אוניברסיטת תל-אביב / Tel Aviv University IMAGES AND EPISODES FROM THE WRITERS' ASSOCIATION HOUSE IN WARSAW: Memoirs of Bashevis Singer, Apprentice Journalist Author(s): ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER and Israel Zamir Source: Kesher / קשר )נובמבר No. 10 1991), pp. 4e-11e אוניברסיטת תל-אביב / Published by: Tel Aviv University Stable URL: ${ithaka.pdfcover.jstor.url:https://www.jstor.org/stable/23908271 Accessed: 25-09-2019 16:09 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to אוניברסיטת תל-אביב / Tel Aviv University .קשר / Kesher https://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Wed, 25 Sep 2019 16:09:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms IMAGES AND EPISODES FROM THE WRITERS' ASSOCIATION HOUSE IN WARSAW Memoirs of Bashevis Singer, Apprentice Journalist ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER The First Visit The Writers' Association House on Tlomackie Street in Warsaw was more than just a writers' club. It was, actually, a center for Yiddish culture and Yiddish literature, as well as a refuge for actors, members of various political parties and plain intellectuals who would come there — I nearly said: come there on pilgrimage. For me, personally, the Writers' jm Association House was a kind of second home for 13-14 years, plain and simple. My literary development is closely bound up with the institution. I had heard about the Writers' Association House when I was still living in Bilgoraj, the city where my maternal grandfather, Rabbi Jacob Mordecai Zilberman, served as chief rabbi for 40 years. In 1917, when my mother took me and my brother Moses from Warsaw to Bilgoraj, the Writers' Association House did not yet exist, as far as I know. My brother Joshua often spoke of the Zamir singing association, where [Y. L.] Peretz used to deliver speeches and the conductor Shneor led his choir, but I never heard him mention the Writers' Association. My guess is that it was founded in 1918 or 1919• Several daily newspapers and weeklies were being published in Yiddish in Warsaw by then. Jewish Bashevis Singer during his Warsaw period journalists, authors, textbook writers, public speakers and ordinary Yiddish and Hebrew writers had a need for a possibly also Hillel Zeitlin, his son Aaron Zeitlin, Efraim professional and spiritual base. Among the founders of the Kaganowski and many others. There was an Orthodox Writers' Association were such figures as Hersh David newspaper published in Warsaw too, and its staff — religious Nomberg, Noah Pryluski, S. Stupnicky, Yeheskel Moshe Jews, men of Torah and tradition — were also drawn to the Neumann, Dr. Yehoshua Gottlieb, Pineas Lazaro Zitnitzky and institution. 4e This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Wed, 25 Sep 2019 16:09:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Qesher No. 10, November 1991 At that time, fund-raising and organized appeals were as yet literature, art and culture only after he had acquired the unknown. When a group of hasidim wanted their own necessary credentials. synagogue, they rented a room, brought in cabinets with books, As for me, I was not entirely a stranger to the Writers' a holy ark, a table and benches, and there it was — a synagogue. Association House. I had an older brother, I.J. Singer, who had The emancipated Jews did the same. They rented a hall, been published in the newspapers. However, few people had brought in a few tables and everything was ready. heard of him, inasmuch as he had been in Russia during 1917 The Writers' Association House immediately gained fame 21 and witnessed the Kerensky Revolution, the October and prestige. One of the enlightened Jews of Bilgoraj who Revolution, the pogroms and the riots. Returning to Poland, visited Warsaw reported that he was there and saw with his he settled in Warsaw and worked on a Yiddish paper. own eyes nearly all the writers whose novels, poems and Before going to Russia he had served as secretary to the articles we provincials read in the papers or in the books that Zamir society. He knew Peretz personally. He was a close were in Yona Ackerman's library. The man related that the friend of the historian E. N. Frank. He had taken up painting writers ate lunch, supper and maybe even breakfast at a for a while, sharing his attelier with such artists as Ostazgo and cafeteria in the Writers' Association House. Yiddish papers Robinlicht, whom I met in 1914 when my brother hid out with arrived there from North and South America, England, France them to avoid the Russian draft. and even the Soviet Union. Hebrew periodicals arrived from I also had another tie to literature. I read nearly everything Eretz Israel, London and other places. Jewish periodicals in written by Yiddish authors — Linetzky, Isaac Meir Dick, other languages — Polish, English, French and German — Mendele Mokher Seforim, Shalom Aleichem, Peretz, were also received. Meetings on literary subjects were held Frishman, Sholem Asch, Nomberg, Abraham Reisen, there, as well as deliberations on political topics — Zionism, Yeushzohn (his novel, The Rabbi's Court), David Cassel, Dan Socialism, Communism — and professional subjects. Kaplanovitch, David Bergelson, Der Nister, Anokhi (his Since I am not recording history but personal impressions, I novel, Reb Abba) and many others. I even read several works am not obliged to include exact dates. I have the impression by Yiddish writers in America, such as Morris Rosenfeld, that the Yiddish Stage Actors' Association was founded at Kobrin, Libin, Berkowitz and others. Every Yiddish book was approximately the same time, or a bit before. Naturally, Jewish an experience for me, every periodical or paper that reached painters and sculptors soon became regulars at the Writers' Bilgoraj a revelation. All these writers were like relatives with Association House. Strange, but parallel to the founding of the whom I was involved. This did not prevent me from feeling a Polish state, a kind of spiritual Jewish state was also similar spiritual closeness with the literary giants of the world established in Poland — a center for ideas, aspirations, whom I read in Yiddish, Hebrew and later Polish and even theories, fantasies, dreams. German translation. When I first heard the name Writers' Association House, I Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Strindberg, Maupassant, Hemson, felt a strong attraction to the institution, like a pin attracted by Lermontov, Chekhov, Andreyev, Szenkiewicz, Mickiewicz and a magnet. At about that time I had begun to write, and I knew Pushkin were the closest to me. I was more excited about them that my destiny and my life would have to be connected with than about Yiddish or Hebrew writers. I read their works with the Writers' Association House. All I had to do was find a a fervor that was inextinguishable. I was, if I may say, an room (or part of a room) in Warsaw, and a morsel of bread. I anonymous potential writer, a sort of secret literary righteous didn't have in mind wasting my life in a forsaken hole. The soul, one of the 36 who would one day be revealed to the wide world took shape for me at the house at 13 Tlomackie world — and to himself. Innumerable obstacles stood in my Street in Warsaw. way until I could arrive at the literary palace, but I knew inside I was well aware that it was a one-sided love. True, I yearned me that I had to get there. I felt creative powers within myself. for the Writers' Association House, but for them I was nothing They churned inside me, along with the desire for love and sex. more than an unknown boy from the provinces trying to write, My adolescent thoughts were sunk in philosophy. The and who had not yet published even one line. There were problems that preoccupied Plato, Zeno, Aristo, Spinoza, hundreds, thousands like me, with the same ambitions and Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant and Schopenhauer were also my desires. The enlightened Jew from Bilgoraj related that only problems, my questions. I spent time with the boys and girls in writers who wrote for a newspaper or were published in Bilgoraj as if in a dream. I listened but didn't listen to what newspapers and periodicals and had made a name for they said. I was friendly with them. But sooner or later I would themselves were allowed in. A person could enter this palace of have to leave them and set out on my own way. My small, 5e This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Wed, 25 Sep 2019 16:09:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Qesher No. 10, November 1991 private accounts, such as how to earn a few pennies by giving a Warsaw was something that only near-beggars did. Rich lesson, how to avoid persecution by the ultra-Orthodox, how to people lived in private villas, and many of them traveled to get along with father and mother, went hand in hand with my sanitoriums and spas. The rented summer houses were large accounts with the world. nothing more than a room and a kitchen located in a sandy I got hold of a translation of Karl Marx's Das Kapital from area, without electricity, water (which had to be brought from somewhere.