The times., 1900-12-26
SONGS OF dire Misery
Laments of Yiddish Poet Over
His Peoples Sorrows.
Can Find No Pleasure In Life for
Workers Oppressed by Conditions
-DroninE OF Machines in the
Sweatshup - One Who Sees in the
Whole World Nothing But Despair.

A poet and a poor man is in Chicago
the two coincide because the reason oil the
poetry Is 10 be found in the poverty and
because the poet has sung the song OF the
poor When he came TO Chicago from New
York week or more ago there were very
few people here who knew Morris Rosen-
fsld. the Yidaish singer. But now they
know him; know it is the voice of genius
with which he sings. He has read his
verses before the Chicago audiences, and
although many people had never hear,' the
Yiddish they laughed and cried with him
in perfect understanding Of his songs.
And they are songs; they have come
from the heart, come from the deep feel
ing, from the suffering which has found
in words true expression. Morris Rosen-
field is young man. but he is old in mis-
cry. Born in a Polish fishing village IN
1867, born poor, he grew to be man with
narrow idea of either the world or of
books. When he was old enough to be
absorbed by the Continental octopus, the
army. he ran away from home.
He had a boys dream Of great fortunes
and great cities, and 1t was not long be-
fore London swallowed him up. Then 1t
was that he became an apprentice to the
sweaters life. Once he thought to escape
the deadly round of work by flying to Hol-
land to try his hand at diamond cutting
When this proved an unhappy expert
ment he came to America, and in New
York. where he thought to find freedom,
he found the sweat shop. He went back
to the slaves work, hoping for better
things and it was this hope that kept
him working when his body was exhaust
ed and his will seemed dead. 1t was The
misery of the work and the suffering,
grinding numerically into the soul which
reused the genius and awakened it to pro-
test. In Shop the first poem in the
volume which Morris Resented has pub
lished under the title Songs From the
Ghetto" is this protest. Undoubtedly it
is the best of the collection; ii has been
compared, not without reason to MIS-.
Browning's Cry of the Children or, per-
haps, more fttingly, to Hoods Song of
the Shirt" In the Yiddish it has the
drone of the machines, the pathos OF an
unending struggle. The translation which
accompanies the poems has been done by
Leo Wiener, who is an instructor in the
Slavic languages at Harvard University.
1t was Mr. Wiener who gave the poet his
first help to better things, and it was due
largely to his efforts that this first vol
urae appeared. The translator has made
no attempt TO hold the poetic form; in
deed, it would take an artist TO do that.
since there is so much that is individual
in the original work Nevertheless, the
translation grasps much of the terrible
pathos of the poem and gives very lit
eral reproduction of the poets thought.
In Shop" begins:
The machines in the shop roar so wild
Iy that often / forget in the roar that l
am. / am lost in the terrible tumult: my
ego disappears; ! am a machine. l work
and work and work without end; / am
busy and busy and busy at all time. For
what and for whom? l know not; l ask
not. How should machine ever come to
think %
Anoiher-stanza Is translated:
THE shop at midday hour appears to
me like bloody battlefield. where all are
at rest. About me I see lying the dead, and
the blood that has been spilled cries from
the earth. A minute later tie
tocsin is sounded, the dead arise, the bat
tie is renewed. The corpses fight for
strangers. and they battle and fall and
disappear into night"
II is natural that the man Of the tene-
ments and sweat shops should see but the
sad side of life. He sees the world through
the narrow, dirty window CT his home and
sees an accordingly shadowed picture. II
is not at all stFenge that the poems of
Morris Rosenfeld should bear the taint of
sadness. He has written of bright beau
u DS but lICiu Nlldt d
pitiful point of view, He sees the world
as a man in despair-a man overwhelmed
with the misery Of his lot. He has the
sweaters view OF everything. and added
to that bitterness there is Just a touch Of
feeling from the oppressed Jew.
He sings to the autumn flowers in this
fashion:
Flowers, mos, beautiful children Of life;
ornaments OF earth, sun-kissed, woven OF
ether and sunbeams; only trusty com
rades Of love, who are hailed here as guests
in spring You come in contact only with
these who are contented; you remain
strangers to him who has fallen into ad-
Versity."
To the student of sociology and psychol-
ogy nothing could be more interesting
than the revelation which these poems
make. The entire trend OF thought OF
class of people usually silent and moody
is laid bare with telling effect The dwell
er in the tenement, the Pole, the Jew, the
wrongs OF these three peoples have lodged
themselves upon the shoulders of this one
man and found utterance through his ge-
hius. The personality of the people and
the personality of the man have given the
poems strange faScina ton; they are un-
like anything which has been written be-
fore, and they must find place for them
selves. whether that be among the i'm
mortals or among the everyday singings
time viii tell.
The bitterness of the Jew is given ex-
preston in many of the poems when for
a time the writer forgets his burden OF
work. One of the poems gives utterance
TO this thought:
Eyes. we are Jews. miserable Jews.
without friends or joys, without hopes of
happiness. Oh, ask us no more. ask us no
more; oh. leave us in peace; America
drives us back 30 Russia.
ITO Russia, whence we have run away;
10 Russia because we have no money
What is there left for us to expect to
hope for2 Oh. what good is life and the
gloomy world to us?"
And so the verses run on. all OF people
and of a peoples world; the writer ex-
presses his surroundings he has never
Eeen the world OF beauty. the natural
world in it's natural state. He sings in
the Yiddish because il Is his mothers
tongue he sings of sorrow because 1t is
his predominant feeling. In pouring out
a confession OF his sorrows he has opened
the door for help to a people who have
hidden themselves and their thoughts be-
hind moody silence. II is doubtful
whether Mr.. Rosenfeld can have done so
much for literature as he has done for
his own people by crying protest to their
wrongE. II is undoubtedly true that his
poet nature has felt in exaggerated meas
ure the misery of the sweater and the
Jew, but that IL has felt truly there Is no
reason TO question.
Mr.. Rosenfeid gave his first reading 10
the general Chicago public on Thursday
night at Sinai Temple He reads as he
writes. dramatically and with pathos
which is strilingly individual Each verse
he repeats as though ii were a repetition