Syracuse University SURFACE
Religion College of Arts and Sciences
Winter 1999
The Displacement of Jewish Identity in Stefan Zweig's "Buchmendel"
Ken Frieden Syracuse University
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Recommended Citation Frieden, Ken, "The Displacement of Jewish Identity in Stefan Zweig's "Buchmendel"" (1999). Religion. 61. https://surface.syr.edu/rel/61
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KEN FRIEDEN breed [or race)"). 3 The notion of race is displaced. like almost everything else in this text, to the realm of books. The narrator provides a congenial frame lo the story. at the beginning and THE DISPLACEMENT OF JEWISH IDENTITY end. by means of unhurried descriptions and retlections. His opening scene combines a hint of ominous events to come with an aura of security: "Wieder IN STEFAN ZWEIG'S "BUCHMENDEL" einmal in Wien und heimkehrend von einem Besuch in den äußern Bezirken, geriet ic.:h unvc.:rmulel in einen Rq:cngull. dn 111i1 nassn Peitscht• die Men schen hurtig in Haustore und Unterstände jagte. und auch ich selbst suchte schleunig nach einem schützenden Obdach" (61 ). ["Once again in Vienna, on IN THE STORY "BUCHMENDEL" ( 1929), Stefan Zweig represents Jewish identi return from a visit to the outlying regions. I was unexpectedly caught in a ty in Vienna as it is displaced. eclipsed, and then destroyed. Yet the narrator. downpour that, with its wet scourge, swiftly chased the people into entryways a man of the world much like Zweig himself. does not mourn this process of and other shelters. and I myself quickly searched for a proteelive refuge."] ethnic effacement. Instead, he bemoans the associated destruction of literary This well-cadenced phrase balances impressions of Viennese Gemütlichkeit culture at !arge and seems unconcerned about the implications for Jews in and duress as it brings together an awareness of nearby sheher and a sense of Vienna or elsewhere. Like other residents of Vienna during the First World being whipped and chased. Although "Buchmendel" is a postwar story, its War, the urbane postwar narrator even shows a measure of unexamined xeno opening sentence evokes a wartime crisis; the German word for "shehers" phobia, which is surprising in light of the nesh-and-blood author's Jewish eth (Unterstände) has military associations. The narrator finds asylum in a cafe he nicity and cosmopolitanism. Because the Judaic subtext of "Buchmendel" is describes as "ahwienerisch bürgerlich und vollgefüllt mit kleinen Leuten" subordinated to a universal drama, ethnicity is a suppressed theme. ["bourgeois in the old Viennese style and filled with common people" (61 )]. Ambivalence and self-denial characterized Jews in Stefan Zweig's cuhural The entire story unfolds inside this cafe, which turns out to be a refurbished milieu. Born in 1881 to an assimilated Viennese-Jewish family, Zweig became Cafe Gluck-named after the composer. but suggesting a lost place of joy and one of the most popular writers in Europe between the world wars, known good fortune, Glück. especially for his biographies published in the 1920s and 1930s. His prose and Zweig presents Mendel's story through the narrator's memoriesandin rec ideology were late expressions of the Jewish Enlightenment that began in ollections by Frau Sporschi I, an elderly cleaning woman at the cafe. She turns eighteenth-century Berlin; Zweig shared many of the values that led the Jews out to be the only person responsible for preserving Mendel's memory. The of Europe toward Westernization and assimilation. He fled from Austria after name "Sporschil" indicates that she is a trace. a Spur. as weil as a shield. the rise of Nazi influence in 1934, however, and after several years of wan Another intertextual trace is contained in the name Jacob Mendel, and espe dering, he and his wife committed suicide in Brazil in 1942. The reception of cially in his nickname "Buchmendel." As a book peddler. Mendel has much Zweig's work has suffered immensely since the Second World War rendered in common with one of the major figures in Judaic literature. Mendele anachronistic his dream of universal humanity. 1 Moykher Sforim, which means literally "Mendele the Book Peddler." This The story "Buchmendel" anticipates the anti-Semitism that would eventu character made his debut in 1864 and underwent a number of metamorphoses ally haunt its creator.2 The story is told in the first person by an unnamed nar in the Yiddish and Hebrew works of S. Y. Abramovitsh ( 1836-1917).4 Zweig's rator whose education and literary activities suggest obvious links to Zweig. book-peddling Mendel alludes to the Mendele whose presence pervades fic The protagenist is a bookseller named Jacob Mendel who is known widely as tion by Abramovitsh, the so-called grandfather of modern Yiddish Iiterature "Buchmendel," or "book Mendel." Famous for his prodigious memory of bib and also an enthusiast of the Enlightenment decades before Zweig was born. liographic details, and as a striking emblem of Viennese literary cuhure, he is Within their imaginary worlds, Mendele Moykher Sforim and Jacob Mendel admired by patrons of the cafe he frequents. During and after the First World are both traditional Jewish men from the Eastern European shtetl; the differ War, however, he appears out of place and is persecuted by a society that has ence is that the journeyman Mendele in Yiddish and Hebrew Iiterature never suddenly become intolerant. The story revolves around the downfall of this abandons the provinces of Eastern Europe. The latter-day tragedy lies in a dis remarkable personage, as retold by characters who remember him. Zweig's placement from origins that Jeaves Zweig's character, Jacob Mendel, at an narrator views Mendel as a relic from the past and, incidentally, from the East. untenable distance from his namesake and his culture. Another intellectual in the story describes Buchmendel as "ein vorweltlicher For Zweig's narrator, the centrat theme of his story is memory. He recalls Bücher-Saurier aussterbender Rasse" ("a primeval book-saurian of a dying a twenty-year period (roughly 1905 to 1925) that concludes with his chance
232 234 SYMPOSIUM Winter 1999 Frk-dcn SYMPOSIUM 235 visit to the renovated Cafe Gluck. The character Mendel. whom he knew this skill tinds its analogue in bibliographic expertise. The detailed descrip before the First World War, interests him precisely because of his pretematur tion of a displaced shtetiJew is unique in Zweig's writings: one facet of this al memory for bibliographical information. Yel Mendel's literary learning is rortrait is linguistic. At several roints the narrator mentions Mcndel's "East confined to titles and publication data; this superficiality suggests the shal ern jargon," a pejorative reference to the Yiddish language, and the story lowness of his entry into European culture. Whereas his childhood education quotes a handful of his Yiddish words-Parch (67). Nu. eppes. Seche/, included traditional Jewish concepts. his secular knowledge Iacks true con Amlwrh. (6!0. Oi. 11nd Oiweh (7:1) They arc what remains of the former tent. Jacob or "Jainkd"i" (X I). In a postwar era characterized by impersonality. Zweig grants special Even more exotic. in the eyes of the cosmopolitan narrator, is Mendel's importance to the psychology of memory, "for memory always binds. and childhood in the East: "Vor dreiunddreißig Jahren. mit noch weichem. doubly so loving memory" (91 ). A woman works "mechanically" near the schwarzflaumigem Bart und geringelten Stirnlocken, war er, ein kleines cash register (Zahlungsautomat, 61-62) in the degraded new cafe. Even men schiefes Jüngel. aus dem Osten nach Wien gekommen, um Rabbinat zu tal processes seem to have become mechanical when the narrator prods the studieren; aber bald hatte er den harten Eingott Jehova verlassen, um sich der "apparatus" of his memory (his Gedächtnisapparat, 63) much as one shakes funkelnden und tausendfältigen Vielgötterei der Bücher zu ergeben" (73). a broken machine. When he finally realizes that this is Cafe Gluck, "Mendel's ["Thirty-three years before, as a small slouching boy with a soft, black downy place," the narrator recalls his hero as a "miracle of memory" (67). At this beard and curly forelocks, he had come to Vienna from the East in order to point he introduces a musical metaphor into the sequence of technological study for the rabbinate; but he had soon left the severe monotheistic God, Yah images. During their first encounter in about 1905, the narrator requests infor weh, in order to devote hirnself to the scintillating and multifaceted polythe mation from Mendel, who "immediately played the most wonderful biblio ism of books.") Altematively secular and polytheislic book cults have swept graphical restatements of my theme upon the keyboard of his memory" (67). aside Mendel's biblical and Talmudic education and, without regrets, the nar This was before the war gave prominence to machines at the expense of liter rator affirms this explicit displacement. 6 All that remains, marked in the ary, musical, and artistic expression. rhythms of Mendel's body, is a habit of rocking back and forth (schaukeln), A corollary to the narrator's interest in phenomenal memory is the theme "a habit brought with him from the cheder, the Jewish school for small chil of genius in art. Looking back at his student years in tum-of-the-century Vien dren in the East" (65). The displacement involves a cultural transfer that is na, the narrator teils us: "In diesem kleinen galizischen Büchertrödler Jakob epitomized by the narrator's explanation of the word eheder and his observa Mendel hatte ich zum erstenmal als junger Mensch das große Geheimnis der tion that Mendel "read the way other people pray" (65). We might say, more restlosen Konzentration gesehen, das den Künstler macht wie den Gelehrten, precisely, that Mendel memorizes title pages as he once memorized pages of den wahrhaft Weisen wie den vollkommen Irrwitzigen, dieses tragische Glück the Talmud. und Unglück vollkommener Besessenheit" (65). ("In this little Galician book The narrator consistently avoids passing judgrnent on this phenomenon of peddler, Jacob Mendel, I first saw as a young man the greal mystery of total displacement. Formost of the Jews living in fin-de-siecle Vienna, it was a his concentration, which produces both the artist and the scholar. the truly wtse torical reality that lay in the family history just one or two generations past. and the totally deranged-the tragic happiness and unhappiness of total So the narrator situates Mendel's tragedy elsewhere. at a safe distance from obsession.") Mendel became a model for the young narrator. who aspired to the situation of Viennese Jewry and of Zweig hirnseiL A single passage inti outstanding literary accomplishments. Yet this ideal image has its negative matesthat the society araund Buchmendel is tlawed in its failure to value him: side, because Mendel attains his "total concentration" by forgetting all eise. Thus Mendel is an ambiguous figure. Heroie by virtue of his miraculous Eingesetzt in ein Seminar. an eine öffentliche Stelle hätle dies Gehirn preservation of bibliographical details in his memory. at the same tirrie he is lausende, hundertlausende von Studenten und Gelehrte belehrt und pathetic because of his complete Separation from the world. At what pnce erstaunt, fruchtbar für die Wissenschaften. ein unvergleichlicher does the protagonist attain such extraordinary powers? "He did not live" ("er Gewinn für jene öffentlichen Schatzkammern. die wir Bibliotheken lebte nicht"), the narrator states simply. nennen. Aber diese obere Weh war ihm. dem kleinen. ungebildeten gal The key to Mendel's accomplishments may be called "cultural transfer," izischen Buchtrödler, der nicht viel mehr als seine Talmudschule in Yael Feldman's term.5 Mendel achieves rare feats of memory by transfer bewältigt, für ewig verschlossen; so vermochten diese phantastischen ring former Eastem European Jewish practices into his new Viennese identi Fähigkeiten sich nur als Geheimwissenschaft auszuwirken an jenem ty. Traditional Talmudic leaming demanded extensive memorization, and Marmortische des Cafe Gluck. (70) 236 SYMPOSIUM Winter 1999 Frit'
vergessen, gerade ich. der ich doch wissen sollte. daß man Bücher nur This essay is 1he revised Iex I of a Ieeiure presen1ed on I 0 March 1991 a1 a Columbia Univer schafft, um über den eigenen Atem hinaus sich Menschen zu verbinden sily confercncc en1i1lcd "Race and F.1hnici1y in German ;md Jewish Thoughl." I . Cnmparc Donald Cl . D:1vi.au. "Srcfan i.'.wcig \ Victor~ in Dcfcar ." Molwt.,·lw.f/(' S 1 (January und sich so zu verteidigen gegen den unerbittlichen Widerpart alles 1959): II Lebens: Vergänglichkeil und Yergessensein. (92) 2. On a Slmilar nole. Helmu1 Rudolf commcniS. "Die Geswll Jakob Mendels iSI ein Schlüs• sel 7.u Siefan Zwcig's GendankenweiL die Erzählung nimm1 lragisch voraus. was sich mehr als For she, the uneducated one, had at least retained a book, 1he bwcr 10 crn );rhrt.chrH 'P'iler ereigne!: Siefan 7.wer(s lJn1ergang " ("The figure of Jacob Mendel is a key remember him; but I had for years forgotten Buchmendel-1, who lo lhc wnrld of S1d.1n /.wc•f 's lhnut:hl: lht· ....: lt,ry tr ;•g• ctlly ; ullicipalc~ whal occurs morc lhan ;1 decade later: Stefan Z we1g 's f.kmi.se''). in Nt;lllt.'l Filoldgiui hmuluuinyok (Arhc·ilt'll .~ur dnaxchen should have known that one only creates books in order to unite oneself Philologie] I ( 1965): 129. See also Ken Frieden. "Siefan Zweig and lhe Nazis." in A Jewish Jour with people beyond the period of one's own breathing days, and so to nal at Yale I ( 1983 ): 39--4 I. defend against the inexorable enemy of all that lives: transience and 3. Slefen Zweig's "Buchmendel." in Kleine Chronik: Vier Erziihlwrgm (Leipzig: Insel. 1929) 66. Henceforth ci1ed by page alone; alltranslations are my own. This powerful storywas reprint oblivion. ed in Kaleidoskop (Vienna: Herbert Reichner, 1936)--lwo years before the Nazi annexation of Austria. An old and inadequate English version of "Buchmendel,'' translated by Cedar Paul. is These high-sounding phrases conceal the deeper meaning of what has taken contained in Siefan Zweig. Jewish ugends (New York : Markus Wiener, 1987) 227-263. place. The narrator assumes a moralistic tone, preaching about the virtues of 4. See Ken Frieden. C/assic Yiddish Fiction: Ahramovitsh. Sholem Aleichem. and Peretz human memory and praising books as weapons against oblivion. Taking (Aibany: S1a1e U of New Yorlc P. 1995). chap1ers 1-3. 5. See Yael S. Feld man. Modemism and Culture Tran.rfer: Gabrief Prei/ and the Tradition of refuge in this self-chastening remorse, the narrator neglects a fuller question Jewish Literary Bilingua/ism (Cincinnali: Hebrew Union College P. 1986). ing of his own story. He reads the writing on the wall but interprets it one-sid 6. Compare 1he related discussion by David Turner in "Memory and the Humanilarian Ideal: edly. The coded message, unconscious perhaps even to the author, is not mere An Interpretation of Stefan Zweig's Buchmendel." Modem Austrian Literature 12 ( 1979): 45--46. 7. This formulation echoes Freud's now farnous statemem about the psychoanalytic eure: ly that memory will save us from death. This platitude contrasts with a more "Where the id was. the ego shall be" ("Wo Es war, soll Ich werden"). A process of making"Con pertinent Hebrew expression, "Charity rescues from death" (tzedakah tatzi/ scious or rendering accessible to reason characterizes both psychoanalysis and the secularization mimavet), which points a different way. Indeed, Mendel's demise shows how of the Jews in modern Europe. Slceptically, one might add Karl Kraus's Observation that psycho analysis (or secularization) is the disease for which it purports tobe the eure. fragile human memory can be. Buchmendel's destruction is the direct outcome of his cultural displace WORKS CITED ment. Where Talmudic study was, secular learning takes place.7 This new obsession abstracts him entirely from the world, unlike traditional Jewish Daviau. Donald G. "S1efan Zweig's Vic1ors in Defea1:· Monatshefte 51 (January 1959): 1-12. learning that is intimately Iied to everyday practices and the concreteness of Feld man. Yael S. Moderni. Syracuse University