all our lovely ways”—and so on and so on.
That’s the sort of problem I turned with to the rabbinical judiciary of the town of Glupsk and all the big shots of the grand company thereabouts. “Since, at the time I put out The Tax, you know, I promised the public a second part of the said book, and had added no saving reservation about a promise not being a vow—which meant that my word was all by itself as sacred as a vow—therefore, my dear sirs, what’s the proper, lawful thing to do now?” I asked them. “I am now publishing this same Nag—may I consider that I have fulfilled my promise concerning the second part of The Tax?”
Well, they certainly pondered, and then pondered some more; they scratched and scratched behind their ears and, at last, came to a decision:
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“Yes, Reb Mendele, since we have here nosed out a whiff of The Tax, we do hereby release you from your vow. Let The Nag be considered the equivalent of your having kept your word, as it were, and as if you had turned out the second part of The Tax, with all the things appertaining thereto—things aren’t so bad, really, and you can quite fully hit every taste therewith.”
How many thanks, then, ought I to render to the All Highest! Had I acquired The Nag just so, without any deposit toward the purchase of a horse, it would have been well; had I acquired it with a small deposit, but had it not given off a whiff of The Tax, and the rabbinical judiciary had not absolved me of my vow, yet at the same time had not scratched themselves behind their ears—that, too, would have been well; and even if they had scratched themselves, yet I would not have grasped what their reason was—even then it would have been well.
And therefore I ought to render thanks to the All Highest, over and over again, even for that The Nag had a whiff of The Tax about it, and for that the rabbinical judiciary had released me from my vow, and for that they scratched themselves horribly is they gave me absolution, and for that I know why they scratched themselves and understand that The Nag, one must suppose, is worth scratching oneself behind the ear about . . . by way of redemption for all our transgressions.
That, gentlemen, is precisely what I wanted to say right out in my brief foreword. Whatever I have in mind is on the tip of my tongue.
Humbly,
Mendele the Book-Peddler
Written the first day of the month of Elul, in a cart loaded with books, on the road between the town of Glupsk [Sillytown] and Teterevka [Grouseville].
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