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8 December 1978
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10 min.
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The
storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer
of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or
political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious
literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and
the escape that true art always grants. Nevertheless, it is also true that the
serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of his
generation. He cannot but see that the power of religion, especially belief in
revelation, is weaker today than it was in any other epoch in human history. More
and more children grow up without faith in God, without belief in reward and punishment,
in the immortality of the soul and even in the validity of ethics. The genuine
writer cannot ignore the fact that the family is losing its spiritual foundation.
All the dismal prophecies of Oswald Spengler have become realities since the Second
World War. No technological achievements can mitigate the disappointment of modern
man, his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution
and terror. Not only has our generation lost faith in Providence but also in man
himself, in his institutions and often in those who are nearest to him.
In their despair a number of those who no longer have confidence in the
leadership of our society look up to the writer, the master of words. They hope
against hope that the man of talent and sensitivity can perhaps rescue civilization.
Maybe there is a spark of the prophet in the artist after all.
As
the son of a people who received the worst blows that human madness can inflict,
I must brood about the forthcoming dangers. I have many times resigned myself
to never finding a true way out. But a new hope always emerges telling me that
it is not yet too late for all of us to take stock and make a decision. I was
brought up to believe in free will. Although I came to doubt all revelation, I
can never accept the idea that the Universe is a physical or chemical accident,
a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the
clichés and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths
which I think all of us might accept some day. There must be a way for man to
attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant
him, and still serve God - a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose
vocabulary is the Cosmos.
I am not ashamed to admit that I belong
to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and
new perspectives - philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social. In the
history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between
the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.
Some of my cronies in the cafeteria near the Jewish Daily Forward in New
York call me a pessimist and a decadent, but there is always a background of faith
behind resignation. I found comfort in such pessimists and decadents as Baudelaire,
Verlaine, Edgar Allan Poe, and Strindberg. My interest in psychic research made
me find solace in such mystics as your Swedenborg and in our own Rabbi Nachman
Bratzlaver, as well as in a great poet of my time, my friend Aaron Zeitlin who
died a few years ago and left a literary inheritance of high quality, most of
it in Yiddish.
The pessimism of the creative person is not decadence
but a mighty passion for the redemption of man. While the poet entertains he continues
to search for eternal truths, for the essence of being. In his own fashion he
tries to solve the riddle of time and change, to find an answer to suffering,
to reveal love in the very abyss of cruelty and injustice. Strange as these words
may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse
and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet - whom Plato
banned from his Republic - may rise up to save us all.
The high honor
bestowed upon me by the Swedish Academy is also a recognition of the Yiddish language
- a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by any
government, a language which possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military
exercises, war tactics; a language that was despised by both gentiles and emancipated
Jews. The truth is that what the great religions preached, the Yiddish-speaking
people of the ghettos practiced day in and day out. They were the people of The
Book in the truest sense of the word. They knew of no greater joy than the study
of man and human relations, which they called Torah, Talmud, Mussar, Cabala. The
ghetto was not only a place of refuge for a persecuted minority but a great experiment
in peace, in self-discipline and in humanism. As such it still exists and refuses
to give up in spite of all the brutality that surrounds it. I was brought up among
those people. My father's home on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw was a study house,
a court of justice, a house of prayer, of storytelling, as well as a place for
weddings and Chassidic banquets. As a child I had heard from my older brother
and master, I. J. Singer, who later wrote The Brothers Ashkenazi, all the
arguments that the rationalists from Spinoza to Max Nordau brought out against
religion. I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in
God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in
many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in
the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism
I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking,
their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing
but misery and humiliation. To me the Yiddish language and the conduct of those
who spoke it are identical. One can find in the Yiddish tongue and in the Yiddish
spirit expressions of pious joy, lust for life, longing for the Messiah, patience
and deep appreciation of human individuality. There is a quiet humor in Yiddish
and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter
of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted.
It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself
amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation
is still at the very beginning.
There are some who call Yiddish a
dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived
in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly
a dead language for centuries but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of
mysticism of sublime value. It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature
are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature. Yiddish has not yet said
its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of
the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabalists
- rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative
way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened
and hopeful Humanity.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1993
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