Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 15.002
May 16 , 2005
1) ikh vil nisht Keyn ayzerne keytn (Zulema Seligsohn)
2) ikh vil nisht Keyn ayzerne keytn (Lucas Braun)
3) Land measurement (Edward L. Keenan)
4) pishn boyml (Dina Levias)
5) di yidishe shikse (Bob Rothstein)
6) prezhenitse (Bob Rothstein)
1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 15, 2005
Subject: ikh vil nisht Keyn ayzerne keytn
I do not believe Hershl Hartman (Mendele 15.001) is correct on this.
Servitude and slavery are both closely alluded to in this poem, and there
is no reason why the poet should not write that "Slavery" even to God
himself is not acceptable to him, the speaker in the poem. And a speaker
in a poem is never totally identical to the poet. We cannot read what is
not there.
Zulema Seligsohn
2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 15, 2005
Subject: Re: ikh vil nisht Keyn ayzerne keytn
Hershl Hartman responds in Vol. 15.001 to my question in Vol. 14.053 re
the fourth line of Baruch Charney Vladek's song "ikh vil nit keyn
ayzerne keytn", given in Vol. 14.049 by Daniel Lang and quickly
translated by Elye Palevski in Vol. 14.051.
What I wanted to know is, whether my suggested translation was
gramatically correct:
Di knekhtshaft is mies un biter
Zi meg zayn di gothayt aleyn
Palevski takes it, that "di knekhtshaft" is "di Gothayt". Gramatically
correct, but I never heard of the concept of slavery as a deity.
Slavery to a deity,is, depite what Hershl Hartman thinks, quite common.
However, if that was meant one would, I think, expect a dative case:
"zi meg zayn der gothayt aleyn".
Hershl Hartman states that the correct translation of "knekhtshaft" is
"slavery" and not "servitude", as translated by Elye Palevski.
Knekhtshaft is given by Weinreich as slavery, bondage, servitude.
Though the translation of "knekht" is slave, bondage or servitude are
correct translations for "knekhtshaft".
Hershl Hartman further asks the question "whether translations into
English of rhymed, rhythmic poetry from other languages is allowed "the
Freedom" to ignore the poetic genius of the authors for the convenience
of the renderers"."
Since Elye Palevski's translation was obviously not meant as a
definitive translation I take it that the question is one in general,
deserving a general answer: It depends. Rhymed and metric translations
of Homer are mostly quite unreadable, while prose translations are more
accessible to the reader. One would not expect Shakespeare's sonnets to
be translated without rhyme or metre.
Lucas Bruyn
3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 15, 2005
Subject: Re: Land Measurement
Ruth Rischall asks (Mendele 15.001) about "diesyatin (daled, yod, eyin,
samech, yod, tet, yod, nun)." A desiatina (NB singular ending -a; genitive
plural after "10" would have no final vowel) is usually taken as 2.7 acres,
but there were several kinds of desiatina, of varying dimensions.
Edward L. Keenan
[Mendele received more than a dozen similar posts on this thread and thanks
everyone who wrote.]
4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 15, 2005
Subject: Re: pishn boyml
I wonder whether the confusion between "beymel" i.e. small tree, and
"boymel" i.e. oil, is not spurious after all, as the latter word seems,
etymologically, to stem from the German "Baum Oel", referring to oil (of
plant origin) as opposed to animal fat. Just an idea.
Dina Levias
5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 15, 2005
Subject: Re: di yidishe shikse
In 14.045 Lillian Siegfried asked about "di yidishe shikse," and in
14.047 Goldie Sigal provided a link to a photograph of sheet music for
"dos lid fun der yesoyme" as sung by "nyuyorks radiolibling di yidishe
shikse," Vera Rozanko. I had the pleasure of getting to know Vera
Rozanko-Rosenberg in the 1970s in New York - she lived in Brighton
Beach, Brooklyn - when she was in her eighties (she was born in 1893 in
Ukraine). She told me that she had spent part of her childhood in a
Ukrainian village, to which she had been sent by her father (after her
mother died, if I remember correctly). She didn't even know, she said,
that she was Jewish until her father came to bring her home after
several years in the village. One result of living in the village was an
extensive repertoire of Ukrainian and Russian songs, to which she later
added Yiddish songs. According to the _leksikon fun der nayer yidisher
literatur_, which gives her real name as Shifre Viner, she emigrated to
Canada in 1914 and came to New York in 1920. She appeared in concerts,
in the Yiddish theater, on the radio, made records and also published
poetry and stories in the Yiddish press in Toronto, Winnipeg and New
York. She appeared in plays written by her husband, the playwright and
actor Israel Rosenberg, and also collaborated with him on songs such as
"Dos lid fun der yesoyme." I believe that they also owned a theater in
New York.
The title "di yidishe shikse" came from the fact that she often
appeared in Ukrainian folk costume and performed Ukrainian and Russian
songs. Last year her daughter, Betty Perlov, who herself acted in the
Yiddish theater at one time and who now occasionally provides English
translations for the "yidish-vinkl" in the English _Forward_, donated
to YIVO Vera Rozanko's music collection as well as materials about
Israel Rosenberg.
Bob Rothstein
6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: May 15, 2005
Subject: Etymology of _prezhenitse_
Since the moderator pointed out that the original question about the
etymology of _prezhenitse_ had not been answered, permit me to share the
results of some digging in Slavic etymological and other dictionaries.
The various Slavic terms that have been cited in earlier postings are
generally generic terms for eggs that have been fried - whether in the form
of omelets, scrambled eggs or simply fried eggs (sunnyside up or "over").
The root _priazh-_ (originally _prag-/prazh-_) means 'to fry, toast or dry
roast' (nuts, for example). Southern and western Russian dialects, for
example, have the verb _priazhit'_, meaning 'fry in oil'; the Russian
sectarian priest Avvakum used the verb in his 17th-century diary to refer
to the tormenting of sinners in hell. Ukrainian _priazhyty_ or _priahty_
can mean 'fry' or 'torture by fire.' The term that is closest to the
Yiddish word is Slovak _prazhenitsa_ (spelled "prazenica" with a v-like
diacritic ["hachek"] on the "z"). As far as I can tell, the only noun
cognate in Serbian or Croatian is _przhenitsa_ (spelled "przenica" with the
same "hachek" on the "z"), which means 'French toast.'.
Max Vasmer, in his _Russisches etymologisches Woerterbuch_ suggests a
connection with Czech _prahnout_ 'dry up, dry out', with Polish _pragnac_
(reverse cedilla under the "a" and acute accent on the "c") meaning
'desire; be thirsty" and more distant connections for the Slavic root with
Lithuanian, Latvian, Avestan and Sanskrit words with such meanings as 'dry
up'; 'crack'; 'burst out' and even with Greek _asparagos_ 'shoot of a
plant; asparagus' and the name of the Czech capital (_Praha_ in Czech) and
the section of Warsaw called _Praga_ (both, he suggests, from the sense of
a space cleared of trees and their roots, perhaps in part by burning).
Bob Rothstein
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End of Mendele Vol. 15.002
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