Ensconced in winter, I tend to brood. I may self-aggrandize and call it “filosófye.” But Yiddish, thankfully, has a nice deflating pejorative for that, namely: “pilisúfye.” In any event, I thought I’d take a moment and talk a little about one of Yiddish poetry’s underappreciated voices: Leyzer Volf (1910-1943). A versatile poet as well as something of a “tshudák” (odd duck) — he once set himself the task of writing 1,000 poems in a single month — he was an outspoken member of the group Yung Vilne (Young Vilna), a collection of literary and cultural figures in Vilna in the 1930s that included such notable figures as Abraham Sutzkever, Chaim Grade, and Shmerke Kaczerginski. Volf worked between high and popular culture, offering a variety of virtuosic parodies, humoresques, and artistic lyrics. His long poem “Evigingo,” for example, uses Longfellow to offer a memorable critique of modernity. (If you’re interested, yours truly has a translation of that poem published on the website In Geveb.)
Here, however, I will turn to a short poem that is a kind of parody of “filosófye” and one whose brevity belies deep insight.
Farvós?
Farvós bilt a hunt af der levóne?
Vayl er meynt: s’iz a royt shtikl fleysh.
Farvós shlogt a melámed di kínder?
Vayl zey kénen nit keyn alef-béys.
Farvós faln aróp di shtern?
Vayl s’iz zey úmetik mit got.
Farvós hakt men oys di vélder?
Di kháyes zoln kúmen in shtot.
Why?
Why does a dog bay at the moon?
Because he thinks it’s a piece of red meat.
Why does the teacher strike the children?
Because they don’t know their a-b-c’s.
Why do the stars fall?
Because it’s lonesome for them with the deity.
Why do people clear-cut the forests?
So the beasts will come to the city.
The poem begins with a kind of philosophical set piece. The “why” in a lyrical poem sets us up to expect a lofty idea, or a mood of emotional complexity. While not a koan, because there’s no paradox in the question, it is true that traditionally Eastern European Jews were wary of dogs. A dog barking at the moon would have been an ominous sound. Meantime, we are expecting a philosophical answer to the question why a dog bays at the moon, and instead the poet bursts the balloon and tells us because it’s a dog, so it’s hungry and stupid.
The mock philosophizing continues, and now it picks up the threat inherent in the preceding lines, turning it into actual violence. Except here, the violence is not from outside, but from within the community itself. It plays, of course, on the well-worn trope of the cruel “khéyder” (heder) teacher beating his inattentive students. Why, the sympathetic poet asks, are these sweet little children being hit? Because — and many a teacher may identify with the frustrations — they didn’t do their homework!
So we are ping-ponging between higher philosophical or emotional questions and their very down-to-earth and unpoetic answers. The pattern has been set, and now it’s Volf’s opportunity, in the compressed space of two quatrains, to turn up the heat. So he returns to the heavens and asks why the stars fall. That is, an essential speculative question for any watchful stargazer. “Because God is such a downer” is certainly not what we are expecting. The adjective “úmetik,” which means “sad, lonesome, gloomy, dispirited,” is of a somewhat elevated register, but it is also the standard, sometimes almost hackneyed word used in sentimental poetry for the forlorn lover or the world-weary wanderer. Here, however, the stars have become suicidal because, though all may be right with the world, God in His heaven is so very dreary.
Finally, with the last question we are again in the land of people. Why are the forests being felled? The verb “óys-hakn” means to cut down many trees (as opposed to “hakn” which means to chop wood or a single tree, à la George Washington). While it is certainly a question that raises our contemporary ecological antennae, for Volf, however, it is a symptom of modernity and of capitalist excess. The world of nature (as in the moon and the stars) is confronted by man with his saws and axes that whack at the trees just like the melamed whacks his students. Why, then, do men clear cut the forests? The answer is enigmatic. Who exactly are these “kháyes” (beasts)? Why would we want them in our cities? Perhaps the enigma is precisely the point. Perhaps it is the ignorance of consequences that makes the situation so menacing. The rest of the questions are answered “because,” indicating a static relationship. This question is answered “so that,” indicating a dynamic intent. It is both spooky and sinister, and somehow we feel a strange sense of responsibility for the situation. The poem is a wonderful study in compression, and a good entrée into the remarkable poetic mind of Leyzer Volf.
As always, “léyent gezúnterhéyt” — read it in good health.
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