Mendele Moich Sforim

Mendele Moïkher Sforim (Yiddish: מענדעלעמוכרספֿרים "Mendele the itinerant salesman of livres" , in Hebrew, Mendele Mokher Sefarim ) is the Pseudonyme of Cholem Yakov Abramovich , an author Juif and one of the founders of the modern literature in Hebrew Yiddish and . It was born the January 2nd 1836 and is deceased the December 8th 1917.

Youth

Mendele was born in a family poor from Kopyl close to Minsk then in Russia (currently capital of the Bielorussia) and lost his/her father, Chaim Moyshe Broyde, little time after its Bar Mitsva. He studies in a Yechiva with Slutsk and Vilnius until the old one 17 years; during this period, it is internal of day with the system of the Teg-Essen (eating each day in a different house), devouring the remainders, and often famished.

After, Mendele travels enormously to Bielorussia, Ukraine and Lithuania in company of a coarse beggar of the name of Avreml Khromoy (of Russian: " Avreml the boiteux" ; Avreml will become thereafter a source of inspiration for the main character of Fishke der Krumer , Fishke the lame ).

In 1854, Mendele settles with Kamianets-Podilskyi, where it become acquainted with the writer and poet Avrom Ber Gotlober, which helps it to learn the culture profane, the Philosophie, the Littérature, the Histoire, the Russian and other languages.

The first works

The first article of Mendele, " Letter on the éducation" , appears in 1857 in the first Journal in Hebrew, Hamagid ; its mentor, Gotlober had subjected the article of Mendele to the newspaper without informing Mendele as a preliminary of it. With Berditchev in Ukraine, where he saw 1858 with 1869, he starts to publish Hebrew novels as well as in Yiddish. Having offended the local authorities with its Satire, it leaves Berdichev to teach like Rabbin at the rabbinical school of Jytomyr, subsidized by the government and relatively liberal from the theological point of view. It remains in this town of 1869 with 1881, then is established with Odessa or it becomes responsible for a traditional school (Talmud Torah). He will live in Odessa of 1881 until his death in 1917.

Grandfather of the literature Yiddish

Mendele writes initially in Hebrew, inventing many words in this language, but thereafter it passes to the Yiddish in order to increase its audience. Like Cholem Aleichem, it uses a pseudonym, thinking that the use of the vernacular language of the Ghetto S, the Yiddish, is not adapted to serious literary work; an idea that it will make much to dissipate. Its writings strongly carry the mark of the Haskala. He is regarded by much as the " grandfather of the literature yiddish" ; its Hebrew style as well as in Yiddish largely influenced several generations of writers.

Although the history of journalism in Yiddish is a little older than that in Hebrew, the Kol Mevasser , than it supports since the beginning and where it publishes his first history in Yiddish, " Back Kleine Menshele" (" Small the homme") in 1863, is generally regarded as the first stable newspaper and most important in Yiddish.

Ideology and last works

Sol Liptzin writes that in its first accounts in Yiddish, Mendele " wanted to be useful to its people rather than to gain bay-trees littéraires". 1972,42

The account " Small the homme" and the dramatic part Die Takse (" The taxe") of 1869, condemn both corruption concerning the religious taxes (and more specifically the tax on the meat cachère) which are diverted for the benefit of the leaders of the community rather than to be distibuées with the poor. This continuous satirical tendency in Die Klatshe ( the nag , 1873) which tells the history of a prince, whom one can identify with the Jewish people, which bewitched and transformed into beast of burden, keeps its moral superiority in spite of its sufferings.

Its later works become more human and less satirists: first of all with Fishke (written in 1868 - 1888) then thereafter with not finished work Masoes Beniamin Hashlishi ( peregrinations of Benjamin III , 1878), a kind of Don Quichotte Jewish.

As with Fishke , Mendele works and works again during several decades with its long novel Dos Vinshfingeril ( the ring of the desire , 1889); at least two versions precede the final version. It is the history of a maskil , i.e. of a follower of the Haskalah , like Mendele itself, which flees of a poor city, survives misérablement to obtain a laic education, but whose dreams of universal fraternity will change, because of the Pogrom S of 1880, in dream of Jewish nationalism.

Its last major work is its Autobiographie, Shlome Reb Chaims , finished little time before its death.

French books

Voyages of Benjamin III: Editor: Circé (June 19th, 1998); Collection: Circe Pocket; ISBN-10: 2842420497; ISBN-13: 978-2842420499
Fishke the Lame one: Editor: The Stag (April 3rd, 1996); ISBN: 9782204053099

References

(in) : Jewish Encyclopedia: Abramowitsch, Solomon (Shalom) Jacob
(in) : Liptzin, Ground, a history of the literature Yiddish , Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6, especially 40-45.

External bonds

(in) : '' Mendele '', a bulletin mainly in English concerning the language and the culture Yiddish.

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