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Esperanto-blogo, kelkfoje blago, de Ralph Dumain
Zamenhof muskoloza ĉe la strando
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 5:38 PM 1 komentoj
Rubrikoj: bildoj, humuro, komiksoj, Zamenhof
FONTO: “La Anuso de Dio,” Vola Püg’!, n-ro 4, marto 2005 (kun komiksoj).
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 10:10 PM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: ateismo, komiksoj, religio, satiro, spiritismo, Zamenhof
Sounds of Silence -- Traces of Jewish Life in Lithuania
Beit Hatfutsot located on the campus of Tel Aviv University:
See also this essay on the subject:
The Sounds of Silence of Jewish Lithuania by Dovid Katz
This essay mentions two of my favorites in the same sentence -- L.L. Zamenhof, and the great philosopher of the Jewish Enlightenment, Salomon Maimon (much more confrontational than Moses Mendelssohn but highly respected by Immanuel Kant, the latter's anti-Semitic proclivities notwithstanding):
Then there were the modern realms of Jewish civilization, where Lithuanian Jewry also took a lead. The scope was breathtaking. It included the revival of the modern Hebrew language, and its first contemporary-grade literature. And modern Yiddish scholarship and research as a new field of humanistic inquiry. And a unique branch of Jewish socialism that stressed the development of Yiddish as a national Jewish language in the context of autonomy for minorities. The Litvak’s love of learning and education became proverbial. One result was a long line of original, maverick creators, among them the philosopher Solomon Maimon, the inventor of Esperanto Ludwig Leyzer Zamenhof, the artists Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine. For centuries, the compact and exalted culture of Lithuanian Jewry never failed to impress. In his 1899 Journey through Lithuania (in Hebrew), Nahum Slouschz comments: “We are in the Jewish country, perhaps the only Jewish country in the world.”
Who knew? And here is a sample of Maimon's chutzpah I translated into Esperanto:
Pri Proponita Konvertiĝo al Kristanismo: El la Aŭtobiografio de Salomon Maimon
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 11:55 AM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: ekspozicioj, judoj, Klerismo, Litovio, Salomon Maimon, Zamenhof
L.L. Zamenhof and the Shadow People
The amazing story of how Esperanto came to be.
By now many of you have probably seen this. I wouldn't call Zamenhof my household god, but otherwise I am very pleased to see this article, in which Esperanto takes second place to Zamenhof, meaning that the picture of Zamenhof--his underlying motivations, what he tried to accomplish in the various phases of his life--has finally migrated from the small world of Zamenhof Esperanto scholars that have emerged since the 1970s to the non-Esperantist public at large. Esther Schor has been engaging the general public on a number of fronts, and if she speaks on this theme at the national Kongreso in Washington DC in May 2010, then I won't have to, since she has already accomplished with Zamenhof what I only recently set out to do.
The "shadow people" were the Jews of Eastern Europe, and "Hilelismo" was a key phase in Zamenhof's overall trajectory, wherein the Jewish question and the quest for a universal language again merge. Schor focuses on this phase, but also covers the various twists and turns of Zamenhof's personal trajectory as well as of the Esperanto movement, showing the English-speaking public how complex was the terrain that Zamenhof sought to navigate and making sense out of his strategic maneuvers. She also illustrates the important point about how the twists and turns of history elude our various attempts to get a grip on it. This was as true for the various political and cultural positions taken by East European Jewry as it was for the Esperantists seeking the universal adoption of their language. A century ago who could have imagined the twisted course the 20th century would take?
It turns out that Esther Schor and I already crossed paths, though she wouldn't know it. I attended a talk on her book on Emma Lazarus a few years ago, which was pretty inspiring. Then I had no idea she was interested in Zamenhof or Esperanto.
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 7:52 AM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: Esther Schor, Hillel, homaranismo, judoj, Zamenhof
Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917), is best known as creator of the Esperanto language. December 15 marks the 150th anniversary of his birth. Tonight I will get to meet his great-granddaughter, whose very existence is a near miracle.
Marxism & the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography
This material is testing ground for a number of projects. Not only in terms of overt politics, but conceptually, how was historical materialism sufficiently evolved or not at any given stage or within any given tendency to explain exactly what bound the Jewish people--specifically of Europe (and more specifically of Eastern Europe, where conditions were worst)--as a people? Could historical materialism adequately encompass culture, and conversely, what did the culturalists leave out in their conceptualization of their situation?
On the plane of overt politics, one will find an emphasis here on the conceptions and policies of the Bolsheviks as compared to the Jewish Bundists (on which there is a thought-provoking new book out).
This is, however, only a portion of the elements needed for a full analysis. The late 19th century and early 20th century were filled with schemes of religious, cultural, linguistic, and political reform and radicalism. There were currents not only of socialism and Marxism, but of assimilationism, Zionism, cultural autonomism, liberalism, Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment)--formulated and argued by Jewish intellectuals, all involving different conceptions of the nature of the past and contemporaneous communities of European Jews and prospects and programs for their future. I attempted to cover as many of these currents as I could in my second bibliography:
L. L. Zamenhof & the Cultural, Religious, Professional & Political Context of 19th-20th Century Eastern European Jewish Intellectuals:
Juxtaposing these two bibliographies suggests the extensiveness and complexity of the ideological ferment of the time, a topic which stands on its own, though the intellectually vacuous, ideologically degenerate, and juvenile politics of the present would gain some perspective from a study of this past.
Finally, all of this is related to a specific project. December 15 will mark the 150th birthday of the creator of the Esperanto language, L. L. Zamenhof, a product of this ferment. Tonight I will have the opportunity to meet Zamenhof's great-granddaughter, itself a remarkable occasion, all the more amazing because all of Zamenhof's children were murdered by the Nazis, and his grandson, a child at the time, escaped their clutches twice by a hairsbreadth (once under the protection of a Catholic priest), to eventually produce two daughters. Though Zamenhof is known mostly for the creation of Esperanto, underlying that project was a more general program of cultural and religious reform, all stemming from Zamenhof's preoccupation with the Jewish question.
Traumatized by the pogroms of 1881, Zamenhof, still a medical student, joined the early Zionist movement and embroiled himself in its debates. At the time various options--all utopian--were considered. Zamenhof opposed establishing settlements in the territory that is now Israel, and favored settlement in America. Ultimately he rejected Zionism altogether, and argued vigorously for years afterward that the project of settling in the Middle East would be either impracticable or disastrous. Another project involved the reform and standardization of Yiddish. (Zamenhof was born in the same year as Sholem Aleichem.) He gave up on that as well. In 1887 he published his first book outlining the basics of Esperanto. As the Esperanto movement took off internationally, he published two treatises in Russian under a pseudonym, in 1901, outlining a program for religious reform and a doctrine called "Hilelismo", inspired by Rabbi Hillel's famous aphorism concerning the golden rule as the essence of religion. Here the influence of Enlightenment thought (Haskalah) is evident, as Zamenhof rejects ancient superstitions and outmoded practices. However, Zamenhof's arguments were even more trenchant. Not only does he demolish the case for Zionism in every way possible, but he engages in a merciless demystification of the Jewish people, questioning the continuity that allegedly connects the Jewish people of today with their ancient homeland, and even questions the basis of their commonality across different nations and regions in the present.
Zamenhof enquires as to what binds peoples together in general, and in the case of Jews in particular. He settles on language and religion as the two shaping principles of peoplehood. This is the very obverse of historical materialism, as Zamenhof completely ignores material factors and concentrates all of his attention on cultural issues (I suppose what is now called by some "imagined communities"). Zamenhof rejects nationalism and in particular nationalistic religion. But curiously, he also pooh-poohs the culturalist Yiddishist option, which would be the logical choice for secularists who reject assimilation (as did Zamenhof). Yiddish is now just a "jargon" in his eyes; Hebrew is not (in 1901) a living language, and the Jews are a "pseudo-people", martyring themselves for a faith they can no longer believe in, and immersed in a nostalgia for a lost civilization with which they no longer have a substantial connection. Hence, a radical cultural reform is necessary, with a radically reformed religion for modern times, sustaining a connection between the intellectuals and the masses, aiming to create a modern, "neutrally-human" people for a cosmopolitan world. By this time Zamenhof sees Esperanto as the binding language, not a reformed Yiddish.
These ideas got Zamenhof into hot water with all parties concerned, both in Jewish circles and in the Esperanto movement, now internationally established, with its center of gravity having shifted from Eastern Europe to France. Within a few years his project underwent another transformation, and "Hilelismo" for the Jews was generalized to "Homaranismo" for everyone. ("Homaranismo" is not literally translatable but means being a member of the human family). Homaranismo bears similarities to Ethical Culture or Unitarianism, but has its own spin, intended as a mediator between inherited traditions and modern secularized consciousness, and between members of different religious traditions. While Esperanto thrived, Homaranismo sank like a stone. Zamenhof's prospective for either the Jews or of all of humanity based on linguistic and religious reform belongs to an alternative history, a timeline in a parallel universe for a strategy that had no chance in this one.
Zamenhof attempted a few other types of public interventions, a contribution to the Universal Races Congress of 1911, and a call to diplomats in 1915, proposing what nations should look like after the war. Zamenhof died in 1917.
There is a postscript to this story. Following the war, a separate workers' Esperanto movement sprang up and remained vigorous, until it was largely killed off by Hitler and Stalin. There arose within it two major factions--the anarchists/anationalists and the Soviets and their supporters. Zamenhof's idealist notions of society were criticized by Soviet Esperantists using the analytical tools provided by Soviet Marxism. They did not, however, wrestle with the Jewish question or delve into Zamenhof's specific arguments with respect to it. In any case, Zamenhof's Jewish origin was such a sensitive topic up to that time that scholars only delved into it substantively decades later.
Thus my third bibliography:
Zamenhof & Zamenhof Studies Web Guide (Zamenhof kaj Zamenhofologio)
Only a smattering of documents listed are in English, but some do tell this story, particularly in the sections on Hilelismo/Homaranismo & Jewish affairs.
Pursuing any portion of the intellectual terrain mapped out by these three bibliographies/web guides can be related to a number of conceptual issues.
“Scholars of Wisdom have no rest in this world or in the world to come.” -- Talmud
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 1:32 PM 1 komentoj
Rubrikoj: bibliografio, cionismo, Hillel, homaranismo, humanismo, jida, Judismo, judoj, Klerismo, kulturkritiko, kulturpolitiko, liberpensado, marksismo, socialismo, Zamenhof
William Blake: Moto por la Kanzonoj de Naivo kaj de Sperto
Antaŭ du semajnoj, kiam mi finlaboris mian tradukon de “Plenas via pelv’ da semo” [Thou hast a lap full of seed] de William Blake (kiun mi finis je la naskiĝtago de Blake, la 28-an de novembro), mi ankaŭ prilaboris tradukon de la jena poemo de Blake, ankaŭ neniam de li publikigita. Ĝi montras la saman spiriton de la alia menciita poemo kaj de la Kanzonoj el Sperto ĝenerale: skeptika esploro sub ŝajnoj pri homa naturo, motivita de ideo kiu priokupis Blake kaj kiun li iam esprimis jene, ke "innocence" (senkulpeco, naivo, pureco, senmakuleco--malfacile tradukebla) ne povas travivi naive kaj senscie, sed "oni devas puron organizi" ("Innocence must be organiz'd"), t.e. navigi la kontraŭdirojn kaj danĝerojn de la reala vivo, afero kiu postulas asimilon de cinika kompreno de homaj karaktero kaj institucioj.
Moto por la Kanzonoj de Naivo kaj de Sperto
el la Notlibro de 1793
Ili per si mem ne pensas;
Ĝis Spert’ instruos kapti, kaĝe
Elfojn kaj feinojn, saĝe.
Sekvas grunt’ de la fripon’
El amikoj malkaŝiĝas la intrigo,
Kaj distingiĝas aglo de la strigo.
Motto to the Songs of Innocence & of Experience
The Good are attracted by Mens perceptions
And Think not for themselves
Till Experience teaches them to catch
And to cage the Fairies & Elves
And then the Knave begins to snarl
And the Hypocrite to howl
And all his good Friends shew their private ends
And the Eagle is known from the Owl
The Notebook of William Blake - Folio N101 and N100
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 3:09 PM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: beletro, poezio, tradukado, William Blake
Borges en Esperanto (7)
Mi elfosis el mia arkivo kaj enretigis la jenajn verkojn de Jorge Luis Borges:
Hajkoj kaj Tankaoj, tradukis Carlos A. Castrillón
"La Sudo", tradukis Enio Hugo Garrote
La jena traduko aperis en la libro La Sekreta Miraklo de Jorge Luis Borges (Kaliningrado: Sezonoj, 2008):
La Viro ĉe la Sojlo, tradukis Liven Dek
Kaj aŭskultu la podkaston:
Kaliningrada Esperanto-Podkasto, n-ro 15
Notu denove la podkaston de "Emma Zunz":
Kaliningrada Esperanto-Podkasto, n-ro 12
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 1:25 PM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: beletro, Jorge Luis Borges, podkastoj
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