Sholem Aleichem: Monologues of Mastery

Abstract

Sholem Aleichem's give voice to a diverse cast of characters. Sholem Aleichem is best known as an author who speaks for common people, or folkstipn, because his digressive, free-associative style is most effective when attributed to untrained narrators.' vastly different situation arises, however, when relatively educated monologists narrate and manipulate events; I refer to of this manipulative kind as monologues of These preclude an affectionate or even a neutral response, and raise questions concerning moral content of satire. In two particular cases, when Sholem Aleichem represents voices of bourgeois characters, he stages an unusual drama of social criticism. Previous writers have touched on social and political implications of Sholem Aleichem's work. In a seminal essay entitled, Social Roots of Sholem Aleichem's Humor, for example, Meir Viner disputes claim that Sholem Aleichem did not criticize Jewish plutocracy of Kiev.2 Viner refers to first period of Sholem Aleichem's creativity, from 1890 to 1895, arguing that he did stray from path of mercy onto path of judgment. Yet Viner only mentions years of reaction (from 1905 to 1907), and does not analyze later stories written during these years. recent article by Hana Wirth-Nesher, Voices of Ambivalence in Sholem Aleichem's Monologues, continues where Viner left off. Paraphrasing Viner, Wirth-Nesher concludes that Sholem Aleichem strives to preserve neutrality: the linguistic disguises which Sholem Aleichem has draped around his speakers.., permit writer to escape from making moral choices that his mutually contradictory and eclectic petit bourgeois social views would have eventually necessitated.3 I will dispute this conclusion: while many of do express basic ambivalences, others convey Sholem Aleichem's sympathies and (especially) antipathies. In short, Sholem Aleichem employs to enact a subtle form of social satire. Interpreters of Sholem Aleichem's have concentrated on a few major figures.4 As a result, critical and popular awareness hardly extend beyond Pot, Advice, Geese, and Tevye stories. Reader reception has suppressed or overlooked another, potentially threatening world of Sholem Aleichem's work, which is epitomized by of mastery. The elements that comprise this mock genre may be found elsewhere, but they are particularly evident in stories Yoysef, Three Widows, and A Story of a Greenhorn. Rather than attempt a comprehensive discussion of Sholem Aleichem's monologues, I will interpret two of these relatively unknown and atypical tales.