{"title":"Chaucer's First Three Tales: Unity in Trinity","authors":"Garth A. McCann","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1973.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1973.0009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1973-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123960225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Much speculation and debate have centered on the new media. Many fear that "television in particular is . . . the agent of moral and aesthetic education, supplying a continuous stream of attitude-forming information under the label of entertainment, replacing the teaching of church and family and school."1 Because of the filmic pervasiveness in our times, the phenomenon of cinema's audience affectiveness and the causes for this unique reaction have intrigued many investigators. Several theories attempt to explain why movies are different from other art forms, but few seem complete, accurate, or empirical enough to deal adequately with the problem in all of its complexities. Professor Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man deals extensively with the power of film and develops several interesting theories concerning it. Primarily, he postulates, film's impact is due to the medium becoming the message itself. It is an extension of our senses, and therein lies its tremendous force. He contends that, as with all new media, two facts need underscoring: that a radical reorganization of "our sense life" occurs,2 and that it comes from the new medium's use of its preceding medium as content (hence the novel, play, and opera become the content of the succeeding cinematic medium).3 The result of this he calls "implosion"; its initial effect is immediacy and a sense of actuality. Employing communication theorists' models, he asserts that movies are essentially "programming, as it were; one can play back the materials of the natural world in a variety of levels and intensities of style."4 This transmission of data always is transformed via the vehicle that transmits it. Hence the movies' power to "store" information (unique like print in its capacities of uniformity and repeatability5) is very great. And from these potentialities come a most twentieth century device—a mirror of the external world, now automated.6 This theory of McLuhan's continues into all aspects of the film's role as shaper "of our own consciousness" in the contemporary world.7 He claims that this "inclusive form of the icon," this programmed "ratio of the senses," this "statement without syntax, the delineation of the inner world by 'gestalt' " is the modem movie.8 And yet a central theory of "why" still seems lacking from McLuhan's assessments. To attack this giant theorist when armed with so few
{"title":"Why Movies Move Us","authors":"R. Bacon","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1972.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1972.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Much speculation and debate have centered on the new media. Many fear that \"television in particular is . . . the agent of moral and aesthetic education, supplying a continuous stream of attitude-forming information under the label of entertainment, replacing the teaching of church and family and school.\"1 Because of the filmic pervasiveness in our times, the phenomenon of cinema's audience affectiveness and the causes for this unique reaction have intrigued many investigators. Several theories attempt to explain why movies are different from other art forms, but few seem complete, accurate, or empirical enough to deal adequately with the problem in all of its complexities. Professor Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man deals extensively with the power of film and develops several interesting theories concerning it. Primarily, he postulates, film's impact is due to the medium becoming the message itself. It is an extension of our senses, and therein lies its tremendous force. He contends that, as with all new media, two facts need underscoring: that a radical reorganization of \"our sense life\" occurs,2 and that it comes from the new medium's use of its preceding medium as content (hence the novel, play, and opera become the content of the succeeding cinematic medium).3 The result of this he calls \"implosion\"; its initial effect is immediacy and a sense of actuality. Employing communication theorists' models, he asserts that movies are essentially \"programming, as it were; one can play back the materials of the natural world in a variety of levels and intensities of style.\"4 This transmission of data always is transformed via the vehicle that transmits it. Hence the movies' power to \"store\" information (unique like print in its capacities of uniformity and repeatability5) is very great. And from these potentialities come a most twentieth century device—a mirror of the external world, now automated.6 This theory of McLuhan's continues into all aspects of the film's role as shaper \"of our own consciousness\" in the contemporary world.7 He claims that this \"inclusive form of the icon,\" this programmed \"ratio of the senses,\" this \"statement without syntax, the delineation of the inner world by 'gestalt' \" is the modem movie.8 And yet a central theory of \"why\" still seems lacking from McLuhan's assessments. To attack this giant theorist when armed with so few","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126614124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In an early autobiographical work, Julien Green recalls that when critics of his first novel, Mont-Cinère, told him that "since I had left love out of this first novel, it was very obvious that I could not treat the subject adequately," he resolved to answer them by writing a love story.1 In the following year, Green published Adrienne Mesurât, which remains, in our opinion, the best of his many novels. Adrienne was indeed in love, as would be most of Green's later heroes and heroines, and the love intrigue was central to the structure of the novel. Yet we can well ask whether she represented a satisfactory answer to the critics, whether her immature and rather solipsistic notion of love (which applies to the majority of the lovers in Green's later novels as well) is an "adequate" treatment of the subject. At the age of seventeen, Ardienne seems to have been locked into an empty life of unchanging routine by her fanatically conventional father and her dessicated, moribund elder sister. The young girl is hardly aware of her own situation and feelings; it is a mystery to her how and why she has fallen desperately in love with a not particularly attractive middle-aged doctor who lives near by. Adrienne has never actually met this neighbor; she fell in love with him one summer afternoon when he happened to pass by in a carriage as she stood in a field by the road. Her father's unwillingness to receive visitors, and his refusal to recognize the severe illness of his elder daughter preclude any social or professional contact between the Mesurât family and Doctor Maurecourt. Adrienne mast content herself with gazing at the doctor's house from the window of her room, a pastime which becomes so obsessive that she nearly forgets the doctor himself. After the departure of her sister for a sanatorium and the death of her tyrannical father, Adrienne is finally free to meet the man she loves; but strangely, she does nothing but avoid possible encounters with him. Growing increasingly unhappy because (she assumes) of her frustrated passion, Adrienne imagines that she would be free and happy if only she could rid herself of her enslaving love. In a desperate move to escape herself and her solitude, Adrienne flees to a neighboring town, where her anxiety and depression grow worse. Before returning home, she sends an anonymous card to Maurecourt, telling him of her love and suffering. In the meantime, Adrienne's somewhat unsavory next door neighbor and meddling confidante summons the doctor to the Mesurât home so that Adrienne will be able to confront him directly. When the doctor arrives, she does not recognize him at first, and then is so disconcerted that she receives him quite curtly. Maurecourt, who seems to have some notions about
{"title":"Julien Green as Novelist of Love","authors":"M. Ignatius","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1972.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1972.0007","url":null,"abstract":"In an early autobiographical work, Julien Green recalls that when critics of his first novel, Mont-Cinère, told him that \"since I had left love out of this first novel, it was very obvious that I could not treat the subject adequately,\" he resolved to answer them by writing a love story.1 In the following year, Green published Adrienne Mesurât, which remains, in our opinion, the best of his many novels. Adrienne was indeed in love, as would be most of Green's later heroes and heroines, and the love intrigue was central to the structure of the novel. Yet we can well ask whether she represented a satisfactory answer to the critics, whether her immature and rather solipsistic notion of love (which applies to the majority of the lovers in Green's later novels as well) is an \"adequate\" treatment of the subject. At the age of seventeen, Ardienne seems to have been locked into an empty life of unchanging routine by her fanatically conventional father and her dessicated, moribund elder sister. The young girl is hardly aware of her own situation and feelings; it is a mystery to her how and why she has fallen desperately in love with a not particularly attractive middle-aged doctor who lives near by. Adrienne has never actually met this neighbor; she fell in love with him one summer afternoon when he happened to pass by in a carriage as she stood in a field by the road. Her father's unwillingness to receive visitors, and his refusal to recognize the severe illness of his elder daughter preclude any social or professional contact between the Mesurât family and Doctor Maurecourt. Adrienne mast content herself with gazing at the doctor's house from the window of her room, a pastime which becomes so obsessive that she nearly forgets the doctor himself. After the departure of her sister for a sanatorium and the death of her tyrannical father, Adrienne is finally free to meet the man she loves; but strangely, she does nothing but avoid possible encounters with him. Growing increasingly unhappy because (she assumes) of her frustrated passion, Adrienne imagines that she would be free and happy if only she could rid herself of her enslaving love. In a desperate move to escape herself and her solitude, Adrienne flees to a neighboring town, where her anxiety and depression grow worse. Before returning home, she sends an anonymous card to Maurecourt, telling him of her love and suffering. In the meantime, Adrienne's somewhat unsavory next door neighbor and meddling confidante summons the doctor to the Mesurât home so that Adrienne will be able to confront him directly. When the doctor arrives, she does not recognize him at first, and then is so disconcerted that she receives him quite curtly. Maurecourt, who seems to have some notions about","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114375927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Two years ago, on a quiet autumn night, I stood in a dark passage-way of the Colosseum and peered through one of the window spaces at the starry sky. The big stars looked intently and radiantly into my eyes, and as I gazed into the delicate, dark-blue firmament, other stars appeared before me and looked at me just as mysteriously and just as eloquently as the first. Behind them, in the depth, there twinkled even more delicate sparkles, and little by little they in tum revealed themselves. Framed by the dark masses of the walls, my eyes saw only a small part of the sky, but I felt that it was boundless and that there was no end to its beauty. With similar sensations I open the poems of F. Tiutchev.1
{"title":"The Metaphors in Tiutchev's Philosophical Poems","authors":"S. Safonov","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1972.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1972.0013","url":null,"abstract":"Two years ago, on a quiet autumn night, I stood in a dark passage-way of the Colosseum and peered through one of the window spaces at the starry sky. The big stars looked intently and radiantly into my eyes, and as I gazed into the delicate, dark-blue firmament, other stars appeared before me and looked at me just as mysteriously and just as eloquently as the first. Behind them, in the depth, there twinkled even more delicate sparkles, and little by little they in tum revealed themselves. Framed by the dark masses of the walls, my eyes saw only a small part of the sky, but I felt that it was boundless and that there was no end to its beauty. With similar sensations I open the poems of F. Tiutchev.1","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123368521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Racine's Racists","authors":"R. Tobin","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1972.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1972.0001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124062259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The yellow fog stanza of eight lines in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (11. 15-22) has been for many an ambiguous if not unmanageable part of the poem since it appeared over fifty years ago. In attempting to relate the passage to the implicit theme of Prufock's weakened faith in civilization and his consequent inaction through timidity, dramatized by Eliot's emphasis on Prufrock's enfeeblement of love, one often feels thwarted by the technique of ellipsis and the thick psychological web of the poem. Noticeable too is the limited help found in critical discussions. A surprising number of the criticisms which offer analyses of the poem do not explicate at all the conspicuous yellow fog passage.' Others imply by their characteristically brief and indecisive treatment of the passage that one had better not dally too long on a deadend venture. According to Grover Smith, for example, Prufrock's observation of the yellow fog is merely a way the man has of diverting himself for a few moments from the prospect of a visit.2 For George Williamson, the passage has more, but negative, importance. He sees the cat-fog image as suggestive of a desire which ends in inertia.3 Williamson's assumption that the outcome of the stanza's richly amorous emotional activity is inertia seems questionable. For inertia is a condition marked by an inherent inactivity, and the flowing motion of the passage, which rises to an energetic caper, calls for recuperation as the normal response. Thus, for some the stanza may end not with inertia, but with a credible fatigue and rest. If one studies "Prufrock" with an eye for detecting negative and positive values, it becomes apparent from a psychological viewpoint that the yellow fog passage, far from being a cul-de-sac or an oversized fragment,4 is the only section of the poem which is organically complete and which ends on a note of positive satisfaction. It appears to contain an apprehensible and useful essence with tenable connections to the entire poem. Prufrock gazes attentively at the evening fog. He seems to have entered into a good mood for the observation, detached from himself and almost objective about what he sees, objective in the sense that none of the timidity and anxiety incipient in his opening sally (11. 1-12) is present here. Subconsciously he associates the cat-fog's provocative behavior with what he most desires: love. The stanza can be read as a very normal, although subconscious and highly symbolic,
{"title":"The Yellow Fog of \"Prufrock\"","authors":"J. Hakáč","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1972.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1972.0010","url":null,"abstract":"The yellow fog stanza of eight lines in 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock\" (11. 15-22) has been for many an ambiguous if not unmanageable part of the poem since it appeared over fifty years ago. In attempting to relate the passage to the implicit theme of Prufock's weakened faith in civilization and his consequent inaction through timidity, dramatized by Eliot's emphasis on Prufrock's enfeeblement of love, one often feels thwarted by the technique of ellipsis and the thick psychological web of the poem. Noticeable too is the limited help found in critical discussions. A surprising number of the criticisms which offer analyses of the poem do not explicate at all the conspicuous yellow fog passage.' Others imply by their characteristically brief and indecisive treatment of the passage that one had better not dally too long on a deadend venture. According to Grover Smith, for example, Prufrock's observation of the yellow fog is merely a way the man has of diverting himself for a few moments from the prospect of a visit.2 For George Williamson, the passage has more, but negative, importance. He sees the cat-fog image as suggestive of a desire which ends in inertia.3 Williamson's assumption that the outcome of the stanza's richly amorous emotional activity is inertia seems questionable. For inertia is a condition marked by an inherent inactivity, and the flowing motion of the passage, which rises to an energetic caper, calls for recuperation as the normal response. Thus, for some the stanza may end not with inertia, but with a credible fatigue and rest. If one studies \"Prufrock\" with an eye for detecting negative and positive values, it becomes apparent from a psychological viewpoint that the yellow fog passage, far from being a cul-de-sac or an oversized fragment,4 is the only section of the poem which is organically complete and which ends on a note of positive satisfaction. It appears to contain an apprehensible and useful essence with tenable connections to the entire poem. Prufrock gazes attentively at the evening fog. He seems to have entered into a good mood for the observation, detached from himself and almost objective about what he sees, objective in the sense that none of the timidity and anxiety incipient in his opening sally (11. 1-12) is present here. Subconsciously he associates the cat-fog's provocative behavior with what he most desires: love. The stanza can be read as a very normal, although subconscious and highly symbolic,","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134297847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Des les premiers instants ou Gustave Flaubert pr6sente les personnages feminins qui constitueront les quatre tentations de Frederic Moreau, il utilise deux procedes esthetiques particuliers, chacun reserve a un couple distinct: le premier de ces couples-Mme Amoux et Louise; le second-Mme Dambreuse et Rosanette. L'analyse de l'effet obtenu grc ou du moins il ne distingua personne dans 'eblouissement que lui envoyerent ses yeux. En meme temps qu'il passait, elle leva la tete; il flechit involontairement les epaules; et, quand il se fut mis plus loin, du meme cote, il la regarda (p. 4).1
{"title":"Aspect structural de L'Education sentimentale","authors":"H. Servin","doi":"10.1353/RMR.1972.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/RMR.1972.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Des les premiers instants ou Gustave Flaubert pr6sente les personnages feminins qui constitueront les quatre tentations de Frederic Moreau, il utilise deux procedes esthetiques particuliers, chacun reserve a un couple distinct: le premier de ces couples-Mme Amoux et Louise; le second-Mme Dambreuse et Rosanette. L'analyse de l'effet obtenu grc ou du moins il ne distingua personne dans 'eblouissement que lui envoyerent ses yeux. En meme temps qu'il passait, elle leva la tete; il flechit involontairement les epaules; et, quand il se fut mis plus loin, du meme cote, il la regarda (p. 4).1","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131456282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Roland at Roncevaux: The Poet's Visual Art","authors":"N. Lacy","doi":"10.2307/1346562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1346562","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"97 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115705459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards a Third Reading of \"Voyage au bout de la nuit\"","authors":"P. Alméras","doi":"10.2307/1346565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1346565","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":344945,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1972-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123390099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During this past decade a literary figure from the somewhat isolated and obscure Yiddish tradition has moved commandingly into the general cognizance of contemporary Western thought and letters. Isaac Bashevis Singer, an Eastern European emigrant to America who has been writing fiction prolifically for over half a century, is now translated, published, reviewed, and contemplated in many countries and languages. Commentary, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, and Saturday Review have offered his work in this country; Irving Howe, Susan Sontag, Kenneth Rexroth, David Boroff, and Richard Ellman have studied it. Although the American public has brushed against Yiddish literature in Sholem Aleykhem's Tevye of "Fiddler on the Roof," the folk characters of the Yiddish theater in New York, and such novels as The Nazarene and Moses of Sholem Ash, it is now through Singer's work that we have come to reckon with this rich background. The emergence of this vigorous and original artist from the Yiddish source is something of a paradox, because that thousand-year-old tradition is moribund. It is small exaggeration to say that when a speaker of Yiddish dies today, there is no one to replace him. A century ago there were about ten million Yiddish speakers in Russia, Central Europe, the New World, and elsewhere, almost sixty percent of the earth's Jews. But since their vast annihilation in the Second World War, this idiom, regarded by some linguists as one of humanity's richest because of the accretion of so many other tongues, is vanishing. About half of the Yiddish speakers died under the Nazis and the remaining ones are to be found in North and South America, Russia, and Israel, practically all bilingual. Yiddish, from judisch or Jewish, is a medieval vernacular of the Ashkenazim in Europe with a grammatical structure and predominant vocabulary from Middle High German of the middle Rhine region. Written in Hebrew characters, the language includes many Hebrew words that predate the development of Yiddish. These range from such familiär terms as beheyme for "animal" and efsher, "perhaps," to the sacred phrases of prayer, now augmented by some neologisms from Israel. The literary tradition was largely oral until the nineteenth century, but a manuscript of Yiddish epic poems written in 1382 has been found in Egypt and religious books were published in Amsterdam and Warsaw in the seventeenth century. Although the first Yiddish daily was Der yidisher telegraf of 1877-78 in Bucharest, Rumania, the Yudishe Gazetn appeared soon after on June 8, 1881, in New York City. It is there that the Yiddish literary tradition has its center today. The remaining community is largely a literate, informed, fiction-reading audience, supporting three daily papers: Forverts, Tog-Morgn-Zhurnal, and Morgn-
在过去的十年里，一位来自有点孤立和晦涩的意第绪语传统的文学人物，已经引人注目地进入了当代西方思想和文学的普遍认知。艾萨克·巴什维斯·辛格是一位移居美国的东欧人，半个多世纪以来，他一直在大量创作小说。如今，他的作品被翻译、出版、评论，并被翻译成许多国家和语言。《评论》、《纽约客》、《时尚先生》、《大西洋月刊》、《新共和》和《星期六评论》都刊登了他在美国的作品;欧文·豪、苏珊·桑塔格、肯尼斯·雷克斯罗斯、大卫·博洛夫和理查德·埃尔曼都研究过这个问题。尽管美国公众在《屋顶上的提琴手》(Sholem Aleykhem)的《Tevye》、纽约意第绪语剧院的民间人物，以及《拿撒勒人》(the Nazarene)和《Sholem Ash的摩西》(Moses of Sholem Ash)等小说中对意第绪语文学略为了解，但现在通过辛格的作品，我们才开始认识到这一丰富的背景。这位来自意第绪语的充满活力和独创性的艺术家的出现是一个悖论，因为这个千年的传统正在消亡。可以毫不夸张地说，当一个说意第绪语的人今天去世时，没有人可以代替他。一个世纪以前，在俄罗斯、中欧、新大陆和其他地方大约有1000万讲意第绪语的人，几乎占地球犹太人的60%。但是，自从他们在第二次世界大战中大规模灭绝以来，这个被一些语言学家认为是人类最丰富的语言之一，因为许多其他语言的增加，正在消失。大约一半说意第绪语的人在纳粹统治下死亡，剩下的人分布在北美和南美、俄罗斯和以色列，几乎都是双语的。意第绪语，源自judisch或Jewish，是欧洲阿什肯纳兹犹太人的一种中世纪方言，其语法结构和主要词汇来自莱茵河中部地区的中古高地德语。希伯来语是用希伯来文字书写的，它包含了许多早于意第绪语发展的希伯来词。这些词汇的范围从familiär中代表“动物”的beheyme和代表“也许”的efsher，到神圣的祈祷词，现在又增加了一些来自以色列的新词。直到19世纪，文学传统主要是口头的，但在埃及发现了1382年写的意第绪语史诗手稿，17世纪在阿姆斯特丹和华沙出版了宗教书籍。尽管第一份意第绪语日报是1877年至1878年在罗马尼亚布加勒斯特出版的《Der yidisher telegraf》，但不久之后，《Yudishe Gazetn》于1881年6月8日在纽约市出版。正是在那里，意第绪文学传统成为了今天的中心。剩下的社区主要是有文化的、见多识广的、看小说的读者，支持三份日报:forforts、Tog-Morgn-Zhurnal和Morgn-
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