New(s) Poems: Y. L. Teller's Lider fun der Tsayt(ung)

Y. L. Teller's poetry underwent radical transformations in the 1930s, and its shifting forms were representative of the age. Influenced by the introspectivists, Teller excluded proper names, identifiable places, and definite time from his early poems. By the end of the decade, however, he had developed a style that drew heavily from news reports. The relationship between poetry and journalism became a matter of dispute in American Yiddish literature during these years, when Arn Glants-Leyeles and Yankev Glatshteyn were among the leading poets who dirtied their hands with news-print.

‫.ן‬ r tnorgn zhurna ~ wrotc cullural and polilical essa)'s for D llskus" until his virulenl poem "Good Night, \Vorld" \\'as reprinted in this nC\\'spaper on " M<lY 8, 1938, and he subsequenlly introduced the Sunday column "Prost un poshet" under his . actual name 269 -The dedication does not convey empty praise. Leyeles's Fobius Lind. pub lished in 1937, attracted and heartened Teller; its combination ofa personal tone \vith political contents found resonant echoes in Teller's Lider filn der . 1 ') 1S0 ne month after Teller inscribed his book of new poems to Leyeles, the ‫ס‬ older poet reviewed it favorably in Der 1og. Leyeles wrote: "Y. L. Teller is a poet, a modern poet, and at the same time-a journalist .... It sometimes happens that journalistic elements steal their way into poetry-which is no misfortune . ... None of this was understood just 20-25 years ago. The Leyeles's review alludes to changing ‫ניי.‬ poets themselves were very naive literary theories and practices during the previous decade: the journalistic context ofTeller's Lider !un der 1sayl had been anticipated by the writings of Glatshteyn, Leyeles, and others. For example, based on his trip to Poland in ) 1938 ( 1934, Glatshteyn produced the travel narratives Ven Yosh iz ge!oren 1111 ! en (1940). Even more striking is his novel E1//i ‫/וו‬ and Ven Yash iz geku . Kor! (1940), which deals with the fate of two children in Nazi Vienna Because Glatshteyn had no direct experience ofVienna in the late 1930s, his descriptions necessarily rely on newspaper reports. Specifically, Glat shteyn's novel En/i! un Kor! probably borrowed details from a series of By ~ ed from Nazi Vienna. In 1930, at the age of eighteen, Teller published his first book of poems lbo!n. and also began his career as a journalist. Teller's second collection ‫ו‬ Si1 -of poems, Minia11"". appeared in 1934, ""hile he \vas ""riting frequent arti , cles for Der n/orgn zhurna! on topics as diverse as American Nazi groups Yeshiva College, and sex crimes in New York. Until this point Teller's poetry still showed no trace of his \vorldly employment. The moment of truth for his poetic and journalistic careers came in April 1937, \vhen he set 1937 sail for Europe. During \'isits to Poland, Germany, and Austria in May and January-February 1939, he witnessed international crises and began to . integrate these experiences into his verse The decisive period in Teller's literary activity stretched from 1937 until . 1940 s, Lider !un der 1S0)'1, in ‫ן‬ he published his third and last book of poen These ne\v poems \\'ere simultaneously news poems: they were fil11 der . g-from the ne\\'spaper ‫ו‬ 1soyl-of the time or age, and also !U11 der 1S0)'(/l1 While Teller did not print his poems in ne\\'spapers, instead sending them to . and other journals, he dre\v inspiration from his \\'ork as a journalist ‫ו‬ zikl ‫ו‬ J1 s about world events, but allo\\'ed his ‫ו‬ The author never simply v.'rote poen two modes of expression to interact. In any case, Teller was an uncon\'en tional ne\vspaper v.'riter whose diverse stories sometimes resembled fiction more than factual accounts; they often relied on intervie\\'s \vith anonymous sources and \Vere occasionally referred to as "travel scenes" or "impres sions." These narrative intertexts are relevant to the interpretation of . Teller's poems : To A, Leycles-Knowing full \\'ell that Without Fabius Lind our poetic path \\'ould have been gloomier. Teller, Nov. 5, 1940. 2 . his book is in Ihe priv31c collc:clion of Ken Frieden responds to the trial and execution of a "good shoemaker ‫ך‬ Leyeles's poen and a "poor fish-peddler." One part even takes on the persona of the con demned, in dialogue with the warden and executioner. This political direc tion may not have been the height of Leyeles's poetic career, yet-in conjunction v.'ith the work of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern and Yankev Glat shteyn-it apparently encouraged the young Teller in his poetic develop . ment . er's first two books of poems owe profound debts to Glatshteyn ‫ןן‬ Te There are even thematic parallels, as between Teller's "\Vild Song" and 1934 Glatshteyn's "In Smoke."·· The former exemplifies the tone ofTeller's : volume Following a poetic reflection on the futurists' talk of "the function of the pen," Leyeles concludes: Listen, poets, listen: Have no part in these Iires, no share in murder; Just scrub, scour, and re\'eal The true, the pure \vord . 6 , I \\'ill take you wild,like frost And draw forth sweat . esh

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This final plea distills Leyeles's persistent attitude to\vard poetry and politics in the early 1930s. The poetic voice explicitly demands that poems remain unspoiled by politica1 power, and the tit]e "War" a1so names the poet's literary battle. This does not prevent Leye1es from citing, as the epigraph to another poem, "a correspondence from J\10sco\v in an American newspaper." \Vhile the quotation deals favorab1y \vith the Soviet Five-Year Plan (] 928-32), the poetic voice is skeptical: \\'e will drift Through blinding fumes I\nd you will soak me in Likc smoke.  (New York, 1929), pp ‫:ו‬ 10. Y:1nkcv GI 11 . GI~lshteyn's pocm "In ro)'kh" forms part of ln :ikh: A :anllung introspt. 'kti,'t' lidl'r (New York, 1920 ". used as chairs \Ve climb up on ladders \Vith nails between our teeth A nd patch the broken frames. (16)(17)(18) he speakers a1so discuss their anxiety about wounds that may not hea1 so ‫ז‬ readily. One ofthe most vivid stanzas refers to a traumatized gir1 1ike the one : e11er's news report ‫ז‬ described in (30)(31)(32)(33) e11er conve)'s a girl's sense ‫ז‬ , Vith sexual vio1ence the unspoken assumption \ . of being impure and of needing to be cleansed whenever a man 100ks at her -Rather than merely repeating the journalistic 1anguage, the image-of a dis turbed, compulsive reaction-reverses Tel1er's account of a girl \vho refuses to wash after narrowly escaping rape. In another case, Teller's poem por trays a man who is ashamed of his failure to resist the pogrom : "Yankl " akh will never forgive / The cov.'ardice of his oaken [denlbelle] hands ‫ך‬ Steln hese lines stand in a c10se re1ationship to Teller's ne\vspaper ‫ז‬ .) 34-35 ( description of a man who comments ruefully: "1 have hands, 1 have shoulders, 1 have strength-but \vhere was 1 when the gO)Jinl raged? 1 hid indoors . . .. 1, Yankl Oak [dell1b], went into hiding."16 Te11er combines his ey stole everything .... But worst of al1 is that"-and she points to her ‫ן‬ TI " daughter, a girl who is sitting on a crate in the dark room . She is dishevc:led I chased her and tore ‫ו,‬ and stares straight ahead with vacant eyes. "The sJ,ko/si her dress. Suddenly they saw ho\v their friends across the \\'ay \verc: robbing a large \varehouse. So they ran over there and 1eft my daughter. But sincc: Thurs day she \"on't wash herse1f or comb her hair ... . '1 don't \\'ant to wash . For

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-e11er never emplo)'ed a merely factual approach; he a1ways dealt \vith per ‫ז‬ -sonal experiences, attitudes, or reactions. The course of his journalism sud denly turned, however, when his human-interest stories became part of efforts to grasp an overwhelming historical calamity, the intensification of , 38-39 . r jun der /sa)'/ (New York, 1940 Teller's figure of Jud Siiss broadens the analytic session with Freud. from the outset. by mentioning the Wandering Jew. ( 1-7) diverse impressions and interviews by writing a collective monologue that gives voice to the stunned Jewish community of Brisk. His perspeclive \vas no longer that of an individual writer at home in Ne\v York. but had . expanded to include that of distant pogrom victims The most extraordinary of the six sections that compose Teller's Lider aking ‫ן‬ is the cycle of six poems entitled "Psychoanalysis." 8y n  Freud in a position to interpret Jud Suss. The timeless character of this imaginary encounter emerges as Teller's Jud Suss depicts Freud as a medieval miracle-worker: "They say that at night / You mix herbs in boiling water" (45)(46). Here and at the start of the poem, Jud Siiss addresses Freud as the Wandering Je\v, associating psychoanalysis with myths of the Je\v "in Gentile legend" (2). I n his first visit to Freud, then, Jud Suss turns the tables and begins to analyze the professor, figured as a medieval healer. Later identifying Freud with the biblical Joseph, who interpreted Pharaoh's dreams as prophesying famine, the poem asks Freud to play the prophetic role he al\vays refused:  (41)(42)(43)(44)(51)(52)(53)(54) Interpretation is itself an issue in Teller's poems: they invoke Freud as the master of dreams \vho should be able to discover the meaning of cultural phenomena. In the Nazi period, ho\vever. Jud Suss can no longer rest con tent with knowledge of the origins and ancestry of "civilization and its dis er of psychoanalysis to ‫ו‬ contents." This persona poem calls on the fatl explain this moment of crisis, or at least to interpret the violent \vay in which 1," the Wandering Je\v's nephew and Gamzu's grandson, feel compelled to " . respond Through the imagined voice of Jud Siiss Oppenheimer, Teller probes the interrelationships between himself. Freud. and Judaic traditions. This poem is Teller's invocation to the vanquished Freud at the same time that it merges the Viennese Freud with the legend of the \Vandering Jew. A latter version of the poem asserts that "\ve are of one lineage."19 Teller apparently Even apart from this anachronism, Jud Suss sounds like the poetps)'chologist Teller \vhen he comments: "The still-unspoken syllable terrifies me, / That which I never yet have guessed" (39-40). Freud's "talking cure" traced mental illnesses to unacknowledged thoughts, wishes, traumas, longings. Thus the poem, analogous to a psychoanalysis process of free association, strives to overcome resistances and facilitate expression of \vhat has been repressed.
Until this point, the mock-psychoanalytic intervie\\' places Sigmund boots of the storm troopers tread upon the streets of Vienna. Austrian utter ‫ח‬ women already walk arm-in-arm with the conquerors. Swastikas above all the buildings." The remainder of the article recalls the history and current state of the Jewish community in Vienna. Teller describes Chassidic . courts alongside anti-Semitism and poverty under the Schuschnigg regime Several aspects of Teller's portrait are also present in a contemporary poem he wrote, "Hitler's March into Vienna." His ne'vspaper article refers to : Vienna's traditional role as leading city of Galicia. Hungary, and Bohemia Jewish students. bookkeepers with tSI'jkers aJ der noz and ,vith leather " ". purses under their arms, dreamed of studying at the University of Vienna / Similarly, the poem calls Vienna the "dream-city of Galician students , The news account describes the second district

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Jerusalem ko)'sl account: "The streets and alleys in this area are medieval, and wander up and downhill, as if they were searching for the Wailing Wall."24 The paral lels attest to the close interaction between the 'author's poetic and prose \vrit ing. Yet it is impossible to determine whether the poem or the news report as written first; it is as true to say that the poem contains journalistic ' ....
• elements as that the news report contains poetic elements. 1 n other .... ·ords -the language of the t\VO juxtaposed texts is continuous rather than diametri . cally opposed To,vard the end of the same article, Teller recalls his visit to Berggasse . 1937 during May J remember a day in the office ofProfessor Sigmund Freud. A small man, with . a stone-gray face, with cJever Jewish eyes and a vc:st buttoned up to his tie of human

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The grc:at psychologist, the great expert on thc: souJ, the seer [choze t is a city whose senses are  The subsequent lines of the poem represent Freud's reactions. He re\'erts to traditional, often pejorative epithets, repeatedly emplo)'ed by Je\\'s in reference to Gentiles. As if to counter the anti-Semitic cliches leveled against the Je\\'s, Freud returns to stereot)'pical Hebrew and Yiddish \\'ords : of separation and scorn Sigmund Freud at the age of eighty-t\\·o Climbs out of the S"'astikas, repeats: Hilman. 0,1. Esau . Goy. e self-analyzed Freud, \vith his "complexes smoked out," rises to the ‫ו‬ Even tl occasion \vith a vigorous response to the Nazi intruders. Teller projects upon Freud a radical turn that is analogous to the ne\v tone of Teller's . poetry Early in 1941, in connection with Teller's third book of poems, Shmuel Niger referred to the change that was occurring in Yiddish letters: "Those who demand relevance from poetry, who want the poet to get involved in politics, and \vho maintain that he must react-at least to major, extra ordinary events of the time-can have no complaints \vith today's Yiddish effective are the poems in the "Psychoanalysis" c)'cle, \\·hich con\'ey Lhe his torical andjournalistic background indirectly. Ephraim Auerbach ackno\\'I eller was occasionally successful in Lider jun der /5a)'I, but he ‫ז‬ edged that he journalistic reality is ‫ז"‬ : objected that journalism rarely benefiLs poems much stronger than journalisLic poeLry, and therefore, it seems to me, poeLry must distance itself from journalism with ten )'ears of fantasy, in order to be able to look into it afterwards with e)'es that sec deeper, and glimpse eternity age recurs in poetic and jour ‫ר‬ in events." JS Sometimes an actual phrase or in eller \\'as most original and successful \\'hen events ga\'e ‫ז‬ nalistic texts, but . rise to highly mediated inspirations eller's Lider jUII der 15ayl demonstrates Lhe benelits and hazards of a ‫ז‬ eller ‫ז‬ , poet's close dependence on historical occurrences. On the one hand was able Lo reestablish the link bet\\'een Jewish literature and history that had been challenged by the introspectivists; on the other hand, his verse \\'3S -sometimes overburdened by the immediacy of its response. 36