Listening to the Languages of the People: Lazare Sainéan on Romanian, Yiddish, and French 9789633865941

Table of contents :
Contents
Note on Transliteration
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Romania
Part Two: France
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

ZD_Book.indb 1

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

ZD_Book.indb 2

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

Listening to the Languages of the

People

Lazare Sainéan on Romanian, Yiddish, and French *** Natalie Zemon Davis

Central European University Press Budapest – Vienna - New York

ZD_Book.indb 3

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

©2022 Natalie Zemon Davis Published in 2022 by Central European University Press Nádor utca 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 978-963-386-593-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-963-386-594-1 (ebook) On the cover: detail from “Nederlandse Spreuken” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559 Cover and book design by Sebastian Stachowski

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Davis, Natalie Zemon, 1928- author. Title: Listening to the languages of the people : Lazare Sainéan on Romanian, Yiddish, and French / Natalie Zemon Davis. Description: Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022026347 (print) | LCCN 2022026348 (ebook) | ISBN 9789633865934 (hardcover) | ISBN 9789633865941 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Şăineanu, Lazăr, 1859-1934. | Philologists--Romania--Biography. | Philologists--France--Biography. | Philology--Political aspects. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Jewish Studies | LCGFT: Biographies. Classification: LCC P85.S126 D38 2022 (print) | LCC P85.S126 (ebook) | DDC 410.92 [B]--dc23/eng/20220613 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026347 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026348

ZD_Book.indb 4

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

Š  Contents Note on Transliteration  Acknowledgments  Introduction 

vii ix 1

Part One: Romania Early Years: Studies and Friendships  The Field of Linguistics  First Publications   The Science of Judaism: Advancing Emancipation  Semasiology   Paris, Gaston Paris, and the Jours d’Emprunt  Leipzig and the Neogrammarians  Research on Yiddish   The Dialectological Study of Judeo-German  Spreading the Word on Yiddish  B.P. Hasdeu, Anti-Semitism, and Jewish Relations  University Lectures and New Books  V. A. Urechiă and the First Rejection of Naturalization  Favorable Reviews and Marriage  Basmele Române  The Basmele Wins a Prize  Second Defeat of Request for Naturalization  Self-Defense and Studies in Folklore 

ZD_Book.indb 5

3 9 14 16 18 20 25 28 32 40 43 48 52 55 59 70 72 75

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

The Dicționar Universal  Non-Zionist Jew and His Circle of Friends  Paris, London: Gaster and Zionism  Paris: Nordau and Zionism   The Rejection of Zionism, the Dreyfus Affair  Baptism and Its Consequences  The Oriental Influence on Romanian Language and Culture  Șăineanu and Other Jews  The Last Months: Publication and Defeat  Repairing and Describing His Life: The Philological Career 

81 86 92 95 103 106 116 120 124 126

Part Two: France The New Émigré  Living and Making a Living; Some Translations   Judeo-German for the French Scholar  The Popular Languages of France  Rabelais  Les Sources Indigènes and Disappointment  Summing Up   Languages and “the People” in the 1920s and 1930s  Two Jewish Critics on Sainéan’s Life 

Abbreviations  Bibliography  Index 

ZD_Book.indb 6

133 139 146 149 152 156 159 160 162

165 167 179

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

Š  Note on Transliteration I have followed current practice in the translation of Romanian works into English in using diacritical marks on Romanian names and titles of publications.

ZD_Book.indb 7

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

ZD_Book.indb 8

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

Š  Acknowledgments Listening to the Languages of the People was a long time in the making. With the book’s attention to the work of Lazare Sainéan in three languages, Yiddish, Romanian, and French, I have turned to many scholars for their comments and bibliographical suggestions: Hans Aarslef, Svetlana Alpers, Sorin Antohi, Oana Baboi, Jean Birnbaum, Menachem Butler, Denis Crouzet, Alexandru Dutru, Victor Eskenasy, Lucian-Zeev Herşcovici, Christina Kramer, Mircea Platon, David Sorkin, Céline Trautmann-Waller, and Katherine Verdery. Constantin Iordachi and Gábor Klaniczay read the entire manuscript and made very helpful suggestions for its improvement. I am also appreciative of the assistance given me by the Center for the Study of Romanian Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and of the lively discussions around my paper provided by the Nationalism Studies Program at the Central European University, the Department of History at the University of Delaware, the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Linda Kunos, senior editor of the Central European University Press, has been of enormous assistance in readying this book for publication, and I am deeply honored that Listening to the Languages of the People happens to be the five-hundredth book published by the Central European University Press. John Puckett put his keen eye to work in editing the text. My literary agent Jennifer Weltz offered support and good advice at many moments. To all of them I extend my warmest thanks.

ZD_Book.indb 9

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

x

Acknowledgments

Dr. Mark Bernstein and Dr. Andrea Covelli kept me going on my health journey as I wrote this book, as did my wonderful children and grandchildren. My daughter Hannah Davis Taieb took pity on me, mired as I was in old-fashioned copy-editing practices, and guided me through the electronic preparation of a manuscript for publication. My husband Chandler Davis, a lover of languages, was a sharp critic of my claims and encouraged me to strengthen my argument about Lazare Sainéan and his worlds of philology and folklore. I tried here to listen to Lazare Sainéan’s voice and I hope I have given him his due. Natalie Zemon Davis, Toronto, April 2022

ZD_Book.indb 10

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

For Denis Crouzet and Gábor Klaniczay

ZD_Book.indb 11

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

ZD_Book.indb 12

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

Š  Introduction Some twenty-five years ago, while working on the Yiddish autobiography of the seventeenth-century merchant Glikl Hamel, I found myself reading Uriel Weinreich’s 1954 collection, The Field of Yiddish. My eyes caught sight of an essay by Chaim Gininger entitled “[Lazare] Sainéan’s Accomplishments in Yiddish Linguistics.”1 “Lazare Sainéan!” I exclaimed. “What is he doing here?” Like any good seizièmiste, I had often used Sainéan’s book on the language of Rabelais (La langue de Rabelais). Published in Paris in 1922-23, its examination of the sources of Rabelais’s rich vocabulary is still of value today along with newer interpretations of Rabelais’s linguistic strategies.2 Now I discovered that Lazare Sainéan had had a whole other life before he turned to Rabelais. He had been Lazăr Şăin in his earliest articles in Jewish periodicals in Bucharest, and then in 1883 became Lazăr Şăineanu in his many philological and linguistic publications, until he became Lazare Sainéan as an émigré from Romania to Paris in 1901. As such, Şăin/Şăineanu/Sainéan was a fascinating addition to my study of figures who cross cultural and geographical boundaries and of the entanglements, difficulties, and creativities which ensue for them.3 Sainéan’s significance goes beyond his individual life story, however, and his example allows us to bring together strands of thought and action that are usu1 Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments in Yiddish Linguistics,” 147–78. Chaim Gininger was a Yiddish philologist who was born in Czernowitz, Austro-Hungarian Empire, (today Chernivtsi in Ukraine) in 1905 and taught there until after World War I. He then moved to New York, where he continued his work until his death in 1994. Unfortunately, his monograph on Sainéan was never completed. 2 Sainéan, La langue de Rabelais. Among important studies today is François Rigolot, Les langages de Rabelais (Genève: Droz, 1976). 3 As such, I spoke of him briefly in my Marc Bloch lecture of 1995, “Métissage culturel et méditation historique,” Le Monde, 18–19 June 1995, 11.

ZD_Book.indb 1

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

2

Introduction

ally separated in the scholarly literature. He worked on Romanian, Yiddish, and French languages and folklore, using similar innovative methods. For Romanian, Sainéan’s contribution would be part of an effort to give a scholarly base and texts to the youngest of the Romance languages. This was not always a tranquil enterprise: at a time of passionate and contentious quest for national identity, as we will see, there were conflicting agendas within the field of Romanian philology. Sainéan savored his work in this field, for it allowed him early in his career to construct himself publicly as both a Jew and a Romanian. Sainéan’s publication on Yiddish and on Jewish folklore were part of the Ştiința Iudaismului, the Science of Judaism, so important to those modernizing Jewish intellectuals of the last generation of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, in Romania. At the same time, he was deeply influenced by and ultimately contributed to contemporary debates about the methods and goals of European philology and linguistics. Once in Paris and welcomed in its literary circles, Sainéan was distinctively positioned to open new approaches to the popular speech practices of France and the language of François Rabelais. Such work would readily find its place, so he could expect, within the spectrum of current French debate about the social and geographical sources of the national tongue. As for his scholarship on Yiddish, in the political setting of early twentiethcentury France, could it find a public? And with the preference of the burgeoning Zionist movement for Hebrew over Yiddish, what would be the response of some of his fellow Jews? Over the decades, sometimes in the face of harsh opposition, our Şăin/ Șăineanu/Sainéan sustained his loyalty to all his various languages of the people. We will follow him as he studied them, and at the same time tried to carve out a status for himself in scholarly and political settings that were often infected with anti-Semitism. Did he succeed in his efforts, some of them quite contentious, to “belong” to the gentile world, especially to its academic groves? Or did he remain always something of an outsider, a foreigner, a stranger? Listening to the Languages of the People has a double goal. It is a biography of the Romanian Jew Lazăr Șăineanu, both as he conceived his life and as we can recast it from a wider standpoint. It is also a study of how ideas about language and folklore fare in a Europe infused with national sentiment and conflict over the status of its Jews.

ZD_Book.indb 2

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

Pa r t One

Romania

Early Years: Studies and Friendships Lazăr Şăineanu was born Eliezer ben Moses Şăin in Ploieşti, Wallachia in 1859, the same year that Wallachia and Moldavia were united under a single prince of Romania. Romanian was only one of the languages heard in Şăin’s childhood home, however. His mother, Debora Rubin, herself the daughter of a distinguished Talmudist, spoke the Yiddish of Wallachia with him as she did also with his four sisters and his younger brother Mayer, born in 1869. His father Moses, also born in Ploieşti, had studied in Vienna and then became a painter of decorative murals for houses and public buildings. He saw to it that the young Eliezer was tutored in both Hebrew and Greek. At the gymnasium in Ploieşti, Eliezer was introduced to Latin, which he mastered along with French at the lyceum Matei Basarab in Bucharest in the late 1870s and early 1880s. By that date he was calling himself Lazăr and expecting to acquire more languages in the future.1 1 Şăineanu always used the Romanian spelling of his surname—Şăin—in his earliest publications, when they were under his control. As we will see below, when publishing under the editorship of Moses Schwarzkopf, his name appeared in “Jewish” fashion as “Schein” until 1883, when he had his name officially changed to Şăineanu. A major source for the life of Lazare Sainéan is an autobiography that he published in 1928 under the name of Luca Vornea, Lazăr Şăineanu. Schiţă biografică urmată de o bibliografie critică, 1–7: for his early years and languages. Henceforth SVSc. “Vornea” says in the Preface that he is working from materials provided by Lazăr Şăineanu, but the text includes numerous book reviews, comments about Sainéan, and even personal letters, which must have remained in Sainéan’s possession. The text also has passages similar to those in autobiographical texts published under Sainéan’s own name: Une carrière philologique (1901); O carieră filologică (1901); Histoire de mes ouvrages. Fragment de biographie intellectuelle (1901–1930) in Sainéan, SSI, 3:477–510. Şăineanu’s brother Mayer took the Romanian name of Mariu (Stern, Den viața unui evreu român, 2:133). Then, in circumtances that we will explore later, he took on that of Constantin. He wrote a biography shortly after the death of his older brother Lazăr, which adds a few details to the autobiographies: Lazăr Şăineanu 1859–1934.

ZD_Book.indb 3

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

4

Part One

Those years also brought Şăineanu the formative friendships of his young adulthood with two men slightly older than he. Moses Gaster was born into a wealthy and cultivated Jewish family in Bucharest and returned to that city in 1881 after his philological studies at Leipzig and his rabbinical and literary studies at Breslau. Impressed by the young Lazăr, Moses invited him to use his great library of books and manuscripts. Publishing his pioneering book on Romanian literature in 1883, Literatura populară română (Romanian Popular Literature), which explored stories, folk tales, poems, proverbs, songs, and riddles, Gaster sent a copy “amicului meu L. Şăineanu,” to my friend L. Şăineanu, with an affectionate inscription. In that year, too, Lazăr began spelling his surname in a Romanian fashion, which Gaster then adopted in addressing him.2 Moses Schwarzfeld, the other member of the trio, was from a literary family of Moldavian activists for Jewish enlightenment and emancipation. His older brother Elias, a historian and novelist, founded the literary periodical Revista Israelitică, and in 1879 became editor of the important Jewish periodical Fraternitatea. By then Moses Schwarzfeld had moved to Bucharest and created his On his early years: SVSc, 5–6; C. M. Şăineanu, Şăineanu, 3–5. On his mother’s Wallachian Yiddish: Lazare Sainéan, “Essai sur le judéo-allemand,” 95 n. 1. Şăineanu describes his family in the course of his interview for French naturalization in December, 1902. He mentions his brother, then 34 years old, and four sisters, 46, 41, 38, and 32, all married and living in Bucharest. (Archives Nationales de France, BB11, 3885–3030 XO1, Sainéan, Lazare, document 2). According to his brother, Lazăr took on the responsibility of seeing them married after his father’s death in 1879 (C.M Şăineanu, Şăineanu, 5). Recent studies of Sainéan include Voicu, Radiografia unei expatrieri, which gives a thorough treatment of the events leading up to Sainéan’s emigration in 1901, and Herșcovici, Le mouvement de la Haskalah, 1: 822–30, 842–43, 887–95), which describes Sainéan’s relation to Haskalah. 2 Maria Haralambakis, “Romanian Jewish Autographs in the John Rylands Library Collected by Moses Gaster, and their Historical Contexts,” in Crăciun, ed., Lumea evreiască în literatura română, 183–88, 184 n. 21; SVSc 8–9; and Moses Gaster, Literatura populară română (1883).Introductions to and sources for Gaster’s life, including material on the the Gaster-Şăineanu friendship, can be found in Moses Gaster în corespondenţă, ed. Virgiliu Florea (henceforth, Gaster, CF), and especially in Moses Gaster, Memorii [Fragmente]. Corespondenţă, ed. Victor Eskenasy (henceforth, Gaster, MC). Eskenasy has pointed to the excision by “Vornea” of certain sentences in the Gaster/Şăineanu correspondence which were critical of Romania for its treatment of Jews, remarks evidently still unacceptable in Ceaușescu’s communist Romania. Eskenasy has corrected these in his Corespondență and in Eskenasy, “Notes on Moses Gaster’s Correspondence with Jewish and Romanian Intellectuals.” The English originals of the autobiographical materials translated by Eskenasy into Romanian are in the Gaster Papers in the University College London Library, Special Collections, Ms. A, “Autobiography,” Ms. C “Things that Were.” For overviews of Gaster’s life, see also the fascinating essay by his son Theodor H. Gaster, “Prolegomenon” in Moses Gaster, Studies and Texts in Folklore XVXL (mention of Şăineanu, XVIII); Florea, “Dr. M. Gaster: ‘I am a bit of a Romanian Scholar’”; and Măriuca Stanciu, “Gaster, Moses.” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. https://yivoencylopedia.org/article.aspx/Gaster_Moses (accessed October 25, 2021)

ZD_Book.indb 4

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:22

Romania

5

Figure 1. Anuar pentru Israeliţi 5 (1882), edited by Moses Schwarzfeld and with essays by both Gaster and Şăineanu. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Digitala BCU Cluj.

own literary and historical periodical, the Anuar pentru Israeliţi (Israelite Yearbook), for which he solicited articles from Moses Gaster and Lazăr Şăin and other Jewish intellectuals (figure 1). In 1882, Moses Schwarzfeld himself published there an “ethno-psychological” study of Jewish folklore, one of the first of his many works on Jewish culture and history. Meanwhile, the friendship of the three men was memorialized in a photograph from 1885, Gaster with a traditional ample beard, and Schwarzfeld and Şăineanu clean-shaven with fashionable mustaches (figure 2).3 The three young men had much to talk about—surely slipping from Romanian into Yiddish—in regard to politics, literature, and language. The 1866 Constitution of the new Romania had limited citizenship to persons born to an ethnic Romanian father and had denied naturalization to any non-Christian 3 Bar-Avi, Viaţă şi opera lui Moses Schwarzfeld, 3–8; Herşcovici, “Hebrew ‘Maskilim’ Writers in Romania,” 149, 158–59; Herșcovici, “Haskalah,” 1:756–62. Moses Schwarzfeld, Literatura populară Israelită ca element etnico-psichologic, Bucharest, December 1882 (offprint from the Anuar pentru Isrealiți 5).

ZD_Book.indb 5

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

6

Part One

Figure 2. Moses Schwarzfeld, Moses Gaster, and Lazăr Şăineanu in 1885. Courtesy of the Cabinetul de Stampe, Library of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest.

resident, even if born on Romanian soil. Jews (and other non-Christians), whether recent immigrants from Galicia or from families long established in Wallachia and Moldavia, had the status of “foreigners” or “strangers.” By the 1878 treaty of Berlin, the European powers agreed to recognize Romania’s newly won independence from the Ottoman Empire only if its constitution extended citizenship to non-Christians. The Romanian government responded by opening the door just a crack, allowing individual Jews to be naturalized in special cases and then only by approval from both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. On the one hand, wealthy and professional Jews protested their loyalty to Romania: “We, too, are sons of Romania; we, too, are devoted to it... It is our only fatherland... The ashes of our fathers lie at rest in the Romanian soil.”4 On the other hand, a nationalist movement, with support from both conservatives and liberals, found “the Jewish element” incompatible with Romanian identity. Romania’s great poet Mihai Eminescu, though opposed to punitive treatment of Jews and quite willing to associate with the remarkable Moses Gaster, still affirmed, “The Jews are not—cannot be Romanians... They are Jews and 4 “Nous aussi nous sommes les fils de la Roumanie, nous aussi nous lui sommes dévoués … Elle est notre unique patrie … C’est dans le sol roumain que reposent les cendres de nos pères”. Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie (1866–1919), petition of the Romanian Jews (1879), 169.

ZD_Book.indb 6

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

Romania

7

cannot be anything else.” They spoke in their own tongue, and their loyalty was first and foremost to their own kind. Eminescu dismissed those who “claim to form part of the Romanian nation [simply] by the circumstance of being born on a certain piece of land and not by language, customs or the way of looking at the world.”5 Anti-Semitic conviction was reinforced by popular stereotypes of the Jews as wizards, devils, seekers after blood, and the like, and by scholarly theories about Romanian history and language. From 1774 to 1812, the Transylvanian scholars Samuil Micu, Petru Maior, and Gheorghe Şincai had set up the saga in books of history, grammar, and etymology. The current Romanians were the descendants of the Roman soldiers who had settled in the province of DaciaTraiana (present day Transylvania) in the second and third centuries of the Common Era. They had done away with the indigenous Dacians and had remained, now Christianized, after the Emperor Aurelian had withdrawn his legions. The Romanian language had directly descended from the vernacular Latin spoken by those settlers. To keep the purity of the language, Petru Maior substituted words derived from Latin for Slavic words that had crept in over the years. Though these men had their critics, their beliefs still shaped the cultural agenda of the Romanian nationalists of the late nineteenth century.6 Such were the nationalist exclusions facing Gaster, Schwarzfeld, Şăineanu and others in their circle of modernizing Jews. Şăineanu addressed them already in his first book, published under the name of Lazăr Şăin in 1880, as he was turning twenty-one. It was a biography of Moses Mendelssohn, a celebration of the contributions made by that great figure to both the German Enlightenment and the Jewish Haskalah. The young Şăin reminded his Romanian Jewish read5 Iordachi, “The Unyielding Boundaries of Citizenship,” 158–71. The classic study on the Jews and citizenship in Romania is Iancu, Les Juifs en Roumanie (1866–1919); 186–88, table of all naturalizations. After an initial naturalization of 58 men in 1879–1880, only 11 persons were to be naturalized from 1880 through 1889, 16 persons from 1890–1900—out of thousands of requests. Oldson, A Providential Anti-Semitism, 99–138; Trencsényi, The Politics of “National Character,” 20–34. On the attitudes of and quotation from Mihai Eminiscu, see Iancu, Juifs, 214–16; Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 118–22; Trencsényi, Politics, 26–27; and Sorin Antohi, Imaginaire culturel et réalité politique dans la Roumanie moderne, 109–110. A helpful review of the literature is presented by Emanuaela Costantini, “Neither Foreigners, nor Citizens. Romanian Jews’ Long Road to Citizenship,” in Caalan and Dogo, eds. The Jews and the Nation-States of Southeastern Europe, 2–22. 6 For a general background on anti-Semitism in Romania, see Oldson, Providential anti-Semitism and Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and anti-Semitism. On anti-Semitic stereotypes in Romania, see Schwarzfeld, Evreii în literatura populară romănă and Oișteanu, Inventing the Jew. On theories of history and language, see Hitchins, The Idea of Nation, 113–22 and Densușianu, Histoire de la langue roumaine, 1: xvi–xxvi.

ZD_Book.indb 7

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

8

Part One

ers of Mendelssohn’s injunction “to adopt the language and aspirations of the people in the country where they live.” Initiative could not come from the Jews alone, however, for they had been cut off from general culture and society and humiliated by centuries of persecution. Mendelssohn had worked for political reform that would allow Jews to be “good citizens,” said Şăin approvingly; “he had the noble intention of giving those of his religion a new homeland (o novă patrie).” This could be accomplished only with the equality of all persons before the law and the freedom of religion, which had been inaugurated by the French Revolution. May the 150th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth usher in an era of Jewish emancipation in Romania! And then Şăin made a clever comparison between the Jews and the Romanians: how appropriate that Jewish emancipation could coincide with Romania’s own independence from Turkish oppression and Romania’s own intellectual renaissance.7 For his baccalaureate thesis, finished by early 1882, Şăineanu wrote an exposition of the grammar and philology of the polymath Ion Heliade Rădulescu (1802–1872), a leading figure in that Romanian renaissance. Here Şăineanu got full exposure to Romanian nationalist theory. Fired by Liberal and Romantic hopes, Heliade Rădulescu had urged the Romanian elites to put aside their Greek and French and speak with pride their mother tongue. True Romanians descended from the Romans, he affirmed, Romanian was a fully Latin language, and should be published in Roman characters, not in the Greek Cyrillic. Essentially it was the same language as Italian, so Heliade Rădulescu came to believe. Except for some borrowings from the Greek, Slavic words and any other words of non-Latin origin should be excluded from the Romanian dictionary and be replaced with Italianate new coinages.8 Forging his own views subsequently, Şăineanu would take a different tack. 7 Lazăr Şăin, Moisi Mendelsohn [sic] viaţa şi activitatea sa. Studiu biografic (Bucharest: Tipografia Hajoetz, 1880)]. Şăineanu repeated four times the injunction to Jews to adopt the language and aspirations of the people in the locality in which they live. His father Moses had died in January 1879, and Şăineanu dedicated the book to his memory. Herșcovici reviews Şăineanu’s biography in the context of the historical writing of his generation in Mouvement de la Haskalah, 1: 822–29. On Mendelssohn, see Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn. 8 SVSc, 8, 71. Sainéan explains that he published a version of his baccalaureate thesis only in 1892, when he gave it as a lecture at the Bucharest Athenaeum: Ioan Eliade Rădulescu ca gramatic şi filolog (Bucharest, 1892). On Heliade Rădulescu’s linguistic theories and literary practice, especially in the first part of his career, see Close, The Development of Modern Rumanian Linguistic Theory and Practice, 47–134. Early on, Heliade Rădulescu had talked of Romanian as made up of a combination of Daco-Romanian and Macedo-Romanian dialects, but in his later years, he maintained that Romanian and Italian were a single language.

ZD_Book.indb 8

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

Romania

9

The Field of Linguistics In the next years, Şăineanu’s intellectual universe widened to address the central questions being posed in European linguistics of his day, thereby raising the stakes for his later publications on Romanian and Yiddish both. His initial guide here was Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, a linguist, folklorist, and historian, to whom Şăineanu came to prepare his licentiate at the University of Bucharest.9 Linguistic study had begun in 1786, when William Jones made the link between Sanskrit and Latin, Greek, and the Germanic and Celtic languages. After further work by Friedrich von Schlegel and others, the tasks for the field were laid out by the great Indo-Europeanists Franz Bopp (1791–1867) at Berlin and August Schleicher (1821–1868) at Jena.10 The linguist, through comparison, should describe the organization of language families—that is, those that had a common origin—and chart the development of their grammatical structures and their phonetic laws. No more fanciful ill-supported etymologies! Language changed by its own laws. Bopp called them “les lois physiques et mécaniques,” “physical and mechanical laws.” Schleicher, while noting that the movement and location of peoples had an impact on their speech, still affirmed, “[l]anguages are natural organisms, which outside of human will and following determined laws, are born, grow, develop, age and die.” Bopp and Schleicher began to fulfill this agenda for the languages descended from a pre-Sanskrit “fundamental language.” The program could then be followed for sub-groups of the Indo-European languages, such as the Romance languages, and be extended to Semitic and other language families.11 9 SVSc, 11–13, including Şăineanu’s letter to B. P. Hasdeu of February 1882, where he lists the topics he would like to pursue under Hasdeu’s direction. Hasdeu’s life is treated in biographies by Poghirc, B.P. Hasdeu; Drăgan, B. P. Hasdeu, and Sandu, Viața lui B.P. Hasdeu. His intellectual networks and his influence on Șăineanu and many others are described in Goia, B.P. Hasdeu. 10 Interesting early accounts of the history of philology in the wake of William Jones’s 1786 paper on the role of Sanskrit as the language of origin for the Indo-European languages are by Theodor Benfey (1809–1801), who was a Jewish scholar of Sanskrit at Göttingen; and by the great linguist Antoine Meillet (1866–1936), who will figure in our story here. Theodor Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland (Munich: J.G. Cotta, 1869); Antoine Meillet, “Aperçu du développement de la grammaire comparée,” in Meillet, Introduction à l’ étude comparative des langues, 8th ed., 454–509. Meillet’s text here is slightly revised and updated since his first edition appeared in 1903. Among recent studies, see Robins, A Short History of Linguistics, 133–97 and Iordan and Orr, An Introduction to Romance Linguistics, 1–85. Along with Jones and Friedrich von Schlegel, early contributions were made by Friedrich’s brother A. W. von Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Jacob Grimm. 11 “Les langues sont des organismes naturels qui, en dehors de la volonté humaine et suivant des lois déterminées, naissent, croissent, se développent, vieillissent et meurent.” Bopp, Grammaire comparée des langues indo-européennes, 1: 1–2, 8; Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik, 1: iii, xi-xii. Schleicher,

ZD_Book.indb 9

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

10

Part One

But some languages were better than others. Schleicher had distributed languages into three categories depending on their morphology: the monosyllabic, as in Chinese; the confixative (or agglutinative), as in the languages of the aboriginals in America; and the inflective, as in the Indo-European and Semitic language families. Well before he had read Darwin’s Origin of the Species, Schleicher had put these language types in an evolutionary order. The inflective was the higher form, which had gradually developed out of the earlier ones. Within the inflective category, as Bopp had affirmed, the Indo-European language family, with its great richness and refinement in roots and inflections, was higher than the Semitic.12 Schleicher did not think these language-families were coterminous with race, for the same language was spoken by people of different races. Rather language provided a more certain way than race to classify humankind and to follow the human struggle for existence. Currently the Indo-European languages were winning out. “In the current moment in the life of humanity, it is especially the languages of Indo-European stock that are victorious, continually in the process of expansion.” Other languages, such as those of the indigenous peoples of North America, seemed destined for extinction, “rendus impropres à la vie historique rien que par la complexité de leurs langues,” “languages rendered unsuitable for historical life if only by their complexity.”13 La théorie de Darwin et la science du langage, 3, 16–17; Schleicher, Die Darwinsche Theorie, 27–28, Schleicher, Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik, 2nd ed., 1, 4–5. 12 Schleicher, Compendium, 3 (“isolierende sprachen,” “zusammen fügende sprachen,” “flectierende sprachen”); Schleicher, A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar, trans. Bendell, 1, 2–4. Schleicher, Théorie de Darwin, 13–16; Darwinsche Theorie, 24–26. Bopp, Grammaire comparée, 3; Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik, iv-v. The terms used in Bopp’s appreciation of the Indo-European languages go back to those used by Jones: “The Sanskrit language … is of wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either” (Robins, Short History, 134). For background on these matters, see Tort, Évolutionnisme et linguistique, 7–40; J. Peter Maher, “Introduction” in Linguistics and Evolutionary Theory. Three Essays by August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Bleek, ed. Konrad Koerne (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1983), xvii–xliv; and Olender, Les langues du paradis. 13 “Dans la période présente dans la vie de l’humanité, ce sont surtout les langues de la souche indo-germanique qui sont les victorieuses, elles sont continuellement en voie d’extension.” Schleicher, Théorie de Darwin . . . Importance de langage, 19–20 (quotations), 25–27, 31. Schleicher, Darwinsche Theorie, 32. Schleicher, Über die Bedeutung der Sprache, 16–18, 28 (“Indianerstämme). In his Histoire générale et système comparé de langues sémitiques of 1855, Ernest Renan much elaborated on Bopp’s views on the differences between the Semitic and the Indo-European language families and took the idea of race more seriously than did Schleicher (Histoire générale et système, i–viii, 3–9, 17–21). Hasdeu and Şăineanu knew of the work but, concerned as they were with Indo-European languages, it did not have a major impact on them.

ZD_Book.indb 10

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

Romania

11

In Europe as well Schleicher rated some languages lower than others. Wallachian, or Daco-Romanian, was a Latin language, but “diminishing in quality and disorganized. The sounds are arbitrary and without rational rules, the inflection is full of elements not found in the general body of Romance idioms; the dictionary is inundated with a flood of Hungarian, German, Greek, Turkish, and Slavic words.”14 At the bottom were the “artificial languages” (künstliche Sprachen), such as Rotwelsch, the beggars’ tongue, and other idioms created by and for special groups, such as craftsmen and mountain people. Schleicher seems to have located Judendeutsch (Judeo-German) among them, noting also the presence of Hebrew words in many of these special tongues. As a group he called all of them Gaunersprachen, les argots des voleurs, the language of thieves. Whereas true languages were an organic creation, changing by natural laws, the Gaunersprachen were created by persons for their own ends. They were “diseased parasites” on European languages, adopting their syntax and grammar, but cramming them with foreign and unintelligible words. As European police forces could not get rid of thieves, so the Gaunersprachen could not be eradicated.15 Hasdeu, a brilliant and productive maverick, accepted the the BoppSchleicher program in regard to grammar and phonetics, but had his reservations about its judgments on vocabulary and language groups, and its account of language change. Romanian was a “young” language and written evidence for its past was still being accumulated (Gaster’s 1883 collection of early Romanian texts had thus been an important contribution, and Hasdeu himself was publishing major sources). The scholar of Romanian, with limited evidence, would be hard-pressed to describe it only in terms of a natural organism changing by its own rules. Following the example of Heymann Steinthal and others, Hasdeu thus turned to folktales and customs and brought “ethno-psychological” explanations to bear on language change.16 14 “Dégénerée et désordonnée. Le son est arbitraire et sans règles rationnelles, la flexion est imbue d’éléments qui ne se rencontrent pas dans le type générale des idiomes romanisés, et le dictionnaire est inondé d’une foule de mots magyars, allemands, grecs, turcs, et slaves.” (Schleicher, Die Sprachen Europas, 186; Schleicher, Les langues de l’Europe moderne), 238–39. 15 Schleicher, Sprachen Europas, 240–42. The French translation by Ewerbeck eliminates most of Schleicher’s discussion (Langues, 314–15). I have found only one other reference to Judendeutsch in Schleicher’s publications: in Die deutsche Sprache, where he mentions the Yiddish word “schabbes,” along with the Hebrew schabbât, as origins of the German word Samstag ([Stuttgart; J.G. Cotta,1860], 116). 16 Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Cuvente den bătrîni, ed. and with an introduction by G. Mihăilă, 3 vols., (Bucharest: Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, 1984). This edition reproduces the initial publication of the Cuvente den bătrîni in three volumes in Bucharest in 1878–1881. Volume one includes many

ZD_Book.indb 11

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

12

Part One

As for the vocabulary of Romanian, Hasdeu, an ardent patriot, had initially said the language derived wholly from the Latin of Roman settlers. Examining words and phonetics, however, he discovered connections with ancient Dacian, Thracian, and Illyrian, and in 1874 published an important work on Romanian words used by shepherds that were derived from Dacian. The ancient Dacians had not been wiped out by the Romans after all, but, together with Roman settlers and others, they had shaped the early history and language of Romania.17 Hasdeu also had to take seriously recent etymological studies by other philologists showing foreign origins for Romanian words. He ended up with a position intermediate between those who strained for exclusive Latin origins and those who found Slavic, Turkish, Greek, and Hungarian derivations everywhere: foreign words had entered Romanian through trade and social exchange, but it was the Latin-derived words that were heard most often circulating in the mouths of the people.18 Especially important, Hasdeu became interested in the work of the linguist Hugo Schuchardt at the University of Graz, who was starting to develop his concept of Sprachmischung. Mixtures in language were a frequent and healthy state of affairs, Schuchardt was to claim. They were a part of human existence and patterns of settlement and a fertile source of language change. In 18721875, Schuchardt had reviewed books by Hasdeu and others on the diverse sources of Romanian, a debate that spurred his early reflection on Sprachmischung. Hasdeu then invited Schuchardt to comment on his treatment of Old Romanian texts, and Schuchardt’s response was published in 1878 in the opening volume of Hasdeu’s Cuvente den bătrîni (Words from the Elders).19 sources in Romanian especially from 1550—1600. Volume three, subtitled Principie de linguistică, is devoted to Hasdeu’s description of the whole field of language study, including Hasdeu’s distinction between “philology” and “linguistics,” and with much reference to Schleicher throughout. On the need for an ethno-psychological approach, see especially 3: 21–27, 79–91. His role in the development of Romanian linguistics is discussed in Luiza Seche and Mircea Seche, “Lingvistica românească între 1870 și 1918,” in Iorgu Iordan, ed., Istoria lingvisticii românești, 83–97 and in Paliga, “Etymology and Ideology.” 17 Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, 90–91. Tchavdar Marinov, “Ancient Thrace in the Modern Imagination: Ideological Aspects of the Construction of Thracian Studies in Southeast Europe (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria),” in Daskalov and Vezenkov, eds., Entangled Histories of the Balkans, 3: 24–26. 18 Hasdeu, Cuvente, 3: 9–12, 70–79 (the importance of the actual circulation of words in determining the location of a language in language groups); Hasdeu, Studii de lingvistică, 188–230; Poghirc, B.P. Hasdeu, 127–49, 169–93; and Densușianu, Histoire de la langue roumaine, 1: xxvi–xxvii. 19 Schuchardt, Hugo Schuchardt-Brevier, 5–7, 128–82. Though Schuchardt is known today for his pioneering publications on Creole languages and the Mediterranean lingua franca, his writing on

ZD_Book.indb 12

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

Romania

13

All this was going on just before Lazăr Şăineanu became Hasdeu’s student in 1882, and his teacher promptly introduced him both to the established school of German linguistics and to its current critics. Schuchardt made an early impact on Şăineanu, as we will see. By 1885 if not before, Hasdeu also had Şăineanu reading the works of Michel Bréal, the vanguard French linguist, who in 1866 had translated Bopp’s book on comparative grammar into French, while pointing out its limits as a program for the full study of language. Hasdeu had met Bréal in Paris in 1882, when he was elected to the Société de Linguistique de Paris, of which Bréal had been one of the founders some years before.20 Şăineanu had another link to the French scholar: as he knew from the “News from Abroad” column of the Jewish journal Fraternitatea, Michel Bréal was one of the four “Israelite” professors at the Collège de France.21 In his first lectures at the Collège de France in 1866-1868, Bréal offered his vision for the wider study of languages and their history. The Bopp-Schleicher methods for examining the laws for change in morphology, grammar, and sound were essential, he said, but these constituted only “une étude purement externe” of the comparative history of language. Equally necessary was the study of the meaning and function of words. The “great works of Bopp and Schleicher” sometimes read to him like texts of geology or astronomy, “as if everything just followed along and was explained without any human intervention that one could see.” But language was a profoundly human activity: “to understand the structure of a language, it’s not enough to analyse its grammar and find the etymological value of words. One must enter into the ways of thinking and feeling of the people.” Linguistic changes went hand in hand with Sprachmischung began with Europe and continued to include examples from Europe. Hugo Schuchardt, “Der Rumänen Herkunft,” Beilage zur Allgemeine Zeitung 88 (28 March 1872), 1321–23; 91 (31 March 1872), 1374–75. Schuchardt said that the evidence showed that Romanian did not directly descend from the language spoken by the Roman soldiers in Dacia and described the several languages afloat in the region. Schuchardt’s reviews of three publications by Hasdeu appeared in Literarisches Zentralblatt, 20 March 1875, 380–82. One of them, Istoria critică a Romănilor (1875), referred to Schuchardt’s work (Hasdeu, Istoria critică, 501 n. 4). Schuchardt, “Über B. P. Hasdeu’s ‘Altrumänische texte und Glossen,’” in Hasdeu, Cuvente, 1: 444–76; correspondence between Hasdeu and Schuchardt, 2: 594–605. 20 On Bréal’s importance, see Bergounioux, “La science du langage en France,” 22, 30; Aarslef, From Locke to Saussure, 293–94, 303–304; and Décimo, Sciences et pataphysique, 2:1–43. Bréal, Introduction à la grammaire comparée, iii–xliii. Poghirc, Hasdeu, 68, 110. 21 During 1879 “Lazar Schein” made many contributions to Fraternitatea, the Jewish weekly edited by Elias Schwarzfeld, in which Bréal was mentioned.

ZD_Book.indb 13

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:23

14

Part One

other historical changes, “if not with political history than at least with the intellectual and social history of the people.”22 Further, said Bréal, the extension of comparative philology to “toutes les races du globe” was making it clear that no one model for organizing language, such as the Indo-European Sanskrit, was absolutely superior. Human thought could work well with different models, and language flourished in many mouths. (Here Bréal was especially targeting the claims of Schleicher.) The greatness of Greek stemmed from both “la langue populaire” and “la tradition poétique.” As Bréal remarked, in a phrase that Şăineanu was soon to quote, “Le langage n’est pas seulement l’oeuvre des savants... Tout le monde y collabore, hommes, femmes, enfants.” “Language is not only the work of scholars... Everyone collaborates on it—men, women, and children.”23

Š  First Publications Şăineanu drew upon both Bréal’s perspectives and the mixed languages theory of Schuchardt for his publications in the decade from 1882 to 1892. These were busy years as he began with courses at the Faculty of Letters on archeology, Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. (He also spent a few months in Paris, taking a class in Sanskrit at the Sorbonne.) Philosophy he read with Titu Maiorescu, a luminary of Romania’s new cultural movement and its literary society Junimea. “More of an orator than a philosopher,” Şăineanu was to say of him, but at least Maiorescu introduced him to writings by John Stuart Mill. In contrast, Şăineanu found his archeology studies with Alexandru Odobescu a rich introduction to “national culture” and to methods for finding evi22 “Il ne suffit point, pour se rendre compte de la structure d’une langue, d’analyser sa grammaire et de ramener les mots à leur valeur étymologique. Il faut entrer dans la façon de penser et de sentir du people comme tout s’enchaine et s’explique sans qu’aucun agent personnel intervienne d’une façon visible”; “sinon avec l’histoire politique, de moins avec l’histoire intellectuelle et sociale du peuple.” I am here summing up Bréal’s arguments in “De la forme et de la fonction des mots” and “Les idées latentes du langage,” lectures given at the Collège de France respectively in 1866 and 1868. They are published in Bréal, Mélanges de mythologie et de linguistique, 243–66, 297–322 (quotations on 248–49, 253, 321–22). Both lectures are cited by Şăineanu in his Încercare asupra semasiologiei limbei române, 5–6. Aarslef, “Bréal,” 295–96, 303–308. Bréal links some of his ideas to those of the school of Port Royal grammar (Mélanges, 299), and Aarslef points also to Condillac. On the relation of Bréal’s Jewish identity to his thought about language, see Spaeth, “Michel Bréal et Arsène Darmesteter.” 23 Bréal, Mélanges, 310, 321–22. Michel Bréal and Anatole Bailly, Dictionnaire étymologique latin (Paris: Hachette, 1885) 207–208, and cited by Şăineanu in Încercare asupra semasiologiei, 104 n. 2.

ZD_Book.indb 14

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

Romania

15

dence from the past. Especially there were his courses in comparative grammar with Hasdeu.24 In 1885 Şăineanu published a work dedicated with much respect to “my professor B.P. Hasdeu”: Elemente turcești în limba română (Turkish Elements in the Romanian Language). It carried the account of non-Latin words in Romanian farther than Hasdeu might have expected—and farther, too, than two recent and well-regarded etymological dictionaries, those of Alexandru Cihac and the Slovenian Franz Miklosich. The importation of Turkish words into “our language” had begun with the Ottoman invasions of the fifteenth century, said Şăineanu, and had continued without interruption until the present. To discover them, he had explored chronicles, popular poetry, folktales, marriage contracts, and other such sources to create his vocabulary. The “young researcher” was praised in reviews, and Hasdeu scooped up its findings to use in his own great Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae.25 Inspired by conversations with Gaster about folklore, Şăineanu also published a fascinating essay in 1886 on the Ielele, a word derived from the Turkish word yel, for wind, air. It was used by Romanian country folk to refer to dangerous fairies, who flew and danced at night, struck people with paralysis and other ills, and on rare occasions brought them benefit. Şăineanu described the powers and names given to these fairies in different regions of Romania, such as Dinsele in Wallachia and Zinele in Transylvania. But Transylvania was also visited by Irodiada and noue Iroditse, that is, by Herodias and her daughters. Şăineanu thus found the archetype for the Ielele in the pagan Herodias/Diana/ Holda and her nymphs. Diana’s tradition had passed to Romania through Slavic sources and been amalgamated with the enduring folk practice of personifying the wind, which was believed to bring illness.26 24 SVSc, 13, 16–18. 25 SVSc, 14–15, 58–59. Şăineanu, Elemente turceşti, 1–6. The book was first published in the Revista pentru istorie, arheologie și filologie, vol. 4 (1885). The two books on which Şăineanu elaborated were Cihac, Dictionnaire d’étymologie daco-romane, and Miklosich, Die türkischen Elemente. Hasdeu was deeply engaged in this subject, and as professor of comparative grammar at the University of Bucharest, he was well placed to see to it that Şăineanu’s work was published. In his reminiscences fifty years later, Moses Gaster was to claim that he had suggested the topic to Şăineanu, had reviewed every article in the vocabulary, and had arranged for the publication (Gaster Papers C, “Things that were,” 32). That the two friends discussed the project is evident from Şăineanu’s correspondence, and he may well have used a copy of Miklosich’s new book in Gaster’s library. But the rest of the claims are an example of Gaster’s habit of exaggerating his role in events (see Haralambakis, “Romanian Jewish Autographs” in Craciun, ed., Lumea evreiasică, 196–97). In January 1886, Şăineanu informed Gaster, now in exile in England, about the publication of his Elemente (Şăineanu to Gaster, 5 January 1886 in Gaster, CF, 133–34). 26 Şăineanu, Ielele. Dînsele, Vîntoasele; Elemente turcești, 120, no.1438. The Ielele has an epigraph by Hasdeu. SVSc, 59–60. Şăineanu published a revised version of his essay with a different introduction

ZD_Book.indb 15

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

16

Part One

To frame his essay, Şăineanu referred to studies in comparative mythology. Like Michel Bréal in Hercules et Cacus and James Darmesteter in Ormazd et Ahriman (another French “Israelite,” whom Şăineanu much admired), he was describing the evolution of mythical figures and their names over the centuries. In the celebrated debate between Max Müller and Adelburt Kuhn about whether myths were inspired by the regular movement of the sun or the sudden changes of storms and meteorology, his Ielele were an example of the latter. But Şăineanu agreed with France’s Salomon Reinach that myths could grow from several sources. At the same time, his study was advancing an understanding of the new Romania through the voices of its peasants.27

The Science of Judaism: Advancing Emancipation In these very years Şăineanu was working to advance another cause in Romania: Wissenschaft des Judentums—that is, the scholarly study of Judaism, Jews, and the Jewish past—and Jewish emancipation. Toward these goals he collaborated closely with his friends Moses Gaster and Moses Schwarzfeld, but his work was also fueled by the linguistic and social concerns behind his Romanian studies. From 1879 on, he published articles in Fraternitatea and the Anuar pentru Israeliți, several of them on Jewish learning in medieval times. In another key was his piece on blood libel in Romania, published in both periodicals in 1882-1883 at the time of a spectacular trial of fifteen Jews for ritual murder in Transylvania.28 in his collection Studii folklorice (Bucharest, 1896); it appeared, much shortened, in French translation in 1901: Sainéan, “Les Fées méchantes.” After the publication of Carlo Ginzburg’s I Benandanti in 1966, Mircea Eliade wrote an essay in which he showed parallels between the Romanian Ielele and the Benandanti. He gave as his source on the Ielele a recent book on Hasdeu, but in fact the work was done by Şăineanu (Mircea Eliade, “Some Observations on European Witchcraft,” History of Religion 14, no. 3 [1975]: 160–65). 27 Şăineanu, Ielele, 3–5. Bréal, Hercule et Cacus; Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, which described the transformation of Hindu gods into Persian devils. Şăineanu had sent Darmesteter a copy of his Elemente turcești and wrote Gaster about how admirable he found Darmesteter’s work (Gaster, MC, 134). Şăineanu translated quotations from Max Müller concerning his debate with Adelburt Kuhn about the origins of myth: Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, 518–19. Salomon Reinach, Manuel de philologie classique, Lecture XII, Mythologie, 1: 366. 28 L. Schein, “Calomnia luărei sîngului istoricul ei in Romănia,” Fraternitatea 4, no. 19 (7 May 1882) and in Anuar pentru Isrealiți 5 (1882): 53–82. This was the last issue of the Anuar in which the editor Moses Schwarzfeld used the “Jewish” spelling of Şăineanu’s name. From volume 6 on, he appears as “Şăineanu.” On blood libel cases in Romania, including the case in Transylvania in 1882–1883, see Oiștianu, Inventing the Jew, 405–417. An article by “Lazar Schein” appears already in the first number of Fraternitatea on 29 June 1879. On the importance of the Anuar, see Herșcovici, Haskalah 1: 754–82 (articles by Şăineanu listed on 761, the one in 1883–1884 signed Lazăr Şăineanu).

ZD_Book.indb 16

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

Romania

17

Meanwhile, Şăineanu, Gaster, and Schwarzfeld were giving lectures in Jewish circles to urge the creation of a society for the study of Jewish history and folk culture in Romania. Before that could happen, however, Moses Gaster was expelled from Romania in the fall of 1885, together with Elias Schwarzfeld and other Jewish intellectuals who had been pressing for Jewish citizenship. Their “offense” had been publicizing anti-Semitic incidents in Fraternitatea and especially in the foreign press. The Iuliu Barasch Historical Society, named after an inspiring figure of the Romanian Haskalah, came into being in 1886, with Schwarzfeld and Şăineanu as founding members and Gaster sending his support from his exile in England.29 One of the Historical Society’s first actions was to marshal historical evidence for the presence of Jews in the region of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia even before the Roman settlement in Dacia. Jacob Psantir, a selftaught historian much admired by Şăineanu, went around collecting inscriptions from centuries-old Jewish tombs. How could citizenship be withheld from this long native population?30 Şăineanu’s intervention here was an 1887 essay entitled “Jidovii sau Tătarii sau Uriași. Excursiune istorico-lingvistcă” (Jews or Tatars or Giants: A Historical-Linguistic Excursus).31 As Şăineanu had sought the names and attributes for dangerous fairies in Romania, he now explored the place names, metaphors, and stories that associated giants with Tatars and/or Jews. (Among his sources were the answers given by village schoolteachers and other local dignitaries to a questionnaire on sacred spaces that had been circulated some years before by his archeology professor Odobescu.32) “Tatars” and “giants” had become linked, Şăineanu suggested, through the Tatar invasions of the Romanian regions in the thirteenth century: in popular memory they were colossal figures who had done untold damage. 29 On Iuliu Barasch (1815–1863) and the Iuliu Barasch Historical Society, see Herșcovici, “Hebrew ‘Maskilim’ writers in Romania, 1850–1900” and Herșcovici, Haskalah, 1: 790–820. Gaster, MC, xxx–xxxii, 308, 326, 329, 446–47. 30 Herşcovici, “The Role of Historiography in the Emancipation of Romanian Jewry”. Stanciu, “Medieval Documents on the Jews in the Romanian Principalities,” includes historical documents used by Moses Gaster. Lazăr Şăineanu, “Toldot Yaa’akov Psantir” (in Hebrew), Otsar ha-Sifrut. 31 Lazăr Şăineanu, “Jidovii sau Tătarii sau Uriașii,” Convorbiri literare 21 (September 1887): 521–28; reprinted in Anuar pentru Israeliți 11. 32 Şăineanu, “Jidovii,” 522– 23, 522 n. 4. The questionnaire had been initiated by Alexandru Odobescu and distributed by the Ministry of Religious Cults and Public Instruction in 1871 and 1873 to localities throughout Romania. It inquired about the sites for religious activities and settlements, including caves and mountains, and the traditions that pertained to them. Ecaterina Țânțăreanu, “De la răspunsurile la chestionarul lui Odobescu la lista monumentelor istorice 2010—Județul Teleorman,” Buletinul muzeului județean Teleorman. Seria arheologie 3 (2011): 233–47.

ZD_Book.indb 17

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

18

Part One

But why the Jews? Moses Schwarzfeld had suggested a Khazar connection. Following it up, Şăineanu turned to a manuscript recently published by the Jewish curator of the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg that attested to the conversion of the Khazar kingdom to the Jewish religion by the tenth century. Some of those Tatar giants were Jews! Jewish Khazars took part in the Tatar invasions or otherwise settled in Transylvania and Wallachia, some presumably intermarrying with local Jews. Had not the eminent Ernest Renan himself recently asserted that “this conversion of the Khazar kingdom is of considerable importance in the question of the origin of the Jews in Danubian lands.”33 For Şăineanu, his essay contributed both to the ethnographic and linguistic past of Romania and to the Science of Judaism. He had no hesitations in publishing it first in the Convorbiri literare (Literary Conversations), the periodical founded by the Junimea and the most important Romanian literary journal of the day. Shortly afterward it appeared in Schwarzfeld’s Anuar pentru Israeliți. The earliest reaction he received from outside Jewish circles was positive: the essay was used in a Romanian geographical dictionary and won praise from Aleksandr Veselovskij, an eminent historian of literature in St. Petersburg.34 It turned out that this was by no means the end of the story.

Semasiology During these same months, Șăineanu finished and published his thesis for the licentiate. On May 3, 1887, Hasdeu signed the laudatory preface; five days later, Şăineanu wrote Gaster, “Congratulate me! I’ve received my License in 33 “…cette conversion du royaume des Khazars a une importance considérable dans la question de l’origine des juifs qui habitent les pays danubiens,” Şăineanu, “Jidovii,” 159. Moses Schwarzfeld had mentioned the possible presence of Khazar Jews in Romania in a lecture given to the Iuliu Barasch Society in January 1887 and in an article published in June (“Ochire asupra istoriei evreilor in Romania,” Anuar pentru israeliți, 10, [1887], 19–20). Şăineanu’s best source was the tenth-century response of the Khazar King Joseph ben Aaron to the letter of the rabbi of Cordoba, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, in which the king described the history and religious practices of the kingdom. Şăineanu had read the long version of this letter discovered by Abraham Harkavy and published in St. Petersburg in 1878– 1879. See Golb and Pritsak, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century, 75–76, 76 n. 3. Ernest Renan, Le Judaisme comme race et comme religion, 23. On the Romanian folk tradition of Jews as pre-human giants, see Oişteanu, Inventing the Jew, 356–60. 34 SVSc, 60–61. Şăineanu’s text also appeared, slightly revised, in French translation in Romania in 1889 (see figure 3). Aleksandr Veselovskij, specialist in Romance and Germanic languages and literature, was the Russian who wrote approvingly of Şăineanu’s essay. Veselovskij was a good friend of Gaston Paris, editor of Romania (Michel Zink and Petr Zaborov, “Gaston Paris et Aleksandr Veselovskij. Les relations scientifiques franco-russes. Une page d’histoire,” Cahiers du monde russe 48 [2001], 637–65).

ZD_Book.indb 18

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

Romania

19

letters.”35 His subject was new for Romanian linguistics as was his terminology: Încercare asupra semasiologiei limbei române. Studie istorice despre transiţiunea sensurilor (Essay on the Semasiology of the Romanian Language: Historical Studies on Changes in Meaning). Bréal had introduced the word “sémantique,” “la science des significations,” in 1883 in a brief article that Şăineanu had not seen.36 Though influenced by Bréal’s approach to the function of words, Şăineanu was here following the earlier German school in the study of meaning: the term “semasiology” he took from an 1839 book by Christian Karl Reisig, which had been edited and critically enlarged by German linguists in 1878–1881.37 Şăineanu accounted for some changes in the meaning of Romanian words through historical events, such as the introduction of Christianity. Describing the development of analogies, he included the influence on Romanian from contact with Slavic languages and Albanian. When it came to metaphors, he drew also on “popular psychology.”38 At no point did he treat language as a natural organism, with laws wholly independent of human action. The Semasiologiei was crowned with a prestigious prize by the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest. Now planning studies for his doctorate outside of Romania, Şăineanu consulted the current Minister of Education, Dimitrie Sturdza, himself a historian and founder of the National Liberal Party. Since the eminent Moses Gaster had been expelled two years previous, would Şăineanu be welcome on his return? Minister Sturdza assured him that he would. Şăineanu thereupon put in a formal request to the Ministry of Justice for his naturalization, to be acted upon, he hoped, upon his return to Romania. Before his departure, Şăineanu also delivered a German-Romanian dictionary to the publishers. As he assured readers in his Preface, he had included both lit35 Lazăr Şăineanu, Încercare asupra Semasiologiei limbei române. iii-iv. Şăineanu to Gaster, 8 May 1887, in Gaster, MC, 139: “Admiră-mă: sint licențiat in litera de la Facultatea.” 36 Michel Bréal, “Les lois intellectuelles du langage. Fragment de sémantique,”133–42. Bréal used the term again in his review of Arsène Darmesteter’s La vie des mots étudiée dans leurs significations (1887), saying that this book, along with a recent one by Hermann Paul, treated “une branche d’étude dont l’auteur de cet article peut se vanter d’avoir été le parrain … ce sont les livres de sémantique” (“Histoire des mots, ” Revue des deux mondes 82 [1 Juillet 1887]: 188). 37 Şăineanu opened with a review of the literature, in which he mentioned, among others, Christian Karl Reisig and his student Ferdinand Heerdegen, whose book Über Ziele und Methoden der lateinischen Semasiologie had been published in 1878. He also spoke appreciatively of the approach of Heymann Steinthal (Şăineanu, Semasiologiei, 3–7). For an overview of the German school, see Nerlich, Semantic Theories in Europe 1830–1930, 33–49. 38 Şăineanu, Semasiologiei, 25–44, 66–84, 133–56. Along with many examples of words, Şăineanu drew upon evidence from Hasdeu, Schuchardt, Gaster, and Bréal to support his arguments.

ZD_Book.indb 19

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

20

Part One

erary and technical language and the popular language and idioms of everyday life. He hoped it would be useful in the schools. In the late fall of 1887, he left in triumph for Paris.39

Paris, Gaston Paris, and the Jours d’Emprunt Over the next year, Şăineanu sat in on courses in Paris at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) and the École des Langues Orientales. He wanted to deepen his knowledge of comparative grammar and of the Balkan and other languages and put them to use in the study of comparative folklore: Bulgarian, Albanian, Serbian, Russian, modern Greek, and more. In addition, he listened raptly to the lectures of Michel Bréal at the Collège de France and the École Pratique and attended public events at the Société de Linguistique de Paris. Perhaps he presented Bréal with a copy of his pioneering Semasiologiei, though Bréal did not mention the book or the German school in his own Sémantique a decade later.40 Especially Şăineanu established relations with Gaston Paris, a leading scholar of medieval French literature and its history and, like Bréal, a professor at the Collège de France and at the École Pratique.41 In 1872, two years after the German defeat of France, Paris had founded with Paul Meyer the periodical Romania, devoted to the fresh study of the Romance languages and literatures up through the sixteenth century. The peoples who spoke these languages were linked, not by the exclusiveness of race, the wrongful grounds for national identity among Germans and Slavs, so Paris claimed, but by the progressive breadth of civilization. (He regretted that there were people in France, “parmi nous,” who believed in “le sang.”) The Romanian language was included in their scope, a Danubian outlier along with the more central French, Italian, and Spanish. It won its identity not because Romanians were descended from Trajan’s sol39 SVSc, 19–20, 50–51, 62–64; Şăineanu to Gaster, 16 October 1887, in Gaster, MC, 140. On his meeting with Dimitrie Sturdza, the Minister of Education, and his first request for naturalization, see Lazare Sainéan, Carrière philologique, 1–2, 4 n. 1. On Sturdza (1833–1914), see Roszkowski and Kofman, eds., Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe, 984–85. Lazăr Șăineanu, Dicționar germano-român, vii–x, Preface signed Bucharest 1 July 1887. 40 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 13 March 1888 in Gaster, CF, 141. SVSc, 20. 41 The major study of Gaston Paris and his contribution is Bähler, Gaston Paris et la philologie romane. Jacques Monfrin, student and successor of Meyer, provides an interesting picture of the foundation of Romania in Études de philologie romane, 87–103. Further perspectives on Paris are given in Michel Zink, ed., Le Moyen Âge de Gaston Paris.

ZD_Book.indb 20

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

Romania

21

diers—which Paris affirmed they were not—but because it went back historically, as did French, to the language spoken by “peuples barbares romanisés.”42 By the spring of 1887, only a few articles and book reviews on Romanian language and literature had appeared in the pages of Romania. Thus, when the young scholar Şăineanu sent Gaston Paris a copy of his Semasiologiei, he read it with interest. Its use of sources fit well with Paris’s own contrast between lay or “popular” origins and clerical or savant origins for medieval French literary genres. Hearing of Gaston Paris’s favorable response, Şăineanu sent him two more publications—his Elemente turcești and his Ielele—and expressed his hope that Paris might mention them in Romania.43 On his arrival in France, Şăineanu could have the pleasure of reading Gaston Paris’s favorable account of all three works. Of the Semasiologiei, Paris said that in its novelty and historical breadth, it surpassed the new book by Arsène Darmesteter on a similar theme, La vie des mots, étudiée dans leurs significations (soon to appear in English as The Life of Words as the Symbols of Ideas). On Şăineanu’s book, Paris concluded, “The development of meanings in the [Romanian] language, which had remained fifteen centuries without formal cultivation, has a completely popular character, and can often be explained only by the study of customs and beliefs.”44 42 “Barbaric peoples who had been Romanized.” Gaston Paris, “Romani, Romania, lingua romana, romancium,” Romania 1 (1872): 1–22. In their 1871 prospectus for Romania, Meyer and Paris had mentioned the literature of Italy and Spain along with that of France but had neglected to add that of Romania. Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris, Prospectus. Romania. Recueil trimestriel consacré à l’ étude des langues et des littératures romanes (Paris: A Franck, 1871), reprinted in Bähler, Gaston Paris, 699–702. Jacques Monfrin, student of and successor to Meyer, provides an interesting picture of the foundation of Romania in Études de philologie romane, 87–103. 43 Alphonse Bos, Romania, table des trente premiers volumes (1872–1901) (Paris: Honoré Champion, Slatkine reprints, 1971), 152–53. Lazăr Şăineanu to Gaston Paris, Bucharest, 24 August 1887, “Correspondance Gaston Paris,” Archives nationales de France, nouv. acq. fr. 24456, f. 86 r-v. Şăineanu had learned of Paris’s positive response from Joan Bianu, who had been a student of Hasdeu and then of Paris. Paris, Esquisse historique, 5–19. 44 Gaston Paris, “Chronique,” Romania 10 (1887): 631–32. “Le développement des sens, dans ce langage [roumain] resté quinze siècles sans culture, a un caractère plus complètement populaire, et ne peut souvent s’expliquer que par l’étude des moeurs et des croyances.” Paris gave only a brief description of Arsène Darmesteter’s La vie des mots and referred readers to the review by Michel Bréal, Revue des deux mondes (see n. 36 above). Bréal found it “un agréable petit livre,” but took strong issue with Darmesteter’s use of the Schleicher/Darwinian image of language as an organism that is born and dies, and used the review to develop his theory of “la sémantique.” The English translation of Darmesteter’s text was published in London in 1886 by Kegan Paul and Trench. Both Paris and Bréal expected that Darmesteter’s real contribution to the history of meaning would be in the historical dictionary of the French language, which he had been working on for several years with Adolphe Hatzfeld.

ZD_Book.indb 21

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

22

Part One

Șăineanu now had the chance to learn directly about Paris’s views on popular language. In May 1888, Paris gave a public lecture on “Les Parlers de France” (The Dialects of France), which Șăineanu may have heard but surely read soon after. Paris described how by the thirteenth century, the French language had emerged from the dialect spoken in the area around Paris and the Île-de-France. Gradually over the centuries, it had become the language of literature and government—the language of the educated. Meanwhile the villagers were speaking “parlers populaires” or patois, which, except for the region around the Îlede-France, differed from the French of the cities. At best, the peasants knew a little French along with their patois. In some regions, the language itself was not even Romance: the Germanic Flemish in the north; the Celtic Breton of Brittany; the Basque of the southwest.45 At least peasants across France were able to understand those in neighboring villages, whose patois differed only slightly from their own, thus providing geographical bands of community. Even better, so Paris must have thought, were the reforms of the Third Republic: the Jules Ferry Laws of 1881–1882 had made primary school free and obligatory for all children, and the classrooms were increasingly filled with instructors devoted to teaching peasants to speak France’s national tongue. While the parlers populaires were alive, however, Gaston Paris called upon philologists to work with local residents to create a “phonetic atlas” for all of France. For each village, for each commune, a linguistic study!46 In fact, two linguists in Paris’s circle were already involved in such an enterprise, and Şăineanu had the chance to meet them as he attended sessions of Paris’s Romance Language seminar at the École Pratique in the winterspring of 1888. Jules Gilliéron had come from his native Switzerland to study with Paris some years before. After doing research on the patois of a Swiss commune, Gilliéron had settled into instructing the participants in Paris’s seminar. One of those students, the Abbot Pierre-Jean Rousselot, was planning a thesis on the patois of his village in the Charente. In 1887, Gilliéron and Rousselot founded the Revue des patois gallo-romans, dedicating the first issue to Gaston Paris and pointing out that patois were no longer to be looked 45 Gaston Paris, “Les Parlers de France,” Revue des patois gallo-romans 2 (1888): 161–67. Influenced by his colleague Paul Meyer, Paris preferred to see Provençal, as he called Occitan, as a range of “parlers populaires” rather than as a separate Romance language or even a dialect. For a critical response to Paris’s conceptualization of Provençal in this lecture, see Charles de Tourtoulon, Des Dialectes. 46 Paris, “Parlers,” 168.

ZD_Book.indb 22

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

Romania

23

at as “shapeless and coarse jargon, the fruit of ignorance and whim… Provincial dialects have now captured the place due them, next to our literary language.” Şăineanu was soon to praise the periodical as an example to be followed in Romania.47 By August of 1888, Şăineanu was addressing Gaston Paris as “cher maître” as he corresponded with him about articles that he hoped could be published in Romania.48 They agreed on three, all examples of popular words or tales. The first appeared in the last number of Romania that very year: an essay on the changing meanings and pronunciation of filosof among Romanian peasants once that word had reached them in the seventeenth century (they turned it into “astrologer” and “magician”). In 1889 appeared Şăineanu’s French translation of his “Jews or Tatars or Giants” (“Les Juifs ou Tartares ou géants,” ­figure 3), an act innocent enough but, as we shall see, to have serious ramifications back home. And then there was a major essay that had been published first in a short version in Romanian and now appeared as “Les jours d’emprunt ou les jours de la Vieille” (The Borrowed Days or The Old Woman’s Days).49 Drawing on his current study of Balkan folklore, Şăineanu once again described the habit of villagers to personify changes in the weather, here the return of days of cold weather in early March or early April, as winter turns into to spring. These are the days of the Old Woman. Sensing the arrival of spring, so the story went, an old woman ignores warnings and leaves for the mountain with her lambs. March takes revenge against her pride, borrows days from February, and petrifies the woman and her animals. 47 Iordan, Romance Linguistics, 36–37, 148–49. Rapport sur l’École Pratique des Hautes Études 3 (1887– 1888): 208–10. Pierre-Jean Rousselot, Les Modifications phonétiques du langage étudiées dans la famille de Cellefrouin (Charente) (Paris: H. Welter, 1891). “Des jargons informes et grossiers, fruits de l’ignorance et du caprice… Ils ont conquis la place qui leur est due, à côté de notre langue littéraire,” Revue des patois gallo-romans, ed. J. Gilliéron and l’Abbé Rousselot, 1 (1887): 1. On Șăineanu’s reference to this periodical in relation to Romania, see below p. 51. 48 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 23 March 1888 in Gaster, CF, 142–43 (describes his visit to Gaston Paris). Lazăr Şăineanu to Gaston Paris, Paris, 13 August 1888, “Correspondance Gaston Paris,” f. 87r–88r. 49 Shaineanu, “Les sens du mot ‘philosophe,’” Romania 17 (1888): 599–602; “Les Juifs ou Tartares ou géants,” Romania 18 (1889): 494–501 (with a few additions and shifts in references in the notes from the Romanian original). Şăineanu published “Les jours d’emprunt” first in a shorter Romanian version, and then revised and extended it for his French version. Lazăr Şăineanu, “Zilele Babei și legenda Dochieĭ,” Convorbiri literare 22 (1888): 193–220. Lazare Shaineanu [sic], “Les jours d’emprunt ou les jours de la Vieille,” Romania 18 (1889): 107–127. SVSc, 65–66. Şăineanu added comparative material from Bulgaria, Serbia, and other Balkan areas and from western Europe to the original Romanian essay.

ZD_Book.indb 23

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:24

24

Part One Figure 3. Opening page of Şăineanu’s essay on “Jews or Tatars or Giants” that was to become the target of anti-Semitic attack in Romania. “Notes sur le vocabulaire français. II. Les Juifs ou Tartares ou Géants.” Romania 18 (1889): 494.

Şăineanu described versions of the tale throughout the Balkans, and in Western Europe as well, and contrasted their liveliness with the partisan efforts of certain scholars to link La Vieille with, say, an Orthodox saint or a figure in the Latin kingdom of Dacia. Some versions traveled from one country to the next, but Şăineanu thought the relative similarity of the tales sprang less from diffusion than from a human “nécessité psychologique” to give an explanation for events and the human tendency to personify natural forces. He was here implicitly making his stand against the “Indianist theory” that we have met in the late 18th century theory of William Jones and that was still current in some circles: European folk tales had all originated in and been diffused from India. Indeed, Gaston Paris himself had embraced that belief to account for the origin of the medieval French fabliaux. Paris added an editor’s note with his reserva-

ZD_Book.indb 24

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

Romania

25

tions to the end of Şăineanu’s essay: the article was “utile et très intéressant,” but its explanation for resemblances among the tales was improbable. Admiring though he was of his cher maître Paris, Şăineanu was not to abandon his commitment to the people’s creativity in regard to tales, as we will see.50

Leipzig and the Neogrammarians As Şăineanu was putting the last touches on the French version of “Les jours d’emprunt,” he was also preparing to leave Paris for Leipzig. There he planned to get his doctorate and attend the lectures of August Leskien and Karl Brugmann, Neogrammarians who, as Şăineanu had written to Gaster, were “at the forefront of present-day linguistics.” He arrived in Leipzig in mid-October, and two months later was telling Gaster that these professors had immense learning, but he found their expository style tedious, especially compared to the inspiring lectures he had heard in Paris.51 He was soon to have more substantial reservations about their approach. The Neogrammarians wanted to put comparative grammar on a firmer ground, focusing on phonology as it could be examined in contemporary living speech rather than gleaned from ancient texts. Their celebrated law had been proclaimed by Leskien in 1876 and then by Brugmann in 1878: Every sound change, inasmuch as it occurs mechanically, takes place according to laws that admit no exception. That is, the direction of the sound shift is always the same for all the members of a linguistic community except where a split into dialects occurs; and all words in which the sound subjected to the change appears in the same relationship are affected by the change without exception. 50 Shaineanu, “Les jours d’emprunt,”107, 117–27, n. 127. Paris, Les contes orientaux, 7–21. Paul Meyer, co-editor of Romania, had published a short note, without analysis, on examples of “les jours d’emprunt” in Provence, the Pyrénées, and two other places in western Europe and was undoubtedly glad to have Şăineanu’s article appear, whatever its view of the origin of tales (Meyer, “Les jours d’emprunt,” Romania 3 [1874]: 294–97). For a description of varying views in regard to the Indianist theory in the year that Şăineanu published his essay, see Alfred Nutt, “Recent archæological research. No. II Folk-Lore,” The Archaeological Review 3, no. 2 (1889): 76–79. See below on Gaston Paris’s adoption of the Indianist thesis and the critical reaction of his student Joseph Bédier to that view. 51 Şăineanu to Gaston Paris, Paris, 20 August 1888, “Correspondance Gaston Paris,” f. 89r-90r (he would be leaving for Leipzig in early October). Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 23 March 1888; Paris, 6 October 1888 (he asks Gaster to send him names of any friends he has in Leipzig among students or professors (Gaster, CF, 143, 149).

ZD_Book.indb 25

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

26

Part One

Language existed and changed in the mouths of individuals, not as Schleicher’s separate organism with laws of its own. Natural laws did operate though. How else could you conceptualize linguistics as a science? asked Brugmann. Sound change had both a physiological and a psychological side, but the process was “psychomechanical,” “the physical reflection of psychological processes.” Thus, change was located outside conscious choice.52 Hugo Schuchardt responded sharply to parts of this program in a text of 1885, “On Sound Laws: Against the Neogrammarians.” Focusing on the phonetics of living speech was all very well, but he took issue with their claim that the sound laws operated without exception within the same dialect. He observed “endless differentiation in speech among individuals,” much more than the Neogrammarian theory would allow, and “infinite mixture of speech.” As for individuals, old and new speech forms coexisted not just because younger persons were quicker to adopt them—a concession allowed by the Neogrammarians—but also because of differences in gender, education, and class. As for mixture, said Schuchardt, “I assume language mixture in even the most homogenous speech community.” Even “remote dialects” leave their mark on population centers. Schuchardt gave as an example the influence of Jewish groups, even small ones, on the pronunciation of the larger speech community. “It is a well-known fact that Germans fall into a Yiddish way of speaking (Judeln) when they have a great many dealings with Jews. [Sometimes], in consequence of this, the Yiddish pronunciation ( jüdische Aussprache) of a word … becomes fixed in the speech of a German.”53

52 Karl Brugmann, “Preface” to Hermann Osthoff and Karl Brugmann, Morphologische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen(Leipzig, S. Hirzel, 1878),1, III-XX; quotations, XIII: “Aller lautwandel, so weit er mechanisch vor sich geht, vollzieht sich nach ausnahmslosen gesetzen, d. h. die richtung der lautbewegug ist bei allen angehörigen einer sprachgenossenschaft, ausser dem fall, dass dialektspaltung eintritt, stets dieselbe, und alle wörter, in denen der der lautbewegung unterworfene laut unter gleichen verhältnissen erscheint, werden ohne ausnahme von der änderung ergriffen.”; IV: “in wie weit die lautlichen neuerungen einerseits rein leiblich-mechanischer art und in wie weit sie andererseits die leiblichen abbilder von psychischen bewegungen sind.” English translation of the Preface by Judy Haddon in Winfred P. Lehmann, ed., A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics, 197–209, quotations on 204, 199. Though Osthoff co-signed the Preface, it was in fact written by Brugmann. Among the extensive literature on the Neo-grammarians, see Meillet, Introduction à l’ étude comparative, 471–73 and Robins, Short History,182–92. 53 Hugo Schuchardt, “Über die Lautgesetze: gegen die Junggrammatiker,” and “On Sound Laws: Against the Neogrammarians,” trans. Theo Venneman and Terence H. Wilbur, in Vennemann and Wilbur, Schuchardt, 15–21, 47–52. Wilbur discusses Schuchardt’s views at length in his essay “Hugo Schuchardt and the Neogrammarians,” in Vennemann and Wilbur, 73–113.

ZD_Book.indb 26

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

Romania

27

Not surprisingly, Şăineanu agreed strongly with Schuchardt’s position on language mixture and human initiative. As he told his listeners in a lecture at the University of Bucharest after his return, the Neogrammarian characterization of phonetic change as “natural law” was an “absurd pretention.” Moreover, their program neglected the relation of language to the expression of ideas, the subject he had treated in his Semasiologiei.54 Still, Şăineanu’s months at Leipzig brought him singular fruits. Boarding with an American family, he had improved his English. He may have sat in on the psychology lectures of Wilhelm Wundt, whose work Şăineanu was to mention in a publication a few years later. Wundt had been a pioneer in the development of laboratory experiments to study the physiology of speech and the relation of mental constructs to spoken sentences. Now he was starting to think about “Völkerpsychologie.” Here Wundt was elaborating on the approach developed by Heymann Steinthal, a kind of social psychology, which Şăineanu knew well and approved. Language and the quest for truth more generally must be studied not only through the individual consciousness, but through the customs and values of the larger society.55 More important, Şăineanu studied Old Church Slavonic with the great Leskien himself and quickly found common ground with his professor for a doctoral thesis. Leskien and Brugmann had published an edition of Lithuanian folksongs and folk tales. While their interest was phonetic and grammatical rather than thematic and etymological, Leskien still approved the manuscript of “Les jours d’emprunt” when Şăineanu presented it to him for his doctoral thesis in early November 1888. To qualify for the degree, however, the essay had to be published in French. Şăineanu notified Gaston Paris, who brought it out in the January 1889 number of Romania, in time for the Uni54 Lazăr Şăineanu, Linguistica contemporană sau şcoala neogramaticală. Lecţiune de deschidere a cursului de filologie comparativă la facultatea de litere din București (16 Oct.1889), Bucharest, 1890; described in SVSc, 66–67. Robins similarly describes Bréal’s Sémantique as a work falling outside the Neogrammarian program (Short History, 183). 55 Şăineanu to Gaster, Leipzig, 19 November 1888, 12 December 1888, in Gaster, CF, 150–52. On Wundt, see Alan Kim, “Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt,” The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zafta, ed., URL= http://plato.stanford/edu/archives/win2014/ entries/wilhelm-wundt/; Espagne, “Le cercle positiviste de Leipzig.” Though Wundt’s volumes on Völkerpsychologie did not start appearing until 1900, he was already using the term by 1886 (Émile Durkheim, “La Science positive de la morale en Allemagne,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’ étranger 24, no. 2 [July-December 1887]: 115; Wilhelm Wundt, “Ueber Ziele und Wege der Völkerpsychologie,” Philosophische Studien [1888], 1–27). Heymann Steinthal and Moritz Lazarus founded the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft in 1859–1860. Şăineanu referred to Wundt’s work in his Raporturile între gramatică și logică of 1891 (see below, pp. 48–50).

ZD_Book.indb 27

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

28

Part One

versity of Leipzig’s deadline.56 On February 20, Şăineanu sent Gaster momentous news: he was now a doctor, and furthermore, he was now making “a study of the Judeo-German dialect... a scientific and comparative study of a language which has been neglected, but which is important for German dialectology and for linguistics in general.”57

Š  Research on Yiddish It was an exciting step for Şăineanu. He had already expanded his skills as a philologist through his 1887 German-Romanian dictionary, where he had been dealing with a language with such different vocabulary and morphology from the Romance tongues with which he was familiar. Perhaps his months auditing Bréal’s seminar at the EPHE had turned him in that direction, for Ferdinand de Saussure was giving lectures there on Old High German. Now in Leipzig Șăineanu was finishing the second half of his dictionary, signing the preface to the Romanian-German volume on March 10, 1889. Yiddish itself he mentioned only in a single German entry, referring to it as a “jargon”: “Juden-deutsch n. jargonul evreo-german.” But in his introduction, he reviewed major texts in the development of the German tongue and talked of the role of popular expression in continually rejuvenating language.58 He had been listening to Jules Gilliéron justify the scholarly study of French patois. Why not treat these themes in the

56 Şăineanu to Gaster, Leipzig, 19 November 1888, 12 December 1888, 21 December 1888, in Gaster, CF, 150–53. Leskien and Brugmann, Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen. Şăineanu to Gaston Paris, Leipzig, 7 November 1888, in Correspondance Gaston Paris, f. 91r – 92r. Şăineanu, “Les jours d’emprunt.” Şăineanu explained to Paris and to Gaster that he was submitting his other publications, along with the dissertation, as further support for the doctorate. 57 Şăineanu to Gaster, Leipzig, 20 February 1889, in Gaster, CF, 153. Gininger says, on the basis of recollections from Moses Schwarzfeld many years after the event, that Şăineanu had planned to do his doctoral dissertation on Yiddish, but because it was not ready in time for the University of Leipzig deadline, he switched to “Les jours d’emprunt” (Gininger, “Sainéan’s accomplishments,” 149). This is clearly a case of Schwarzfeld’s faulty memory. Gininger did not have access to the correspondence of Şăineanu with Gaston Paris or with Moses Gaster, where it is evident that Şăineanu had agreed on “Les jours d’emprunt” as his thesis shortly after his arrival in Leipzig in late October 1888. 58 Lazăr Șăineanu, Dicționar germano-român (Bucharest: Socecŭ, 1887), v–xvi, 255; the German-Romanian dictionary is dedicated to the memory of the great Romanian teller of tales and collector of folktales, Petre Ispirescu. Șăineanu was to draw heavily on Ispirescu’s collection for his own Basmele some years hence. Lazăr Șăineanu, Dicționar româno-german (Bucharest: H. Steinberg, 1889), viii–x. On Ferdinand de Saussure’s lectures at the EPHE, see Rapport sur l’École Pratique des Hautes Études 3 (1887–1888): 206 and Décimo, Sciences et pataphysique 2: 80–135.

ZD_Book.indb 28

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

Romania

29

Germanic language, the so-called “jargon,” which had resonated in his ears since childhood? He was relatively on his own in such a scholarly choice in Leipzig, for only one of the current professors had shown an interest in Yiddish: the elderly Rudolf Hildebrand, professor of German language and literature, with a specialty in folk tales and folk songs.59 Some twenty years before, Hildebrand had lectured to fellow Germanists on several medieval poems in “Jüdisch-deutsch” and had planned to publish a listing of such works in a “Jüdisch-deutschen Bibliothek.” This had come to naught, and Hildebrand did not return to the theme, though Şăineanu knew his earlier work.60 As for the city of Leipzig, books on Jüdisch-Deutsch came off the presses of Leipzig publishers, but it was not a center for Yiddish. Jews made up only about one percent of the population. Among them, Yiddish was spoken by those who had immigrated from eastern Europe and perhaps also by the small group of Jewish students at the university from Poland and Russia. Meanwhile the Rabbi Aaron Goldschmidt, an admirer of Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing, was preaching in German at the Reformed temple, where most of his congregation had consigned Jüdisch-Deutsch to their past.61 59 Rudolf Hildebrand (1832–1894) was a professor at the University of Leipzig from 1868 until his death in 1894. In the 1850s, he collaborated on the volumes of the Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch. In 1856, he published an edition of historical folksongs by F. L. von Soltau. On him, see Georg Berlit, Ein Erinnerungsbild (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1895). A description of the philology seminar at the University of Leipzig during Şăineanu’s time there does not mention anyone working on Yiddish (Festschrift zur Feier des 500 jährigen Bestehens der Universität Leipzig, 4 vols. [Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1909], 4, part 1, 1–27). Nor did the study of Völkerpsychologie at the University of Leipzig, under the inspiration of the psychologist and linguist Wilhelm Wundt, include any important research at the time on Jewish culture or ethnography (Michel Espagne, “Völkerpsychologie et anthropogéographie: le cas de Leipzig,” in Trautmann-Waller, ed., Quand Berlin pensait les peuples, 185–196; Espagne, “Le cercle positiviste de Leipzig.”). 60 Ludwig Bossler, “Bericht über die Sitzungen der germanistischen Section der XXVI. Philologenversammlung zu Würzburg, 1 bis 3 october 1868,” Germania 14, no. 2 (1869), 127–28. “Vermischte Nachrichten,” Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit 19, no. 4 (April 1867), 123: announcement of the publication of a “Jüdisch-deutsch Bibliothek,” to be edited by Dr. Hildebrand and Dr. Lötze. The initial impulse for the bibliography came from materials collected by the polymath Hermann Lötze, while Hildebrand would serve as actual editor. In 1870, when the publication had still not appeared, Lötze published a description of a sixteenth-century printed edition of the Book of Samuel in “Jüdisch-deutsch” poetry, which he intended to be part of the bibliography (Lötze, “Zur jüdischdeutschen Litteratur”). In his study of Yiddish, Şăineanu cited Lötze’s article and quoted from Hildebrand’s lecture to the philologists the phrase “Les Juifs ont été les porteurs de la civilisation allemande en Orient” (Studiu Dialectologic, 26; Judéo-allemand, 108, 110). 61 Willingham II, Jews in Leipzig, 17–20. Judaica Lipsiensia. Zur Geschichte der Juden in Leipzig, ed. Ephraim Carlebach Stiftung (Leipzig: Editions Leipzig, 1994), 36–38; Ludwig Fränkel, “Goldschmidt, Abraham Mayer,” Allgemeine Deutsche-Biographie, (1904), 49, 435–38. Freimark, “Language

ZD_Book.indb 29

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

30

Part One

Thus, in his turn to Yiddish, Şăineanu was drawing primarily on resources he had brought with him from Romania. He had been much impressed with Schwarz­feld’s collection of Yiddish proverbs, started already in 1877, “precious material,” in Şăineanu’s words, “for studying the psychological qualities and the particularities of the folk speech.”62 Then in August 1888, Șăineanu’s mother died, and the significance of what had been his mother tongue came back to him in full force. As he wrote later to a Yiddish scholar in Vienna, “I wanted to erect a memorial to my blessed mother, who had so treasured and loved her version of the dialect. As a philologist by trade, I wanted to use a rigorous scholarly method for the treatment of this orphaned dialect.” The new Dr. Şăineanu went to work, believing himself to be the first trained philologist of his day to undertake the task.63 By February 1889, he had discovered the state of the field from books in the University of Leipzig library. He had worked through accounts from Christians, such as the short description of “Hebraeo Germanica” by the learned Johannes Buxtorf, who included it in his 1609 study of the Holy Tongue, and the 1862 volumes of the police commissioner Avé-Lallemant, who elaborated on the grammar and vocabulary of “Jüdischdeutsche” as part of his big study of Gaunersprache, “thieves’ cant.”64 In the literature by Jewish scholars, he had behavior and assimilation.” Yvonne Kleinmann, “‘Ausländer,’ ‘Russen,’ ‘Sozialisten,’ Jüdische Studenten aus dem östlichen Europa in Leipzig,” in Wenderhorst, Bausteine einer jüdischen Geschichte der Universität Leipzig, 517–40. In 1889, of thirty-nine students of “Russian nationality” at the University, five identified themselves as Jewish (524–25). 62 Lazăr Şăineanu, Strîngerea materialelor din viul graiu pentru studiarea dialectului evreo-german, Bucharest, July 1889, in Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,” 151 and 151, n.12. 63 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 9 September 1888, expressing his feeling of loss at the death of his mother; Şăineanu to Gaster, Leipzig 20 February1889, saying how necessary it was to add a “scientific” linguistic and comparative dimension to the existing literature on “this neglected idiom,” Gaster, CF, 148– 49, 153–54. Lazăr Şăineanu to Alfred Landau, Bucharest, 24 September 1892, in Gininger, “Correspondence,” 287. On Landau, who had not yet published his research on Yiddish, see below. Şăineanu was also unaware of the Russian/Yiddish/Yiddish/Russian dictionaries published in Ukraine in 1869 and 1876 by Shiye Mordkhe Lifshits and the work on Polish Yiddish (“Der jüdisch-polnische Jargon”) and its grammar being published in Lemberg (Lviv) in 1888–1890 (thus contemporary with Şăineanu’s work) by Filip Mansch. Important though these writings were, they were produced by gifted intellectuals with political and cultural commitment to the cause of Yiddish, rather than by a Jewish philologist like Şăineanu. 64 Şăineanu to Gaster, Leipzig, 20 February 1889 in Gaster, CF, 153. Johannes Buxtorf, Thesaurus grammaticus linguae sanctae hebraeae… Lectionis hebraeo-germincae (Basel: Conrad Waldkirch, 1609); 6th edition (Basel, J.J. Decker, 1663), 639–69 on “Hebrew-German.” Friedrich Christian Benedict AvéLallemant, Das Deutsche Gaunerthum in seiner social-politischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinem heutigen Bestande, 4 vols. (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1858–1862); the materials on “Jüdischdeutsche Sprache” are in volumes 3 and 4. Avé-Lallemant’s scholarly training was in law. Şăineanu had also read in Leipzig the brief Jüdisch-teutsche Grammatick by Wilhelm Christian Justus Chrysander (Leipzig: J.C. Meisner, 1750) and the Judeo-German instruction book and vocabulary by

ZD_Book.indb 30

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

Romania

31

read, among other works, the rich but unsettling pages on Judeo-German in Leopold Zunz’s Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden (The Worship Sermons of the Jews) of 1832 and Abraham Tendlau’s lively collection of Yiddish proverbs, published in 1860 and intended to connect its Jewish readers with their ancient past. He had also benefited from Moritz Steinschneider’s bibliographies of books published in Jüdisch-Deutsch from the sixteenth century on.65 Şăineanu’s next months at the Royal Library in Berlin were even more rewarding, as he consulted “its excellent collection of dictionaries and German dialectological studies.” Here or upon his return to Bucharest, he studied the Yiddish compositions central to his enterprise in their original Hebrew characters, such as Elijah Levita’s celebrated Bovo-Bukh, a chivalric romance in verse which had been composed in 1507 and been much reprinted over the centuries (Şăineanu especially examined the edition printed in Prague in 1767). Another was the Tze’enah Ure’enah, retellings of and commentary on parts of the Pentateuch and sections of the Prophets. First published in the early seventeenth century for both men and women who could not understand Hebrew, the Tze’enah Ure’enah had gone through countless editions as it became the prized devotional book for women. Şăineanu must have seen it first in his mother’s hands.66 Gottfried Selig, Lehrbuch zur gründlichen Erlernung der jüdischdeutschen Sprache (Leipzig: Voss and Leo, 1792). Chrysander was a Lutheran scholar and theologian; Selig had converted from Judaism to Christianity at age sixteen and eventually became a lecturer on the Hebrew language at the University at Leipzig. 65 Şăineanu to Gaster, Leipzig, 20 February 1888, in Gaster, MC, 153. Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, 438–41. Abraham Tendlau, Sprichwörter und Redensarten deutsch-jüdischer Vorzeit als Beitrag zur Volks-, Sprach-, und Sprichwörter-Kunde (1860). Tendlau transliterated the Yiddish text into German rather than Hebrew characters. On the folklorist and historian Tendlau (1802– 1878), see Elyada, “Bridge to a bygone Jewish past?” During his stay in Leipzig, Şăineanu also read the excerpts from popular Yiddish retellings of Bible stories and moral advice, transliterated into Roman characters and with serious attention to the sound, made by Max Grünbaum in Jüdischdeutsche Chrestomathie. Among the bibliographies and essays by Moritz Steinschneider used by Şăineanu, he probably started with the listing of the Yiddish books in the Oppenheimer collection at the Bodleian Library: Moritz Steinschneider, “Jüdisch-Deutsche Literatur nach einem handschriftlichen Katalog der Oppenheim’schen Bibliothek (in Oxford) mit Zusätzen und Berichtigungen,” Serapeum 9 (1848): 313–17, 321–36, with successive articles in volumes 10, 25, 27, and 28. Şăineanu, Judéo-allemand, 104 n. 3. For a review of this literature, see Dovid Katz, “On Yiddish, in Yiddish and for Yiddish,” 23–36; Jean Baumgarten, Introduction à la littérature yiddish ancienne, 15–41; and Jeffrey A. Grossman, The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany, 120–37. 66 Şăineanu wrote Gaster about his research in Berlin in mid-April 1889. He was in Paris in mid-May, and perhaps did further research there before returning to Bucharest (Şăineanu to Gaster, Berlin, 14 April 1889; Paris, 11 May 1889, in Gaster, CF, 155–57). Şăineanu says incorrectly that Levita’s chivalric romance was printed in Venice in 1507. Levita composed it in that city in 1507, as he says later in the preface to the first printed edition of 1541. Elijah Levita, Bovo d’Ancona (Isny, 1541). It soon came to be known as the Bovo-Buch. Şăineanu used and quoted from the edition published in Prague in

ZD_Book.indb 31

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:25

32

Part One

With the Neogrammarian prescription fresh in his mind, he moved beyond books to current speech practice, “essential for any successful study of language.” For Wallachian Yiddish, he had his own family experience. Once returned to Romania, he compiled the phonetic practices of four Yiddish speakers who were living in Bucharest, but had grown up in towns in Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. He regretted that he could not give an even wider picture of dialectical shading.67 In July 1889 Şăineanu published what he called volume one of Studiu dialectologic asupra graiului evreo-german (Dialectological Study of the Judeo-German Language). It was dedicated to the memory of his mother and to his “dear friend Dr. M. Gaster.”68

The Dialectological Study of Judeo-German As with his publications on mixture in Romanian, Şăineanu could expect some critical reaction. There were three arenas in which he had to give scholarly justification for his project. The first was that of Haskalah Jews for whom Judeo-German was an obstacle to the acquisition of true culture, both their own and that of the countries in which they lived. Preparing for his book on Moses Mendelssohn nine years before, Şăineanu had read this reformer’s letter to a government official opposing the use of “judisch-deutsch,” “a mixture of Hebrew with German,” when Jews took oaths in Prussian courts. Either “pure German or pure Hebrew,” said 1767 by Israel Jeiteles. The Tze’enah Ure’enah was composed by Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi of Janów. The first extant edition of the work was published in 1622, with the false address of Basel; the frontispiece refers to earlier editions published in Lublin and Cracow. Şăineanu used the 1622 edition and many others, up to one published in Warsaw and Lvov in 1875. ( Judéo-allemand, 112–15, 119– 20). On the place of these texts in Yiddish literature and publication, see Baumgarten, Introduction, 145–54. 216–28; Jacob Elbaum and Chava Turniansky, Tsene-rene, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Tsene-rene; and the important book by Naomi Seidman, A Marriage Made in Heaven: Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish. Seidman describes how Yiddish was widely viewed as a women’s language, Hebrew as a men’s language until the much read Yiddish novels of Sholem Abromovitsch (1835–1917) broke the pattern in the later nineteenth century, 6–7, 40–66. 67 Şăineanu’s interviews with Mlle Dr. Epstein from Vilna, Mme Altheim from Grosswardein [Oradea, then in Hungary], M. Haym Vogel from Stanisław [Poland], and M. Simon Goldbraun, from Kherson [Ukraine], all of whom were in Bucharest in 1889 (Evreo-german, 14 n. 2; Judéo-allemand, 91 n. 3). 68 Lazăr Şăineanu, Studiu dialectologic asupra graiului evreo-german (Bucharest: Eduard Wiegand, 1889); also published in Anuar pentru Israeliți 12 (1889–1890): 53–126. All my page references to the Romanian edition are to the one published by Wiegand. On publication during the month of July 1889, see Şăineanu to Gaster, from Slatina, Romania, 27 July 1889, in Gaster, CF, 157. Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishment,” 149. By August 22, Şăineanu had had time to get a copy of the book to Hugo Schuchardt in Graz and receive an answer (154).

ZD_Book.indb 32

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

Romania

33

Mendelssohn, but “no mixing of languages.” In approval, the historian Graetz had spoken of Mendelssohn’s efforts to free the Jews from “a childish jargon.”69 More important was the assessment of Leopold Zunz, founder of the Science of Judaism and himself trained in philology. If he had included a few examples of Yiddish in his Gottesdienstlichen Vorträge (1832), he had condemned the “so-called Jüdisch-Deutsch” as “obsolete and faulty German.” Around 1400, said Zunz, the Jews of Germany had spoken a language no different from the Christians around them. Then as they had migrated to Poland and became isolated from true learning, their language became an ill-pronounced mishmash of Hebrew and German, and so “mixed with foreign words—Polish, French, Dutch—that it was often wholly unrecognizable as German.” What a contrast to his beautiful account of Hebrew expression in sermons and religious commentary over the centuries as the rightful inheritance of the Jews.70 Even while using Yiddish to enlighten their fellow Jews, modernizing scholars and writers disparaged it. Tendlau regretted its strange turns of phrase, but in his defense quoted the sixteenth-century Agricola that so long as one is writing proverbs, “[one] can not always spin silk.” S.Y. Abramovich, author of bestselling Yiddish stories, took on the name Mendele the Book-peddlar to conceal his true identity and reminisced about his past: The Yiddish language was in my time [the early 1860s] an empty vessel. Nothing was written in it but babbling, nonsensical and misguided compo-

69 Şăineanu had read and given bibliographical citation to a 1782 letter of Moses Mendelssohn to Ministry of Justice Councillor E. F. Klein about the language of the “Jewish oath”: Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, 5: 604–605. Şăin, Mendelsohn, 69, 69 n.1. In his biography of Mendelssohn, Şăineanu had quoted Mendelssohn’s worries about Judeo-German, namely, that “this jargon had contributed not a little to Jewish shame and the demoralization of the lower classes.” Mendelssohn had written “contributing to the immorality”—Unsittlichkeit—which Şăineanu translated as “la orcara” (shame or insult) and “la demoralizarea” (demoralization) of the Jewish lower classes, which made the quotation a kinder one in regard to the speakers of Judeo-German. Werner Weinberg has pointed out that Mendelssohn’s statement on “immorality” was exceptional. Mendelssohn did think of Judeo-German as “corrupted German” and did not want a “mixed language” to be given the legal status as the language of the Jews. But he was not opposed to its conversational use among those Jews who needed it, and wrote letters in Yiddish, especially to those who could not read German or Hebrew. Weinberg, “Language questions,” 198–99, 204, 228–33; Sorkin, Mendelssohn, 175 n. 3. Graetz, History of the Jews, 5: 300. 70 Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, 438–41, quotations on p. 438–39. Şăineanu, EvreoGerman, 21; Judéo-allemand, 103. On Zunz’s attitude toward Yiddish, see Katz, “On Yiddish,” 30; and Grossman, Discourse on Yiddish, 101–107; on Zunz’s attitude toward Hebrew language and literature, see Céline Trautmann-Waller, Philologie allemande et tradition juive, chapter 5.

ZD_Book.indb 33

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

34

Part One

sitions, the products of stammering simpletons, people without names, and these were read by the women and the lower classes.71

Second, for those comparative linguists in the tradition of Schleicher, as we have seen, Judeo-German was on par with the Rotwelsch lingo of the beggars, that is, a contrived language feeding off the syntax and grammar of a natural language. Even the wide-ranging August Pott, who had demonstrated the IndoEuropean origin of the Roma language, put Jüdisch-Deutsch near the bottom of his classification of languages. After the great language families and after the languages shared in “secrecy—the Geheimsprachen, such as thieves’ cant and the flower-language used by women in the Turkish harems—came the Mischlingssprachen, the mixed languages. These Pott identified as Jüdisch-Deutsch; “the Talkee-Talkee of Blacks” on the Guinea coast, with its English base and old Dutch vocabulary; and the various “mixed Black idioms” of the Americas, that is, Creole languages that had been created by slaves.72 With such rankings to respond to, the young linguist Şăineanu had a task ahead in establishing the value of Judeo-German for dialectology. His cause was all the harder since the existing scholarship on Yiddish itself often carried negative judgments. Already in his pioneering Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten (Jewish Curiosities) in the early eighteenth century, Johann Jacob Schudt had called it “a crude and corrupt German.” In the mid-nineteenth century, as quoted by Şăineanu himself, Avé-Lallemant had characterized it as “a violent and unnatural juxtaposition of Indo-European and Semitic types.”73 Third, for zealous nationalists in Romania, including professors at the University of Bucharest and members of the Senate, the study of Yiddish was not going to advance the cause of the Romanian language as a Latin tongue. Șăineanu had got away with his Turkish words in the Romanian lexicon, but for those who thought of Romanian Jews as “strangers,” a serious book on the 71 Tendlau, Sprichwörter, viii. Quotation from S. Y. Abramovich given in Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised, 25. Miron’s introduction gives a vivid picture of the attitudes toward Yiddish in Jewish literary circles in the nineteenth century, 2–33. Also very useful is Jeffrey Alan Grossman, The Discourse of Yiddish. 72 August Friedrich Pott (1822–1887), Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien. August Friedrich Pott, “Einleitung in die Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,” Internationale Zeitschrift für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 1 (1884): 60. Robins, Short History, 170, 172. 73 Johann Jacob Schudt, Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten, 4 vols. (Frankfurt and Leipzig: n.p. [Samuel Tobias Hocker], 1714–1718), 2: 288: “grob und verdorben Teutsch”. Avé-Lallemant, Gaunerthum, 3, viii: “jene gewaltsame unnatürliche Zusammenschiebung indogermanischer und semitischer Sprachtypen,” quoted in translation by Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 25; Judéo-allemand, 106.

ZD_Book.indb 34

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

Romania

35

Figure 4. Title page of Şăineanu’s pioneering study of the Yiddish language, Studiu dialectologic asupra graiului evreo-german (Bucharest, 1889). Cornell University Library, online Hathi Trust.

language they spoke among themselves might expect little praise. Or to put it practically, was a study of Yiddish going to move Șăineanu toward becoming a professor at the University of Bucharest and a citizen of Romania? Şăineanu was quite willing to face up to challenges from several sides, for he had his book published both in the Anuar pentru Israeliți, with its Jewish readership, and by a Bucharest publisher of books on more general Romanian literary and historical subjects (figure 4). All his quotations from Yiddish were rendered in the Roman rather than the Hebrew alphabet.74 Early in his text, he tried to address the concerns both of supporters of the classic Haskalah and of defenders of the Romanian and other national tongues. The role of Judeo-German was coming to an end or could be readily brought to an end once Jews lived under enlightened governments: 74 From Edgar Wiegand’s presses came not only a collection of essays from the Iuliu Barasch Society (1889) and works by Moses Gaster (1888) and Moses Schwarzfeld (1890), but also a manual of Romanian grammar by C.S. Stoicescu, to be used in the schools (1886), and a collection of essays (1891) by the eminent poet and nationalist Mihai Eminescu, who had died in 1889.

ZD_Book.indb 35

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

36

Part One

After the intellectual emancipation of Judaism by Mendelssohn, this JudeoGerman speech was gradually replaced (in Germany) by cultivated German … Wherever the social condition of the Jews is improved, Judeo-German disappears, slowly but surely; whereas it stays on wherever their situation remains precarious. Already in most countries of eastern Europe, the substitution of the national language for Judeo-German has taken place and the young people scarcely know it except by the name.75

But there are strong reasons for making a serious study of Judeo-German, and here, in a book dedicated to a mother who loved Yiddish and spoke it beautifully, Şăineanu almost seems to take back his expectation of the language’s demise. During several centuries, Judeo-German served as the organ of communication between different branches of Judaism, especially in eastern Europe, where it also conserved in part its old vigor. It includes a religious, ethical, and novelesque literature, without counting its popular literature—proverbs, stories, songs, plays—still in circulation and certain features of which surprise us by their originality.76

Furthermore, in his own day in Poland and Russia, “Judeo-German literature fulfills its social role, to make the benefits of civilization accessible to the masses, and it serves the educated Jews in these countries in opening the way to social reform.”77 (Şăineanu tactfully did not locate Romania, with its still “unenlightened” government, in this spectrum of Yiddish survival. The Haskalah periodicals themselves were in Romanian, as were the sermons of the great Rabbi Beck 75 “Après l’émancipation intellectuelle du judaïsme par Mendelssohn, ce parler judéo-allemand fut graduellement remplacé [en Allemagne] par l’allemand cultivé . . . Partout où l’état social des Juifs s’est amélioré, le judéo-allemand s’efface lentement, mais sûrement, tandis qu’il se maintient là où leur situation est restée précaire. Déjà dans la plupart des contrées de l’Europe orientale, la substitution de la langue nationale au judéo-allemand est un fait accompli, et les jeunes générations ne le connaissent guère que de nom.” Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 8; Judéo-allemand, 91–92. 76 “Durant plusieurs siècles, le judéo-allemand servit d’organe de communication entre les diverses branches du judaïsme, surtout dans l’Europe orientale, où du reste il a conservé en partie son ancienne vigueur; qu’il possède en propre une littérature religieuse, morale, romanesque, sans compter sa littérature populaire--proverbes, contes, chansons, pièces de théâtre--toujours en circulation, et dont certains traits typiques nous surprennent par leur originalité.” Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 8 (includes “piese teatrale”); Judéo-allemand, 92. 77 “La littérature judéo-allemand . . . remplit son rôle social, de rendre les bienfaits de la civilisation accessible aux masses ignorantes, et sert aux Juifs savants de ces contrées pour ouvrir la voie à une réforme sociale.” Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 38; Judéo-allemand, 124.

ZD_Book.indb 36

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

Romania

37

at Bucharest’s Coral Temple, but a Yiddish newspaper, Hayoets [The Counselor], had been founded in Bucharest in 1874 and a Yiddish theatre troupe in Iaşi in 1876.) Şăineanu drew on his skills as a linguist. He was guided by the teachings of Bréal and Schuchardt and other recent work on dialects, but was also able to benefit from his own familiarity with the language of folk tales and regional speech. Reviewing the existing literature on Judeo-German, he brushed aside the negative stereotypes that appeared there: they emerged from ignorance about the nature of dialects and the failure to understand the relation between high literary language and popular speech practices.78 Judeo-German was a dialect of Middle High German, which over time had become autonomous with sub-dialects of its own, essentially a language with its dialects.79 Wherever the Jews had dwelled in Europe, said Şăineanu, they had, along with their devotion to the holy tongue of Hebrew, fully adopted and become attached to the language spoken around them. In Germany, with its many dialects, they spoke the dialect specific to their region. When banished from German-speaking lands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Jews had taken the various dialects of Middle High German with them to new homes in Europe, Holland in the west, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Russia in the east. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the language had changed from its original forms with “the infusion of heterogeneous elements, but the Jews were so good at unifying its dialectical elements that they succeeded in creating a unique instrument of communication, whose variants were everywhere intelligible.”80 (Şăineanu’s chronology was the same as Zunz’s, but his description and evaluation of the outcome were very different.) Framing Judeo-German as in part a “mixed language,” Şăineanu quoted Hugo Schuchardt’s dictum “there is no completely unmixed language.” Thus Schuchardt had opened his path-breaking 1885 book, Slawo-deutsches und 78 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 9. This overall picture of German dialects is not included in Judéoallemand. 79 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 9–12, 13, 42; Judéo-allemand, 93, 97, 129–30. Şăineanu prudently used the word “grai” in his title, which can mean voice, language (limbă), faculty of speech, manner of speech, and dialect (Leviţichi, Dicţionar român-englez, 481). In French, he translated “grai” by the noun “parler.” The words limbă and langue he reserved for languages like German and Latin. He most often referred to Judeo-German as such—“Evreo-German” and “Judéo-allemand”—and proceeded to describe change as he would for an autonomous dialect or language. 80 “…l’infusion d’éléments hétérogènes ... mais les Juifs surent si bien unifier ses nuances dialectales, qu’ils réussirent à créer un organe de communication unique, dont les variantes étaient partout intelligibles.” Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 5–8; Judéo-allemand, 91–93.

ZD_Book.indb 37

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

38

Part One

Slawo-italienisches (Slavo-German and Slavo-Italian), where he applied his approach to the Creole languages used by slaves to the languages spoken among mixed populations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Schuchardt pointed to mixture not only in vocabulary and pronunciation, but even in some elements of grammar. This last was striking to linguists, because it challenged a famous assertion of Max Müller: “it is impossible to admit the existence of a mixed idiom... languages can never be mixed in their grammar.”81 For Judeo-German, Şăineanu found ample mixture in vocabulary and phonetics. Its grammar, however, was “exclusivement allemande,” exclusively German, so he claimed early in his book. When Hebrew words entered the idiom, they were ordinarily “germanisés,” their roots given German prefixes and suffixes and conjugated as in German. For the Slavic features of Yiddish, Şăineanu had to nuance his argument: the words sometimes kept their Slavic suffixes and one or two grammatical constructions were Slavic. Still, Şăineanu could defend Judeo-German from the charge of “Semitizing” the German national tongue and free it from the low prestige assigned “mixed languages” by philologists like Pott. Judeo-German had a mixed vocabulary as did Romanian, but each sat solidly on a Germanic or Latin base.82 Poised precariously as both Jew and Romanian, Şăineanu was not ready to adopt the more radical position of Schuchardt, who was willing to accept mixture everywhere. Şăineanu went on to describe the different lexicographic elements of Judeo-German. The German dialects made the largest contribution, including words that were absent from current literary German. They were not thereby “obsolete” or “incorrect.” Some carried meanings they had in Middle High German in medieval times, precious witnesses to the German past; others could be found in various German dialects, especially Bavarian.83 Hebrew provided the second major component of Judeo-German, with words picked up from religious service and from popular versions of the Talmud, rabbinic literature, and Bible stories. Many of these were used when Yiddish-speakers talked of religious life or wanted to express abstract ideas and feelings.84 Slavic 81 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 13–14; Judéo-allemand, 93–94. Hugo Schuchardt, Slawo-deutsches und Slawo-italienisches, 5. A.M. Elliott gave an extensive and very favorable review of Schuchardt’s book in the American Journal of Philology 6, no. 1 (April 1885): 89–94. The inclusion of exchange in some grammatical forms like inflexion was especially important because, as Schuchardt pointed out, Max Müller had claimed that there was never mixture in grammatical forms. Müller, Lectures, 5th ed., 79–82. 82 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 14, 41, 52, 57, 66–67; Judéo-allemand, 94, 128–30, 178, 184, 189–91. 83 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 41–51; Judéo-allemand, 128–38, 176–77. 84 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 51–64; Judéo-allemand, 177–88.

ZD_Book.indb 38

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

Romania

39

was the third lexicographic element in Judeo-German, Polish supplying many words at first, and then Russian and Ruthenian. Here was a vocabulary for referring to the everyday: family, parts of the body, housing, food, clothing, plants, and animals.85 Finally, Latin and the Romance tongues had a small but interesting presence in Judeo-German. Şăineanu described it most fully for the dialect of Yiddish spoken in his Danubian region, where Romanian itself was the source, many of the words also referring to the everyday. Along the way, of course, Şăineanu was affirming the historical presence of Jews in his native land.86 As for the dialects of Judeo-German, Şăineanu characterized them partly by differences in vocabulary (more words from Slavic in the east) and especially by differences in pronunciation. He distinguished four geographical regions of Yiddish-speakers—a swath from Austria through Bohemia, Hungary, to Galicia; Poland and Russian border towns; Galicia and parts of Russia; and Germany—and gave the variations in their pronunciation of vowels. He set up no phonetic model or preferred pronunciation, nor did he echo the old disapproval of Yiddish as badly pronounced German. Rather in several instances, he noted the resemblance of a Yiddish pronunciation to that of a German dialect, say, in Bavaria.87 The one criticism he made—and it was a harsh one—concerned the Yiddish pronunciation of words taken from Hebrew. The Germanisation of the Hebrew words had contributed, he claimed, to the split in Europe between the PolishGerman Jews on the one hand and the Portuguese-Spanish Jews on the other. Whereas the “harmonieuse tonalité” of the Spanish tongue had allowed the Sephardic Jews to maintain a pronunciation of Hebrew like that of ancient times, the “the muffled and somber sounds of the German dialects and their complicated phonetics” had spoiled the sound of Hebrew spoken by the Ashkenazic Jews, both in Hebrew prayer and in Yiddish conversation. Şăineanu was here adopting the position on the reform of Hebrew pronunciation advocated earlier by Zunz and other spokesmen for Haskalah and shared by his friend Moses Gaster. Those Jews who now spoke their national tongue should be espe85 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 65–75; Judéo-allemand, 188–93. 86 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 40, 75–78; Judéo-allemand, 126–28. Şăineanu acknowledged his debt here to the previous work of Jacob Psantir (Evreo-German, 77–78; Judéo-allemand, 128, n. 1.) 87 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 14–16; Judéo-allemand, 94–97 (with some changes from the Romanian edition, which will be described below). See the important assessment of this material by Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,” 157–61.

ZD_Book.indb 39

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

40

Part One

cially eager to correct the sound of their Hebrew prayer, said Şăineanu, since they had dismissed Judeo-German with such disdain.88 Apart from this flare-up about their pronunciation of Hebrew, Şăineanu assigned much creativity to the “people,” that is, to the Jewish common folk, in regard to language, as Michel Bréal would have him do and as he himself had already ventured in regard to Romanian folk speech. “The people do their best everywhere to give their ideas expressive, substantial, and tangible forms.” Here lay the originality of popular languages, which made them a source for the renewal of literary expression. He reviewed for his readers the major texts in Judeo-German literature, from Levita’s Bovo-Buch and the much-reprinted tales of the Maasehbuch to recent novels. “Judeo-German is full of vivacity and piquancy. It adapts itself wonderfully to comic or burlesque genres.” Some texts could be considered chefs d’oeuvre.89

Spreading the Word on Yiddish Such was the substance of Şăineanu’s Dialectological Study of the Judeo-German Language. Its title page bore a Roman numeral one, promising readers more to come. He felt he had much left to do, especially in regard to the dialects of Judeo-German and the popular culture associated with them.90 As it was, the publication in July 1889 caused an immediate stir within the Iuliu Barasch Historical Society. With Moses Schwarzfeld’s encouragement, Şăineanu promptly sent out an appeal to its members to collect materials for the study of “the living language of the Judeo-German dialect.” It included an excerpt from his new book, praised Schwarzfeld’s ongoing collection of Yiddish proverbs, and urged recipients to gather information from current speakers of Judeo-German. This was of vital importance to both linguists and ethnographers, as the language, itself a testimony to the human spirit, was dying away. Reminding collectors to be rigorous in their recording, Şăineanu spelled out the topics: fairy tales, including explanations for unusual words; riddles with 88 “Sons sourds et assombris des dialectes allemands [et] leur phonétisme compliqué.” Şăineanu, EvreoGerman, 53–56; Judéo-allemand, 180–83; Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy”; Efron, German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic, 48–52. 89 “Le people s’efforce partout de revêtir ses idées de formes expressives, matérielles et palpables.” “Le judéo-allemand est plein de vivacité et de piquant, il s’adapte merveilleusement au genre comique ou burlesque.” Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 29–41, 45; Judéo-allemand, 111–25, 133. 90 Lazăr Şăineanu to Alfred Landau, Bucharest, 24 September 1892, in Gininger, “Correspondence,” 287.

ZD_Book.indb 40

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

Romania

41

their solutions; songs for different occasions; children’s games, both those connected with Jewish holy days and everyday; incantations against the evil eye and other dangers; magic and fortune-telling; and folk medicine. He promised publication of any results.91 Şăineanu and Schwarzfeld were embarked on an early example of the Science of Judaism turning an ethnographic eye on Yiddish culture. They had been preceded by Moses Berlin, a maskalim of St. Petersburg and advisor to the imperial government on Jewish matters. Guided by a questionnaire developed by the Geographical Society of Russia, Berlin had published in 1861 an Ethnographic Study of the Jewish Population in Russia, which included data on Yiddish and other languages spoken by the Jews.92 Şăineanu did not know of Berlin’s book, but he had read the multi-volumed Trudy etnografichesko-statis­ticheskoi ekspeditsii v zapadno-russkii krai (Proceedings of the EthnographicStatistical Expedition in the Western Russia Region), published by the Russian Geographical Society in the 1870s under the editorship of the Kiev poet and ethnographer Pavlo Chubinsky. Many pages were devoted to the Jewish populations in these border regions of the Russian empire, but Şăineanu found the linguistic treatment “superficial” and inaccurate.93 In contrast, with his training as a philologist, he felt well equipped to interpret the answers that he anticipated from his questionnaire. Had he not learned to interpret such sources two years before, when he had used responses to the Romanian questionnaire for his essay on Jews, Tatars, and Giants? Meanwhile, Şăineanu had his professional community to think of. He sent a copy of the Dialectological Study, hot off the press, to Hugo Schuchardt, who answered appreciatively in August 1889: “your study... deals with a subject which interests me keenly and does so in a most thorough and critical manner.” 91 Strîngerea materialelor din viul graiu pentru studiarea dialectului evreo-german, signed Lazăr Șăineanu, Bucharest, July 1889, letter and questionnaire printed in translation in Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,” 150–52. 92 Moses Berlin, Ocherk etnografii evreiskogo narodonaseleniia v Rossii. Saint Petersburg, in Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 1 (1861): 24–27.ic. Claire Le Foll, “La première étude ethnographique sur les juifs de Russie: science juive ou science impériale?” in Baumgarten and Trautmann-Waller, eds., Rabbins et savants au village, 159–81; Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 26; Judéoallemand, 108. In his introduction to Studies in Jewish Folklore in 1977 (1–2), the great folklorist Dov Noy described the questionnaire on “ jüdische Volkskunde” issued in 1896 by Max Grunwald, then rabbi of Hamburg, as “the first folklore questionnaire” among the Jews. But it was preceded by those of Berlin and Şăineanu. 93 Pavlo P. Chubinsky, Trudy etnografichesko-statisticheskoi ekspeditsii v zapadno-russkii krai, 7 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1872–78). Șăineanu, Evreo-German, 26; Judéo-allemand, 108. Șăineanu also mentioned a French summary of the report published in the periodical Globus (1880), 331–33 (108, n.8).

ZD_Book.indb 41

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:26

42

Part One

He went on to correct a small error in Şăineanu’s treatment of the Slavic element in Judeo-German and urged Şăineanu to turn his talents next to the study of Judeo-Spanish. Schuchardt planned to consult him one day about some baffling features of North-African Judeo-French.94 Șăineanu must have been pleased with the praise, but disappointed that Schuchardt had not commented more generally on his contribution to linguistics and to German dialectology. Nor did the book receive any real reviews, not even in the Literaturblatt für romanische und germanische Philologie (Literary Magazine for Romance and Germanic Philology), which had Schuchardt among its collaborators. Judeo-German was evidently too “mixed” a dialect for the neat categories of the Literaturblatt. Possibly Romania as the geographical catchment area of the Dialectological Study was the problem, for the contemporary stirring of Yiddish studies was focusing on Germany. In any case, Șăineanu’s book was simply listed in a few bibliographies of new books on Jewish subjects, such as that in the Revue des études juives (Review of Jewish Studies) of 1890.95 Still, word of the book eventually reached one Alfred Landau in Vienna. Landau had not yet published anything of note but would one day be classed with Şăineanu as a pioneer in Yiddish linguistics. Born in eastern Galicia, which had its own dialect of Yiddish, Landau had gone on to study and practice law in Vienna. Yiddish philology had long been his passion, however, and he had recently put aside his legal career and was devoting himself to collecting materials for a grammar and dictionary of Yiddish.96 In 1892, he initiated correspondence with Şăineanu, who responded by sending him a copy of the Dialectological Study and of the Barasch Society questionnaire on Judeo-Ger94 Hugo Schuchardt to Lazăr Şăineanu, Graz, 22 August 1889, reproduced and translated in Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,” 154–55. 95 SVSc, 48; Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,” 153. Revue des études juives 20 (1890): 156. The only other listing I have found is in the bibliography of new publications on “Juden,” compiled by M. Kayserling for the annual Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft 12, no. 1 (1889): 57, n. 82. Kayserling was rabbi of Budapest and a historian of the Jews, whose book on Moses Mendelssohn Şăineanu had used in writing his biography. On the lively interest in Yiddish emerging in Germany in these years, see Baumgarten, “Les recherches sur la dialectologie Yiddish.” 96 Landoy-bukh: dr. Alfred Landoy tsu zayn 75stn geboyrnstog dem 25stn November 1925 (Vilnius: B.A. Kletskin, 1926), summary English biography, unpaginated, at end; bibliography 7–10. Landau’s only publications before 1892 were a one-paragraph account in 1881 of the source of the taunt against Jews, “hep, hep,” and an 1882 review of Max Grünbaum’s Jüdischdeutsche Chrestomathie. Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,” 149; Dovid Katz, “Origins of Yiddish Dialectology,” in Katz, ed., Dialects of the Yiddish Language, 1: “The Rumanian linguist Lazăr Şăineanu (1889) and the Austrian philologist Alfred Landau (1896) are justly credited with bringing to Yiddish dialectology the methods and goals of nineteenth-century comparative Germanic studies.”

ZD_Book.indb 42

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

Romania

43

man. Landau wrote him of his own research, commented on Schuchardt’s view of mixed languages, and offered a correction to Şăineanu’s geography of Judeo-German dialects. Şăineanu answered in a friendly fashion about his own plans in regard to Judeo-German, and then let the correspondence lapse for several years. But he was surely glad to have common purpose on this “orphaned subject” with at least one other philologist and was to read with appreciation Landau’s major essay on the diminutive in Galician Yiddish when it finally appeared in 1896.97

B.P. Hasdeu, Anti-Semitism, and Jewish Relations Closer to home, Şăineanu had to hope for a positive reaction to his book from Hasdeu, his doktorvater, on whom rested his university future. Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a man of strange contradictions, with a complex relation to Jewish persons and subject matters. He had been a staunch opponent of emancipation for the Jews in Romania. In 1866–1868, when the Constituent Assembly had inserted an article in the new constitution admitting only Christians to citizenship and when Jews were being expelled as “vagabonds” from rural communes in Moldavia, Hasdeu published works which justified the rationale behind these and other anti-Semitic restrictions. In his Studii asupra Judaismului (Studies on Judaism) of 1866, present-day Jews were depicted as shameless traders and dealers in money. They were coming to Romania from Galicia in hordes, rapidly enriching themselves, and harming the growth of the national economy: “an entire nation of traders and shopkeepers… Shylock is the prototype of the Jews.” Incapable of patriotism, the Jews, if made citizens, would introduce bribery and corruption into Romanian political life.98 97 Gininger, “Correspondence,” 285–92. Alfred Landau, “Das Diminutivum der gallizsen-jüdischer Mundart. Ein Kapitel aus der judisch-deutschen Grammatik,” Deutsche Mundarten 1, no. 1 (1896): 46–58. Şăineanu’s appreciation for this essay in Judéo-allemand, 111, n. 1. 98 On the state of affairs in regard to Jews in Romania in the 1860s and the quarrel about the constitution of 1866, see Iancu, Juifs, 63–98. In 1866, Hasdeu published in Bucharest three Studii asupra Judaismului, which he had previously given as lectures: Talmudul ca profesiune de credintă a popurului israelit, in which he included discussion of the hostility to Christianity found in the Talmud; Trei ovrei: jupânal Shylock al lui Shakespeare, domnul Gobseck al lui Balzac, jupânal Moise al lui Alecsandri, in which he described the usurious and greedy figures created by Shakespeare, Honoré de Balzac, and the Romanian Vasile Alecsandri; and Industria națională, industria streina, și, industria ovreésca, față cu principiulu concurenței. For discussion of his anti-Semitic views, see Oișteanu, Inventing the Jew, 158, 162, 166–67; Stanciu, “The End [of] 19th Century Cultural Elite and the Origins of Romanian Anti-Semitism,” 71–73; Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 124–25; Ovidiu Pecican, “Antisemitismul lui B. P. Hasdeu,” Istoria, http://193.226.7.140/-laszlo/eleonardo/n05/Pecican1.htm. None of

ZD_Book.indb 43

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

44

Part One

Meanwhile Hasdeu could see that Romanian policies toward its Jews were arousing critical response in Western Europe, both from the governments that had presided over the creation of the new Danubian state and most urgently from Adolphe Crémieux, president of the Alliance israélite universelle.99 In 1868, now a Liberal deputy in the Chamber of Deputies, Hasdeu published his Istoria toleranțeĭ religióse în România (History of Religious Tolerance in Romania) to counter their accusations. As he described the Danubian lands over the centuries, the Orthodox Christian Romanians had allowed the presence and religious practice of Lutherans, Muslims, Roman Catholics, the Old Believers (that is, Eastern Orthodox Christians who refused to adopt the mid-17th century church reforms), and the Spanish and Polish Jews. The expulsion of Polish Jews by Prince Peter the Lame in the late sixteenth-century was his one example of an exception. Indeed, Romanian hospitality to different sects in the past compared favorably with the French, who had expelled their Huguenots, and with the Spanish, who had expelled their Muslims. To be sure, attacks on rabbis and synagogues, when they occurred, were “intolerant” and “stupid.” (Hasdeu gave no specifics, though the great synagogue in Bucharest had been pillaged during the Constituent Assembly debates of 1866, and synagogues were attacked along with other serious violence in two Moldavian towns as he was writing his History. He said not a word about ritual murder charges over the centuries.) In contrast, said Hasdeu, when current Romanian authorities took necessary action to protect the economic interest of the nation and to preserve it against an overflow of 500,000 Jews, well beyond their presence in western Europe, such policies had nothing to do with “religious intolerance.”100 Hasdeu set up Romanian and Jewish as counter-identities: the new nation needed homogeneity, Populus Romanus sine Judaeos, “the Romanian people the studies on Hasdeu written during the communist period and listed in note 9 above, discuss Hasdeu’s attitudes toward Jews; his view of the national past was evidently accepted by the regime. See Boia, History and Myth, especially 197–98. Nor had Mircea Eliade discussed Hasdeu’s attitude toward Jews in his two essays on him in 1937, where he characterized Hasdeu as an “organic democrat” and a “romantic genius.” Eliade had that same year expressed his disapproval of the exiling of Moses Gaster and Lazăr Saineanu from Romania in the nineteenth century even while affirming his attraction to the anti-Semitic nationalism of the Iron Guard. Hasdeu in his complexity was thus an attractive figure for him. Eliade, Despres Eminecu și Hasdeu, 57–110. 99 Iancu, Juifs, 65, 69–85. 100 Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Istoria toleranțeĭ religióse, 76–93; on the Jews, 92–93. Oișteanu, Inventing the Jew, 10. Hasdeu’s views were incorporated into a report submitted to Prince Carol by a commission of the Chamber of Deputies, assuring him that the Chamber would not swerve from the Romanian tradition of religious tolerance. On violence against the Jews in the years 1859–1872, see Iancu, Juifs, 60, 66–67, 87, 98–99.

ZD_Book.indb 44

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

Romania

45

without Jews.”101 Yet that dichotomy was disrupted by crossovers. To start with, he himself was a crossover. His paternal grandmother Valeria Hrysant was Jewish, a convert to Christianity. Her maternal tongue had perhaps been Yiddish, though she corresponded with her relatives in a clumsy Romanian. Hasdeu was born in 1838 in Khoytn, Bessarabia in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), that is, outside the Moldavia that would become part of the new Romanian state. He grew up in a multilingual household. His mother, who died when he was ten, had herself a Moldavian mother and a Germano-Baltic father; his gifted father Alexandru chose Romanian as his preferred literary language among the many he could speak. The young Hasdeu would have heard the name of Iuliu Barasch, an acquaintance and correspondent of his father, long before Gaster, Schwarzfeld, and Şăineanu used it for their Jewish historical society. After serving as a soldier for Russia during the Crimean War and completing law studies at the University of Kharkiv, Hasdeu arrived in Moldavia as an immigrant in 1858, becoming a history teacher in a lyceum in Iași, the birthplace of the Junimea movement and also a center of Jewish activity and expression. He began to publish in 1858, though, as he was to confess later to Schuchardt, he felt this early writing in Romanian was still ill-expressed. By the mid 1860s, Hasdeu was living in Bucharest, newly married, and embarked on his career as a scholar, publishing historical and linguistic documents and studies of substance — in marked contrast to his anti-Judaic texts of the same period.102 In the course of that career, Hasdeu made exceptions to his polarity of Romanian and Jewish. Presumably thinking of his grandmother, Hasdeu exempted Jewish women, especially women of refinement, from posing a threat to Romanian national loyalty. Also exempt from his strictures were 101 Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 125. Hasdeu used the motto “Populus Romanos sine Judaeos” in the second edition of his Studiu asupra judaiasmului. Industria națională, published in Bucharest in 1901. Edition described in “Broșurile ‘antisemite’ ale lui Bogdan Patriceicu Hasdeu,” Ştiai despre istorie? http://stiai-despre-istorie.blogspot.ca/2012/01/ 102 “Alexandru Hâjdeu,” Wikipedia, https:ro.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexandru_Hâjdeu&oldid= 14958781. On Hasdeu’s Jewish paternal grandmother Valeria Hrysant (d. 1860), see Drăgan, Hasdeu, 13; Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 125. Valerie married Tadeu Joan Hâjdau before 1811, when Alexandru was born. Alexandru married young Elizaveta Dausk in 1836. Her father was from a well-born Lithuanian family, related to the Germano-Baltic military men Otto Wilhelm and Karl Heinrich von Bistram, who served as generals in the Russian army during the Napoleonic wars and afterward until their deaths. Elizaveta’s mother was born into the Morțun family of Moldavia. Bogdan married Julia Faliciu in Bucharest in 1865 (Poghirc, Hasdeu, 55, 61). On Hasdeu’s letter to Schuchardt in 1878, see Sandu, Viața, 43.

ZD_Book.indb 45

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

46

Part One

remarkable Jewish men of letters, such as Moses Gaster and Lazăr Şăineanu— all the better if they were Sephardim, like Gaster with his prominent greatuncle “of the Spanish rite.”103 In the 1887 Preface to the Semasiology, Hasdeu praised Şăineanu as one of his preferred “disciples.” Whereas much previous commentary on the Romanian language had been marred by tendentious argument, patriotic or anti-patriotic, Şăineanu valued scientific truth above all else. He was a brave fighter, affirmed Hasdeu, taking scholarship in new directions.104 Gaster and Şăineanu were, of course, aware of Hasdeu’s anti-Semitic writings. Local Jews had long cited Hasdeu’s History of Religious Tolerance in Romania as evidence for the long historical presence of Jews in Romanian lands, while ignoring the book’s political conclusions. Şăineanu took from it an apt quotation on the popular quest for the holy in early Christianity and used it in his Semasiology.105 Nothing could be salvaged, however, from Hasdeu’s virulent Studies on Judaism. Gaster attributed this text to opportunism in an amusing reminiscence many years later: Anyone who wished to rise and gain popularity and the assistance of the government joined in [the] hue and cry against the Jews... The most eminent of these was Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu. As he himself told me, his mother [sic for grandmother; either Gaster had misremembered or the scribe to whom he was dictating made a mistake] was a Jewess; about his father he said nothing ... He was a man of extraordinary activity, he had a keen mind. Whatever he undertook, he started with great enthusiasm, with great energy, and he developed great scholarship. But he never finished anything ... His nature would not allow him to settle down permanently to any subject, the true Jewish spirit of restlesness and also the Jewish spirit of keen intuition and clear thinking was in him.106

103 Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 125, 144–45. Gaster, MC, xviii. 104 Şăineanu, Semasiologiei, “In loc de Prefata.” The preface was taken from Hasdeu’s evaluation of the book when it had been presented to the Faculty of Letters as a thesis. 105 Adolphe Crémieux had also cited Hasdeu’s book in his own study of religious tolerance in Romania (Response of Adolphe Crémieux reported in a “Nota Bene” on the last page of Hasdeu, Toleranțeĭ). Herșcovici, “Historiography,” 207. Şăineanu, Încercare asupra semasiologiei, 107, citing Hasdeu, Toleranțeĭ, 15 [sic for 16]. 106 Gaster, “Things that Were,” Gaster Papers, Ms. C, p. 4; Gaster, MC, 58–59.

ZD_Book.indb 46

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

Romania

47

Şăineanu left no commentary on Hasdeu’s Jewish grandmother, but did recall how in 1888, during his year in Paris, Hasdeu had asked him, Jew that he was, to check on the intellectual progress of his gifted daughter Iulia. Clearly, this was a sign of trust. Iulia was a young poet then studying for her doctorate in literature at the Sorbonne. When Iulia fell ill with tuberculosis, Şăineanu did what he could to help, and then commiserated with the heartbroken father after her death in Bucharest in September 1888. Şăineanu’s mother died the same month.107 In the early summer of 1889, when Şăineanu had a freshly printed copy of his Dialectological Study of the Judeo-German Language which he could present to his former teacher, he found Hasdeu wholly engrossed in the publication of Iulia’s poetry and in spiritualist communication with her, which he sustained for the rest of his life.108 Ironically, Hasdeu’s current distraction may have led to his indifference to Şăineanu’s pioneering study of a Jewish language, including its debts to Romanian; Hasdeu might otherwise have questioned its author sharply. But there is no sign that he did so. Rather Hasdeu’s grief opened a space for Şăineanu at the University of Bucharest: Hasdeu asked him to serve as his substitute in the chair of comparative philology. Şăineanu would have to do it for free—there was no salary attached—but it was an opportunity and an honor. His archeology professor Odobescu stepped into the breach and found him a paid post teaching Latin at the lyceum Gheorge Lazăr in Bucharest. It was an interesting setting. Until 1889, the school had been a gymnasium located in the middle of the Jewish and commercial quarter of Bucharest and had a significant presence of Jewish students. That very year, Gheorge Lazăr was elevated to a lyceum and moved to a new building in the political and cultural heart of the city, in the hopes of attracting pupils from the elite families of Bucharest.109 Şăineanu now reactivated his request for naturalization as a Romanian citizen, submitted before his departure in 1887. He went to the office of Petre Carp, 107 SVSc, 20–22. Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 2 August, 9 September, 6 October 1888 in Gaster, CF, 147–50. 108 SVSc, 22. In 1889–1890, Hasdeu saw to it that three volumes of her Oeuvres posthumes were published, two volumes of poetry and one of theatre and occasional pieces. Julie B. P. Hasdeu, Oeuvres posthumes, Preface from B.P. Hasdeu, dated Bucharest, 14 November 1889, 3: ix–xiii. 109 Şăineanu to Gaster, Slatina, 15/27 July 1889, in Gaster, CF, 157–58. SVSc, 23. Sainéan, Carrière philologique, 2–3. On the lyceum Gheorge Lazăr, see Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 197–98. During the years 1859 to 1890, the average percentage of Jews in the student body at the gymnasium Lazăr was 16.5%. The drop in the Jewish percentage in the lyceum Lazăr was especially notable after 1900 in the wake of the anti-Semitic legislation of 1898, which will be discussed below.

ZD_Book.indb 47

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

48

Part One

a founder of Junimea and an influential member of the current Conservative government and told him of his eagerness to serve letters and scholarship in Romania. For the moment in the summer of 1889, he felt “enveloped in an atmosphere of fellowship and esteem.”110

Š  University Lectures and New Books Şăineanu was soon writing Moses Gaster about his intellectual delight in preparing his university lectures. Now he could go beyond his own discoveries and speak with authority about the general state of linguistics and comparative philology.111 After a year instructing in Latin at the lyceum Lazăr, his responsibilities were expanded to teaching Romanian literature to the older pupils. Three books emerged from this experience, further establishing his place as an interpreter of the Romanian language and as a linguist on the European scene. In 1891 his anthology of Autorii români moderni (Contemporary Romanian Authors) came off the press, much needed for use in schools: brief excerpts from the poetry and prose of Romanian men and women, together with biographies and literary commentary. It was already in a second edition the next year, and a third by 1895.112 His lectures during the first year of his university course on “general linguistics” had drawn large audiences and became a book as well in the late summer of 1891. Published under the ungainly title Raporturile între gramatică și logică c’o privire sintectică asupra părților cuvîntuluĭ (The Relations between Grammar and Logic with a Syntactical Examination of the Parts of Speech), it was an elegant overview of the main themes in comparative grammar.113 Şăineanu 110 Sainéan, Carrière philologique, 46. On Petre Carp (1837–1919), see Hitchins, Rumania 1866–1947, 57–59, 107. 111 Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 1 November 1889, in Gaster, CF, 159. SVSc, 129–30: topics covered in his lectures on the history and fundamental elements of comparative philology. 112 Şăineanu, Carrière philologique, 6–7. Lazăr Şăineanu, Autorii români moderni, Şăineanu’s preface dated Bucharest, 1 June 1891; 3rd edition, preface dated Interlaken, 1 July 1895. Şăineanu even included excerpts from early Romanian literature printed in Cyrillic characters. He also included Hasdeu among his authors in prose, and even listed the (anti-Semitic) Studies on Judaism in the bibliography of Hasdeu’s writing (3rd ed., 244–49, 320). A favorable review of the book in 1891 by the Romanian poet and novelist Traian Demtrescu is reproduced in SVSc, 52. 113 Lazăr Şăineanu, Raporturile între gramatica și logica, preface dated August 1891, in which he mentions that these lectures had been given during the winter semester of the past year. He dedicated the book to his “listeners at the Faculty of Letters.” SVSc, 129 on his large audiences. Şăineanu also published separately in 1890 his opening lecture in the course: his critical picture of the Neogrammarian school, described above p. 27 and n. 54.

ZD_Book.indb 48

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

Romania

49

described the close relation of logic and grammar as it had been put in place by Aristotle and transmitted or modified over the centuries. Language was a wondrous instrument of knowledge! How to account for the move from thought and expression, on the one hand, to expression in language on the other? That gap must be explored through the tools and concepts of psychology, and in languages well beyond the Indo-European, including those of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia. Şăineanu discarded Schleicher’s categories of language families in evolutionary sequence (the monosyllabic, the agglutinative, the inflective): the Semitic languages, Romanian, and Judeo-German had not fared very well in that hierarchical ladder, as we have seen.114 Schuchardt had also rejected the family-tree model of his one-time teacher Schleicher. Together with Johannes Schmidt, Schuchardt had accounted for change through language mixture, which was then diffused outward in circles like a wave. But Schuchardt did not go on to establish a new hierarchy of languages: one language did not win over another in the course of mixture because it was necessarily “better.” Defending the Creole language of Suriname slaves, Schuchardt commented that its syntactical habits were not odder than those in French.115 Once again, Şăineanu was not prepared to go as far as Schuchardt. Rather, following the teachings of Michel Bréal, he put together a capacious view of the range of successful human languages with what one reviewer called “an especially suggestive … theory of striation.” Şăineanu placed languages in three classes—imperfect, absolute, perfect—depending on the extent to which human thought was realized in language. If indigenous languages of the Americas were clustered in the “imperfect” category, nonetheless, they were rich in

114 SVSc, 67–69. [A.H. Sayce], “Philology Notes,” The Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art 40, no. 1018 (7 November 1891): 411. Raoul de La Grasserie, Le Muséon. Revue d’ études orientales 10 (1891): 645–46. D. N. Comsa, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’ étranger 33 (JanuaryJune 1892): 345–46. 115 Campbell, Historical Linguistics. 188. The “wave theory” model is found in Johannes Schmidt, Die Verwandtschaftsvehältnisse der indogermanishchen Sprachen (Weimar, 1872), but Campbell reports the development of the model by Schuchardt in 1868 and 1870. Schuchardt, Brevier, 142–82; 143: “Wellencentra” (from a work published in 1768). Alexandre François, “Trees, Waves and Linkages: Models of Language Diversification,” in Bowers and Evans, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, 168–69. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Creole Languages and their Uses: The Example of Colonial Suriname,” Historical Research 82 (May 2009): 269.

ZD_Book.indb 49

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

50

Part One

vivid concrete imagery.116 If, as the late Arsène Darmesteter had maintained, the Semitic tongue was limited in tenses, it was rich in voice, while the IndoEuropean conjugation was rich in tenses but reduced in voice. “The power of human thought to take such varied forms” was a striking fact. Across their differences, people had the same propensities, logical, phonetic, and artistic.117 The Raporturile was greeted warmly in reviews. The Oxford philologist, Assyriologist, and Egyptologist Archibald Sayce hoped for an English translation; Şăineanu’s former teacher Odobescu praised its scholarship and applauded it for making the new learning on linguistics accessible beyond the university.118 Şăineanu quickly turned to his next book, Istoria filologieĭ române (The History of Romanian Philology): a lucid and extensively documented history of Romanian philology, folklore, ethnography, and varied literary genres, placed within the context of European studies more generally.119 The book was published at the end of the summer, 1892, and in its pages, the different threads of his scholarly life appeared for a moment to come together. Hasdeu provided a preface, praising his former student as “a true master of contemporary linguistics.”120 Şăineanu positioned himself throughout the Istoria as a Romanian: “our language,” “our vocabulary,” “our folktales.” He reported the pure Latin theory of the origin of Romanian, but then sided with its persuasive critics. Along 116 Saineanu’s model was adopted from the recent publication on grammatical case by the French polymath Raoul de La Grasserie, whom he quoted a length (Raporturile, 32–33, 42, 51–52, 104–105). La Grasserie had developed these views in Études de grammaire comparée, 53–98, 329–30. On La Grasserie, see Simone Delesalle, “Raoul Guérin de la Grasserie, son statut et son rôle dans la linguistique du tournant du siècle,” in Hans Josef Niederehe and E. F. K. Koerner, eds., History and Historiography of Linguistics, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 51, no. 2 (1990): 677–86. 117 “Cette puissance de la pensée humaine à prendre corps des des formes tellement variées.” Saineanu, Raporturile, 35–38. 118 [A.H. Sayce], “Philology Notes,” The Academy. A Weekly Review of Literature, Science and Art 40, no. 1018: 411. Alexandru Odobescu, review appearing in Revista pedagogic in 1892. Titu Maiorescu was worried only about vagueness in Saineanu’s term “essence of thought,” expressed in a comment in the appendix to his Scrieri de logică, and reproduced in SVSc, 69–71. 119 Lazăr Şăineanu, Istoria filologieĭ române (1892). Şăineanu also published the same year a reworking of his lyceum thesis on Ion Rădulescu: Ioan Eliad Rădulescu ca gramatic și filolog (Bucharest, 1892), which included in its appendix three texts by Eliade on grammar and vocabulary (SVSc, 71). In his Istoria, he devoted simply a section to Rădulescu in the chapter on “the Italianate movement,” 172–90. 120 Şăineanu, Istoria (1892), vii–viii, preface dated 1 September 1792. Gaster, however, found the Preface “brazen and rude,” perhaps because Hasdeu said Şăineanu was here filling a role previously played by Gaster and Alexandru Xenopol (Gaster to Şăineanu, London, 7 November 1892, in Eskenasy, “Notes,” 81; phrase omitted in Gaster, CF, 117).

ZD_Book.indb 50

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

Romania

51

with describing the evolution of Hasdeu’s thought on the matter, he noted the role of Schuchardt in conceptualizing a pre-Roman indigenous “substratum” for Romanian and in documenting the presence of foreign words in the language. Others had provided support for that linguistic mixture, such as the remarkable Franz Miklosich, a Slovenian scholar teaching in Vienna, with his work on the Slavic element in Romanian—and Şăineanu added to the list his own study of Turkish words in Romanian. If Hasdeu was frequently cited in contemporary work on the Romanian language and tales, so also was Dr. Gaster. Şăineanu’s own book on Semantics, the Semasiologiei, and some of his other works could be rightly listed with those on Romanian language and folktales, as could the publications on popular Romanian poetry of his friend M. Schwarzfeld.121 Along with this variety of subjects Șăineanu stressed the importance of dialects, of “popular languages,” for the “national tongue.” Here Romanian philologists had lagged, partly because of their “prejudicial patriotism”: they desired to see Romanian as a language spoken by peasants in a similar way, with the same syntax and morphology, across all the territories. Șăineanu cited a recent study so intent on showing the proximity of the Macedonian Romanian dialect to Romanian literary language that it misreported what had actually been said. The best work on Romanian dialects was being done by foreigners, such as the young Gustav Weigand at Leipzig, while the Revue des patois gallo-romans could show Romanians new directions in which to go. At least Șăineanu could praise great Romanian storytellers, whose collections faithfully captured local dialects.122 The story has more to it, however, for other “ethnic elements were [also] living together in Romania,” “peoples who have lived on our national soil” (“pe solul patrieĭ nóstre”). Such were the Roma, the Ţigani, especially important “from a psychological point of view.” The polymath Miklosich had produced major volumes on their language, and studies were being published on their poetry and song in different parts of Romania. The Hungarians living in Moldavia were also receiving some attention. 121 Şăineanu, Istoria (1892), 435: “limba nóstra”; 309: “vocabularuluĭ nostru”; 355: “basmelor nóstre”; 43, 302, 292 n. 1, 292–93, 300, 300 n. 1, 307, 309, 310 n. 2, 340 n. 2, 348 n. 1, 356, 356 nn. 1–2, 363 n. 1. 122 Șăineanu, Istoria (1892), 317–25, 335–42, 350–53. The phrase “prejudicial patriotism” is Șăineanu’s (319). Ovid Densuşianu spelled out further the anti-dialectical view, still held among Romanian philologists ten years later: Histoire, xxx. Franz Miklosich, Cercetări româneşti: Monumente de limbă istro- și macedoneană (Bucharest: Romanian Academy, 1880); Gustav Weigand, Die Sprache der Olympo-Walachen (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1888).

ZD_Book.indb 51

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:27

52

Part One

And there were the Jews: M. Schwarzfeld had published on their history in Romania, while he, Şăineanu, had examined the language spoken locally by the Jews. He then cited his 1889 publication on Judeo-German, and indeed, the Studiu dialectologic asupra graiului evreo-german had appeared among his list of publications next to the Istoria’s title page. In all three cases, he said, the languages of these peoples had been influenced by the Romanian spoken around them, and in all three cases, their speakers figured as targets of popular satire. Şăineanu did not elaborate, but simply made bibliographical reference to two recent publications of Schwarzfeld on the Jews in Romanian popular literature.123 The Istoria filologieĭ romăne gave expression both to cultural mixture and an inclusive society in Romania, at least in the world of scholarly inquiry. The Jews were present, if in muted form, and Jewish scholars could speak significantly as Romanians. This was a step toward the world that Şăineanu, Gaster, and Schwarzfeld had been hoping to build for years.

V. A. Urechiă and the First Rejection of Naturalization That imagined world had already begun to fall apart. Şăineanu had aroused an unrelenting and jealous enemy twenty-five years his senior, the historian/publicist/politician Vasile Alexandrescu Urechiă. Urechiă was to do everything in his power to prevent the talented and productive linguist/folklorist from getting a professorship at the University of Bucharest and from being naturalized as a citizen of Romania. From a noble family of Moldavia, Urechiă had been a Senator for many years, and had even served as Minister of Education in the Liberal government of 1881–1882. The stream of publications from his pen was unending, including writings on Romanian letters and history—an untrustworthy “fatras (hodge-podge), with little in it that was new,” according to the up-and-coming young historian Nicolae Iorga. The poet Eminescu had earlier termed Urechiă “a falsifier … who hardly knows how to write a correct phrase.”124 A zealous patriot, committed to the Latin origin of the Romanian language and to the image of Romanians as “Latins, proud descendants of Rome,” Urechiă delighted in 123 Şăineanu, Istoria (1892), 278–84, 279 n. 1, 284 n. 1, 363 n. 1, 403–405, 405 n. 1. 124 Nicolae Iorga, Opinions sincères (Bucharest: Indépendence roumaine, 1899), 29, quoted by Şăineanu in Carieră filologică, 81. Iorga stressed Urechiă’s lack of scholarly training and unreliable knowledge of Latin. On Eminsescu’s view, see Voicu, Radiografia, 17 and 17, n. 16. The distinguished historian Lucian Boia says today of Urechiă that “his industry was not matched by his competence” (History, 52).

ZD_Book.indb 52

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

Romania

53

uncovering what he claimed were Romanian priorities, such as the vast superiority of a minor Romanian poet over the German poet Goethe.125 Curiously enough, in 1886, perhaps at Hasdeu’s urging, Urechiă had invited Şăineanu to do a glossary of the words used by the seventeenth-century Moldavian historian Miron Costin. It was to be appended to an edition Urechiă was preparing of Costin’s works. Şăineanu started his compilation, but by 1888, Urechiă had let the glossary drop, perhaps in the wake of reading Şăineanu’s 1887 essay on “Jews or Tatars or Giants,” which had just appeared in Convorbiri literare.126 As we will see, this essay was to play a central part in Urechiă’s polemic against Şăineanu. Urechiă’s first hostile move was in the fall of 1890, when Şăineanu had just been named to a newly created chair in Romanian history, literature, and language at the University of Bucharest. (Şăineanu’s teachers Hasdeu and Odobescu were members of the selection committee.) Urechiă, then teaching at the University of Iaşi, immediately proposed himself for the chair, even offering to teach it without salary. He attacked Şăineanu publicly for his lack of Romanian patriotism; and aroused the university students at Bucharest, the teachers at the lyceum in Şăineanu’s hometown of Ploieşti, and the press to protest the nomination. The professors at the Faculty of Letters held firm for a time, improvising solutions, such as dividing the chair in two and assigning only Romanian literature and language to Şăineanu. When Urechiă pointed out that Şăineanu was not a citizen of Romania, they caved in and, at a meeting at which Hasdeu and Odobescu were absent, withdrew their support. Şăineanu was able to continue his university lectures in comparative linguistics as Hasdeu’s assistant but resigned his own chair in November 1890.127 Urechiă then got busy to obstruct Şăineanu’s being admitted to citizenship. The vote on the matter had to come first before the Senate. To his fellow Senators, Urechiă spread the word that the “strain,” the “foreigner” Şăineanu, had been denigrating the fatherland in his publications. His proof was Şăineanu’s “Jews or Tatars or Giants,” published in France as well as Romania, and which, 125 Boia, History, 56. 126 SVSc, 61–62: for Şăineanu’s description of the invitation, his work on the glossary, and the cancellation. The title pages of the two volumes of Miron Costin’s Opera completa (Bucharest: Tipografia Academieĭ Române, 1886, 1888) announce the glosariŭ by L. Şăineanu; and in his introduction to volume 1, Urechiă said the glossary would appear to volume 1 (p. x). But this did not happen, and Şăineanu was left with a partially finished manuscript. 127 Şăineanu, Carrière philologique, 5–7; Carieră filologică, 52–56, for the documents in the case. The Minister of Education at the time was Maiorescu.

ZD_Book.indb 53

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

54

Part One

Urechiă claimed, gave priority to the Jewish presence in Romanian lands and undermined the theory of continuous Romanian presence in Dacia: M. Şăineanu has maintained that a race of the religion of Moses dominated in the Principalities, in these provinces, and thus, the Jews today are ethnographically the descendants of the ancient Jews of the country. It’s true that the Hungarians say almost the same thing when they claim their property right to Dacia supersedes the right of Romanians. Now come the Jews claiming priority for the Jewish Khazars in Dacia!128

An “absurd” view of his essay, Şăineanu was to counter, quoting the actual paragraphs he had written. (To be sure, “Jews or Tatars or Giants” did add to the evidence for the continuity of Jews in Romanian lands and thereby strengthened claims for their citizenship, but it did not touch upon the question of the Dacian Romanian community one way or the other.) In any case, Urechiă published his attack far and wide. Urechiă especially got to Dimitrie Sturdza. Free for the moment of the ministerial posts he had held throughout the Liberal governments of the 1880s, Sturdza was currently president of the Romanian Academy. Furthermore, he was sitting on the committee, appointed by the Minister of Justice, to evaluate Şăineanu’s qualifications for citizenship. The assurances Sturdza had given to Şăineanu back in 1887 were forgotten. Sturdza henceforth stood with Urechiă: the Jew Şăineanu would not become a citizen. The committee’s report to the Senate in late November 1891 concluded that Şăineanu had “given no evidence of outstanding talent in his scholarship” and recommended that his request for naturalization be denied. The Senate convened in mid-December. No one rose to speak, and the decision to reject Şăineanu’s naturalization was accepted by a vote of 79 to 2.129 128 “M. Şăineanu a soutenu qu’une race de la religion de Moïse a dominé dans les Principautés, dans ces provinces et que, par conséquent, comme il l’a démontré, les Juifs actuels ne seraient ethnographiquement que les descendants des Juifs anciens du pays. Il est vrai que les Hongrois disent à peu près la même chose, quand ils prétendent que leur droit de propriété sur la Dacie prévaut sur celui des Roumains. Voici maintenant venir des Juifs qui défendent la priorité d’établissement des Juifs Khazars en Dacie!” Quoted by Şăineanu in Carrière philologique, 20. This quotation from Urechiă was from his speech before the Senate on 13 April 1895, but Şăineanu used it to illustrate the character of the attack Urechiă was making on him already in the fall of 1890. 129 Şăineanu, Carrière philologique, 8–16. Roskowski and Kofman, Biographical Dictionary, 984–85. On the exact date of the Senate session, see Voicu, Radiografia, 21, n. 23. In 1881, Sturdza had been Minister of Finance, in 1882–1885, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in 1885–1888, Minister of Education.

ZD_Book.indb 54

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

Romania

55

Favorable Reviews and Marriage Şăineanu reacted to the defeat with bitter irony but also resilience. He spared Moses Gaster the details in his letter of late December 1891, though he mentioned his low spirits and even apathy. He went on to describe the book he was currently writing on the history of Romanian philology, folk-literature, and ethnography, and then added, “As time goes by, I am beginning to understand that the greatest misfortune for a Jew in this country is to devote himself to learning.” Gaster immediately sent his dear friend a letter of support, commenting on the “shameful vote.”130 Still, Şăineanu left no trace of recent events in his History of Romanian Philology: he referred to relevant works by Urechiă in the text and notes; he described the edition of Miron Costin, from which Urechiă had omitted Şăineanu’s glossary, as “still unfinished”; he said that “a chair in Romanian language at the University of Bucharest remains a question for the future.”131 Hoping to win naturalization in a future attempt, he must have thought it prudent not to fan the fires unnecessarily in this new text. Şăineanu was soon to be cheered when King Carol I expressed regrets at the Senate’s vote, and then in the spring of 1892, went on to award Şăineanu a medal of merit for his publications. As for his academic posts, Hasdeu had by now resumed his lectures at the University with Şăineanu as an unpaid assistant, and he was also teaching Latin and German at two lyceums in Bucharest and serving as an instructor at the Şcoala Normală Superioară.132

He had founded the National Liberal Party in 1875 and served as president of the Romanian Academy from 1881 to 1892. 130 Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 27 December 1891, in Gaster, CF, 164–65. The sentence quoted here is omitted in the Florea edition and replaced by three dots (165); it is added in Eskenasy, “Notes,” 78. Gaster to Şăineanu, London 12 January 1892, in Eskenasy, “Notes,” 80, Gaster, MC, 346–47. 131 Şăineanu, Istoria (1892), 83 n.1, 102, 105 n.1, 292 (comment about a chair in Romanian philology at the University of Bucharest), 320, n. 3, 323 n. 2, 361, 385 and 385 n. 1 (reference to Şăineanu’s glossary for Urechiă’s edition of Miron Costin, the edition “not yet complete”), 386, 415 n. 1, 417 n. 1, 421, 421 n. 1. Though Şăineanu made no overt criticism of any of Urechiă’s work, a reader who followed up the reviews he mentioned in the notes would find it there. For instance, Alexandru Xenopol’s reviews of the Costin volumes were appreciative of the publication of those texts that had not been previously available, but critical of the “mutilation” of documents, presentation of material already well-known, and excessive notes and references that made for “exhausting reading.” Alexandru Xenopol, “Roumanie,” Revue historique 35, no. 2 (1887): 359–60; 43, no. 2 (1890): 389–90. Cf. Xenopol’s review of Şăineanu below. 132 Şăineanu, Carrière philologique, 16; Carieră filologică, 57–58. “Notițe diverse,” Anuar pentru Israeliți 15 (1892–1893): 187: Şăineanu was teaching Latin at the lyceum Gheorghe Lazăr and German at the lyceum Sava.

ZD_Book.indb 55

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

56

Part One

The favorable reviews of the Raporturile continued to appear, and starting soon after its publication in September 1892, there were enthusiastic reactions to his Istoria filologieĭ române. In Paris, Gaston Paris found it “fort intéressant,” as one could expect from the “learning and critical acumen” of its author.133 Especially unexpected was the praise the book garnered in early 1894 from Alexandru Xenopol, the leading historian in Romania of the day and rector of the University of Iași, where Urechiă had a base. The son of a Greek mother and a Jewish father who had converted to Orthodox Christianity, Xenopol was a passionate nationalist. Those Jews who converted and intermarried could be accepted—given his own background, what else could he say? But most Jews, he claimed, put loyalty to their own people above all else. The distinctive qualities of the great Romanian people must be protected against the excess of Jewish foreigners, their economic intrusion, and their “intolerable jargon Yiddish.”134 Xenopol reviewed Şăineanu’s Istoria as part of a longer description of recent publications on Romania for the Revue historique. He arrived at Şăineanu’s book after he had sharply criticized Hasdeu’s genealogy of Balkan peoples in the latest volume of his Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae. How dare Hasdeu bring Slavicized Thracian-Romanians into areas north of the Danube, when evidence pointed to the continuity there only of Dacian Romanians?135 Şăineanu’s Istoria, however, Xenopol found new and well-documented, especially in its appreciation of the quality of the Romanian language and its impact on other languages and western philologists. With “the hand of a master,” he had drawn a complete picture of “l’esprit littéraire roumain de 1870 à 1890.” Xenopol apparently forgave Şăineanu his Jewish origins and his image of an inclusive Romania because of his love of the Romanian tongue.136 Meanwhile, the Jewish cultural circles of Romania had no need of book reviews to recognize their Şăineanu as a remarkable and gifted scholar. Moses Schwarzfeld would have been among the first to celebrate his friend’s accomplishments, and the 1892–1893 edition of the Israelite Yearbook devoted a sec133 Gaston Paris, review, Romania 22 (1893): 336 134 Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 126–32. Jancu, Juifs, 217. 135 Alexandru Xenopol, “Bulletin historique: Roumanie,” Revue hisorique 55 (1894): 138–39. On Xenopol’s position on the origins and geographical location of the Romanians and the contrast with Hasdeu’s views, see Boia, History, 35, 53, 115–17. 136 Xenopol, “Bulletin historique,” 140–42. On Xenopol’s strong concern for the Romanian language and his belief that even third generation Jews in Romania could not speak it properly, see Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 129.

ZD_Book.indb 56

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

Romania

57

tion to his recent publications.137 To fail in one’s initial effort to become a Romanian citizen was an expected outcome. It certainly did not dim Şăineanu’s personal prospects: in 1893, he made a brilliant marriage to Cecilia Samitca, daughter of Rose and Ralian Samitca, the latter one of the most important publishers in Romania.138 The Samitca printing house had been founded in Craiova by Iosif Samitca in 1847, fifteen years after the first synagogue was built in that western Wallachian town. Iosif had published schoolbooks for Romanian pupils, poetry, and books of general interest, including Minunele naturei (The Wonders of Nature) by Dr. Iuliu Barasch, a pioneer in popularizing science as well as a founder of Romanian Haskalah.139 Iosif ’s sons, Ralian and Ignat carried on and expanded his inventory. Ion Heliade Rădulescu’s Satirele și fabulele (Satires and Fables) had come off their presses in 1883, and the same year, Hasdeu himself had the Samitca house publish his history of an early Romanian revolutionary who had started out in the Craiova region. A novel by the vanguard Symbolic poet Traian Demetrescu would appear under their imprint not long after Şăineanu’s marriage to Cecilia.140 Furthermore, as part of their Library of Celebrated Fiction and Popular Library of Literature, Science, and Art, the Samitcas were making European literature available to Romanian readers in translation: the Inferno and Purgatory of Dante, Molière’s Don Juan, Goethe’s Werther, Heine’s poems, and novels and 137 “Notițe diverse,” Anuar pentru Israeliți 15 (1892–1893), 185–87. 138 The formal marriage act of Lazăr Şăineanu and Cecilia Samitca, daughter of Ralian and Rose Samitca, in Craiova, 11 March 1893, is included in French translation, approved by the Romanian legation at Paris, in Şăineanu’s dossier requesting admission to settle in France, submitted to the Préfet de la Police and the Ministre de la Justice, 11 May 1901, Archives Nationales de France [henceforth ANF), Paris, France, BB11, 3885–3030 X01 Lazare Sainéan. The two “friends of the groom” for the marriage contract, Leopold Mendel, aged forty-three, and Isidore Fareanu [sic, perhaps for Focsaneanu, which was the name of an old Jewish family in Bucharest and elsewhere in Romania], age thirty-four, were perhaps the husbands of two of Șăineanu’s four sisters. 139 Liviu Rotman, “Craiova,” The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/craiova. Andrei, Braun, and Zimbler, Institutul de editură și arte grafice Samitca, 24–28, 58. Iosif Samitca was known locally as Iosif Legătorul, Iosif the Bookbinder. From 1846 to 1863, he was often associated with Iancu-Moise-Taubam in publication, including for the 1850 edition of Iuliu Barasch’s Wonders of Nature (14, 20–23, 58). Iuliu Barasch, Minunele naturei: conversațiuni asupra deosebitelor obiecte interesante din sţiinţele naturale, fisică, chimie, şi astronomie, vol. I [printed in Cyrillic characters] (Craiova: Iosif and Iancu-Moise, 1850), title page reproduced on line, www. slideserve.co.uk; www.dacoromanica.ro). Barasch’s work had another edition published in Bucharest in 1852, but it was first published in Craiova, where Barasch had served for a time as physician. 140 Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Satirele și fabulele (Craiova: Ralian Samitca, 1884). Traian Demetrescu, Iubita (Craiova: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, 1895). B. P. Hasdeu, Olteneștele (Craiova: Samitca, 1884).

ZD_Book.indb 57

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

58

Part One

stories by Honoré de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas, Émile Zola, and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky among others.141 In 1889, the Senate had voted to bestow citizenship on Ralian Samitca, the only naturalization that year.142 Şăineanu’s marriage would bring advantages both to him and to his fatherin-law. The Samitcas would also be a useful connection for his younger brother Mariu (as Mayer had called himself for many years). Now with his diploma from the École des Études Orientales and his recent Leipzig doctorate in Semitic studies, Mariu was one day to publish with the firm.143 Şăineanu wrote Gaster the good news some weeks before the wedding. “The choice of my heart is a modest young woman, who seems to believe her dream realized in taking me for a husband.” (He was perhaps being ironic about the fact that he was thirty-four and she only twenty-one.) Her father had received him with warmth and smiles. He was optimistic about this turn in his life, he thought it boded well for his future.144 Married in Craiova in March 1893, the couple moved into new quarters that Lazăr had found for them in Bucharest. Three years later, in April 1896, Cecilia gave birth to their daughter Elisabeth. Lazăr now identified himself cheerfully as a pater familias. “Cecilia and I send cordial greetings,” he writes to Gas141 Dante Alighieri, Divina Comedie [I] Infernul and [II] Purguturiul, trans. Maria P. Chițu, published by Ralian and Ignat Samitca in 1883 and 1888. Émile Zola, Germinal, trans. I. Gentilis, Biblioteca Romanelor Celebre (Craoiva: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, 1897). Leo Tolstoy, Nuvele și povestiri populare, trans. Iosif Hussar, Biblioteca de popularizare pentru literatură, știință și artă (Craoiva: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, 1888–1895). Iosif Hussar, a journalist and translator, was born to a Jewish family of Moldavia; besides the Tolstoy, he translated several works from the French for the Samitca brothers. Andrei et al., Samitca, 34–36. Badea, ed., Repertoriul traducătorilor români de limbă franceză, italiană, spaniolă, 116, 121–22. 142 Iancu, Le Combat international, Appendix 17, 87; Appendix 19, 103. 143 After his studies at the the École des Études Orientales and at the École des Hautes Études with Joseph Halévy, Mariu Şăineanu had gone on to the University of Leipzig for his doctorate. His 1892 thesis, published in Bucharest, was an introduction in French to a hitherto unknown Amharic chronicle of the sixteenth century, the manuscript of which he had been introduced to by Joseph Halévy in Paris. By 1893, he was teaching French language and history at a gymnasium in Caracal, a town not far from Craiova. Two years later, he published in Bucharest a short overview in Romanian of all the Semitic languages. Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 8/20 June 1891, 10/22 August 1891, in Gaster, CF, 162–64; “Notițe diverse,” Anuar pentru Israeliți 15 (1892–1893): 189. [Constantin] Mariu Şăineanu, L’Abyssine dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle. Mariu Şăineanu, Limbile semitice; published also in the Anuar pentru Israeliți 18 (1896–1897): 1–49. Then in 1896, the Samitca brothers had Mariu translate two novels from the French into Romanian: Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet and Alphonse Daudet, Fromont jeune et Risler ainé. The year after he was to publish a French-Romanian dictionary, the first of many dictionaries by him to come off their presses. Mariu Șăineanu, Dicționar franceso-român, vi: preface dated 27 July 1897; Andrei et al., Samitca, 35; Badea, Repertoriul, 243, 346. Constantin Șăineanu, Amintiri, 24–25, 35–36, 41. 144 Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 2 February 1893, in Gaster, CF, 165–66.

ZD_Book.indb 58

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

Romania

59

ter in 1894, and to introduce his friend to his new-born daughter, “My little Elisabeth sends a sweet kiss.”145 Counting on Cecilia’s support, he devoted all his time (as his daughter later recalled) “à ses livres et à ses etudes philologiques.” Şăineanu acknowledged the character of their relationship some years later in dedicating a book “À ma chère femme, compagne inséparable de mes travaux.”146 Cecilia was to learn early in their marriage both of his intense dedication to his work and of the ups and downs of his career.

Š  Basmele Române Already a few weeks after their marriage Cecilia was to get a taste of those vicissitudes. In April 1893, probably at the urging of King Carol himself, who, as Şăineanu put it, “deigned to concern himself about my fate,” the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the general Gheorghe Manu, decided to take up the matter of his naturalization. It had failed first time round in the Senate; perhaps it could succeed this time if the case started off in the Chamber rather than the Senate. The government was now a Conservative one, and the prime minister Lascăr Cataragiu threw his support to Şăineanu. (Interestingly enough, the Conservatives were for the moment slightly less anti-Semitic than the populist and fervently nationalist Liberals, headed for the past year by Sturdza himself). Hasdeu pled the case for naturalization of his brilliant student before the Deputies, and the vote went with a large majority in Şăineanu’s favor 76-20.147 To Şăineanu’s astonishment, the one voice to speak against him in the Chamber was none other than Jacob Negruzzi, founder and long-time editor of the Junimea periodical Convorbiri literare. In its pages in 1887, Negruzzi had published “Jews or Tatars or Giants. A Socio-Linguistic Excursus,” the first appearance of that essay before Şăineanu published it in the Anuar pentru Israeliți and in French translation in Romania. Negruzzi had also welcomed 145 Birth date of Elisabeth Şăineanu, 23 April 1896 in ANF, BB11 3885–3030 X01 Lazare Sainéan, request for naturalization December 1902. Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 1 July 1894, 18/30 June 1896, in Gaster, CF, 172, 196. 146 Dossier of Elisabeth Nizan [stage name of Elisabeth Şăineanu], Bibliothèque de la Comédie française, retirement speech, December 1936, p. 1. Lazare Sainéan, Le langage parisien au 19e siècle, dedication. 147 Şăineanu, Carrière, 17–18, 30, 48. On the Romanian political scene and the Conservative governments in the early 1890s, see Hitchins, Rumania, 107–109.

ZD_Book.indb 59

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

60

Part One

five other essays by Şăineanu, including his Zilele Babei (Days of the Old Women) later revised for his Leipzig doctoral dissertation. Now that “Jews or Tatars or Giants” had become controversial, Negruzzi aligned himself with Urechiă and claimed that Şăineanu had “disparaged the fatherland” and not only in Romanian, but also “in the English language”—a preposterous claim, perhaps intended to evoke the fate meted out to Gaster and others, exiled for having spoken against Romania in the foreign press.148 Whatever the case, Şăineanu was already hard at work on his new book, Basmele române (Romanian Folktales). Its subject had interested him since his 1886–1888 essays on the Ielele and the Days of the Old Woman (la Vieille), where he had tracked these stories and their sources in Romania and the Balkans. In his History of Romanian Philology, he had reviewed the existing literature on Romanian oral genres, mentioning along the way that the Romanian Academy had announced a prize for “a study of Romanian folktales in comparison with ancient myths and in connection with the tales of neighboring peoples and other peoples of the Romance languages.” Why not submit a manuscript? Here was his chance to expand further his earlier research and to develop his own view of the origin of tales in opposition to the Indianist thesis and other theories that were single-minded or lacked ethnographic specificity. Setting to work in the spring of 1893, he had to act fast, since the deadline for the submission of a manuscript was the end of that year.149 Excited letters to Gaster carried news of the sources Şăineanu was seeking, now digging deeper than he had for the Istoria. The fairy tales of the brothers Grimm were, of course, essential, and Johann Georg van Hahn’s Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Greek and Albanian Fairy Tales) of 1869 yielded 148 Şăineanu, Carrière, 18. A list of Şăineanu’s publications in the Convorbiri literare from 1887 to 1892 in SVSc, 123. Jacob Negruzzi (1842–1932), playwright, author, and literary critic, had been one of the five founding members of the Junimea in 1863, along with Titu Maiorescu (Şăineanu’s former teacher, we recall) and Petre Carp, both of whom were prominent figures in the Conservative Party in the 1890s. Hitchins, Rumania, 57–59, 107–109. Possibly they thought Negruzzi had gone too far in his opposition to Şăineanu. 149 Şăineanu, Istoria (1892), 329–70, devoted to folklore and oral genres; 368–70, on different theories of the origin of tales; 355, on the prize contest of the Romanian Academy. The three-volume book announced “in preparation” opposite the 1892 title page is Românismul din punctul de vedere etnografic, linguistic și psicologic and has some overlap with the comparative study of Romanian folktales, especially in the planned volume III, but in his letters to Gaster, Şăineanu does not mention work on the Basmele române until the early summer of 1893. The initial deadline of the end of December 1893 was shortened by the Academy to 1 December! Şăineanu to Gaster, Budapest, 18/30 June 1893, 4/16 July 1893, in Gaster, CF, 166–68.

ZD_Book.indb 60

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:28

Romania

61

precious stories and helpful contextualization.150 For Romanian tales, he turned again to the Legende și basmele românilor (Romanian Legends and Fairy Tales) of the late printer and folklorist Petre Ispirescu, using not only the volumes published in the 1870s with Hasdeu’s introduction, but also unedited tales shown to him by Ispirescu’s widow. A copy of Romanian tales from Macedonia came to him through one of his students at the Şcoala Normală, while a former student helped him locate Bulgarian tales, especially important since the literature here was sparce. Gaster kindly sent him books from London, including a collection of Hungarian tales published by the English Folklore Society, while Şăineanu visited libraries in Berlin and Munich for further research. Many hours were spent at the National Library in Bucharest, where he examined some 500 tales in printed collections.151 Along with his research, Şăineanu had exchanges with both Gaster and Hasdeu about the character and origin of folktales. He would draw on their views in his Basmele române even while carving out his own position. For that, his even more important guides were the anthropologists Edward Tylor and Andrew Lang.152 He managed to finish his manuscript and hand its many pages to the Romanian Academy by the deadline on the first of December 1893. In Basmele române, Şăineanu affirmed the literary and linguistic capacities of “the people” world-wide, the view he had adumbrated in his Raporturile. Folk tales were the property of all humankind, present in all times and places, and a testament to the powers of the human imagination. In the earliest ages, tales were “the intellectual capital of primitive races”; in the highest civiliza-

150 Johann Georg van Hahn, Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1864), 2 vols. Hahn was the Austrian consul to Greece and learned Albanian as well as Greek. 151 Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 18/30 June 1893, 4/16 July 1893; Gaster to Şăineanu, Ramsgate, 10 July 1893, Gaster, CF, 120–21, 166-70. Lazăr Şăineanu, Basmele române, xiii (acknowledgements), 190–94 (bibliography of Romanian folktales); new edition (Bucharest, 1978), 132–36. Petre Ispirescu (1830– 1877), Legende și basmele românilor, ghicitori și proverburi,adunate din gura poporului, with an introduction by B.P. Hasdeu, Parts I-II (Bucharest: Tipografia Laborataorilor români, 1872–1876) A new edition was published in 1882 and reprinted in 1892, with an introduction by the late poet and folklorist Vasile Alecsandri. Şăineanu lists both editions. Among other collections, Şăineanu read two by men who were to play a role in his future: Simion Florea Marian, Ornitologia poporană română (1883) and V.A. Urechiă, Legende române culese (1891). Şăineanu listed seventeen folk tales published in Convorbiri literare between 1872 and 1892; Jacob (also called Jacques) Negruzzi (1842–1932) had been editor during all those years. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies. 152 Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 4/16 July 1893; Gaster to Şăineanu, Ramsgate, 10 July 1893, 23 July 1893 (Gaster, CF, 120–23, 168–70). Şăineanu, Basmele, ix-x, xiii, 32 n. 2, 59; (1978), 6, 8, 34 n. 3, 51.

ZD_Book.indb 61

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

62

Part One

tions everywhere, grandmothers and mothers filled the ears of their children with stories.153 The corpus of tales drew from a limited number of fundamental motifs, which were found universally. Human nature was everywhere the same, and the similarity in core themes in the tales grew from the similar way “primitive peoples” understood and related to their world—from “primitive human psychology,” as it had been described in Tylor’s Primitive Culture (which Şăineanu had read in French translation) and in Lang’s studies on the origins of myth. For such peoples, everything was endowed with a soul, the breath of life, and could be personified: humans, animals, plants, clouds, thunder, and all other natural forms. Metamorphoses of all kinds were possible, and charms and spells had their force. Dreams and visions were sources of truth, as real as waking life, and yielded predictions for the future (here Hasdeu had contributed to Şăineanu’s thinking). “Viewed in modern times as myths and stories, this fantastic and absurd baggage belongs to a mental state which considers it real and normal.”154 Şăineanu gave examples of these fundamental motifs as they appeared in Biblical, Greek, Roman, Romanian, and other stories, but went on to say that this “anthropological substrate of tales” was always filtered through the ethnic and historical experience of tellers and listeners. Individual peoples colored their stories their own way. As Şăineanu had stressed the impact of Christianity in his Semasiologiei, so he did again here. Saints were introduced into European folk tales, substituting for or adding to other sorts of heroes. The devil made his appearance, along with the ancient hydra, dragons, and other monsters, the 153 Şăineanu, Basmele, 1–2; (1978), 13–14. I am perforce describing the Basmele române as it appeared in the printed version, which has a Preface from Şăineanu dated 1 January 1895. In that Preface, Şăineanu thanks the folklorist Simion Florea Marian, one of the judges for the Academy, for pointing out some “lacunae” in his manuscript, presumably some stories he had missed and was able to add for the final printed text. 154 Şăineanu, Basmele, ix, 6–17, 21, 58, 964–65; (1978), 6, 18–24, 27, 50–51, 625. Edward B. Tylor (1832– 1917) was a major figure in the development of cultural anthropology within a frame of evolutionary theory. He eventually became professor of anthropology at Oxford. His influential book on Primitive Culture first appeared in 1871 and went through many editions. Şăineanu cites the French translation of 1874–1876, which was based on the second edition: Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1873); La civilisation primitive, 2 vols., trans. Pauline Brunet (vol. 1) and Edmond Barbier (vol. 2) (Paris: C. Reinwald, 1876–1878). Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a historian, classicist, folklorist, and editor of fairy tales. Şăineanu cites the following: Custom and Myth, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans Green, 1885); Myth, Ritual and Religion (London: Longmans Green, 1887); La Mythologie, trans. Charles Michel (Paris: A. Dupret, 1886); and Études traditionnistes, trans. Emile Blémont (Paris: J. Maisonneuve, 1890). Citations of their work by Şăineanu: Basmele, 8–9, 12, 32, 59–60, 63.

ZD_Book.indb 62

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

Romania

63

zmeiĭ and balauriĭ, whose frightening deeds brought shivers to Romanian listeners. Local historical events shaped tales as well. Centuries after their invasions, Tatars were still featured in stories in Bukovina and Moldavia coming to steal people and make them their slaves. In Romania, capcânĭ (capcîni) was an epithet for Tatars, man-eating monsters with the heads of dogs, who played terrifying roles in tales in Ruthenia, Bulgaria, and contemporary Greece.155 The hero who brought relief might be a simple working man, a shepherd, or a hermit, among other possibilities, but was often a prince. In Romania, FătFrumos was that Prince Charming, handsome, courageous, and kind. He used both talismans and weapons to destroy monsters and other threats (blood works against serpents) and turned to ruse and metamorphosis when sheer force was not enough. Meanwhile the beautiful princess of Romanian tales was Ileana Cosânzeana, with a star on her forehead and plaits of golden hair.156 Şăineanu contrasted his anthropological account of the origin of folktales with those developed earlier in the century: these claimed a single common source for the tales and assigned authorship to poets and priests or otherwise undervalued the role of peoples in their creation. As described by the brothers Grimm, European folktales were the vestiges of ancient Indo-European myths about the gods. Similarities among the European tales might be due to similar thoughts among the peoples, but in most instances stemmed from their common Aryan origin. The Grimms’ view had its supporters: Şăineanu cited a Romanian contemporary who identified Făt-Frumos with the sun god Phaeton. Şăineanu had his doubts. The Grimms talked only of the Indo-European ethnic families and Aryan beliefs, ignoring the primitive societies of the rest of the world. Moreover, they excluded the playful role of fantasy in the tales and the cleverness of the people in inventing them.157 Meanwhile, Max Müller had also taken Aryan myths about the gods as his starting point but had his own theory of the mechanisms behind their origin. They were the result of “a disease of language”: what had begun as poetic names or metaphors for features of nature—the sun, the moon, dawn and dusk, earth 155 Şăineanu, Basmele, 14–15, 17, 21–30; (1978) 21–22, 27–32. 156 Şăineanu, Basmele, 32–37, 45; (1978), 34–36, 42–43. In the 1895 edition, Şăineanu used the spelling Cosinzéna (36), but the princess is better known as Cosânzeana. 157 Şăineanu, Basmele, 50–51; (1978), 46–47. Şăineanu cited the 1856 edition of Kinder und Hausmärchen; the subject was also treated by Jacob Grimm in his preface to the second edition of his Deutsche Mythologie (Teutonic Mythology), Preface to the second edition, dated 28 April 1844, 3: vi-lv.

ZD_Book.indb 63

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

64

Part One

and the rest—had been concretized by the people and “were gradually allowed to assume a divine personality never contemplated by their original inventors.” The subject matter of myths was limited: “I look upon the sunrise and the sunset, on the daily return of day and night, on the battle between light and darkness … as the principal subject of early mythology.”158 Such views had won followers, even “fervent disciples,” said Şăineanu. For Romanian tales, he gave the example of the Swiss Léo Bachelin, currently in Bucharest as librarian for King Carol I. In a newly published edition of Romanian tales in French translation, Bachelin had pronounced on the true meaning of “The Emperor’s Twelve Daughters”: the emperor stood for heaven; his daughters, each the dawn; Făt-Frumos, here a gardener pursuing the youngest daughter, the sun; the enchanted forest he crosses in her wake, the night sky; and so forth. Readers might well feel that Bachelin had left the story in shambles.159 Şăineanu objected to Müller’s views on several grounds. The popular relation to metaphors should not be characterized as a “disease of language.” Had Şăineanu not written in his Semasiology of metaphors as a “rich intellectual treasure,” which marked the identity of different peoples?160 Now in the Basmele, Şăineanu protested that by reducing everything to an “error of language,” Müller had ignored “the spontaneous and naïve fantasy of primitive man as well as the historical events that continuously transform mythological material.” Describing some mythical tales as efforts to account for atmospheric phenomena made sense (he had done this himself for the Ielele fairies, using Kuhn’s meteorological variant, as we have seen). But it failed as a general explanation for the origin and content of tales found in many lands, which included, for instance, themes of the monstruous, the obscene, and metamorphosis.161 Finally, Şăineanu came to the Indianist theory, elaborated by the Sanskritist Theodor Benfey in the Introduction to his 1859 German translation of the Pantchatantra. The world’s folk tales had been created in India, recorded by learned Buddhists, and disseminated to Europe by various channels, written 158 Şăineanu, Basmele, 52–54; (1978), 48–49. 159 Şăineanu, Basmele, 54–55; (1978), 48–49. Léo Bachelin, Introduction to Sept contes roumains, xxviii-xxix, lx, 91–96 (Bachelin’s preface to “Les douze filles de l’Empereur”). Şăineanu cited this book, which had appeared in 1894, in the printed edition of his Basmele, which was published in January 1895. For the manuscript submitted earlier to the prize jury of the Romanian Academy, Şăineanu had read Bachelin’s interpretation of “Les douzes filles de l’Empereur” in an article that had appeared in the French periodical Semeur during 1893 (Basmele, 54, n. 3; [1978], 48, n. 13). 160 Şăineanu, Semasiologiei, 106–107. 161 Şăineanu, Basmele, 53, 55, 60; (1978), 47, 49, 52.

ZD_Book.indb 64

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

Romania

65

and oral: from Persia through Arabic versions into Spain and Sicily, and by Crusaders and other travelers to the East. China had received them as well. Şăineanu named some of the adherents of the Indianist theory, including the French scholar Emmanuel Cosquin. Cosquin opened his 1887 collection of Contes populaires de Lorraine rejoicing in the image of “so many diverse nations receiving their stories from the same Indian source and of the movement of tales from the Ganges and the Indus to the villages of Brittany and Lorraine.”162 Şăineanu tactfully did not mention that his “cher maître” Gaston Paris believed that the medieval French fabliaux derived from Indian tales (along with Benfey’s other claims, Paris thought that stories of the ruses and perfidies of women could never have emerged in medieval European society, but only in India, where the unfree and uninstructed women actually had such vices). But Şăineanu did cite the devastating critique of the Indianist thesis newly published in 1893 by Gaston Paris’s brilliant student Joseph Bédier. The Indian texts were translated into Latin, French, and Spanish only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Bédier pointed out, and were little known. Only a small fraction of the fabliaux could be shown to have taken themes from these Indian collections. Tales passed primarily through oral culture. Some came from India, but “history does not permit us to imagine that there once existed a privileged people endowed with the mission to invent stories to amuse future humanity in perpetuity. It shows us, on the contrary, that each people has created its own stories, which belong to it: Bretons, Germans, Slavs, Indians.”163 Clearly, Şăineanu affirmed, the anthropological explanation of Tylor and Lang accounted best for the origin of tales and their range of fantastic and extravagant elements. They had been invented in many settings, expressive of the mind set found universally in humanity’s primitive state, “the psychological 162 Şăineanu, Basmele, 55–56; (1978), 49–50; Emmanuel Cosquin, Contes populaires de Lorraine, “Introduction: Essai sur l’origine et la propagation de contes populaires européens,” viii-xxxxv; quotation on xxxxv. 163 “L’histoire ne nous permet pas de supposer qu’il ait existé un peuple privilégié, ayant reçu la mission d’inventer les contes dont devait à perpetuité s’amuser l’humanité future. Elle nous montre, au contraire, que chacun a créé ses contes, qui lui appartiennent: les Bretons, les Germains, les Slaves, les Indiens.” Bédier, Les Fabliaux, 1–21, quotation on 15. Gaston Paris, Les contes orientaux, 21– 24. Şăineanu, Basmele, 56–57; (1978) 50. Hans Aarsleff, “Scholarship and Ideology: Joseph Bédier’s Critique of Romantic Medievalism,” in McGann, ed., Historical Studies and Literary Criticism, 95– 103. Şăineanu did mention, however, that Paris’s “erudite monograph” of 1875 on Petit-Poucet (Tom Thumb) was slightly marred by his inclusion of “the fantastic exaggerations of the mythological theories of Max Müller” (Basmele, 177 and 177, n. 1–2; [1978], 125 and 125, n. 159, n. 160). This was a side remark in his historical review of the publication of folktales.

ZD_Book.indb 65

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

66

Part One

substratum of mankind.” The tales had been sustained and modified over the centuries by the fecund imagination of the people in different lands.164 Though in principle Şăineanu accepted Tylor’s evolutionary scheme from savagery to civilization, his appreciation for the continuing role of the tales in popular and even literary milieux was strong. (His sensibility here resembles the feeling he had for Yiddish: in principle it would fade away in Jewish use once political systems had evolved toward equality; in practice, as we have seen, he was impressed by its creative role in Jewish communities.) Having dispatched the Aryan and Indianist theories, Şăineanu was undoubtedly delighted to open his historical review of folk tales with one emerging from the Semitic family: “The Two Brothers,” a tale in ancient Egyptian, discovered in 1852 in a papyrus dating from the XIXth dynasty, and thus the oldest story ever found up to that time. Şăineanu noted how its motifs, such as a woman’s false accusation of seduction, appeared over the millennia in other stories, including in those from Muntenia and other parts of Romania.165 He used this procedure for other groups of tales—from India, Greece, Rome, the medieval period and on to modern times.166 The last half of Şăineanu’s Basmele, devoted to the analytical classification of hundreds of Romanian tales, was even more original. Though he brought new evidence to the origins of folk tales, he was not the first to describe that 164 Şăineanu, Basmele, 60, 61, n. 1; (1978), 51–52, 53, n. 1. 165 Şăineanu, Basmele, 64–67; (1978), 55–58. The papyrus with the tale of the “two brothers” had been purchased in Italy by Elizabeth d’Orbiney, an English woman of letters, and she had shown it for translation to the Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé in Paris. Rougé first published a paraphrase of the story in 1852. The British Museum acquired the papyrus from d’Orbiney in 1857, and facsimiles, transcriptions, and translations followed in the next years, while more Egyptian tales were also being discovered and published. Şăineanu was using as his source the classic book by the great Egyptologist Gaston Maspero (another “Israelite” teaching at the Collège de France): Les contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1881), v-xiv, 1–28. Şăineanu’s Romanian examples were taken from Ispirescu and others. The Egyptian papyrus of the tale of the Two Brothers posed a problem for Emmanuel Cosquin and his loyalty to the Indianist thesis. He speculated that the story could have originated with a pre-Aryan Cushite population in India, which was thus connected like the Egyptians with a Hamite/Semitic family, but he admitted that it was an open question (Cosquin, Contes populaires, xxxii-xxxiii). 166 Şăineanu, Basmele, 164–70; (1978), 114–20. “Puss in Boots”—a version of the age-old motif of the grateful animal—Şăineanu located first in a sixteenth-century Venetian collection, traced its retellings in the next centuries, and then gave the Romanian versions heard in Muntenia and Macedonia and those told in Hungary, Balkan lands, and Russia. To give another example, Şăineanu told the story of King Lear and his three daughters as it appeared in its medieval versions and followed it through Shakespeare to the Romanian Sarea în bucate, The Salt in Food, and other European versions. Here the older daughters love the king “like sugar” and “like honey,” and the the third offends by loving him “like salt in food.” Basmele, 151–156; (1978), 109–112.

ZD_Book.indb 66

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

Romania

67

debate. In sorting the tales into meaningful categories, however, he had few predecessors. Hahn had given a start by organizing his Greek tales according to their actors (family figures, mixed tales, heroes and demons). Şăineanu was also aware of the pioneering classification of Russian tales by Orest Miller in St. Petersburg, and of the recent efforts of Gregor Krek at Graz, who had proposed organization by motifs, especially those linked to the solar and meteorological schemes of Müller and Kuhn. But Şăineanu wanted to do better with the Romanian materials, creating a system that would both “have immediate application to our tales (la basmele noastre) and be at the same time suitable for wider generalization.”167 He established four overall categories: tales of fantasy; ethical-mythical tales (psychological); religious tales; and amusing tales and anecdotes. Within each category were “cycles,” referring to universal motifs, narrative events, or actors, and under each cycle were listed the “types” of different Romanian tales. Thus, under fantasy tales, one of the cycles was Human-Animal (provisional abandonment of identity), with types where a man or a woman becomes temporarily an animal. Another cycle was Interdiction, where the hero or heroine is forbidden to go into a certain place or do a certain thing. Each was illustrated by stories told by different Romanian-speaking communities and by communities in Hungary and the Balkans.168 Şăineanu’s systematic presentation of hundreds of stories in the Romanian language was dazzling, and more than fulfilled the comparative requirements for the Academy’s prize.169 Did it carry with it the inclusiveness of his History of 167 Şăineanu, Basmele, 229–30; (1978), 162. Hahn, Märchen, 45–61. Gregor Krek, Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte, 629–36. Orest Miller (1883–1889) was a Russian mythographer and folklorist. His system of classification, based on overall themes or characters (moral tales, animal tales, myths), is described by Vladimir Propp, The Russian Folktale, 84–85; Propp calls it “the first scholarly classification” of Russian tales. Brief descriptions of early efforts at classification are given by HansJörg Uther, “Classifying Tales: Remarks to Indexes and Systems of Ordering,” https://hrcak.srce.hr/ file/61506; and Jane Garry and Hasan El-Shamy, eds., Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005), xviii-xix. None of these mention the important work of Şăineanu. Antti Aarne does not include Şăineanu’s system or, indeed, any other prior effort at classification in the 1910 Preface to his Verzeichnis der Märchentypen. In its revision by Stith Thompson, Aarne’s work became the core system for classification of tales. Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, 7–15: “Author’s Preface (1901).” 168 Şăineanu, Basmele, a schematic summary of his classification on 954–61; (1978), 617–22; HumanAnimal (Ciclul Părăsirilor sau om-animal), 231–89; (1978), 165–202; Interdiction (Ciclul Interzicerilor), 311–46; (1978), 216–38. 169 See the appreciative and well-informed evaluation of Şăineanu’s Basmele române by Ovidiu Bîrlea in Istoria folcloristicii românești (Bucharest: Editura enciclopedică română, 1974), 317–21. The Basmele române has also been treated in a section of the doctoral dissertation of Budașu (Crișan)

ZD_Book.indb 67

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

68

Part One

Romanian Philology? For the Roma, it did. The “Țigan,” (Tsigan or “Gypsy”), were the troublemakers in many a tale, along with dragons, monsters, and various perfidious and jealous women. As Şăineanu put it, Among the adversaries of the hero... is that typical figure in the Romanian folktale, the Gypsy... Deceitfully taking credit for the achievements of another, the Gypsy impersonates the hero... but in the end he is unmasked and punished with the utmost severity. The heroine, too, suffers at the hands of the mean and covetous Gypsy woman, who unfairly accuses the heroine or treacherously tries to get rid of her. But the Gypsy woman, too, receives in the end a terrible punishment for her misdeeds.170

Şăineanu gave one counterexample in a tale from Muntenia, the region around Bucharest: Vasilică the Brave, the handsome light-skinned son of a Tsigan farrier, who goes into the world, kills griffons and dragons, and marries the girl of his dreams.171 More characteristic was the wicked Gypsy in the story of Petru Firicel. As told in western Wallachia, the virtuous young Petru lives in the woods, having been banished from his father’s house by his evil stepmother. Among other courageous deeds, he slays the dragon who has been holding the princess captive, frees her, and sets off to the royal castle with the dragon’s twelve heads to claim the king’s promised reward of his daughter’s hand. At that moment, a Gypsy man appears, decapitates Petru, and leaves with the dragon’s heads, intending to present himself as savior of the princess. Petru is magically brought back to life and regains his just reward. The Gypsy is punished by being rolled down a mountain in a barrel full of nails.172 Still, the Roma appear in Şăineanu’s Basmele not just as actors in other people’s stories, but also as storytellers in their own right. Using Miklosich’s collection from Bukovina, Şăineanu described ten Roma tales and placed them in his Iulia-Paraschiva on Jewish Scholar Contribution to Romanian Traditional Culture in Nineteenth Century (PhD diss., Babeș-Bolyai University, 2012, 329–63). 170 Şăineanu, Basmele, 34; (1978), 35–36. (I am grateful to Mircea Platon for guidance on this translation). 171 Şăineanu, Basmele, 819, 826; (1978), 533, 538. An English translation of another version is given in E. B. Mawr, trans., Roumanian Fariy Tales and Legends (London: H. K. Lewis, 1881), 58–80. Mawr was based in Bucharest at the time, and signed her Preface, Bucharest, April 1881. 172 Şăineanu, Basmele, 327; (1978), 226. Şăineanu’s source was Arthur Schott and Albert Schott, Walachische Märchen (Stuttgart and Tübingen: J.G. Cotta, 1845), story no. 10, 135–48, 338. Other examples of tales in which Roma appear as troublemakers in the Basmele on 329–30, 614, 996 n. 122; (1978), 227, 405, 654 n. 121.

ZD_Book.indb 68

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

Romania

69

system of classification. For instance, “The Deluded Dragon” fits into the cycle of Brave Heroes. Its Roma hero frightens and outsmarts the dragon by clever exaggeration, starting with the claim that he has killed a hundred souls with one slap, when in fact he had just killed a hundred flies.173 In the case of the Jews, however, Şăineanu filled in only the negative part of the picture. Thus in a Moldavian tale, a Jew appears beating a grave with a cudgel because the dead man had not repaid his debt, and in a Russian tale, as “the whelp of the devil,” bargaining with a thirsty father for his son. In a Serbian story, two cannibalistic Jews are planning to roast a woman, but her daughter, who understands Yiddish, unmasks them in time.174 Illustrating the cycle Giants, Şăineanu recounted the role that such monstrous figures played in the adventures of Făt-Frumos, and went on to give the popular words used for them in “our language” and various other European languages. In Romanian it was jidov [Jew] and tatar; in Bulgarian, latin; in Czech, avar; in French, Sarasin; and the like, always “old and remote figures” and “heathen” in the imagination of the different peoples. “See ‘Jews, Tatars, or Giants,’” he said in a footnote to readers—he was not going to let Urechiă’s campaign efface that essay—though he did not here elaborate on the controversial link he had suggested with the Jewish Khazars.175 In contrast, the Jews have no role as storytellers in the Basmele. Şăineanu knew the existing Yiddish collections, and in his book on Judeo-German he had remarked on the “charm and beauty” of the tales in the much-reprinted Maasehbuch. Indeed, he had given as an example from that collection the Yid173 Şăineanu, Basmele, 832; (1978), 541. “Der betrogene Drache “appeared in Miklosich, Mundarten 4: 14–16, no. 3; English translation in Francis Hindes Groome, Gypsy Folk Tales (London: Hourt and Blackett, 1999), 80–82, no. 22. Miklosich translated the Romani “ek phuró, haj sach les ek grõmáda rakloró” as “quidam senex, et erat ei multitudo liberorum” (“an old man with many children”). Şăineanu calls him “țiganul,” and for the Roma storyteller and listeners, the hero would indeed be one of their own people. In variants, the story has the title “The Gypsy and the Dragon” (Şăineanu, Basmele, 832; (1978), 541; Groome, Folk Tales, 83–84, no. 22). Other Roma tales described by Şăineanu in Basmele, 384, 400, 417, 507–508, 565–66, 648–49, 651, 764, 795; Basmele (1978), 263, 273, 284, 338, 374, 426– 28, 499, 519. 174 Şăineanu, Basmele, 636, 816, 816 n.1, 998 n. 133; (1978), 419, 532, 532 n. 32, 656 n.133. The Russian tale is given in William R. S. Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1873), variants on “The Water-King,” 35. The Serbian tale is found in Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Volksmärchen der Serben (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1854), “Die Stiefkinder,” reference to Jews on 208–209. Şăineanu cites Karadžić by his first name Vuk, rather than his surname, but his reference is otherwise correct. 175 Şăineanu, Basmele, 807, 807 n.1; (1978), 527, 527 n. 4. In describing anti-Semitic figures in the folktales, Şăineanu did not, however, reference Moses Schwarzfeld’s Evreii în literatura populară română of 1892. He had cited the work earlier in his Istoria and it was even more relevant here than to the earlier book.

ZD_Book.indb 69

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

70

Part One

dish story of The Fickle Widow, itself a version of the tale-type of the Matron of Epheseus: while mourning at her husband’s grave, the woman yields to the overtures of a man nearby, who is guarding the corpses of criminals hanged on the gallows. Such a tale could have fit well into Şăineanu’s own cycle of Perfidious Women in the Basmele.176 Yiddish stories were being recounted in many corners of Romanian lands; he had asked about them in the questionnaire he had distributed through the Iuliu Barasch society a few years before. Yet they are absent from the Basmele, as is any reference to his own Dialectological Study. Was Şăineanu now finding it imprudent to remind readers of his Jewish identity in writing of “our folktales,” la basmele noastre, or was he beginning to feel a strain himself in sustaining openly a mixed identity? Perhaps both.

The Basmele Wins a Prize Events of the next months strengthened the contradictions in his circumstances. In early December, the commission on naturalization, presided over by the new Metropolitan-Primate Ghenadie of Romania, approved the recommendation from the Chamber of Deputies that Şăineanu be made a citizen and forwarded it to the Senate for its eventual action. In the commission’s view, Şăineanu had rendered great service to Romania and its literature through his books, whose learning had been recognized by eminent scholars in Romania and abroad. He could be considered “one of the most distinguished representatives of Romanian society.”177 That reputation would soon be enhanced as the Romanian Academy responded to Şăineanu’s Basmele române. Curiously enough, his was the only manuscript submitted. As required, it came in anonymously: Şăineanu signed with a quotation from The Golden Ass of Apuleius and removed any of the selfreference that would later appear in the published version. He had high regard for the head of the jury: Simion Florea Marian, a native of Bukovina and one of Romania’s most gifted and productive folklorists. Şaineanu had put to good use 176 Şăineanu, Judéo-allemand, 120–22. Şăineanu, Basmele, 107; (1978), 81: “the celebrated story of the Matrona din Efes is first found [in Petronius’s Satyricon] and has now spread all over the globe.” “Ciclul Femeiei Perfide,” 642–75; (1978), 423–44. Many years later Moses Gaster published an English translation of the Maasehbuch: Ma’aseh Book. Book of Jewish Tales and Legends, trans. Moses Gaster (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1934; facsimile edition, 1981), 193–95, no. 107: “Women are Fickle – But Not All.” 177 Carrière, 29–30.

ZD_Book.indb 70

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:29

Romania

71

his collection of bird stories. Marian and his two fellows were impressed with the Basmele and recommended that it be awarded the prize—named after Heliade Rădulescu himself and carrying a stipend of 5000 lei.178 The Academy met in late March 1894, now presided over by Jacob Negruzzi, who had been so vociferous an opponent of Şăineanu’s naturalization in the Chamber of Deputies the year before. The illustrious Academicians accepted the jury’s recommendation, and then opened the envelope to learn that the man behind the quotation from The Golden Ass was Lazăr Şăineanu. Negruzzi was appalled; so was Sturdza, the current Secretary to the Academy, and the question was raised of revoking the approval. Şăineanu had supporters among the Academicians, however, such as his former teacher Alexandru Odobescu and others who put scholarly judgment ahead of political passion, and the vote stood. Word got out about what had happened: one of the self-styled patriotic newspapers announced “with regret” that the prizewinner turned out to be “the Jew Şăineanu,” while the Jewish Egalitatea was proud of Şăineanu’s success in such circumstances. Şăineanu wrote Gaster the story, adding bitterly “I am certain you bless the hour that you left such an ungrateful country and so villainous a people.”179 Still, the prestigious award was made, Şăineanu prepared the book for the press, and it appeared—some one-thousand pages—with his author’s preface dated January 1, 1895 (figure 5). He thanked the Academy for supporting the edition and Simion Florea Marian for advising him of some omissions, and quickly sent out copies to Gaster and important European linguists and folk178 SVSc, 24, 74. Şăineanu, Carieră, 56–57; Carrière, 27. Simion Florea Marian (1847–1907) had published works on the folk poetry of Bukovina, on popular Romanian beliefs about plants, on Romanian customs in regard to birth, marriage and death, and on popular beliefs about witches and charms, as well as Ornitologia poporană române (see n. 153 above). The other members of the jury were Alexandru Roman (1826–1897), born in Transylvania, a scholar of the Romanian language, and a founding member of the Romanian Academy; and a professor named Quintesco. 179 Şăineanu, Carieră, 56–57 (hostile quote from the newspaper Național; ironic quote from the newspaper Advertul; letter of 1 April 1894 to Şăineanu informing him that he had been awarded the Academy’s prize, and signed by J. Negruzzi as president and D. Sturdza as secretary); Carrière, 28. Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 4/16 April 1894 in Gaster, Corespondență, ed. Florea, 170–71. As part of his political excisions, Florea omitted the phrase quoted here. It is supplied by Eskenasy in “Notes on Moses Gaster’s Correspondence,” 78. Even before receiving Şăineanu’s report, Gaster had read of the events at the Academy meeting in Egalitatea and wrote to congratulate Şăineanu and condemn the “poisonous” Sturdza. For Gaster’s account, see the complete letter, Gaster to Şăineanu, 16 April 1894, in Eskenasy, “Notes on Moses Gaster’s Correspondence,” 82 and Gaster, MC, 350–351. (Florea omits several sentences from his edition, CF, 124.) Gaster told the story again years later in his memoir: “Things that Were,” Ms. C, 33; Gaster, MC, 78.

ZD_Book.indb 71

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

72

Part One Figure 5. Title page of Şăineanu’s book on Romanian folktales and their themes, Basmele române (Bucharest, 1895). https://anticariat-unu. ro/basmele-romane-in-comparatiune-cu-legendele-anticeclasice

lorists, including the anthropologist Edward Tylor himself. By late March, Şăineanu had received Gaster’s reaction, one of the first to come in: “admirable . . . a monumental work from every point of view.”180 He could let that praise ring in his ears as he prepared for the momentous meeting of the Senate in April 1895, which would consider once again the case for his naturalization.

Second Defeat of Request for Naturalization Assisted by Alexandru Odobescu, Şăineanu visited two major figures in the Conservative party, which then formed the government. One of them was Odobescu’s uncle, who expected to preside at the Senate meeting, the other 180 Şăineanu, Basmele, XIII; (1978), 8–9. Gaster to Şăineanu, London, 18 March 1895; Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 26 March 1895, in Gaster, CF, 127, 174–75.

ZD_Book.indb 72

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

Romania

73

was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The eyes of the latter flashed with indignation as Şăineanu recounted the indignities heaped upon him by Urechiă. As things turned out, neither man was able to attend the Senate session, but Şăineanu carried with him the memory of their support.181 A few days before the Senate meeting, Hasdeu wrote a letter of appreciation to Şăineanu and circulated it publicly: I have known you for twelve years, and for twelve years have followed your studies. First of all, you were my student, then my companion in work. I have not lost sight of you for a single moment, and during those twelve years, I’ve been convinced not only of the power of your work, your abilities, and your learning, but even more and above all, of your ardor and the sincerity of your love for the Romanian nation... Thus, dear Monsieur Şăineanu, I don’t think any serious and impartial Romanian can be found who would contest your right, so long deserved, to be a Romanian citizen. Whoever might claim that you have acted or written against the interests of the country doesn’t know what he’s saying...182

On April 13, 1895, Hasdeu and the whole Senate had the chance to hear exactly such accusations in Urechiă’s diatribe against Şăineanu. Urechiă had more of a challenge than at the 1891 session, for this time the naturalization commission and the Chamber of Deputies had recommended in Şăineanu’s favor. He insisted for a start that he was not an anti-Semite. He had recently voted for naturalization for a Jewish candidate. He was opposed not to a race but to an individual. He went on, however, to quote from Hasdeu’s early books on Judaism, where the “illustrious professor” described the Jewish hatred for Chris181 Şăineanu, Carrière, 28–29. Odobescu’s uncle was the lawyer and judge Gheorge G. Cantacuzino, who would become head of the Conservative Party in 1899. The minister of foreign affairs was Alexandru Lahovary. The former was ill the two days of the Senate meeting on Şăineanu’s case; the latter had been called away to Paris. On the role of these two men in Conservative politics, see Hitchins, Rumania, 112, 144–45. 182 “Depuis 12 ans je vous connais, et depuis 12 ans je vous suis dans vos études. D’abord vous avez été mon élève, puis mon compagnon de travail. Je ne vous ai pas perdu de vue un seul instant, et pendant ces 12 ans, j’ai pu me convaincre non seulement de votre puissance de travail, de vos aptitudes, de votre science, mais encore et par-dessus tout, de votre ardeur et de la sincérité de votre amour pour la nation roumaine, qui à son tour est obligée de vous aimer... Je ne doute donc pas, cher monsieur Şăineanu, qu’il ne se trouve aucun Roumain sérieux et impartial qui vous conteste le droit depuis longtemps merité d’être citoyen roumain. Quiconque soutiendrait que vous avez agi ou écrit contre les intérêts du pays, ne saurait ce qu’il dit...” Şăineanu, Carrière, 21, letter dated 9 April 1895.

ZD_Book.indb 73

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

74

Part One

tians and the Jewish lack in humane sentiment. And was Hasdeu now going to vote for Şăineanu?183 On Şăineanu’s publications, Urechiă said little and almost all of it negative. He had invited Şăineanu to contribute a bibliography to his edition of the historian Costin, but then Şăineanu had shown his unpatriotic colors by asserting that in the persons of the Khazars, the Jews had been living in the Romanian kingdoms before the true Romanians themselves. To this familiar and contrived accusation, Urechiă added, with no evidence, the claim of a now deceased professor that Şăineanu had plagiarized one of his articles. As for Urechiă himself, in reading Şăineanu’s writings he felt that he had in his hands the work of a professor of anatomy: one saw only the skeleton of the cadaver of the Romanian language, not its life.184 Urechiă’s tirade then turned to statements made in publications by Şăineanu’s “co-religionists,” which Urechiă found false and anti-Romanian. Most of his examples, from periodicals such as Egalitatea and Monitorul evreesc, compared the treatment by the Hungarian authorities of the Romanians living in Transylvania and the Banat with the treatment by the Romanian government and Romanian Christians of the Jews of Romania. (Urechiă, president of the newly founded Cultural League for the Unity of all Romanians, was obsessed with the fate of Romanians “beyond the mountains.”) In the Jewish press, so he claimed, the Romanians were portrayed as behaving much worse than the Hungarians. When members of the Senate interrupted to ask what all this had to do with Şăineanu, Urechiă brushed them aside. Why had Şăineanu not done his patriotic duty and written to object to the falsehoods of his fellow Jews? Josef Bloch, a Jewish deputy in the Austrian Parliament, had published a pamphlet on the matter in which he found the Hungarians “civilized” in their conduct and the Romanians “barbaric.” Şăineanu knew German perfectly; why had he not exposed the calumny of his co-religionist?185 Whatever books he had written, Şăineanu could not be trusted to teach love of the nation to university students. He should be denied the naturalization that was the path to a university professorship. “Dear colleagues,” said

183 Urechiă’s speech and questions and comments to him during his delivery are reproduced in Carieră, 59–68. Further quotations from the minutes of the Senate found in Voicu, Radiografia, 25–31. 184 Carieră, 61–62, 64. 185 Carieră, 61–66.

ZD_Book.indb 74

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

Romania

75

Urechiă, “let your Romanian hearts tell you how to vote,” and was greeted by applause.186 Thirty-three Senators voted to deny naturalization to Şăineanu, but despite Urechiă’s oratory, twenty-six supported the Commission’s recommendation that he be allowed to become a citizen. Since the naturalization law required a larger majority for decisions, a second vote was held a day later. As he dropped his black ball into the urn, Sturdza, head of the Liberal party, announced to the assembly that “he was voting against the Jew who has tried to introduce himself into the Romanian city by devious paths.” This time sixty-one opposed naturalization, but twelve valiant hearts still voted to welcome Şăineanu into that Romanian space.187

Self-Defense and Studies in Folklore Once again Şăineanu responded with resilience, though with much less hope than before and with some costs to his earlier desire to maintain both a Romanian and a Jewish public identity. He composed an open letter to Urechiă, which he hoped to have published in the Romanian press. He recalled there how he had returned from his studies abroad “full of enthusiasm for the future of scholarship in our country,” but then during the past four years he had suffered from Urechiă’s “hatred” and “the venom” that Urechiă had spread among the Senators.188 Urechiă had reproached him before the Senate for having written nothing in defense of the national cause. But distancing himself from politics was his duty as a scholar: During the twelve years that I have devoted to Romanian philology, I have always kept myself away from political discussions, and that for the good reason that scholarship must remain serene and rise above such preoccupations... Just as I have never written on current events in any political newspaper, so I solemnly declare than no sentence from my hand has appeared in the Jewish periodicals here or abroad.189 186 Carieră, 67–68. 187 Carieră, 68; Carrière, 30–31; Voicu, Radiografia, 32–34. 188 “Plein d’enthousiasme pour l’avenir de la science dans notre pays.” Carrière, 35–36 189 “Depuis 12 ans que je cultive la philologie roumaine, je me suis toujours tenu à l’écart des discussions politiques, et cela pour la bonne raison que la science doit rester sereine, et planer au dessus de telles

ZD_Book.indb 75

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

76

Part One

Through his scholarship, however, he had served Romania: When in my Semasiology, I deepened our understanding of the Romanian language; when in the History of Philology, I followed the distinctive path of our intellectual life; when I penetrated the soul of the Romanian people in my studies on the “Fées méchantes” and the “Jours de la Vieille”; and when recently I devoted to our folk literature a monumental work that introduced the products of the Romanian genius into European folklore—was I not then putting all my intelligence and perserverance to the service of the Romanian cause?

As for the Romanians in Transylvania, Şăineanu felt deeply for their sufferings, having himself experienced the blows of persecution. He sympathized with all victims of persecution and expected that “the noble martyrs of the Romanian cause”—“les nobles martyres de la cause roumaine”—would disapprove of Urechiă’s acts against him.190 Şăineanu presents himself in this open letter as both a scholar devoted to advancing the knowledge of language and folk culture in “our country,” “notre pays”—thus, making clear that Romania was his country—and as a Jew who is suffering persecution there. The activist Jew of the 1880s, who had published essays in Jewish periodicals to advance Jewish enlightenment and Jewish emancipation, is effaced—even seemingly lied about in the phrase “I solemnly declare that no sentence fom my hand has appeared in the Jewish periodicals here or abroad.” Even if what Şăineanu meant here was that he had published not a word on current politics in a Jewish periodical, he was being disingenuous, for his historical essays on such matters as the blood libel in Romania clearly had contemporary implications.191

préoccupations. . . De même que je n’ai jamais écrit sur les événements du jour dans aucun journal politique, de même je déclare solennellement qu’aucune ligne de ma main n’a paru dans les journaux israélites du pays et de l’Étranger.” Carrière, 36–37. 190 Carrière, 37. “Mais lorsque j’approfondissais, dans ma Sémaisologie, l’évolution idéale de la langue roumaine; lorsque je suivais, dans l’Histoire de la philologie, notre mouvement intellectuel dans une direction spéciale; lorsque je pénétrais dans l’âme du peuple roumain par mes études sur les Fées méchantes et sur les Jours de la Vieille: et lorsque naguéres, je consacrais à notre littérature populaire un monument de labeur et de patience qui introduira les créations du génie roumain dans le folklore européen – est-ce que je ne mettais pas au service du pays et du roumanisme toute mon intelligence et toute ma persévérance?” 191 Carrière, 36–37.

ZD_Book.indb 76

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

Romania

77

Only one newspaper was willing to publish Şăineanu’s letter: the Românul, whose editors were currently supporting the campaign of the Social Democratic Workers party for universal suffrage “without distinction of sex, religion, or race.” Şăineanu’s letter appeared on 10 May 1895.192 Not long after, he received an indignant message from Moses Gaster: To see that act of villainy and untold infamy committed by that odious body [the Senate]! ... One cannot imagine how disgusting and degrading it must be to deal with such people. That you, after such hard work and sacrifice to the cause of Romanian literature, were treated in the way you were, makes one lose all hope in the future of the country.193

Indeed, at the end of May, Şăineanu was writing to Gaston Paris about what had happened and talking of emigration: “What use to me have been my titles, my writings, my services to Romanian civilization? ... Completely isolated and seeing my human dignity and my intellectual efforts trampled underfoot, the thought has come to me to expatriate.” While in “le noble pays de France,” the brilliant careers of Jewish scholars like the late Arsène and James Darmesteter were interrupted by untimely death, in Romania the talent of Jewish scholars was met with hatred. (In making this comparison, Şăineanu evidently did not realize how serious were the consequences of the condemnation of Alfred Dreyfus for espionage that past December in France and his public degradation and imprisonment not long after.) What would his “cher maître” advise?194 Paris, who was about to write his review of Basmele române, urged Şăineanu not to give up yet on Romania: “It seems impossible to me that you will be refused a grant of naturalization that you have so brilliantly deserved.”He must have powerful enemies, but they would not last forever. “Your task is to spread 192 Carrière, 35. Şăineanu said that the other newspapers had agreed that Urechiă’s conduct was “shameful,” but Urechiă was also the leader of the Cultural League for the Unity of all Romanians. Evidently its members did not dare offend him or put him in a bad light. On Românul and the support of the universal suffrage campaign by its editor Vintilă Rosetti, see the well-documented article “Românul” in Wikipedia. On the founding of the Social Democratic Party of Workers of Romania in 1893 and its program for universal suffrage, see Hitchins, Rumania, 127–33 and Iancu, Juifs, 185. 193 Moses Gaster to Lazăr Şăineanu, London, 6 May 1895 in Gaster, MC, 351–52. 194 “A quoi m’ont servi mes titres, mes écrits, mes services rendus à la civilisation roumaine? . . . Dans ce complet isolément, en voyant ma dignité d’homme et mes efforts intellectuels foulés aux pieds, il m’est venu la pensée de m’expatrier.” Lazăr Şăineanu to Gaston Paris, Bucharest 26 May 1895, ff. 93r96r, AN, nouv. acq. fr. 24456, Correspondence Gaston Paris.

ZD_Book.indb 77

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

78

Part One

in your own country the scholarship in which you’ve been so deeply trained and to which you’ve already contributed.” Paris encouraged him to believe that he would finally win.195 Şăineanu decided to stay put for a time. He could be somewhat reassured by the reviews of the Basmele, which began to appear. Giuseppe Pitré, the great Sicilian folklorist, found its useful system of classification and rich annotations expanded readily from Romanian tales to those of Italy. Vatroslav Jagić, professor of Slavic philology at Vienna, saw it as contributing to the study of both comparative popular literature and Slavic folktales.196 Gaston Paris noted the impressive range and the “grande valeur” of the Basmele for the study of tales but spent much of his review contesting one sentence: Şăineanu had said of Paris’s study of Tom Thumb (Petit-Poucet) that it was “erudite,” but that it “bore the imprint of the fantastic exaggerations of the mythological theory of Max Müller.” Paris insisted that since the Big Bear constellation (la Grande Ourse) was referred to in some parts of Europe as “le Char Poucet,” it had been reasonable for him to suggest that Tom Thumb was originally a story about the god Hermes, himself here a personification of the Big Bear constellation. Such an explanation, Paris maintained, had more plausibility than Şăineanu’s theory that the similarity among tales of diverse peoples was due simply to “the human spirit,” that “the stories are born everywhere...and have no other meaning than that offered right off, that is to say, stories drawn from the imagination, fascinating and amusing.” Paris doubted that this was the case. This was not the first example (as we have seen) of his disapproval of Şăineanu’s loyalty to the popular imagination, and it would not be the last.197 195 “Il me semble impossible qu’on s’obstine à vous refuser une naturalisation que vous avez si brillament méritée.” “Votre tâche est évidemment de faire pénétrer dans votre patrie la science à laquelle vous êtes si profondément initié et que vous avez déjà fait avancer.” Carierà, 39; Carrière, 38: letter of Gaston Paris, dated 29 June 1895. 196 Reviews of Şăineanu, Basmele române by Giuseppe Pitré in Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari 14, no. 3 (1895): 589–91 and by Vatroslav Jagić, in Archiv für slavische Philologie 19 (1897): 295–96. Both men were the editors of their periodicals. Şăineanu had sent Jagić a copy of the book (Şăineanu to Gaster, Bucharest, 26 March 1895 [Gaster, CF, 174]). He gives short excerpts from these reviews in SVSc,75 and excerpts from reviews written in Greece and Hungary, 75–76. 197 Gaston Paris, review of Basmele române, Romania 24, no. 2 (1895): 304: “l’esprit humain”; “les contes sont nés un peu partout ... et n’ont d’autre sens que celui qu’ils offrent à première vue, c’est à dire des récits imaginaires, passionants et amusants.” Short excerpt from the review in SVSc, 74–75. See Şăineanu, Basmele, 177, 177 n. 1; (1978), 125, 125 n. 160. The book in question is Gaston Paris, Le Petit Poucet et la Grande Ourse (Paris: A. Franck, 1875). Paris must have been feeling especially embattled in 1895, for the second revised edition of Joseph Bédier’s book on the Fabliaux had appeared the

ZD_Book.indb 78

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

Romania

79

By the late summer of 1895, Lazăr and Cecilia had had a family holiday in Switzerland, she was pregnant with their first child, and he was busy with publication. His History of Romanian Philology came out in Bucharest in a second edition, and his Contemporary Romanian Authors in a third, now published by his Samitca in-laws in Craoiva, who were happy to add it to their inventory of school texts.198 Clearly Şăineanu still had ample readers, though the History bore signs of his current struggle. The Preface told of the prize that had been awarded by the Romanian Academy to his first edition, but also named the Academy member who had claimed that “this book adds nothing new to the study of our philology.” For the honor of the Academy, said Şăineanu, the man should retract his statement. On his list of publications, Şăineanu announced as forthcoming his Six Years in the Life of a Romanian Philologist (1891–1895): it would include a chapter on the “History of a Naturalization.” In mentioning the works by V. A. Urechiă, he now added negative assessments, which had not been present, presumably for strategic reasons, in the first edition. For instance, he claimed that Urechiă’s so-called Legende române were not collected in Romania at all, but were translations from collections from France and Spain.199 In fact, Şăineanu decided to postpone his autobiography, presumably in hopes that it might one day have a happier ending. His next publication was in 1896: Studii folklorice (Folklore Studies), a collection of his previously published essays on folk tales and beliefs together with a recent lecture at Bucharest’s Atheneum on non-verbal forms of communication. He included not only his mischievous fairies, the Ilele, and “The Days of the Old Woman,” but also— pace Urechiă—“Jews or Tatars or Giants.” The collection was intended to illusyear before and argued against Paris’s theory of the Indianist origin of these medieval tales and in favor of local popular sources. Charles Marc des Granges reviewed it in the same volume of Romania and tried to counter Bédier’s compelling evidence (24, no. 1 [1895]:135–42). 198 SVSc, 71, 52. Lazăr Şăineanu, Istoria filologieĭ române, preface, Bucharest 1 May 1895. Lazăr Şăineanu, Autorii români moderni, preface, Interlaken, 1 July 1895. 199 Şăineanu, Istoria filologieĭ române, 2nd ed., list of books opposite the title page; v-vi: criticism of the Istoria filologieĭ before the Academy by Nicolae Quintescu (Quintescu, who had included a letter to Urechiă in one of his travel accounts, had become a professor of classical philology at the University of Bucharest). On Urechiă’s publications: 286, n. 1 (criticism of Urechiă’s Legenda române, whose misrepresentation he had not realized when mentioning it in the first edition); 303–304 (Urechiă’s edition of the writings of Miron Costin inferior to an earlier edition by another scholar, with errors and “complete lack of a critical sense” in the interpretation and annotations); 329 (Urechiă’s Istoria românilor [7 vols., 1891–1895] “transforms historical scholarship into an uncontrolled heap of actions and details of every kind”). Such criticism of Urechiă’s scholarship was made by others as well.

ZD_Book.indb 79

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

80

Part One

trate the anthropological method of his Basmele: by examining tales in different parts of Romania and nearby, he would uncover an “enduring substratum” of belief, parallels among neighboring peoples (popórelor), and the psychological principles behind stories.200 As for “Jews or Tatars or Giants,” he remarked at its conclusion that since its first appearance in 1887, he had been accused of “anti-patriotic inspiration.” To this he responded in elegant sarcasm wih Junia’s rejection of Nero’s proposal of marriage in Racine’s Britannicus (II, 3): “Je n’ai mérité ni cet excès d’honneur ni cette indignité” (“I have merited neither this too great honour nor this indignity.”) His mission had been a scholarly one, simply to account for the semantic correlation between Jew, Tatar, and giant. The presence of the Khazar Jews in different lands had been reported in several studies, including from Poland, Bulgaria, and Serbia. He had uncovered an ancient feature of popular psychology, that is, the identification of dangerous outsiders, like Huns, as giants.201 In a postscript at the end of the Studii, however, Şăineanu dropped this scholarly cool for bruised anger. In the course of his scholarly production, he said, he had been met with detractors acting out of hate and envy. An example was the recent review of his Basmele române by Aron Densuşianu. Densuşianu’s effort to write a Romanian epic had already been ridiculed by Eminescu and other poets (Şăineanu was referring to Densuşianu’s Negriada, where the historical hero confronts monsters and dragons, a text which Şăineanu had quoted a few times in his chapters on folk beliefs).202 Now Densuşianu was turning serious criticism into mere pedantry, a parody of learning. Şăineanu was fighting back, though it is not at all sure that this particular response served his cause.

200 Lazăr Şăineanu, Studii folklorice cercetări in domeniul literaturei populare, v-vii: preface dated Bucharest, 15 November 1895. Şăineanu once again used the word “etnice” to mean what we would call “cultural” or “ethnographic.” SVSc,77–78. 201 Şăineanu, Studii folklorice, 207–215. 202 Şăineanu, Studii folklorice, 224 [sic for p. 243]. Aron Densuşianu (1837–1900), a Romanian from a family of Transylvania, was a poet and professor of classical and Romanian literature at the University of Iași. His Negriada was an expression of his nationalist ardor. References to the Negriada in the Studii, 36, 78–79, 97, 106, 112, 116, 147. In an 1893 letter to Gaster, Moses Schwarzfeld described another of Aron Densuşianu’s reviews as “full of venom,” appropriate for the political press rather than a literary journal (Moses Schwarzfeld to Moses Gaster, 10/22 July 1893, in Gaster, MC, 349).

ZD_Book.indb 80

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:30

Romania

81

Š  The Dicţionar Universal From folktales, Şăineanu returned to the Romanian language. On May 1, 1896, one week after the birth of his daughter Elisabeth, the new father signed the long preface to his Dicționar universal al limbei române (Universal Dictionary of the Romanian Language). In this book, published by the Samitcas a few months later, Şăineanu asserted his strongest identity as a Romanian and prompted the most acrimonious response of his Romanian years. Conflict was rife in Romanian lexicography, and he had already described it in his Istoria. The “exaggerations” of the Latinist school infused the volumes that August Laurian and Ioan Massim had published in 1871–1876, sponsored by the Romanian Academy itself. Their Dicționar included only words with a Romance origin, and even with these, any “foreign” suffix was altered. Any Romanian word with a non-Latin origin was consigned to a Glosar, a Glossary, an entirely separate book. Out of date in its etymologies, their work represented, said Şăineanu, “the funeral of hyper-Latinism.”203 In contrast was the Dictionnaire d’ étymologie daco-romaine of Alexandru Cihac, also from the 1870s, which documented multiple origins for the language and which, we recall, had inspired Şăineanu’s own Turkish Elements in the Romanian Language back in 1885. Cihac had even a made start toward incorporating one of the Romanian dialects. Additional non-Latin sources for Romanian had been found by Miklosich and Schuchardt, while other scholars, including Moses Gaster, had produced dictionaries of Romanian topographical and historical terms. As for the weighty tomes of Hasdeu’s Etymologicum magnum Romaniae, with their attention to even pre-Dacian times, they were “inaugurating a new era in the search for the origin of Romanian words.”204 The time was ripe, then, for the kind of dictionary Şăineanu was creating for “a deeper knowledge of the mother tongue”: one that he intended to be accessible to a wide public and useful for teaching in the schools. (For this, the Samitcas were the perfect publishers.) His Dicționar universal would be a treasury of 203 Şăineanu, Istoria filologieĭ române (1895), 132, 181–96. August Trebonio Laurian and Ioan C. Massim, Dictionariulu limbei române, 2 vols. (Bucharest: Noua Typographia a Laboraturiolor Români, 1871–1876), Preface, i – vi; Glossariu care coprinde vorbele d’ in Limb’a Romana straine prin originea sau form’a loru: cumu si celle de origine indouiosa (Bucharest: Noua Typographia a Laboratoriloru Români, 1871). Boia, History, 85–88. 204 Şăineanu, Istoria filologieĭ române (1895), 198–203, 240–53. Alexandru Cihac, Dictionnaire (1870– 1879); Franz Miklosich, Die türkishen Elemente (1884). Hasdeu, Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae (1886). Moses Gaster, Nomenclatura topică a județuluĭ (Vîlcea, 1885).

ZD_Book.indb 81

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

82

Part One

popular speech and would also include the special terms used in talking of literature, science, art, politics, and commerce. It would include archaic and “indigenous” words along with words of foreign origin and neologisms: these had become part of “our culture” by use. Such breadth was what he was invoking by the word universal in his title. From the dialects spoken in Romania, however, he would include only those words which had found their way into the written or literary language. Bawdy words and obscenities he would omit entirely.205 Şăineanu carefully listed all his sources for citation and the dictionaries that he was consulting, including that of Hasdeu and the recent Romanian-French dictionary of Frédéric Damé. He recognized that this first edition of his Dictionary “probably has omissions and errors”; he would welcome hearing about them in order to correct them for a later edition.206 Şăineanu was in his element here, using his skills as a philologist to describe the “national tongue” and its sources, as he had also in his Semasiology, and as he had seven years earlier for Yiddish. (Interestingly enough, he did not include the Dialectological Study of Yiddish in his list of publications in the dictionary.)207 Şăineanu was working, however, under great pressure. Though he already had at hand much lexicographical material from his German-Romanian/Romanian-German dictionaries, his Turkish Elements, and his Semasiology, he seems to have rushed the Dictionary into print to affirm his merit as a Romanian scholar and to add to the income of his growing family. Alas, there turned out to be some errors in its 900 printed pages, jubilantly noted by his enemies. He was to correct them in a second edition some years later. Positive reviews began right away, with one of the first coming from the pen of Ion Luca Caragiale, a leading dramatist and writer. Caragiale had won laughter from readers in 1893 through his satirical portrait of a professor from the hyper-Latinist school trying to get his pupils to talk with ridiculous pronunciation. Now he contrasted the enormous interest aroused by Şăineanu’s Dicționar with the tiresome school dictionaries of the day. Caragiale lauded the dictionary’s breadth, covering both archaic and newer terms, and its biographical, his205 Lazăr Şăineanu, Dicționar universal al limbei române (Craiova: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, n.d. [1896]), v –viii. 206 Şăineanu, Dicționar, v–x. Assuming that it would be well known to readers, Şăineanu does not give the title of Damé’s recent Romanian-French dictionary, saying only that it included useful quotations. The exact title of the source is Frédéric Damé, Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français (Bucharest: Imprimerie de l’État, 1893). 207 Şăineanu, Dicţionar, TP vo. In contrast, he had included the Yiddish study in the list of his publications in his Studii folklorice of the same year.

ZD_Book.indb 82

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

Romania

83

torical, and geographical reference to Romania and beyond. “Şăineanu is one of our younger scholars in whom sound scholarship is associated with a true talent for popularization.”208 From Prague, the eminent philologist and Romanist Jan Urban Jarnik praised the Dicționar’s definitions as “pithy and clear,” with multiple meanings presented in “logical sequence,” and noted its impressive use of “the entire production of Romanian folklore.” Jarnik hoped that Romanian philology would continue to progress in such a fashion. 209 Critical reviews followed apace.210 Among their authors was Ovid Densușianu, the son of Aron, who now had revenge for Şăineanu’s attack on his father. Fresh from his studies in Berlin and Paris, Ovid had returned to Romania in 1897 to take up the position in the history of Romanian language and literature at the University of Bucharest, that is, the post which had originally been created for Lazăr Şăineanu and for which Densușianu, with his previous focus on the medieval French romance and chanson de geste, had little background. (In later years, Ovid would have a distinguished career writing on subjects on which Şăineanu had been a pioneer.) Ovid’s review appeared in early 1897 in a journal founded and edited by his father. He opened it proclaiming, “The author lacks the qualities of a true lexicographer. The material is badly 208 The publication of the Dicționar universal al limbei române was announced in the Epoca literară of June 17, 1896 (1, no. 10). The review by Ion Luca Caragiale is reproduced in SVSc, 54–55 except for Caragiale’s quotations from the dictionary itself, which are omitted. Şăineanu gives the date as June 1896, so the review must have appeared soon after June 17. Nicolae Filipescu, founder and editor of Epoca, had recently added a literary supplement and asked Caragiale to be its editor. On Caragiale, see an extended biography in Wikipedia and a chronological account by Șerban Cioculescu, Viața lui I. L. Caragiale (Bucharest, 2012 online; first printed edition 1940). Caragiale’s satire: Ion Luca Caragiale, Un pedagog de școală nouă (1893); the hyper-Latinist teacher is named Marius Chicoș Rostogan. Two other favorable reviews were reported by Şăineanu: Dr. A. Suluț-Cărpenișanu, a professor of Romanian literature, in the Tribuna of Sibiu, July 1896; and D. Stoicănescu, a lyceum teacher in Bucharest, in Convorbirĭ didactice (SVSc, 53, n. 1; Lazăr Şăineanu, “In jurul unui dicționar . . . Privire critică retrospectivă,” Noua revistă română pentru politică, literatură, știință și artă 3, no. 28 [15 February 1901]: 170.) 209 Jan Urban Jarnik, “Dicționarul lui Şăineanu,” Tribuna of Sibiu, 14 (January-February 1897) no. 20: 79; no. 21: 83; no. 22: 87; no. 23: 91; no 24: 95; no. 25: 99; no. 26: 103. Citations from no. 21: 83; no. 26: 103. Jarnik (1848–1923), a professor at Charles University in Prague, was a well-known specialist in Romanian language, popular poetry, and folklore. His publications include Sprachliches aus rumänischen Volksmärchen (1877); Index zu Diez’ etymologischem Wörterbuch der romanischen Sprachen (1878); and, with Andrei Bârseanu, a collection of Transylvanian songs: Doine şi strigăturĭ din ardeal (Bucharest: Romanian Academy, 1885). 210 Critical reviews were written by Biron, a statistician, in Convorbiri literare (1896) and by Ion P. Licherdopol, a naturalist interested in language, in Precuvîntare la nomenclator merciologic și technologic (1896). These reviews are referred to and discussed briefly in SVSc, 53, n. 2, and Şăineanu, “In jurul uni dicționar” (see note 208 for full reference), 161–62. Şăineanu indicates some of the difficulties in defining technical terms for a popular and student readership.

ZD_Book.indb 83

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

84

Part One

organized and the lack of system is seen at every step.” He then listed some twenty definitions in the Dicționar that he found wrong. Some had typos or unrealized cross-references or inadequacies, and these Şăineanu corrected in the second edition. Others Şăineanu left the way they were. For instance, Densuşianu thought it insufficient to define “alliteration” as “the repetition of the same letter or the same syllable.” Şăineanu should have specified that alliteration meant repeating the sound at the beginning of the word. Since Şăineanu had provided an example showing just that, he did not make a change.211 Urechiă waited till the spring of 1898 to mount his review of the Dicționar, a violent and openly anti-Semitic denunciation of Şăineanu’s scholarship and character. He delivered it first as a public lecture at the Atheneum before an audience patient enough to sit through several hours of exposition, and then published it with a supporting dossier.212 Şăineanu had plagiarized Frédéric Damé’s Romanian-French dictionary, pronounced Urechiă, and gave several instances where Şăineanu had given the same quotation as Damé to illustrate word usage and where Şăineanu had employed the same words as Damé for a definition. (As for the former, Şaineanu had specified in his Preface that Damé’s dictionary was one of the sources for his quotations; as for the latter, Şăineanu noted in a subsequent answer to Urechiă that he was using definitions already present in his Semasiology, published years before Damé’s dictionary.)213 Urechiă went on to illustrate errors in Şăineanu’s synomyms, antonyms, and definitions, making his points not in in the tone of ordinary academic critique or even scholarly polemic, but with mockery and insult. For instance, Şăineanu had defined “macaroni” as an Italian pasta of cylindrical form, “in which enter 211 Ovid Densușianu (1873–1938), “Notițe Critice,” Revista critică-literară, 5 (January–June 1897): 21– 22. Densuşianu’s early works were a study of alliteration in the Romance languages, Aliterațiunea în limbile romanice (Iaşi, 1895); an edition, with introduction, of a twelfth-century chanson de geste, dedicated to his teacher Gaston Paris, Les Prises de Cordes et de Sebille (1896); and a study published in German on a thirteenth-century romance, Der “Roman de la comtesse d’Anion” von Jean Maillart. Densușianu was named provisionally to the chair of the history of the Romanian language and literature in 1897. His report on the work of his seminar appeared in 1898: Anuarul seminarului de istoria limbei şi literaturei române de pe lîngă facultatea de litere din Bucuresţi (Bucharest, 1898). He was given full title to the chair in 1901. On Densușianu and his work, see Sorin Stati, “Ovid Densușianu,” in Stammerjohann, ed. Lexicon Grammaticorum, 369–70; and Bîrlea, Istoria, 356–77. 212 V. A. Urechiă, Şăinizme. The first fifty-two pages comprise the lecture. Another thirty pages are given over to a “dossier,” with Urechiă’s further claims of plagiarism and extended quotation from critical reviews. The latter include excerpts from the reviews by Biron and Licherdopol (55–66), which raised scholarly questions, and from a scurrilous anti-Semitic review (66–67) by V. Şăghinescu, a retired teacher. See further below on Şăghinescu and his attacks on the “Jewish scholarship” of Şăineanu and his brother. 213 Urechiă, Şăinizme, 4–17; Şăineanu, “In jurul unui dicționar,” 162–63.

ZD_Book.indb 84

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

Romania

85

almonds and sugar.” (Either Şăineanu was thinking of a dessert pasta, or more likely was confusing macaroni with macaroons, which are made with almonds and sugar.) “Macaroni stuffed with almonds and sugar!?” Urechiă exclaimed. “It seems as though Şăineanu has not been able to eat genuine macaroni. Surely macaroni is not treif.”214 Urechiă’s sarcastic treif (the Yiddish word for “non-kosher”) was not the only anti-Semitic moment in his review. The very title of the book was Şăinizme, “Scheinism,” a clear reference to Şăineanu’s Jewish birth name. Plagiarism and scholarly incompetence were characterized as “Scheinism,” that is, as Jewish traits. Urechiă quoted, sometimes at length, from all the negative reviews of the Dicționar universal. Of the positive assessments, he referred only to one that had appeared in the Jewish periodical Egalitatea: that of “Ițic Schvartzfeld” (as he called Moses Schwarzfeld in one mention), and that of “Şloim Schvarzfeld” (as he called him in a second). Was Şăineanu’s work “monumental,” as Schwarzfeld claimed, its author being cruelly targeted as so often happened to “men of merit”? In the view of true Romanian reviewers, said Urechiă, absolutely not.215 Urechiă ended his Şăinizme with a quotation from Şăineanu’s Preface, where he had talked of his goal “to create an instrument... for a deeper knowledge of the mother tongue, “pentru cunóscerea maĭ aprofundată limbeĭ materne.” Our language, the “mother tongue” of Lazăr Şăineanu? “Leizer Şein,” a son of the Romanian language? A stepson, at the most, because only a stepson could so treat, could so mistreat the mother tongue as Şăineanu has mistreated the Romanian language. From such stepsons, the Romanian tongue needs redress... 216

Urechiă delivered his speech on the evening of March 29, 1898. On April 1, Şăineanu published a letter in the left-wing Adevărul. He expressed surprise 214 Urechiă, Şăinzime, 50. 215 Urechiă, Şăinizme, 62, 66. Egalitatea was founded by Moses Schwarzfeld and his brother Elias in April 1890 as a weekly periodical aimed at a wide Jewish audience in Romania. It was committed to “the principles of humanity and progress,” and to providing strength and advice to the Jews of Romania in face of discrimination and anti-Semitism. It included literary as well as political material. Moses Schwarzfeld managed Egalitatea from Bucharest, while Elias played an editorial role from his exile in Paris. Bar-Avi, Schwarzfeld, 24–27; Lucian-Zeev Herșcovici, “Egalitatea,” Encyclopedia Judaica (Thomson Gale, 2007, Encyclopedia.com, online). 216 Urechiă, Şăinizme, 51–52

ZD_Book.indb 85

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

86

Part One

that the Athenaeum would lend its august tribunal to a performance of “insults alternating with the famous obscenities of Dr. Urechiă.”217 On June 5, he, his wife, and daughter arrived in Paris. As he wrote Gaster months later, the “deadly milieu in which [he] had been living” had overwhelmed him. He needed to be away from Romania, from his “continuous troubles” there, at least for a time.218

Non-Zionist Jew and His Circle of Friends The two years since the publication of the Dictionary had indeed been difficult. To be sure, there was the delight, shared with Cecilia, of their growing daughter Elisabeth. Şăineanu also had a scholarly project he hoped to develop: Romanianism, from an Ethnographic, Lingustic and Psychological Point of View. He had begun collecting the material for it already in the early fall of 1890, when he thought he would be filling the new chair in the history of Romanian language and literature. That, of course, had come to naught, but in 1896, he was still announcing a plan for three volumes on “Romanianism” (“Românismul”): one on the ethnography, ancient and modern, of Dacia; a second on the Romanian language and dialects in their relation with sister languages; and a third on Romanian popular literature in conjunction with neighboring peoples.219 In contrast to those contemporaries who were defining the Romanian spirit in terms of a biological folk, the neam, Şăineanu’s approach continued to be that of Schuchardt, seeking mixture and links with adjacent languages and cultures. “Romanianism” was made up of the “ethnographic mosaic” he had celebrated in the Dicționar. But progress on Românismul languished. In part he felt he needed a deeper understanding of psychology and its relation to language, but especially, as he confided to Gaster later from Paris, the unending attacks on him had “depressed” him and drained his energy.220 He did have a circle of friends in Bucharest to whom he turned. Interestingly enough, Moses Schwarzfeld does 217 Part of the letter is given by Urechiă in Şăinizme, 45–46. Regarding the word “pornographic”: in his 1901 discussion of the attacks on his Dicționar, Şăineanu describes Urechiă as a “specialist in pornographic hygiene” (Şăineanu, “In jurul unui dicționar,” 160). 218 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 31 December 1898, in Gaster, CF, 176–77. 219 The book is described as forthcoming in Şăineanu’s list of publications opposite the title page of his Studii folklorice of 1896 and discussed in SVSc, 78–79: Românismul din punctul de vedere etnografic, linguistic și psicologic. 220 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 31 December 1898, in Gaster, CF, 176–77.

ZD_Book.indb 86

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

Romania

87

not seem to have been among them for the moment. Not that they had broken all ties. We have just heard Moses Schwarzfeld praising Lazăr’s Dicționar in Egalitatea, and in 1896–1898 Lazăr’s brother Mariu published two major studies in Moses’s Anuar pentru Israeliți: an overview of Semitic languages and an excerpt from an Amharic chronicle concerning the Falashi Jews.221 But Schwarzfeld, like Moses Gaster, had been drawn into the international Zionist movement. Already in late 1881, Gaster had been one of the delegates to a conference at Focşani, called to support the departure of Jewish groups from Romania to found agricultural colonies in Palestine. When 228 emigrants sailed to Palestine in August 1882, Gaster had invited a schoolteacher to accompany their expedition and write a report. Schwarzfeld had written appreciatively of the colonists’ departure in Fraternitatea, and then gave a favorable account in its pages over the years to Işuv Eretz Israel and Chovevei Zion, Jewish-Romanian organizations encouraging colonization in Palestine. Committed to the Haskalah project of Romanian citizenship though they were, Gaster and Schwarzfeld, in the face of the disappointing response of the Romanian government, were early hedging their bets.222 In December 1885, in the wake of his expulsion from Romania, Gaster was still presenting himself in the Times of London as “a Roumanian patriot”: As a Roumanian patriot, I must declare that the Government, capable of lawless acts, has nothing in common with the Roumanian people, a gifted nation, to which I shall always fervently cling in my undeserved banishment.223 221 Mariu Şăineanu, “Limbile semitice (Aramea, Caldea, Sirica și Neo-Sirica, Feniciana, Ebraica, Samaritana, Araba, Etiopana, Amharica etc. Dialecte semito-africane), studiŭ,” Anuar pentru Israeliți 18 (5657 [1896–1897]): 1–49; “Falașasii, fragment dintr’o cronică abisiniană inedită, cu o introducere,” Anuar pentru Israeliți 19 (5658–5659 [1897–1899]): 84–113. In his 1892 book describing this chronicle, Mariu had included a section on the Falashi Jews of the mountainous region of Samen and the attack of the Ethiopian ruler on them in the 1580s. He had also given a few paragraphs from the chronicle itself (L’Abyssine, 40–48). Here, for his Jewish readers, he provides the whole excerpt from the chronicle and discusses it. 222 Iancu, Juifs, 250–51; Herșcovici, Haskalah, 1: 905–908. Gaster, MC, xxvi-xxviii, 353–54, 445–46. Haralambakis, “Roman Jewish Autographs,” 179–199; Maria Cioată, “Moses Gaster, Friedrich Horn, and the Background to the Settlement of Samarin, (1882),” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 92, no. 1 (Spring, 2016): 27–51. Bar-Avi, Schwarzfeld, 20. Israel Bar-Avi also provides much material on the Focşani conference, emigration societies, and the 1882 colonization project, including reports from the Schwarzfelds’ Fraternitatea in Bar-Avi, O istorie a evreilor români, vol. 4: Precursorii din annul 1882. 223 M. Gaster, “The Expulsion of Jews from Roumania,” The Times, issue 31636, 22 December 1885, 4, reprinted in The Jewish Chronicle, 25 December 1895, 16.

ZD_Book.indb 87

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

88

Part One

By the late 1890s, however, he and Schwarzfeld were ardent advocates of Theo­dor Herzl’s new political Zionism. Gaster had learned of Herzl’s program in late 1895, during the latter’s visit to London. In July 1896, several months after the publication of Der Judenstaat, Herzl visited the city again. Hakham Gaster chaired the meeting in the East End, where Herzl addressed a crowded hall of Jewish workers, many of them immigrants: they responded to him “as if he were Moses or Columbus.” Gaster addressed them as well in what Herzl described as “a fiery oration.”224 Such skill won Gaster election as one of the three vice-presidents at the second Zionist world congress in Basel in August 1898. There he told a rapt audience: Culture is identified with Judaism and we say that Zionism is inseparably bound to cultural advancement: we Zionists do not relinquish the things which are good from the intellectual achievements of this or past centuries, but accept them with the provision that they be assimilated completely in our own way, and that they merge fully with our flesh and blood, in a Jewish manner, adapted in a Jewish spirit.

This was a far cry from the “Roumanian patriot.” Schwarzfeld, named to the financial committee at the same congress, was among those who applauded Gaster’s speech.225 During these same years Şăineanu had shown little interest in colonization in Palestine or in Zionism. His name does not appear among the members of Chovevei Zion. In none of his writing does he discuss a Jewish homeland or a Jewish national culture oriented to Palestine. Gaster was committed early to the Hebrew language as “the sole tie which binds all Jews of the world with 224 Theodor Herzl, Tagebücher, 1: 316–25 (21–28 November 1895); 1:468–85 (5–16 July 1896); Herzl, The Complete Diaries, 1: 408–418. Herzl did not mention meeting Gaster during the 1895 visit, but he was in touch with people close to him, such as Israel Zangwill. They were in contact the next year, however. The East End meeting, chaired by Gaster, was held on 13 July 1896. The next day, Herzl’s sometwhat turbulent meeting with leaders of Chovevei Zion was held at Bevis Marks synagogue, where Gaster served as hakham. On subsequent contact with Herzl in 1896–1898, see Herzl, Tagebücher, 1: 587 (4 February 1897). Bar-Avi, Schwarzfeld, 21. 225 Gaster, MC, 212–13, 224–26. Gaster could not attend the first Zionist Congress in Basel in late August 1897, but sent an “enthusiastic telegram,” which Herzl read aloud at the fifth session. Die Welt [the newspaper of the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897 and available at www. sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/periodical/titleinfo/3315709], 1897, no. 14 (3 September 1897), p. 15. On Gaster’s election as vice president and his activity at the second Congress as well as Moses Schwarzfeld’s appointment to the finance committee, see Die Welt, 1898, no. 35 (2 September 1898), 7, 12, 16, 23. Gaster’s speech to the Congress in Die Welt, 1898, no. 36, 9 September 1898, 6. I am quoting the translation made by Michael Berkowitz in Zionist Culture and West European Jewry, 78.

ZD_Book.indb 88

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

Romania

89

their varying citizenship and languages.” Later he saw Hebrew as central to future Zionist cultural renewal. In contrast, Şăineanu had taken the expressive Yiddish spoken in eastern Europe as the subject of his 1889 Dialectological Essay, and saw it giving way, not to Hebrew, but to the “national tongue” spoken in the countries where they lived. (Şăineanu had dedicated this book to Gaster, but, not surprisingly, Gaster never took much interest in it.)226 Further, the focus in the scholarship of the three friends was diverging during 1896-1898. Schwarzfeld, having described the stereotypes of Jews in his pioneering 1892 book The Jews in Romanian Literature, was now preparing a psycho-ethnic study on how Jews viewed themselves in their own popular literature. Gaster, with his Chrestomathie roumaine (Romanian Chrestomathy) of 1892 well behind him, was now embarking on a long-term study of exempla in the tales of the medieval rabbis. Indeed, he announced the plan to Şăineanu in a letter of July 17, 1896, written the day after Herzl’s departure from his inspiring London visit.227 Şăineanu, in contrast, was continuing his major inquiries into Romanian language, literature, and culture and seeking naturalization so that he could teach these subjects as a university professor. He did not respond to Gaster’s plan to study the rabbinical exempla and, indeed, correspondence between them languished until Gaster wrote Şăineanu again in late 1898.228 The friends Şăineanu recalled from those difficult years were all Romanian citizens: Ion Luca Caragiale, Gheorghe Ionescu-Gion, and David Emmanuel. The playwright Caragiale had no qualms about friendships with people of Jewish origin: he also had close ties with Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, born Solomon Katz in Ukraine and now a commentator on Romanian literary life and the founder of Marxist thought in Romania. The historian Ionescu-Gion (1857-1904) was currently literary critic for the Românul, the left-wing newspa226 Gaster, MC, 222–23, 225–26, 444. Gaster’s interest in Yiddish dated only from the 1920s, when he had stepped down from an active role in Zionism. Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 8; Sainéan, Judéo-allemand, 91–92. 227 Bar-Avi, Schwarzfeld, 9. Moses Schwarzfeld, Evreii in literatura lor populară sau cum se judecă evreii însuşi; studiu etnico-psischologic; Schwarzfeld also published the book in the Anuar pentru Israeliți 20 (1887–1899): 1–38. Oişteanu, Inventing the Jew, 2. Gaster to Şăineanu, London, 17 July 1896, in Gaster, CF, 129–30. Gaster called it “a gigantic work,” and, indeed, The Exempla of the Rabbis did not appear until 1924, Gaster having published other works along the way. 228 The Gaster manuscript collection contains no correspondence between 17 July 1896, when Gaster answers Şăineanu’s letter of 18/30 June 1896, and 27 December 1898, when Gaster writes Şăineanu in Paris, having learned of his current address from his brother Mariu. Şăineanu then writes Gaster on 31 December 1898. Gaster, CF, 129–30, 175–76. Of course, it is possible that some correspondence was lost, but Gaster’s not having Şăineanu’s Paris address for so many months makes it clear that they were out of touch for a time.

ZD_Book.indb 89

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:31

90

Part One

per that had been willing to publish Şăineanu’s response to Urechiă in 1895. Nine years earlier, Ionescu-Gion had even taken part in a debate at the Iuliu Barasch historical society.229 David Emmanuel was a fellow Jew, who had known the younger Lazăr Şăineanu since their boyhood in Ploieşti. A brilliant mathematician with a doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1879, Emmanuel began teaching immediately at the University of Bucharest, was naturalized in 1880, and won a professorship at the university in 1882. Mathematics, of course, was free of the political dangers that were posed by linguistics. And Emmanuel had not been caught up in the agitation for Jewish emancipation to which Şăineanu had contributed in the 1880s. “[Emmanuel] devoted himself entirely to his work as a professor,” said Şăineanu, a man “free of the vanity around him,” full of sympathy for others.230 Such was the world in which Şăineanu yearned to be accepted. It brought him public support, as in 1896, when the caricaturist Constantin Jiquidi, who was collaborating on a satirical journal with Caragiale, turned his talents to mocking Urechiă. In Jiquidi’s print, Şăineanu stands at the entrance to the Senate chamber holding two baskets loaded with his books, while a raven caws out “Beware, Şăineanu.”231 The cartoon must have won the applause of Şăineanu’s relatives in Craiova—his brother Mariu, who was teaching French literature and history at a nearby lyceum, and his Samitca in-laws. Indeed, in early 1896 his wife’s uncle Ignat Samitca, publisher of Romanian books, was smarting from the rejection that he had just received from the Senate of his application to become a citizen.232 229 SVSc, 27. The major studies of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea are by Z. Ornea, Viața lui C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Opera lui C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea (1983). They give ample evidence of his relation with Caragiale and his work (e.g., Opera, 163–78). Bar-Avi, Schwarzfeld, 13. 230 SVSc, 27. David Emmanuel (1854–1941) received his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1879. Iancu, Iuifs, 186. Iancu, Combat, appendix 19, 101. Emmanuel was one of only two professors naturalized— out of a total of 92 Jewish men—between 1880 and 1902 (101–104). On him, see Simion Stoilow, David Emmanuel 1854–1941 (Bucharest, 1955). Trying to demonstrate that he was not an anti-Semite during his 1895 harangue against Şăineanu, Urechiă had said that he would be “honored to stand near David Emmanuel” (Şăineanu, Carieră, 60: “declar că sint onorat de a sta alături cu d. profesor David Emanoil.”) 231 SVSc, 26 n. 1. Constantin Jiquidi (1865–1999) was doing the cartoons for the satirical periodical Moftul român, revistă spiritistă națională, which Caragiale had founded in 1893 with the socialist Anton Bacalbaşa (Biblioteca Digitală Bucureştilor). Şăineanu does not say where the print originally appeared (perhaps it was in the Moftul român) but does state that it was prominently displayed in the window of Indépendance roumaine, a French language newspaper published in Bucharest. 232 Moreno Ascher to Jacques Bigart, Bucharest, 25 February 1896, in Rotman, evrah bi-re’ i hainukh: bet ha-sefer ha-Yehudi-ha Romani, 1851–1914. Education as a Reflection of Society, 260, 263.

ZD_Book.indb 90

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

Romania

91

The attacks on Şăineanu and the rejection of Ignat Samitca, whose own brother Ralian had been naturalized seven years before, were threads in the heightened anti-Semitism in Romania during the 1890s. An Antisemitic Alliance (Alianţa Antisemită) was founded by a lyceum teacher in Bucharest in 1895, with chapters throughout the country and with support from political figures. Its goal was to preserve, protect, and advance “the Romanian element” against the unassimilable “Jewish element” and to render the situation of Jews in Romania such that they would emigrate. Education was an important sphere for “protection.” Already in 1893, under a Conservative government, with Take Ionescu as the Minister of Public Instruction, state education in the primary schools was declared free and obligatory for the “children of Romanians,” while Jewish children, as “foreigners,” were admitted only if there was enough space and were required to pay a special tax to attend. The Jewish community and their supporters objected on many grounds, both principled and practical: how could the children of Jewish inhabitants “assimilate” to the national interest if they were excluded? Protests were in vain. The law went into effect: Jewish enrollment began to fall, and a network of Jewish schools was set up by the community across the land.233 Still the Jews did not give up on Romanian education. When a Liberal government came to power under Prime Minister Sturdza in November 1895, petitions flowed in from Jewish students in Bucharest and Iaşi asking for the revocation of the law requiring “foreigners” to pay to attend Romanian schools. More surprisingly, in February 1896 a similar petition came in from the Christian students at the University of Bucharest, and here Sturdza took alarm. He asked Urechiă to meet with the Christian students and get them to change their position. Urechiă did so, whipping them up against “competition from educated Jews,” as he had whipped up the students against Şăineanu a few years before. Most of them then signed Urechiă’s petition in support of the 1893 law.234 The Liberal Minister of Education, Spiru Haret—himself a mathematician of Armenian origin—went on to extend the law regarding “foreigners” to secThe Paris trained physician Alex Cobilovici was also rejected by the Senate but was accepted for citizenship a year later (Iancu, Combat, appendix 19, 103). 233 Şorer, La Răspântie de Veacuri: Evreii în 1900–1901, 191–223. Iancu, Juifs, 192–96; document 14: Pétition addressée au Sénat par les Juifs roumains contre le projet de loi sur l’enseignement primaire (1893). Livezeanu, Cultural Politics, 196–200. 234 Moreno Ascher to Jacques Bigart, Bucharest, 25 February 1896, in Rotman, Education, 19–20.

ZD_Book.indb 91

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

92

Part One

ondary education and universities. This was only one element in Haret’s larger program of educational reform, by which he hoped to bring the mass of Romanian peasantry into the schools and into literacy. Supporters saw it also as a bulwark against “the invasion of schools by the Jews.” A leader of the Bucharest Jewish community was soon appealing to the Alliance Israélite in Paris to arrange for long-term loans to “desperate” Jewish university students so that they could pay their tax and not abandon their studies.235 Haret’s law on secondary and university education passed in March 1898, one week before Urechiă’s Atheneum lecture attacking “Şăinisme.” Around the same time, as part of his plan to reorganize the training of teachers, Haret closed down the Școală Normală Superioară, thereby abolishing Şăineanu’s only current post with a salary. Most of the other teachers at the Școală could simply repair to their positions at the university’s Faculty of Letters, but not Şăineanu. His stalwart supporter Odobescu had died; Hasdeu was preoccupied with his spiritualism and was near retirement. “Afflicted by so many miseries and with my eyesight weakened [from work] … I left for abroad, with the hope that in a year or two my abnormal situation would come to an end.”236

Paris, London: Gaster and Zionism Once in Paris in June 1898, Lazăr established himself, Cecilia, two-year-old Elisabeth, and the notes for his “Romanianism” project in an apartment on the boulevard Saint Michel. Presumably the family was being supported by income from his publications, his savings, and contributions from his Samitca in-laws. He felt “regenerated,” so he eventually wrote Gaster, and his intellectual horizons widened. He embarked on further study of the relation of psychology to language, much needed, he felt, for the new book. He attended lectures at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, and undoubtedly visited Gaston Paris and Michel Bréal. At Cecilia’s urging, they went to concerts and 235 Livezeanu, Cultural Politics, 31–33 on Haret’s program for reform. Iancu, Juifs, 194–95. The law on secondary and university teaching was passed on 23 March/4 April 1898. Moreno Ascher to Jacques Bigart, Bucharest, August, 1899 in Rotman, Education, 279; Moreno urged the establishment of local committees in Bucharest and Iaşi to advance the funds, which need not be paid back until the students had the means to do so. According to Ioan Lahovary, minister of foreign affairs in 1899, of 3840 students who had been enrolled at the universities of Bucharest and Iaşi, 342 were Jewish (Iancu, Juifs, 194, n. 34.) 236 Şaineanu, Carieră, 39; Sainéan, Carrière, 38. Alexandru Odobescu had died in November 1895, several months after supporting Şăineanu at the Chamber of Deputies.

ZD_Book.indb 92

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

Romania

93

the theatre.237 Şăineanu seems to have been exploring the possibility of a more permanent French life. For a moment, he even thought of the possibility of an English life. Gaster had initiated the resumption of their correspondence with a letter of December 1898 to his “dear friend.” In a prompt response, Şăineanu already was planning a spring visit to London “to occupy himself for a time exclusively with English literature.” By April, he was asking Gaster to send him a catalogue of the lectures at the University of London and the name of someone who could give him lessons in English. In May, Şăineanu took the boat across the Channel, leaving his family in Paris.238 Staying at a hotel Gaster found for him near the British Museum, Şăineanu got a sense of Gaster’s English life. He met Lucy Leah Friedländer, Gaster’s wife, and the three children already born to them (of the thirteen they would eventually have), and described to Gaster his own expressive little daughter “Elica.” He visited Gaster’s father-in-law Michael Friedländer, principal of Jews College London, who was making the teachings of Maimonides and the tenets of Judaism available in English to a large readership.239 Hakham Moses surely took Lazăr to services at the Bevis Marks synagogue, the oldest Jewish house of worship in England and still used by the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation for what Gaster called “red-letter days.” There Şăineanu could hear Gaster’s sermons, which, according to his son Theodor, dealt more often with the history and literature of the Jews than with Jewish belief. They were “by common consent, masterpieces of oratory and exhortation.”240 Of course, the two friends talked of their scholarly interests. Gaster surely took him to Oxford to visit the Bodleian Library, with its great collection of 237 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 31 December 1898, and 26 May 1899, in Gaster, CF, 176–79. 238 Gaster to Şăineanu, 27 December 1898, in Gaster, MC, 352–53. Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 31 December 1898, 12 April 1899, and 26 May 1899, in Gaster, CF, 132, 176–79. 239 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris 26 May 1899, in Gaster, CF, 178–79. Gaster, MC, 109, 113, 332. Theodor Gaster, “Prologemenon,” in Moses Gaster, Studies and Texts in Folklore, viii. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Michael Friedländer, 3 vols. (London: Trübner, 1881–1885); Michael Friedländer, The Jewish Religion (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1891), the first of many editions. Joseph Jacobs and Goodman Lipkind, “Michael Friedländer,” www.Jewishencylopedia.com 240 Gaster gives a history of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in London and of the Bevis Marks synagogue in his History of the Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews: the cathedral synagogue of the Jews in England situate in Bevis Marks (1901). Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 26 May 1899 in Gaster, CF, 178–79. By 1896, the Spanish and Portuguese congregation opened a second synagogue at Lauderdale Road to accommodate the many Sephardic Jews who had moved to west London, and Hakham Moses Gaster presided there as well. On “red-letter days of the Community,” services were held at Bevis Marks (185). Theodor Gaster, “Prolegemenon,” xxiii.

ZD_Book.indb 93

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

94

Part One

Hebraica and Yiddish texts, which Şăineanu had once read about longingly in Steinschneider’s bibliographies. Gaster had been invited to Oxford already in 1886, when he had given the prestigious Ilchester lectures on “Greeko-Slavonic Literature and its Relation to the Folk-lore of Europe during the Middle Ages.”241 Had Gaster met there the great Oxford linguist A. H. Sayce, who had given so warm a review to Şăineanu’s Relations between Grammar and Logic? Yes, Gaster could assure Şăineanu, he saw Sayce at meetings of the Society for Biblical Archeology, but more important, in recent years Sayce had been supplying the Bodleian with precious fragments of medieval Jewish texts discovered in the Cairo Geniza. The Bodleian had by now lost out in that collecting to the Cambridge University Library, where Gaster’s fellow Romanian Solomon Schecter, Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge, had deposited a huge stash of Geniza manuscripts in 1897. But he, Gaster, had started building his own Geniza collection and was even now writing up a description of a Hebrew leaf from the apocryphal Wisdom of Ben Sira.242 Along the way, Şăineanu must have sought Gaster’s views on his planned book on Românismul. Gaster had reminded Şăineanu before his visit that he was no longer going to concern himself with Romanian language and literature. Still, Gaster was keeping abreast of publication in the Romanian field and may have advised Şăineanu on the path that he ultimately took: to put aside “Romanianism” over the centuries and to concentrate on the third part of his plan, the relation of Romanian language and literature to those of adjacent peoples.243 241 Moses Gaster, Ilchester Lectures on Greeko-Slavonic Literature and its Relations to the Folk-lore of Europe during the Middle Ages (London: Trübner, 1887); the lectures were delivered in 1886. 242 Theodor Gaster, “Prolegemenon,” xxiv. The exciting history of the discovery and acquisition of the Geniza manuscripts, along with the initial interest in the wisdom book of Ben Sira, is given in Hoffman and Cole, Sacred Trash; see 36–42 on the interest in the Geniza fragments of Adolf Neubauer, librarian at the Bodleian, and 40 for the role of A. H. Sayce. Adolf Neubauer and A.E. Cowley, The Original Hebrew of a Portion of Ecclesiasticus (XXXIX.15 to XLIX:11), together with the Early Versions and an English Translation, followed by the Quotations from Ben Sira in Rabbinical Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), xii for the role of Sayce. Moses Gaster, “A New Fragment of Ben Sira,” Jewish Quarterly Review 12 (July 1900): 688–702. Gaster’s fragment was not from the wisdom book or proverbs of Ben Sira, but, as he explains, from a Compendium of the book. Gaster’s collection grew to an enormous size: in 1924 the British Museum purchased around 3000 Geniza manuscripts from Gaster, and after his death, the John Rylands Library in Manchester acquired almost 15,000 Geniza fragments along with other materials from his estate (The Rylands Genizah Collection, http://www. rylandsgenizah.org). 243 Gaster to Şăineanu, 27 December 1898 in Gaster, MC, 353. Gaster published a review of Romanian publication on philology and literature during the years 1891–1896 in the Kritischer Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der romanischen Philologie 4, no. 1 (1895–1896, published in 1898): 115–145. He opened it with a comment about the chauvinism that marred so much Romanian publication on

ZD_Book.indb 94

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

Romania

95

Jewish politics was certainly on their agenda, put there at least by Gaster. Gaster had introduced it in his letter to Şăineanu of 27 December 1898: “As you know, I am overwhelmed by the work which I have taken on myself in the cause of Zionism. Neverthless, I rejoice in seeing that we have found our centre of gravity as Jews, and that there is complete agreement reigning throughout the Diaspora.”244 Gaster’s “complete agreement” was something of an exaggeration, given the differences of opinion at the Zionist Congress that past summer, not to mention resistance to the idea of a Jewish state from some English rabbis and prominent families. (In January 1899, only a few months before Şăineanu’s visit, the Elders in Gaster’s congregation had requested him to stop talking about Zionism in his sermons.)245 In any case, Gaster clearly wanted to bring his old friend into the Zionist camp. During their visit, he would have reminded Şăineanu of the abiding significance of the Dreyfus affair for French Jews and fleshed out his hopes for “cultural Zionism” and the Hebrew language. How could he encourage Şăineanu to persist in further study of Yiddish when he believed Hebrew should be the language of the Jewish future?

Paris: Nordau and Zionism Even before Şăineanu’s London visit, Gaster had arranged meetings for him in Paris with Herzl’s close companion Max Nordau.246 Nordau preached a somewhat different style of Zionism from Gaster and represented another way of living as a Jewish intellectual. Born in 1849 in Budapest as Meir Simcha Südfield, these topics, and then discussed Şăineanu’s Istoria filologiei române as the best work published during those years. He went on to praise the Romanian-German dictionary published by another Romanian-Jewish philologian, Heimann Tiktin. Gaster also finished up a long-promised history of Romanian literature, published in 1900 in Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, 2, no. 3: 262–428. His next major contribution to Romanian studies was not until 1915, with the publication of his Romanian Bird and Beast Stories (1915). On Gaster’s publications, see Schindler, “List of Publications of Dr. M. Gaster,” in Bruno Schindler, ed., Gaster Centenary Publication, 23–40. Şăineanu said much later that he himself had abandoned the first two sections of the Românismul project because he was “discouraged” by his failure to get an appointment at the University of Bucharest (SVSc,79). But the concentration on the “Oriental elements in the language and culture of Romania” allowed him to build on his early original work on Turkish elements in the Romanian language and led to a two-volume work with an important theme. See below, 117–19. 244 Gaster to Şăineanu, 27 September 1898 in Eskenasy, “Notes,” 79, 84, and Gaster, MC, 352–53 (phrase omitted in CF, 130-31). 245 Stuart Cohen, English Zionists and British Jews, 25–34, 48. 246 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 26 May 1899 in Gaster, CF, 179.

ZD_Book.indb 95

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

96

Part One

Max Nordau had Germanified his name and his manners in 1874, two years after the death of his rabbi father. Leaving his Jewish religious belief and practice far behind, he had moved to Paris in 1879 to practice medicine and continue his active literary and newspaper career.247 Şăineanu had probably read Nordau’s Degeneration, either when it first appeared in German in 1893 or in French translation the next year. If so, he may have agreed with Nordau’s praise for the “honest realism” of fairy tales, where in a fanciful setting, the events unfolded out of “a peasant’s own experience.” But he may have been dismayed by Dr. Nordau’s diagnosis of so much of contemporary art, music, and literature (including that of Tolstoy and Zola) as “degenerate,” “hysterical,” and promoting moral decay. Was such extravagant language necessary for Nordau’s defense of attentive reason, self-discipline, and social responsibility?248 Şăineanu must have heard from Gaster the story of how Nordau turned away from the path of “assimilation” and resumed his Jewish identity—not a religious identity, for he remained a non-believer, but an ethnic and historical one. As Nordau wrote his former lover, Olga Novikova, in 1899: I am not a Jew by religion but a Jew by race, a Jew by historical sentiment, a  Jew by revolt against the calumnies that are heaped on us, a Jew because of the tortures inflicted on those of my race.249

Nordau was writing Novikova in French and used the word “race.” In referring to Jews collectively in his native German at the Zionist World Congresses, he sometimes said “Volk,” the “Jüdische Volk,” and sometimes said “Stamm”: “unser Stamm” (our race, our tribe), “Jüdische Stamm.” Both words could evoke a shared biological path and/or a shared historical past, and a shared culture.250 247 Max Nordau, Erinnerungen (Leipzig and Vienna: Renaissance Verlag, n.d. [1928],), chaps. 1–6 on his family and life to his first years in Paris. Max Nordau, “Ma Vie,” in Écrits zionistes, 36–39. Anna and Maxa Nordau, Max Nordau. A Biography. The early chapters provide an interesting, though sentimentalized account of Nordau’s pre-Zionist years, by Nordau’s wife and daughter. Robert Wistrich, “Max Nordau and the Dreyfus Affair,” Journal of Israeli History 16, no 1(1995): 1–3. 248 Max Nordau, Degeneration, translation from the 2nd edition (no name of translator given) (New York: D. Appleton, 1895), vii-viii, 480, 536, 560. The work first appeared also as Max Nordau, Entartung, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: Carl Duncker, 1893) and Max Nordau, Dégénérescence, trans. August Dietrich, 2 vols. (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1894). 249 Max Nordau to Olga Novikova, Rothéneuf (Ille-et-Vilaine), 20 September 1899, Correspondence of Olga Novikova, 1862–1890, MS 30, no. 288, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence, Kansas. See the discssion of Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle, 67–68. 250 Max Nordau, “Rede von Dr. Max Nordau. Die allgemeine Lage der Juden,” Die Welt 1, no. 14 (3 September 1897): 5, 6, 9; “Rede des Dr. Nordau,” Die Welt 2, no. 35 (2 September 1898): 7, 10; “Die Rede

ZD_Book.indb 96

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

Romania

97

Though Nordau had experienced and written about anti-Semitism in his earlier publications, it was especially the Dreyfus affair that catapulted him into a public struggle for the “Jüdische Volk” and for Zionism. He had been horrified by the ceremony of degradation in January 1895, when Dreyfus’s sword had been broken and the crowds had shouted murderous threats. In the land that had first proclaimed the Declaration of Human Rights, people nonetheless were assuming that if one Jew was a traitor, all Jews were traitors. (It was even more agonizing for Nordau since he was given early evidence that Dreyfus had never been in touch with the German embassy.)251 It was at this juncture that he learned of Theodor Herzl’s new dream for a Jewish state in Palestine. As fellow journalists in Paris, Nordau and Herzl had been friends for several years, and Nordau was also serving as Herzl’s physician. In November 1895, Herzl read aloud to him the manuscript of Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), and, as Herzl jubiliantly recorded in his diary, Nordau was “completely won over to the cause.”252 Nordau was soon involved with Herzl in Zionist organization. In 1897 and 1898, elected like Gaster as one of the vice-presidents of the World Zionist Congress, Dr. Nordau was giving speeches in which he diagnosed the ills of the Jewish condition and prescribed their cure, as he once had for European degeneration. Romania was included in Nordau’s indictment. In his 1897 speech, he told of the lawless abuse and destitution suffered by so many of Romania’s Jews. The next year he reported the Romanian government’s exclusion of Jews as “foreigners” from the public schools and the people’s plundering of Jewish homes in Bucharest. Centuries of oppression had deformed Jews in body and spirit, so D. Max Nordau,” Die Welt 3, no. 34 (25 August 1899): 1, 9. Zionisten-Congress in Basel (29, 30 und 31 August 1897). Officielles Protocoll (Vienna: Verlag des Vereines “Erez Israel”, 1898), 9–19. On the use of the term Stamm by German Jews and its meanings in the late nineteenth century, see Till van Rahden, “Germans of the Jewish Stamm. Visions of Community between Nationalism and Particularism,” in German History from the Margins, 27–48. 251 Max Nordau, Les Mensonges conventionnels de notre civilisation, trans. Auguste Dietrich (Paris: W. Hinrichesen 1888; first edition in German, Leipzig, 1883), 2; Nordau, Degeneration, 423: critique of Nietzsche on the creation of “the slave revolt in morality” by “the Jewish race”; Dégénérescence, 2, 319. Nordau, Erinnerung, 177. Nordau, “Ma vie,” 39. Anna and Maxa Nordau, Nordau, 115–18. Stanislawski, Zionism, 59–60. Wistrich, “Nordau and the Dreyfus Affair,” 4–5: the excessive blame heaped on the two Jewish middlemen in the Panama Canal bribery affair of 1892, fanned by Edmond Dumont’s anti-Semitic paper La Libre parole, had also troubled Nordau; but it was the Affaire Dreyfus that especially opened him to Herzl’s plan. 252 Herzl, Tagebücher, 1: 312 (17 November 1895); 315 (19 November 1895); 325 (28 November 1895); 353 (28 February 1896); Herzl, Diaries, 1: 275–76, 307. Anna and Maxa Nordau, Nordau, 119–23. Wistrich, “Nordau and the Dreyfus Affair,” 2–5. Stanislawski, Zionism, 63–64.

ZD_Book.indb 97

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

98

Part One

Nordau maintained. To those eastern European Jewish men with their stooped shoulders and weakness, Zionism would bring a new “muscular Judaism” through the physical education of their young.253 Then there were those Jews who had fallen for the false promises of emancipation and turned to assimilation: The emancipated Jew . . . has given up his special Jewish characteristics, but the people among whom he lives let him know that he has not acquired theirs. He has lost the home of the ghetto; but the land of his birth is denied him as a home. He flees the members of his Tribe (Stammgenossen), antiSemitism having rendered them odious to him, but his fellow countrymen (Landsleute) reject him when he wants to consort with them. He has no ground under his feet, and no connection to a community where he would be welcome as a full member.

Zionism would cure the psychological and moral maladies of emancipation by a renewal of Jewish identity and the creation of a homeland in which Jews could live as a nation and which could also serve as a beacon for Jews throughout the world.254 When Lazăr Şăineanu came to visit Nordau during the first half of 1899, he was located along the spectrum of Nordau’s “emancipated Jews.” He was not at an extreme remove from his fellow Jews—not yet what Nordau would call a “renegade, an anti-Semitic Jew” (to use a phrase from Nordau’s Zionist address later that year), but a Jew seeking professional and civic acceptance in the European country in which he and his parents had been born.255 This was a doomed quest in Nordau’s view. Nordau must have had hopes for converting Şăineanu, for he fit at least three visits with the philologist into his busy schedule, one of them an invitation to both Lazăr and Cecilia for luncheon at his house.256 There, if not on other occasions, Şăineanu would have met 253 Nordau, “Rede,” Die Welt 1 no. 14 (3 September 1897): 5, 7–9; “Rede,” Die Welt 2, no. 35 (2 September 1898): 8, 11. On Nordau’s “muscular Judaism,” see Robert S. Wistrich, “Max Nordau: From ‘Degeneration’ to ‘Muscular Judaism,’” in Wistrich, Laboratory for World Destruction, 154–174; and Todd Presner, Muscular Judaism. 254 Nordau, “Rede,” Die Welt 1, no. 14 (3 September 1896): 8. 255 Nordau, “Rede,” Die Welt 3, no. 34 (25 August1899): 5. 256 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 25 May 1899, in Gaster, CF, 179. In this letter, Şăineanu mentions a visit with Nordau before his trip to England, a visit after his return, and the luncheon to which he and Cecilia had been invited.

ZD_Book.indb 98

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

Romania

99

Nordau’s wife, the Danish Lutheran Anna Elisabeth Dons, and perhaps caught sight of their two-year-old daughter Maxa and Anna’s children by an earlier marriage. The path to that marriage had not been smooth. Anna had come to Paris in 1881 to study voice, but interrupted her operatic career to marry Richard Kaufmann, a Danish writer and journalist based in Paris. Nordau had become a good friend of his fellow journalist, who had also been his patient, and at Kaufmann’s death in 1894, Nordau’s erotic interests began to turn away from the aristocratic and elderly Olga Novikova toward the younger widow.257 By 1896, Anna was pregnant with their child, and in January of 1897, Maxa was born and recognized officially by Nordau as his daughter.258 Maxa lived with her mother during 1897, as Nordau busied himself with the first Zionist Congress and its aftermath. In January 1898, the couple made a civil marriage, bringing only Christians to the registry office as their witnesses, and used the occasion to legitimize their daughter Maxa as well.259 Two days later, Nordau brought himself to write Herzl the news of his marriage (though not of his daughter), using disarming language: “I have made a thorougly unrecommendable mixed marriage... Would that I had resisted my budding inclination... and told myself that as a Jew, I had no right to give free rein to my sentiments.” From Vienna Herzl answered right away with good wishes, saying that he had heard high praise of the woman Nordau had mar257 “Anne Elisabeth Dons,” http://www.hannet.dk/Rapporter/aner_familie_slaegt/23137.html Anna and Maxa Nordau, Nordau, 97–99. Among Richard Kaufmann’s books are his Fra det moderne Frankrig (Copenhagen, 1882), an illustrated portrait of life in France, especially in Paris, and Paris under Eiffeltaarnet (Copenhagen, 1889). Stanislawski, Zionism, 60–61. 258 Archives de Paris, État civil de Paris, Actes, Naissances, V4E 8726, fol. 15r, no. 8/86 (archives numerisées): “L’an mil huit cent quatre vingt dix–sept, douze janvier à midi. Acte de naissance de Maxa Simonne Nordau, du sexe feminine, née le dix janvier courant à cinq heures quarante minutes du soir au domicile de sa mère, fille de Max Simon Nordau, agé de quarante-sept ans, Docteur en medicine, domicilié avenue de Villiers 34, qui declare la reconnaître, et de Anna Elisabeth Dons, âgée de trentequatre ans, sans profession, domiciliée rue Miromesnil 106.” Nordau was present with the baby, declared before the witnesses that he was the father of the child, and signed the act. 259 Archives de Paris, État civil de Paris, Actes, Mariages, V4E 10185, p. 12, no. 89, 20 January 1898 (archives numerisées). Anna Elisabeth Dons is still listed in this act as living at 106 Miromesnil, so up till their marriage, the couple had not established a permanent residence together on the avenue de Villiers, where Nordau lived. Nordau’s witnesses were Auguste Dietrich (1846–1905?), who had already translated at least seven of Nordau’s books from German into French, including Mensonges conventionnels de notre civilisation (1886), Dégénérence (1894), and Paradoxes sociologiques (1897); and Eugene de Jagow, a minor German writer; Dons’ witnesses were a man and a woman, both described as rentiers. The legitimation of Maxa stated in this act is recorded in the margin of Maxa’s registration of birth, listed in n. 258 above.

ZD_Book.indb 99

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:32

100

Part One

ried. In the ideal state which he and Nordau envisaged, “a Jewish citizen... would certainly not be restrained from marrying a foreigner.” “If I’m not mistaken,” Herzl added, “Moses married a Midianite.”260 Şăineanu would have known little of the intimate background to Nordau’s marriage, but Gaster would surely have told him that Herzl had accepted it and had tried to calm the scandal it aroused in Zionist circles. Then Şăineanu observed firsthand that household, where, at Nordau’s insistence, the wife did not convert to Judaism (“such an action would not provide her with Jewish ancestors,” said Nordau) and where their daughter Maxa was baptized Protestant.261 Here was an example of how a secularist Jewish literary intellectual might shape a life in relation to the Christian world. In connection with his visits to Nordau, Şăineanu would also have read Nordau’s play Doktor Kohn, published in 1898. It presents three models of male Jewish life as conceived by a major Jewish intellectual and prestigious Zionist— alternate models that Şăineanu was able to ponder at a critical stage in his own experience. One is Leo Kohn, a gifted mathematician at a German University, who refuses to convert to Christianity either to win a professorship at the university or to be granted the hand in marriage of his beloved Christine Moser, member of an important Lutheran family. Kohn’s decision stems not from religious belief, of which he has none, but from loyalty to his “race” and the Zionist cause. Christine’s father confronts Leo: how can so steadfast a Jew choose a Christian wife? Leo answers, “I love Fräulein Christine, my love is the most absolutely personal thing about me, a thing with which neither my forefathers nor my race has any connection.” Christine’s anti-Semitic brother intervenes with insults, and Leo challenges him to a duel when his honor as a man and a 260 Theodor Herzl, Briefe und Tagebücher, ed. Alex Bein et al., 7 vols. (Berlin: Probyläen, 1983), Max Nordau to Theodor Herzl, Paris, 22 January 1898, 4: 714–15, note to letter 1370; Theodor Herzl to Max Nordau, Vienna, 25 January 1898, 4:412–13, letter 1247; 4: 696, note to letter 1247. Translation of Herzl’s letter in Anna and Maxa Nordau, Nordau, 137–38. 261 Herzl, Briefe, 4: 480–81, letter 1370. Anna and Maxa Nordau, Nordau, 98: revolted by anti-Semitism, Dons “proposed to Nordau that she become a Jewish proselyte. His reply was that such an action would not provide her with Jewish ancestors. She was indeed worthy of being a Jewess. But fate had not desired it so …. His marriage was certainly not well received in all circles. He had the consolation that his aged mother took his wife sincerely to her heart and that racial and religious differences faded in the face of a beautiful mutual understanding.” Max Nordau to Olga Novikova, Paris, 5 February 1899: “La petite Maxa est baptisée selon les rites du protestantisme. Elle aura une éducation protestante et si je vis assez, je ne lui permettrai pas de lire les livres de son père avant d’avoir l’âge de 21 ans. Elle a appris à joindre drôlement les deux petites mains et elle se figure qu’en le faisant, elle ‘fait sa prière’” (MS 50, no. 285, Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas).

ZD_Book.indb 100

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

Romania

101

Jew has been impugned. He then fires in the air rather than aim at Christine’s brother, and the play ends tragically as he dies of his wounds.262 Christine’s father, Julius Christian Moser, turns out to be a convert from Judaism. In his 1897 speech to the first Zionist Congress, Nordau had condemned such men as “the new Marranos”: The new Marranos leave Judaism with rage and bitterness, but in their innermost heart, though not acknowledged by themselves, they carry with them their own humiliation, their own dishonesty, and hatred toward Christianity which has forced them to lie.263

In Doktor Kohn, the convert Moser is a more complex and at moments even a sympathetic figure. The son of a wealthy banker and holder of the Iron Cross for his role in the Franco-Prussian war, he had sought baptism not out of true belief—he is as much a secularist as Leo Kohn—but out of a desire to be at one with his German fellow soldiers, to belong as a German. For him the Jews are not a race. Baptism makes a Christian; Jews should intermarry and disappear as a separate people. Married to a nobleman’s daughter and himself a privy councilor, Moser conceals his origins from his three children. His world comes apart when his beloved daughter Christine begs to marry the Jewish Kohn, and tells her father, with full acceptance, that she has learned from Leo that she is half-Jewish. Moser finally consents to their marriage, still hoping one day that Kohn will convert, only to discover the anti-Semitism flourishing in his own family. His brother-in-law, a Lutheran bishop, agrees that baptism might make a Christian, “but it never makes an Oriental a German.”264 Refusing to back down on his patriarchal right to give his daughter in marriage, Moser is abandoned by his wife and his two sons. The sons, one a lieutenant, the other a student, are horrified to discover 262 The play was first published in 1898, but I have seen only Max Nordau, Doktor Kohn. Bürgerliches Trauerspiel aus der Gegenwart in vier Aufzügen (Berlin: Ernest Hofmann, 1899) and the English translation, Max Nordau, A Question of Honor. A Tragedy of the Present Day in Four Acts, trans. Mary J. Sufford (Boston and London: John W. Luce, 1907), quotation, 83. The play is discussed by Stanislawski, Zionism, 83–85 and by Sander Gilman, “Max Nordau, Sigmund Freud, and Conversion,” in Gilman, Love + Marriage = Death and other Essays, 44–52. 263 Nordau, “Rede,” Die Welt 1, no. 14 (3 September 1897): 14; “Max Nordau’s Address on the Situation of the Jews throughout the World,” trans. B. Nethanyahu in The Jubilee of the First Zionist Congress, 1897–1947 (Jerusalem: Jeusalem Press, 1947), 60–61. 264 Nordau, Question of Honor, 118.

ZD_Book.indb 101

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

102

Part One

they have Jewish ancestry. Moser expresses a final thought after he has met Leo’s parents, who are traditional Jews from a small German town: It was right for me to renounce Judaism... When I see old Kohn before me, I am sure of it. That is a different order of mankind with which I have nothing more in common. But it is still my flesh and blood, though no longer my soul, and this I ought to have taught my children.265

In “old Kohn” Nordau presented yet another style of Jewish life in the late nineteenth century. In Nordau’s speech to the First Zionist Congress, he had described the Jews of the earlier Ghettos as having “their own world...a sure refuge [where]...all specific Jewish qualities were esteemed.” Despised by the outside world though they might be, their ritual law and special attire gave them the social connectedness needed by the individual for intellectual, moral, and physical survival.266 Amschel Kohn and his wife are among the many Jews who have carried the Ghetto ways of life into Nordau’s age of emancipation, but they are here judged more severely, not just by the convert Moser, but even by their son Leo. In Nordau’s stage directions, the grocer Amchel has a long gray beard, and arrives at Moser’s fine house wearing a long gray cloak and “a greasy skull cap.” “My father and mother... speak the disagreeable Jewish-German,” says Leo, and when Amchel talks of his son’s fate with Moser, he speaks an accented German. The couple behaves with dignity and honesty, but, as their son has warned, they build a wall between people through their “strange customs” and beliefs. Leo’s mother turns away the distraught Christine, kindly but firmly, “you have your own mother.” Her son had “committed a great error” in his intimacy with her: “he had nothing to seek here.”267 Nordau builds a contrast between the traditional Jewish separation and the modern Zionist separateness advocated by Leo: “We are a separate people... We will try to obtain a country, and we must recall our forgotten language.” But the Zionist separateness allows Leo and Christine to love each other. “The tradition of my race teaches me to serve seven years for the woman I love,” says Leo. Christine answers, “And I will keep my faith to you as a German girl.”268

265 Nordau, Question of Honor, 170. 266 Nordau, “Rede,” Die Welt 1 no. 14 (3 September 1897): 8; “Address,” 58–59. 267 Nordau, Question of Honor, 39, 145, 168. 268 Nordau, Question of Honor, 47, 75.

ZD_Book.indb 102

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

Romania

103

The Rejection of Zionism, the Dreyfus Affair I have lingered over the lives of Moses Gaster and Max Nordau, and their presentation of Jewish alternatives, because they constitute a frame for Lazăr Şăineanu’s decision to choose a momentous path: the acceptance of baptism in Bucharest six months after his visits with them. Şăineanu’s clumsy letter to Gaster upon his return from London makes it clear that Gaster could not have encouraged him to emigrate to England and that he had not won Şăineanu to the Zionist cause: I was at Nordau’s yesterday, and in his antechamber, I caught sight of the same suspicious faces as at your place: it reeks of Zionism here! I found him to be more enthusiastic than when I left, and he was very glad that I brought news of you.

He went on to describe the books he was mailing Gaster, all concerning French literature: Gustave Lanson’s new social history of French literature; an edition of Rabelais; and a best-selling autobiographical novel by the right-wing Paul Bourget on the return of a materialist to Catholicism.269 (Şăineanu had perhaps told Gaster that Bourget, despite his earlier association with wealthy Jewish collectors, artists, and patrons, had recently come out publicly as an antiDreyfusard.) Şăineanu closed his letter with “a profound expression of his affection and his lasting friendship.” Gaster never answered him.270 Why would Şăineanu turn away definitively from the Zionist cause? To begin with, in the 1890s and even earlier, he did not believe that contemporary Jews constituted a race. The key words used for collective description in the Romania of his day were rasă, neam, popor, and națiune, words with the same range in meaning as those we have seen used in German by the early Zionists.

269 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 26 May 1899 in Gaster, CF, 178–79. Gustave Lanson, Histoire de la littérature française, 3rd. ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1895). Paul Bourget, (1852–1935), Le Disciple (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1889). Bourget’s dedication of 5 June 1889 “à un jeune homme” talks of the failure of materialism to remake France in the wake of its loss of the Franco-Prussian war” (Paul Bourget, Le Disciple [Paris: Henri Cyral, 1925], ix). 270 Şăineanu to Gaster, Paris, 26 May 1899, Gaster, CF, 179. Gaster’s last letter to Şăineanu in his collection of his correspondence is dated 14 April 1899 and discusses plans for Şăineanu’s trip to London (132).

ZD_Book.indb 103

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

104

Part One

Neam was a word for people or nation that always carried with it the notion of biological kinship; popor (people) did not, while for națiune there was a choice.271 In his youthful biography of Moses Mendelssohn, Şăineanu spoke of the Evrei, the Jews, as Mendelssohn’s “coreligionari,” his coreligionists. For a moment in 1887, in an essay on Jewish historiography written for the Israelite Yearbook, he did evoke the idea of kinship in his phrase “books destined for our neamului.” But if there was a “kinship,” it was a mixed one: in his “Jews or Giants or Tatars” of that same year, Şăineanu thought it likely that the blood of the Khazars, those “Judaised Tartars,” was “flowing in the veins of the primitive stratum of Romanian Jews.”272 Jews are a “popor,” not a neam, in Şăineanu’s study of Yiddish in 1889, that language serving as a “means of communication between the different branches (ramuri) of the Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.” In his Dictionary of 1896, the Jews, the Evrei, are defined historically as “a Semitic people (popor semitic) originating in Asia and known under the name of Israelites”; but an Evreu is defined currently as “one who professes the religion of the old Israelites.”273 Thus, Şăineanu had his doubts about a notion basic to Nordau’s Zionism. In addition, the scholarly program currently of importance to Gaster and Nordau cut away much that was close to Şăineanu’s passion. (Gaster would return to studies in Romanian and even eventually to Yiddish, but that was years later.) Şăineanu’s interest in Romanian was not just a political loyalty but was a long-held fascination with the linguistic questions surrounding it and the patterns of storytelling for which the language was used. He had followed closely the liturgical use and pronunciation of Hebrew and had explored the presence of Hebrew words in Yiddish; but he had shown no inclination to participate in a “Renaissance of the Hebrew tongue” (to quote Gaster’s phrase). Rather it was his maternal Judeo-German whose liveliness, mixture, and ingenuity still aroused his scholarly curiosity, even though he had for the moment put his extended book on hold. Writing once again of Yiddish in 1901, he still 271 On the language of collective description and its ethnocentric overtones, see Victor Neumann, “Neam (Romanian for Kin) and Popor (Romanian for People): The Notions of Romanian EthnnoCentrism,” and Balázs Trencsényi, “The Conceptualization of National Character in the Romanian Intellectual Tradition,” in Key Concepts of Romanian History, ed. Neumann and Heinen, 377–422. 272 Şăineanu, Mendelsohn, 12. Lazăr Şăineanu, “Martiriu şi devotament,” Anuar pentru Israeliți 10 (1887–1888): 11; he also referred to the European Jews of the late medieval period as “this people” “acestui popor” (17). Şăineanu, “Jidovii,” 528. 273 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 5, 8, 39. Şăineanu, Dicționar universal, 307, 442–43.

ZD_Book.indb 104

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

Romania

105

maintained that it was playing an important social and cultural role in Poland and Russia.274 The language for Şăineanu was not that “disagreeable Judeo-German” dismissed by Leo Kohn in Nordau’s play. Finally, Şăineanu had not drawn the same conclusions as Nordau from the Dreyfus affair. For Nordau, as he proclaimed at the 1898 Zionist World Congress, it was further proof that Jews could never rely on full acceptance or fair treatment from European nations, even from France; “muscular Zionism” was the only answer.275 Şăineanu saw the Affair up close from his arrival in Paris in the summer of 1898, when the forgery used to find Dreyfus guilty was being publicly admitted, to his departure in the summer of 1899, when the Court of Appeals had ordered that Dreyfus be given a new trial. He has left us only indirect evidence of his response, but it suggests he would have approved the approach taken by his scholarly hero Michel Bréal. Bréal had never believed Dreyfus guilty, so he said in August 1898 in an article in the Dreyfusard daily Le Siècle. What motive could Dreyfus have? He had no economic need to sell secrets to the Germans. His only wrong was being Jewish. “A coreligionist of Dreyfus and a fellow Alsatian,” wrote Bréal, “I know better than most the state of mind of a Jewish officer from Alsace.” Such a position was the height of achievement for families of his background, a position that could never be won by a Jew in the German army and that Dreyfus would never jeopardize. The devotion to France of Alsatian Jewish families was all the more intense after the war of 1870. Bréal then widened the argument. The pillorying was now extending beyond Jews to others from Alsace: the Protestant Senator Scheurer-Kestner and the Catholic military officer Georges Picquart, both active in defense of Dreyfus. This was of a piece with France’s lack of initiative in welcoming those Alsatians “thirsty for liberty” under the constraints of German rule. He recalled the efforts made during the Revolution to bring back Huguenot families in exile. The current situation was “a scandal in Europe . . . and a source of mourning for all Frenchmen with eyes to see.”276 Gaston Paris, Şăineanu’s other “cher maître,” also took a stand in 1898. Paris embedded his shock at the judgment against Dreyfus in an article on false victimization in a criminal case in the days of King Philippe le Bel. 274 Gaster, Memorii, 222; Sainéan, Judéo-allemand, 124. 275 Nordau, “Rede,” Die Welt 2, no. 35 (2 September 1898): 8–9, 11. 276 Michel Bréal, “Encore un témoignage,” Le Siècle (20 August 1898): 1. On the range of views among French Jews during the Affair, see Marrus, The Politics of Assimilation, 205–242.

ZD_Book.indb 105

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

106

Part One

All confidence in the equity and impartiality of justice disappeared ... The investigations, the debates, the mechanisms of law were only appearances deceiving no one ... May we not see in our own time judicial inquiries that are no more than comedies, where truthful witnesses are threatened or reduced to silence.

In case Şăineanu missed Paris’s scholarly article, he could read the summary made of it in Le Siècle in August 1898 by the Jewish Dreyfusard Joseph Reinach: Paris, “one of the greatest representatives of French culture,” could be added to those publicly fighting for justice and truth.277 Rather than giving up on France, Bréal and Paris were summoning their country to return to its best traditions. Seeing such response to the Dreyfus affair, Şăineanu seems to have made a double conclusion in 1899. First, he could one day live in France, at least in scholarly circles, without concealing his Jewish origin. So long as Dreyfusards were still struggling for Dreyfus’s rehabilitation, Şăineanu could evoke the destiny of the late French Jew Arsène Darmesteter. Could one imagine, he asked rhetorically, a linguistic scholar like Darmesteter being denied naturalization?278 Second, since he himself had supporters back in Romania, as Paris had reminded him, it was worth giving another try to the country in which he had been born. To be sure, in 1899 the schoolteacher V. Săghinescu was to publish in Craiova a vicious attack on him, his brother Mariu, and the folklorist Mihail Canianu as Literati jidani (Yid Writers), “who are profaning the Romanian language and scholarship.”279 Whether Şăineanu could win citizenship in Romania without tampering with his Jewish identity was thus another matter, one that he began to think about during the summer and fall of 1899.

Baptism and Its Consequences Moses Schwarzfeld was later to write Gaster, “Already in Paris, so I hear, Şăineanu began Christian studies at a chapel there.”280 If such a report is true, 277 Testis [Joseph Reinach], “Encore un!” Le Siècle (9 August 1898): 1. Paris’s article, “Un procès criminel sous Philippe Le Bel,” first appeared in the Revue du Palais in 1898. Bähler, Paris, 176–79. 278 Sainéan, Carrière, vii. (See above, 77–78, on his similar reference in his letter to Gaston Paris in May 1895). 279 V. Săghinescu, Literaţii jidani: Lazăr şi Mariu Şăineanu (Lazăr şi Marca Saia). Mihail Canianu (Moisa Cahana). Săghinescu made errors in giving their supposed Jewish names. He was a teacher in a secondary school. In 1901, he published a further extended attack entitled Vocabular rominesc on Lazăr Șăineau’s Dicționar universal. 280 Moses Schwarzfeld to Moses Gaster, Bucharest, 8/21 March 1900 (Gaster, MC, 356).

ZD_Book.indb 106

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

Romania

107

Şăineanu was simply informing himself of the details or formulae for baptism. He was already quite familiar with Christian doctrine from his years of study of Christian texts and stories. His own succinct and enigmatic account, written a year after his baptism, suggests that he was viewing that rite not just as a personal expedient and certainly not as a matter of religious belief, but as a justifiable socio-political action. He locates his decision in 1899, in Paris and then in Berlin, where he had moved with his family on July 15 to finish the research on what had now definitively become “Oriental influence on Romanian language and culture”: It was there [in Berlin] that I had the occasion to become well-informed about the contemporary religious problem, and it seemed to me that I came to a certain clarity about it... I was determined to go back to a new life [in Romania], and, if I succeeded in regularizing my social position, to devote all my effort to the renown of the country.281

Like Herzl and Nordau, Şăineanu was evidently not a religious believer. Years later, looking back on his youthful relation to Rabbi Moritz Beck of Bucharest’s Choral Temple, Şăineanu mentioned only Beck’s abundant library, whose books had nourished his intellectual curiosity. Especially he recalled reading Heinrich Graetz’s History of the Jews, “which described so well the great figures illustrative of Judaism: Jesus Christ and Spinoza, [Moses] Mendelssohn and Heine.” Mainstream Jewish doctrine was clearly not Şăineanu’s priority!282 Nor does Şăineanu seem to have been deeply committed to orthodox religious practice. In his book on Judeo-German, he had listed the Yiddish terms for the Sabbath and the other Jewish festivals, but participating in such ceremonial life never figures in his correspondence with Gaster.283 Writing to Rabbi Gaster from Paris or Leipzig or Berlin, he never describes a local synagogue he has found for Sabbath prayer. In the summer of 1899, Şăineanu’s links to Judaism were historical, social, scholarly, and familial. He had for several years put aside the Haskalah projects undertaken for the Anuar pentru israeliți (Israelite Yearbook). That bap281 Sainéan, Carrière, 38–39. 282 SVSc,45. On Moritz Beck (1845–1923), see Lucian-Zeev Herșcovici, “Beck, Moritz,” www.yivoencylopedia.org/article.aspx/beck_moritz 283 Şăineanu, Evreo-German, 58; Sainéan, Judéo-allemand, 185 (a longer list of associated terms is promised in a glossary).

ZD_Book.indb 107

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

108

Part One

tism could fulfill some of his hopes without disrupting all his personal ties to Judaism seems to have been encouraged, oddly enough, by his encounters with Nordau. There he had seen the contented Nordau household, where the Jewish father and his Lutheran wife had welcomed the baptism of their little daughter. There he may well have heard an account of Theodor Herzl’s past interest in Christianity, stories known also by Gaster: how Herzl had been “haunted” by anti-Semitism and the Jewish question since his youth and how in 1893, only two years before drafting his Jewish State, he had hoped to win the support of the Archbishop of Vienna and the pope by a proposal involving conversion. “Help us against the anti-Semites,” Herzl imagined himself saying to the pope, “and I will start a great movement for the free and honorable conversion of Jews to Christianity.” His generation would proudly remain as the last Jews but would voluntarily bring their young sons to the Church. Convinced by a friend of the foolishness of his project, Herzl dropped it, but not before he had savoured “this slogan of mixing of the races (Rassenvermischung) flying across the world.”284 What model for a baptized Jew might Şăineanu have imagined in 1899? Neither the hypocritical deceived Moser of Nordau’s play, nor the rejected new Marranos of Nordau’s World Zionist oration would serve this purpose, and certainly not the best-known recent convert among the small number of those taking that step in France: Albin Valabrègue, playwright and vaudeville actor, who in 1895 announced his conversion in a book celebrating Jesus and Christianity as the path to spiritual unity for all religions.285 Once in Berlin, Şăineanu could hear regularly about younger Jewish men, non-believers, who were converting as an essential step for a university post or governmental promotion. Meanwhile a broader political case had been made for baptism by Theodor Gomperz, the elderly and distinguished professor of classical philology at the University of Vienna. Europe’s culture was linked historically to Christianity, said Gomperz; Jews had played their part in the culture of European countries over the centuries, even “manning the barricades for the fatherland.” Judaism, 284 Herzl, Diaries, 4, 7; Tagebücher, 1:4–5,7–9. Gaster, MC, 224 (reference to the interest of Herzl and Nordau in baptism). Kornberg, Theodor Herzl, 25, 119–21. 285 Marrus, Assimilation, 60–62, 156–57, 156 n. 3. Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold, 105–106. Albin Valabrègue, La Philosophie du vingtième siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque Villiers, 1895), 145–152. On the use of Valabrègue’s conversion to give support to an anti-Semitic view of Judaism, see Émile de Kératry, “Conversion de M. Valabrègue,” Le Figaro 41 (19 February 1895): 1. Kératry quotes a recent antiJewish sermon by a Dominican, praises Valabrègue’s book, and concludes that the Dominican friars should be “proud of such a conquest.”

ZD_Book.indb 108

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

Romania

109

however, was “worn out,” its useful role in history long past. Jews should now end their isolation and seek “union and fraternity” with the people around them by conversion. In fact, Gomperz did not take that step himself, but arranged for his children to have a Christian education, and they were ultimately all baptized.286 Such a perspective, coming from a respected fellow philologist, might be taken seriously by Şăineanu. Indeed, his brother Mariu was to publish a more extreme version of that argument in 1900. For now, in the summer of 1899, Mariu was surely smarting from Săghinescu's attack on him and his brother, the “Yid Writers,” which had just appeared in the anti-Semitic press in Craiova—the very town where the Samitca brothers had recently published Mariu’s French-Romanian and Romanian-French dictionaries and his translations of two French novels.287 Săghinescu gave examples of what he claimed were false definitions in the various dictionaries edited by them, “monstruous” errors in “impure dictionaries.” Mariu was ignorant of both Romanian and French. Their books, published by Lazăr’s kinfolk, were “a national crime.”288

286 Endelmann, Leaving the Jewish Fold, 113–14, on the increasing rates of Jewish conversion in Berlin and Vienna in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Kornberg, Herzl, 25–26, 115–16, 119. Astrid Schweighofer, Religiöse Sucher in der Moderne: Konversionen vom Judentum zum Protestantismus, 119–32. Theodor Gomperz expressed his views on Jews and European culture in his testament of 22 March 1887 and in his critical review of Herzl’s Judenstaat, published in 1896 right after the appearance of the book. Gomperz, Theodor Gomperz: ein Gelehrtenleben, 173–75. Theodor Gomperz, “Der Zionismus,” Die Zeit, 29 February 1896, reprinted in Theodor Gomperz, Essays und Erinnerungen, 196–99. 287 [Constantin] Mariu Şăineanu, Dicționar franceso-român, n.d. (1897); [Constantin] Mariu Șăineanu, Dicționar româno-frances, n.d. [1898]), vii: preface dated 7 July 1898; Honoré de Balzac, Eugenia Grandet (Eugénie Grandet), trans. Mariu Şăineanu, Craiova: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, 1896); Alphonse Daudet, Fromont & Risler (Fromont jeune et Risler ainé), trans. Mariu Şăineanu (Craiova: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, 1896). Săghinescu’s Literatii jidani first appeared in 1899 as an article in the periodical Dorul românului, organ național, founded in 1898 as an anti-Semitic weekly and published in Craiova (Petcu, Istoria jurnalismului din România în date, 1 March 1898). It was then published separately as a book (see n. 279 above). Săghinescu takes aim only at Mariu’s Romanian-French dictionary and at least some of his accusations are incorrect. There is nothing wrong with Mariu’s definition of “Accept” as a billet à ordre (Dicționar româno-frances, 2; cf. Le Petit Robert nouveau 2007, 254; Săghinescu, Literatii, 15). Săghinescu wrongly accuses Mariu of giving the weed neghină as a synonym for the fern negară and of erring in using stipe as the French botanical term for that plant. Mariu merely gives nagară as an alternate spelling for negară. The plant is “feather grass,” for which the botanical term is stipa capillata and in French stipe capillaire. Mariu left out the capillaire after stipe, though referred to it correctly as a botanical term, and erred in adding the French ivraie, rye grass, ray grass, but Săghinescu gives a definition of stipe indifferent to its precise botanical use (Dicționar româno-frances, 331–32; Săghinescu, Literatii, 15–16). 288 Săghinescu, Literatii, 11,14,18

ZD_Book.indb 109

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

110

Part One

Such vilification added weight to the troubles Mariu had already been suffering in his teaching career. In 1893 he had obtained a post as an instructor in French and history at a gymnasium in Caracal, a town not far from Craiova. For the next six years, he entered or tried to enter competitions for a chair in French language, especially one in Bucharest, and he failed every time. Even when there were ample posts open and he had performed well, all the other candidates were appointed and he turned down. Having a doctorate was no help when one of his examiners chided him for writing it about Africa rather than Romania. The impact of Haret’s ordinances against Jewish teachers in the schools came out most clearly when he was twice refused the possibility of even registering for the examinations because he was “neither Romanian, nor foreign”: not Romanian because, though born in Romania, he was not naturalized; not a foreigner because he had done his military service in Romania.289 Facing this predicament in the fall of 1899, Mariu went to see Take Ionescu, the Minister of Public Instruction in the recently established Conservative government. Ionescu was blunt: if he wanted to register, “get yourself baptized.” “I saw a way out of my absurd equivocal situation,” said Mariu in a later reminiscence about that fateful day, “and so I crossed the Rubicon.”290 He seems to have invited his brother Lazăr to cross it with him. Ionescu’s peremptory statement was part of a policy instituted together with the chemist Constantin Istrati, the new Minister of Public Works. They would continue their predecessors’ restrictions on Jews while opening the door part way to converts. As a leader of the Bucharest Jewish community wrote to the Alliance Israélite office in Paris: [Unless something is done to help them], I fear that many [Jewish students] will abjure the religion of Moses. The current ministers, Take Ionescu and Dr. Istrati, are ready to become their godfathers at baptism. Already the former has baptized five young Jews... They are being offered well-remunerated posts and being promised a brilliant future.291

Ironically, Mariu was choosing this path just as the Anuar pentru Israeliți was publishing a section of his thesis on the Falashas, where he had spoken of the 289 C. Șăineanu, Amintiri, 41, 50–56, 59. 290 C. Șăineanu, Amintiri, 60. 291 On the shift in government, see Hitchins, Rumania, 112 and Iordache, Take Ionescu, 73–74. Moreno Ascher to Jacques Bigart, Bucharest, August 1899, in Rotman, Education, 279.

ZD_Book.indb 110

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:33

Romania

111

resistance of Jews to conversion: “the love of his religion and his tradition [is] profoundly anchored in the heart of the Jew [and can be] seen in every period.”292 Mariu must have notified his brother about his encounter with Ionescu and his current project with Istrati. Still in Berlin, Lazăr was seeking guidance on the Turkish language and Ottoman culture from the learned Karl Foy at the Seminary for Oriental Studies, much needed background for his book.293 He surely discussed the possibility of baptism with his wife Cecilia and sought counsel from her family. The Samitcas published texts for the Jewish community; Cecilia’s uncle was soon to be president of the Ashkenazic congregation of Craiova; her father would have that post a few years later. It was understood that Cecilia and Elisabeth would never be baptized.294 If Șăineanu was seeking reassurance as he approached his baptism, he may well have taken it from Graetz’s portrait of Heine, still vivid from his youth. Graetz had shown Heine as contemptuous of those who converted for the sake of “personal gain.” As the poet had written: This act might perhaps bear the significance to me, that through it I could devote myself the better to secure full privileges for my unhappy co-religionists. But I should consider it a blot upon my dignity and honour if I were to become baptized in order to obtain a post in Prussia.

But baptized he was, and for economic reasons. “I assure you if the law had permitted the stealing of silver spoons,” Heine wrote a friend, “I should not have 292 [Constantin] Mariu Şăineanu, “Falaşasii, fragment dintr’o Cronică abisiniană cu o introducere,” Anuar Pentru Isrealiți 19 (1897–1899): 84–113. Quotation from M. Șăineanu, L’Abyssinie, 41–42: “L’amour de sa religion et de la tradition [est] très profondément ancré dans le coeur de Juif, ce qu’on a pu d’ailleurs remarquer à toutes les époques.” He goes on to speculate that since this is the case, one may believe that the early Ethiopians who had converted to Christianity were not previously Jews, “for if they had been, they would still be Jews today (car j’irai jusqu’à dire que si ce peuple l’eût été, il le serait encore).” The Falashas, he suggests, are Jews who had emigrated to Abyssinia after the destruction of the temple, and when the mass of Ethiopians had converted to Christianity, they had escaped to the mountains to avoid conversion. 293 Lazăr Șăineanu, Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române, 1: 6. He thanks Dr. Karl Foy, professor of Turkish language at the Oriental Seminary of Berlin, for his scholarly help and calls Foy “my friend.” On Karl Foy, see Christoph Herzog, “Notes on the Development of Turkish Oriental Studies in the German Speaking Lands,” Türkiye Araștırmaları Literatür Dergisi, 8, no. 15(2010): 23, 27–28. 294 For instance, in 1900 the Samitcas published their thirteenth edition of Abraham S. Gold’s alphabet book for use in the Jewish schools in Romania: Abecedar ebraic pentru uzul scoalelor Israelite din tara. Andrei, et al., Institul Samitca, 54–56. There is no evidence one way or another whether Lazăr and Mariu Șăineanu discussed the possibility of baptism with their sisters.

ZD_Book.indb 111

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

112

Part One

been baptized.” Graetz goes on to reclaim Heine’s subsequent writing—his critique of Judaism and of Christianity in the name of Hellenistic values of beauty, and his contributions to German literature—as fully expressive of “the Jewish spirit.” Indeed, Heine had never lost appreciation of the Jewish historical struggle for survival, claimed Graetz, and at the end of his life Heine’s reverence for the moral message of Judaism revived.295 Șăineanu might hope that in his circumstances of persecution, his fellow Jews might forgive him as well. If through baptism, he was able to put his talents to the service of Romania, perhaps it would make the path easier for his coreligionists. In late November, Șăineanu went to see Take Ionescu in Bucharest, leaving the ailing Cecilia and daughter Elisabeth behind in Berlin. Ionescu had been born into a modest family in Șăineanu’s Ploești and had trained for the law in Paris. Long active in Conservative Party politics, he had been Minister of Public Instruction in 1892-1893, when the laws restricting Jewish presence in the schools were passed, and now, as Minister once again, he was presiding over the strengthened version of those “reforms.” According to Șăineanu, Ionescu received him cordially and promised to assure his naturalization and professional future in the wake of his baptism.296 Mariu approached Constantin Istrati, a distinguished chemist and professor at the University of Bucharest, only recently appointed to his government ministry. Nicknamed “John the Baptist” because of his eagerness to get Jews to convert, Istrati was featured in a joking formula: “One intellectual Jew + H2O = a real Romanian.”297 The baptisms took place on November 28, 1899 at the beautiful late seventeenth-century church of the Sinaia monastery, located not far from Ploești and a preferred place of devotion for Take Ionescu. A few years earlier the superior, Archimandrite Nifon, had been present at the Orthodox baptism of the royal prince Carol at nearby Pelișor Castle, born to his Roman Catholic father and Anglican mother. Now the Archimandrite performed the rites for two Jews. The baptisms were duly acknowledged soon after by the Primate of Romania.298 295 Graetz, History of the Jews, 5: 572–73, 586–93; quotations from Heine on 587–88. 296 Șăineanu, Carieră, 41–42; Sainéan, Carrière, 39–40. Netea, Take Ionescu, 24–27, 31. 297 Șorer, Evreii, 332, 340 n. 6. 298 Voicu, Radiografia , 40; George Voicu, “Conversion to Christian Orthodoxy as a Means to Naturalization. Two Cases and Their Distinct Fates: Lazăr Șăineanu and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea,” Holocaust. Studii și ceretări 6: 141 https:/www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=64562. Carol, the son of the Crown Prince Ferdinand and Marie, was born at Pelisor Castle in Sinaia in 1893; his father was a Roman Catholic, his mother Anglican. On Nifon’s presence at the baptism: “Nouvelles religieuses,” Revue des églises d’Orient, 9, no. 12 (Dec. 1893): 570–71. The Archimandrite Nifon was

ZD_Book.indb 112

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

Romania

113

In the next two weeks back in Bucharest, Șăineanu rejoiced in the glow of acceptance. The Committee on Naturalization immediately considered his case, and on December 3 recommended to the Senate that he be naturalized, mentioning along the way that Șăineanu now “belonged to the Orthodox religion.” The Senate met on December 11, with a reduced membership and with Șăineanu’s enemies absent, and voted in favor of his naturalization, thirtyseven to two. Șăineanu’s immediate reponse, as he chose to describe it a year later, mixed utter delight with self-mockery for the illusions generated by nationalist passion: Finally, I’m a Romanian citizen! After twelve years of continual effort and unspeakable suffering, I’ve arrived at the harbor so desired! Immediately I took deep breaths of the air of this country I could finally call mine. My chest seemed to expand and an unaccustomed light flooded my mind. Suddenly the mysteries of history were revealed to my soul, and the relation between ancient Rome and its modern descendants became palpable for me. I began to feel Romanian! What good is there to so many years of study and work when a single happy moment allows you penetrate so deeply the soul of the Romanian people? Yes, from this single moment, I could understand why all the social problems appeared so clear to the patriotic mind. From then on, I understood even the convulsions of M. Urechiă and his noble indignation against those who did not burn like him with the fire of the cult of the nation. Civis romanus sum!299

A few days later he came down to earth: the Minister of Justice, Constantin Dissescu, ruled that Șaineanu’s naturalization could not proceed unless also approved by the Chamber of Deputies during the current session of the legislature. The Chamber’s earlier assent in 1893 did not count. The Senate met on December 19 to debate Dissescu’s decision. Șăineanu had his defenders, who challenged the Minister’s intrepretation of the constitution and cited earlier cases where naturalization had been granted in a situation like Șăineanu’s (such as the lawyer Solodevoted to the region: in 1885, he had published a guidebook for walks in Sinaia (Preumblările la Sinaia [Ploiești, 1885] and in 1895, a history of his monastery (Monastirea Sinaia (1695–1895): schiță istorica [Bucharest, 1895]). In 1893–1895 Ionescu had established a villa for his family at Sinaia, and at his death was buried at the Sinaia Church (https://ro.wikpedia.org/wiki/Take_Ionescu; Netea, Take Ionescu, 89. 299 Șăineanu, Carieră, 41–42; Sainéan, Carrière, 40–41. Voicu, Radiografia, 41.

ZD_Book.indb 113

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

114

Part One

mon Rosenthal, just the week before). But the Minister won his case, sixty-three to thirty-two. Șăineanu would have to try again in the Chamber.300 The blow was all the harder for Șăineanu since his godfather Ionescu had made no effort to dissuade the Minister of Justice from his action and had not even been there to defend his godson at the Senate. “He abandoned me,” wrote Șăineanu bitterly, “just at the decisive moment, despite his repeated promises.” To be sure, Ionescu had other things on his mind: he was the major actor in the current Cabinet and was struggling against the Junimist wing of the Conservative party.301 But it may well be that he was finding open support for Șăineanu a political liability. Șăineanu left right after the Senate vote to return to his family in Berlin. Before he got on the train, he still had time to read attacks on him from opposite quarters. On December 11, the nationalist Vocea Tutovei mocked the baptism of “the honorable Lord Luzăr Șaim, professor,” along with those of a couple of Iași medical students and a pharmacist and warned that Romania was going to be flooded with Marranos. Then on December 17, a scathing letter addressed to Șăineanu was published in Răsăritul (Sunrise), a new Zionist newspaper edited in Iași by the rising poet and literary figure A. SteuermanRodion. One S. Goldenberg of Ploiești warned Șăineanu: Our people will receive you as a renegade; yours, as a baptized Jew. On top of this, you have brought shame upon yourself. You could not achieve your purpose without a great sacrifice, and you made it. But your deed has covered you with a stain so black that even three hours of immersion or all of Urechiă’s medicaments cannot wash you clean.302

Meanwhile Moses Schwarzfeld was bemoaning the news in letters to Moses Gaster: The baptism of Șăineanu, which I wrote you about, shocked me, and to this day I can not wrap my mind around it or understand it. Is it possible? Is it 300 Șăineanu, Carieră, 42–43, 86–90; Sainéan, Carrière, 41–43, 50–54. 301 Șăineanu, Carieră, 41–42; Sainéan, Carrière, 39–40. Netea, Ionescu, 31; Iordache, Ionescu, 74, 78–82 302 Zăvod [sic], “Botezul Jidovilor,” Vocea Tutovei (11 December 1899), 1. S. Goldenberg, “Luĭ Lazăr Șăineanu,” Răsăritul, 17 /29 December 1899. On the former newspaper, organ of the Nationalist Party, see Petcu, ed., Istoria jurnalismului, 18 May1898; on the latter, see Bianca Doris Bretan, “CLIL Teaching: A History Lesson Framework,” Studia UBB Philologia LX, 2 (2015): 81–82.

ZD_Book.indb 114

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

Romania

115

possible? I keep asking myself ... Do we have here a meshumad [Yiddish for traitor, turncoat] and an anti-Semite?303

To make matters worse, Șăineanu’s example emboldened another Jewish scholar of Romania to follow him soon afterward. Heimann Tiktin, son of a rabbi of Breslau, had completed his doctoral thesis on Romanian philology at Leipzig several years before Șăineanu’s studies there. By 1900, Tiktin had several excellent books and articles on Romanian grammar and orthography and a Romanian-German dictionary to his credit but was still teaching at a lyceum in Iași. He had been less publicly associated with the cause of Jewish emancipation than the young Șăineanu, but in 1898, Schwarzfeld was praising Tiktin in the pages of the Israelite Yearbook for his “concern for the progress of Jewish Romanians.” Schwarzfeld was thus taken aback by Tiktin’s betrayal. “Now comes the baptism of Tiktin,” he wrote Gaster. “[It] fills me with dread and disgust.” “A degrading matter of interest,” said other Jews, “an abandonment of his Jewish soul for the sake of a chair at the Şcoală Comercială” of Iași.304 As for Lazăr himself, he took no action to erase his status as a meshumad. He made no effort to explain himself to Rabbi Beck at the Choral Temple or to place himself once again in a Jewish community. He continued to refer openly to his Jewish origin, however—and in fact, by Jewish law, once a Jew, always a Jew. As for Orthodox Christianity, there is no sign that Șăineanu practiced it after the baptism. Indeed, he never mentioned his conversion in any of his autobiographies or other writing for the rest of his life. His brother Mayer/Mariu immediately started using his baptismal name on his publications and elsewhere: “Constantin,” bestowed on him by his godfather. Heimann Tiktin added Hariton—that is, the fourth-century Orthodox Saint Hariton, abbot of Palestine—to his name in official documents, though kept “H. Tiktin” for pub-

303 Moses Schwarzfeld to Moses Gaster, Bucharest, 8/21 March 1900 in Gaster, MC, 355–56. The initial letter of Schwarzfeld to Gaster about the baptism has not survived. 304 On the contribution of Hariton Heimann Tiktin to Romanian linguistics see, see Rizescu, H. Tiktin: omul și opera, and G. Mihăilă, “Locul lui H. Tiktin ĭn lingvistica românească.” Born in Breslau in 1850, Tiktin moved to Iași in1869. Tiktin’s Leipzig doctoral thesis was published in 1884 as Studien zur rumänischen Philologie (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1884). Schwarzfeld gave information about Tiktin in the “Notiţe diverse” section of the Anuar pentru Israeliți of 1894 (16: 187) and 1898 (19: 192–93). Moses Schwarzfeld to Moses Gaster, Bucharest, 8/21 March 1900 in Gaster, MC, 356. Other Jewish reactions to Tiktin’s baptism in Șorer, Evreii, 332–33. Unable to get a university professorship in Romania, Tiktin finally moved to Berlin in 1905 to take up a post teaching the Romanian language at the Seminar for Oriental Languages. He died in Berlin in 1936.

ZD_Book.indb 115

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

116

Part One

lication. Lazăr remained Lazăr. In later years he might well be referred to as a secular Jew, but never as a secular Christian.305 The personal cost was to be great, however. He would lose the friendship of Gaster and Schwarzfeld, the two men with whom his scholarship on Yiddish and Jewish folklore had had the most importance. Though Șăineanu was later to have close associates in France in the circle working on François Rabelais, he never again had his earlier comradeship of shared political goals and intellectual excitement.

Š  The Oriental Influence on Romanian Language and Culture For the time being, as he waited for yet another vote on his naturalization, Șăineanu busied himself with his new book. He had finished the research and had begun to write by March 1, 1900, when he and his family returned from Berlin to Romania: Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române (The Oriental Influence on Romanian Language and Culture). “Oriental” here meant Ottoman Turkish. Once again Șăineanu was describing mixture in Romanian culture. As in his vocabulary collection published during his student days, he cited Franz Miklosich’s pioneering work on Turkish elements in the languages of southeastern Europe, now all the more confidently because Miklosich had used his book for a Supplement.306 In the Influența orientală, Șăineanu delayed the vocabulary format to his second volume. He opened instead with a history of Turkish contacts with the peoples in Romanian lands, and gave the political, social, and cultural detail 305 See below, 126–27, on the indirect way in which Șăineanu refers to the baptism in a letter to Moses Gaster of December 1900. This is the only reference we have remotely connected to the event. ­Mariu took on the name Constantin already in the 1900 edition of his French-Romanian-French dictionary published by the Samitcas: Dicționar francesco-român... Dictionnaire français-roumain... par Constantin Șăineanu (Craiova: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, 1900). Tiktin signed his many publications, both before and after his baptism, as H. Tiktin, but included Hariton, as in Heimann Hariton Tiktin Festrede zum 80. Geburtstag Allegemeiner Deutscher Neuphilologenverband (Charlottenburg, 1930), cited in Mihăilă, “Locul lui Tiktin,” 1, n. 1. Take Ionescu’s baptismal name was Dimitri (Netea, Ionescu, 12), and that may have been the name bestowed on Șăineanu at his baptism in Sinaia. In any case, he never subsequently used any name other than Lazăr (or Lazare in French). 306 Influenţa orientală asupra limbei şi culturei române was published in Bucharest in 1900 in 2 volumes. I am here also using Lazare Sainéan’s condensed version of this text in French translation: “Les éléments orientaux en roumain,” Romania 30 (reference to Miklosich, 540); Romania 31; and “Le régime et la société en Roumanie,” Revue internationale de sociologie (1902): 717–48.

ZD_Book.indb 116

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

Romania

117

needed to visualize the exchanges that ensued. The Crimean Tatars had left some of their words in Moldavia in the course of their raids, especially in the sixteenth century. (He referred in passing to the medieval association of Jews, giants, and Tatars in Wallachia and Transylvania.)307 But it was the Ottoman Turks who had the preponderant influence, first from the late fourteenth century to the early eighteenth century, when the Romanian princes paid tribute to the Ottoman sultan; and then from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth, when the sultan appointed Greek Phanariotes to rule from courts in Iași and Bucharest. Of course, the Turkish impact was pronounced among those in high position during the Phanariote period, and Șăineanu mocks the “servile imitation” of Turkish ceremony and dress in court circles. What he takes more seriously is the prolonged contact of the peoples over the centuries, which left its mark on language, popular poetry, and song— “languages of the people” once again: As these Turkish borrowings . . . penetrated profoundly in the spirit of the people, they acquired a definitive form in the [Romanian] language and were assured a long life. Most of these words never had a Romanian equivalent. . . [Furthermore], the persistence of these borrowings in the popular poetry of all the Romanian provinces, as well as in Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, and modern Greek songs, shows that the Ottoman influence was not limited to the court or the nobility, but was the consequence of close and long-term contact.308

Șăineanu gave extended examples from the Romanian language to illustrate the impact of Turkish: the pronunciation of words, certain prefixes and suffixes, and certain metaphors. For instance, several Romanian words for figures in popular theatre derived from the Turkish theatre of buffoons, jugglers, and har307 Șăineanu, Influența, Part A, Section 1, chap. 2; “Les éléments orientaux en roumain,” Romania 30, 553. 308 Sainéan, “Les éléments orientaux en roumain,” Romania 30 (1901): 558: “Comme [ces emprunts turcs] avaient pénétré profondément dans l’esprit du peuple, ils ont aqcuis une forme définitive dans la langue, sont restés en pleine vigeur, et une longue vitalité leur est assurée, par cette raison que la plus grande partie de ces mots n’ont pas d’équivalents purement roumains . . . Enfin, la persistance de ces emprunts dans la poésie populaire de toutes les province roumaines, aussi bien que dans les chants serbes, bulgares, albanais et grecs modernes, montre suffisament que l’influence osmanlie n’a pas été restreinte à la cour et à la noblesse . . . mais la conséquence nécessaire de rapports intimes et séculaires.”

ZD_Book.indb 117

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

118

Part One

lequins: cabaz, măscăriciŭ, and caraghioz, the last the name of a figure famous in the “primitive theatre” of the Turkish shadow plays.309 He went on to give personal names that had a Turkish origin, as well as proverbs, stories, songs, insults, and children’s games, which had passed from Turkey into Romanian lands. Șăineanu indicated the geographical range of the words, when they were special to one region, such as Moldavia. The second half of the Introduction was devoted to “Culture,” which Șăineanu defined in a broad anthropological sense: political life, social life, commerce, and production. Though he talked of customs and conduct, textiles and garments, and more, the words and phrases used in all these spheres were always his central thread. Concluding his introductory volume, Șăineanu compared the input from Turkish in Romanian with that from Latin, Slavic, Hungarian, and neo-Greek, reminding readers of these other sources. For instance, neo-Greek had understandably been the source of many religious terms, while Turkish had provided none. In fact, words from Turkish were ordinarily concrete in reference rather than abstract. Still, the “Oriental influence” had left its impact on Romania, “an important contribution to the popular language today.”310 Șăineanu’s volumes of Vocabulary followed, a first part containing “popular words,” and a second part devoted to historical terms and literary loan words.311 Entries included a definition or definitions; an indication, when necessary, of the geographical range for the word; sources where the word was used; and sometimes a discussion about the word and its meanings. It was an immense task of scholarship, and the entries made good reading as well. Șăineanu was very proud of the Influența orientală, and later was to name it his most enduring contribution to Romanian philology.312 The initial reaction to the book was mixed. On the one hand, Șăineanu discussed his Influența orientală with Ioan Bogdan, professor of Slavic languages at the University of Bucharest and an accomplished specialist in the Slavic con-

309 Șăineanu, Influența, 1: lxvii-lxix, cxx-cxxviii, clxx-clxxi. Sainéan, “Les éléments orientaux en roumain,” Romania 31 (1902): 121. 310 Șăineanu, Influența, Part A, sect. 2, chap, par. 31; cclxxxvi-cclxxxviii. 311 The Vocabulary came out in two parts: Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române. I, part 1 Vocabularul: Vorbe populare, Preface dated Bucharest, October 1900; II Vocabularul: Vorbe istorice, împrumuturi literare. 312 Lazare Sainéan, “Histoire de mes ouvrages,” in SSI, 3: 518.

ZD_Book.indb 118

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

Romania

119

tribution to the Romanian tongue.313 Currently editor of the Junimist Convorbiri literare, Bogdan proposed that Șăineanu’s Introduction be published in installments in the journal in advance of the publication of the book. (Fortunately for Șăineanu, Jacob Negruzzi’s activities had taken him away from the CL.) It was a leap for Bogdan. The founder of the Convorbiri literare, Maiorescu, was open to a Slavic element in Romanian culture, but in a celebrated manifesto, had described Romania under Ottoman influence as “sunk in Oriental barbarity.” The first installment of Șăineanu’s Influența appeared in midMay 1900, the last one in mid-December. Sometimes his installments were only a few pages away from articles by the historian and ardent nationalist Nicolae Iorga, who would raise many questions about Șăineanu’s book once it had all been published.314 Romania’s leading historian, A.D. Xenopol, beat him to the punch, commissioning a review of the first installment for a scholarly journal he had founded in Iași. Xenopol had praised Șăineanu’s History of Romanian Philology several years before, because it gave Romanian scholarship the role it deserved within Europe. But in the Influența, Șăineanu was moving into Xenopol’s territory. Xenopol had been willing to see ancient Dacians and Romans as “branches of the same people,” and he, too, had allowed for some Slavic influence without jeopardizing the Latin past of Romanians. But Turks were conceptualized as the enemy.315 Thus Xenopol expected a critical response from Alexandru Brăescu de la Scurta when he asked him to respond to Șăineanu’s first installment, and he got it. Brăescu was a Moldavian lawyer and observer of contemporary politics. He had once written on the origins of Romanian place names, but apart from that had no expertise on any of the themes in Șăineanu’s book.316 Șăineanu’s open313 Boia, History, 53, 57, 107. Among Bogdan’s publications in the 1890s were Însemnătatea studiilor slave pentru români (Bucharest: Socecu, 1894) and Româniî și bulgarii. Raporturile culturale și politice între aceste două popoare (Bucharest: Socecu, 1895). 314 Lazăr Șăineanu, “Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române,” Convorbiri literare 34 (1900), no. 5 (15 May): 338–72; no. 6 (15 June): 467–506; no. 7 (15 July): 533–72; no 8 (15 August): 653–89; no. 9 (15 September): 769–93; no. 10 (15 October): 878–925; no. 11 (15 November): 1000–29; no. 12 (15 December): 1053–84. 315 Boia, History, 93, 107, 115–16, 135. Iancu, Juifs, 217; Oldson, Anti-Semitism, 129–30; Șorer, Evreii, 331–32. 316 Alexandru P. Brăescu (b. 1848) became a lawyer in Bacău. He is known for two books of social and political description: Studii sociologice. Un program economico-politico (1888) and Evoluția partidelor (Bucharest, 1896). The latter he published under the pseudonym Rezeșul de la Scurta. Bibliografia Națională Retrospectivă –Biblioteca Academieĭ Române, Bibliografia românească modernă, no. 1431 (on line). He mentions his essay on place names in the course of his review.

ZD_Book.indb 119

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

120

Part One

ing installment in the Convorbirĭ had stressed the Romanian relations with the Ottoman Turks, but Brăescu discussed only those few pages concerning the Tatars: those that described the Tatar invasions over the centuries and reported the few words they had left in their wake. Brăescu defended his Romanians against Șăineanu, whom he accused of imagining an admixture of Moldavian blood with that of the invaders. Some of the words Șăineanu listed had now become Romanian words but were used consciously as “foreign words.” As for the place names cited by Șăineanu, such as Baragan, its origin was Aryan, a Germanic word that had passed from Persia through the Crimea. Brăescu went on to attack Șăineanu’s earlier hypothesis on the identification of the Khazars and the Tatars, even though Șăineanu had not mentioned it in the installment, and misrepresented Șăineanu’s argument about the legendary link in Wallachia and Transylvania between Jews, Tatars, and Giants. Șăineanu’s efforts to provide the Jews an ancient status in Romanian lands must delight the Jewish luminaries, said Brăescu, but he was doomed to failure. The review concluded: Brother in Christ Lazăr Șăineanu has become a Christian. This is too much to take in! All that is left for him to do now is to Romanianize his ideas, just as he has Christianized his thought. Then he will forsake Tatarization just as he has forsaken the devil, and his theories will become more precise and useful.317

Șăineanu and Other Jews In vain Șăineanu tried to separate his scholarship and his quest for naturalization and a professorship from his Jewish origins. The committee on naturalization met once again on his case in early February 1900, and unanimously supported his citizenship. They presented their report to the Chamber of Deputies on April 3, the last session of the Parliamentary year: Șăineanu had Romanianized his name, he was baptized, his conduct was “exemplary,” his previous books had won major prizes.318 N. N. Șoimescu, one-time councillor in the Bucharest city administration, took the floor to announce his shock that a man like Șăineanu had the nerve to 317 Alexandru Brăescu de la Scurta, “Fantaziile uralo-ăltaice ale Domnuluĭ Lazar Șăineanu,” Arhiva. Organul societăţii știinţifice și literare din Iași 9, nos. 7–8 (July-August 1900): 363–69. 318 Voicu, Radiografia, 44–45.

ZD_Book.indb 120

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

Romania

121

ask for citizenship. The flaws in the character and scholarship of “this Jew” had been amply demonstrated in the brochures of Dr. Urechiă and V. Șăghinescu, which Șoimescu then distributed to the deputies. How dare he attack the dictionary of Massim and Laurian, he whose first syllables had been pronounced with a Jewish accent. Imagine what might happen if he became a citizen and was able to take a university chair: a Jew teaching the Romanian language! Awarding Șăineanu citizenship would open the door to other Jews who, loyal as they were first and foremost to their own tribe, would overwhelm the Romanian nation with foreign elements.319 The Chamber decided to postpone a vote on Șăineanu’s case until it met again in the fall. Once again Șăineanu’s godfather, Take Ionescu, now Minister of Finance, let him down, remaining silent during the debate. Even worse, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, his teacher and supporter over so many years, abandoned him and wrote a hostile article for Urechiă’s new nationalist paper, Apărarea națională. Having just retired from his chair in comparative philology, Hasdeu stood by while Ionescu suppressed that chair—precisely the chair that Șăineanu was hoping to acquire once he became a citizen. Hasdeu had his mind elsewhere, including on the preparation of a new edition of his antiSemitic book, Studiu asupra judaismului.320 As for the Romanian Jews themselves, citizenship was currently far from the mind of most of them. In April 1900, so reported the Alliance Israélite Universelle, thousands of Jews were camped at the Romanian border, desperately waiting for help so they could get to to England, Holland, Germany, and on to the United States. Hundreds more were already crowded in Budapest and Vienna, alarming the Austro-Hungarian authorities into barring further passage. Still others were responding to “Zionist agitation” and leaving for Palestine, which had led the Ottoman government to forbid the landing of Jews there. While fully understanding the current plight of the Jews in Romania, the Alliance decided that “it could not in any manner encourage an exodus which, despite the generosity and good will of the Jews of Europe and America, could only end up in a colossal disaster.” At a meeting of all its branches in late June, the Alliance set up procedures to winnow out among the emigrants those who had a chance of being accepted in America or else319 Șăineanu, Carieră, 91–92 (Șoimescu’s speech); Voicu, Radiografia, 45–48. 320 Voicu, Radiografia, 49–50. Șăineanu, Carieră, 46; Carrière, 44–45. C. Șăineanu, L. Șăineanu, 16–17. B. P. Hasdeu, Studiu asupra judaismului, 2nd ed. (Bucharest, 1901).

ZD_Book.indb 121

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:34

122

Part One

where. They would be helped; the rest were to be repatriated to Romania and given assistance there. The situation was indeed dire for anyone in Romania with slender means, Jew or non-Jew. The economy was in crisis and severe drought had led to famine. Peasants were blaming Jewish tradesmen for the cost of provisions, needy boyars were accusing Jewish lenders of ensnaring them in debt, poor workers in the towns were preventing Jews from taking jobs at their side as unskilled laborers or porters—and indeed, new legislation was limiting the percentage of Jewish workers that could be hired at any enterprise. “Frightful destitution,” the Alliance representative wrote from Iași on June 12, 1900. “In this town, with more than 35,000 Jews, at least two-thirds of them are in need of immediate help.”321 At this critical juncture, Lazăr’s brother “Constantin” (to use his baptismal name) published a newspaper article on Jewish emigration that shocked his former coreligionists. The Vienna branch of the Alliance had issued a pamphlet on the desperate plight of the Jews in Romania, which was forcing them to flee. It made a stir in Bucharest such that the Conservative newspaper Epoca began publishing interviews with Jews on the matter. On June 23, 1900, appeared an article volunteered by a “Christian of recent date” and signed “Constantin Șăineanu formerly Mariu.” The Alliance had claimed Jews were emigrating because of poverty and persecution. Poverty, yes, says Constantin, but it is widely shared, and the Jews should expect that it would press on them since commerce and the crafts are so largely in their hands. But the poverty is temporary; a good harvest will remedy it. Jews who leave under such circumstances lack patience. They must have few memories that hold them to Romania, no deep attachment to Romania in their hearts. As for persecution, Constantin denies that it exists. The exclusion of Jews from peddling on the streets is “a justified sacrifice for the greater good of commerce.” In its struggle to support free secondary and university education, surely the government of Romania “need not indulge in the luxury of providing free education for foreigners.” And aren’t thousands of Jews in fact studying in these schools and getting themselves exempt from paying their fees on the pretext of poverty? 321 Isaac Astruc, “Israélites de Roumanie,” Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite universelle, 2nd series (1900): 23– 33, 41–50 (quotation on p. 46). Alexandru Xenopol, La Question Israélite en Roumanie. Article paru dans “La Renaissance latine” du 15 octobre 1902 (Paris: Bureau de la Revue, n.d. [1902]), 4–10. Iancu, Juifs, 256–58. Hitchins, Rumania, 112–13.

ZD_Book.indb 122

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

Romania

123

To the Alliance’s claim that the Jews are denied civil rights and naturalization, Constantin turns the point around and asks, “Can Jews be naturalized? I respond with a categorical ‘No.’” “To sustain itself, any people must be made of homogenous elements... with a community of memories, aspirations and sentiments, and with the same language and faith.” You cannot be Jewish and Romanian at the same time, especially since most Jews are incapable of assimilating. The poor Jews and craftsmen are often religious fanatics; the merchants and bankers think only of their own interest. The only hope is with the young Jewish intellectuals, who have studied in schools with Romanians and have appropriated the Romanian language and sentiments: Only this group can be assimilated. There is only one obstacle: their religion. The duty of this young generation would be, instead of complaining abroad, to overcome this obstacle en masse... If the Jews do not enjoy civil rights, it is because they do not want them. Should they stop being Jews, the gates will open for them.322

Constantin made this attack from a secure position. In the wake of his baptism he had been appointed to teach French at a military school in Bucharest, the Școala di Ofițeridiu Dealul Spirii: the former Jew had been entrusted with future officers in the Romanian army. His godfather Constantin Istrati still remained in touch.323 One wonders whether Istrati himself was not behind the article. The Samitcas and the mysterious Șăineanu sisters must have been taken aback by Constantin Mariu’s publication. And what about his brother Lazăr? The article makes claims about the unimportance of persecution and the happy consequences of conversion that go directly counter to Lazăr’s current experience. Lazăr can not have approved of the publication and was to take a different position on the Jewish predicament some months hence. The two brothers must have had a temporary cooling in their relations. Interestingly enough, when Adolphe Stern, a well-known member of the Jewish community, penned in his diary a sarcastic description of Constantin’s article, he mentioned that “our Mariu” was “a brother of the philologist Lazăr Șăineanu,” but did not implicate

322 Constantin Șăineanu, “In chestia emigrărilor,” Epoca 6, no. 1861–169 (Friday, 23 June 1900): 1. 323 Constantin Șăineanu, Amintiri, 57; L. Șăineanu, 16.

ZD_Book.indb 123

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

124

Part One

Lazăr in the article’s outrageous claims nor mention Lazăr’s conversion.324 Still, Constantin’s blast can not have won empathy for Lazăr’s predicament, from either Christian or Jew.

The Last Months: Publication and Defeat Events moved quickly for Șăineanu and his family. He completed the final work on the Influența orientală and delivered the volumes to the printer (figure 6). His preface to the Vocabulary, dated October 1900, showed him stoutly defending the mixed character of Romanian culture and the Romanian language, even though aware of the critical reaction he could expect: The Oriental influence, and especially that of the Ottomans, has manifested itself in two directions... Of a cultural order, it has been an important factor in the political/social life of our nation for the last two centuries... Of linguistic importance, it has enriched the substance of popular speech with indispensable notions.325

In December he presented the newly published volumes to King Carol, who was optimistic about the success of Șăineanu’s plea for naturalization. Next, he went to Petre Carp, who since July was the new Conservative prime minister. Carp had a reputation of being fairer to Jews than his predecessors in that post, but his brief response to Șăineanu was dispiriting: a quotation from Ovid, “A drop of water hollows a stone, not by force, but by continuous dripping.” At least the current Minister of Education, the lawyer Constantin Arion, praised Șăineanu’s contribution to Romanian philology and promised to defend him before the Chamber.326 December 15 was the fateful day. It had been preceded by a barrage of antiSemitic attacks on Șăineanu in the Apărarea națională, one of which was distributed by Urechiă’s supporters to deputies as they arrived and then attached to the voting urn. In a tumultuous session, the words of the Minister Arion and 324 Sterne, Din viaţa unui evreu român, 133–34, 24 July 1900. Steuermann-Rodion also published a mocking response to Constantin’s article (Șorer, Evreii, 198 n. 7). 325 Șăineanu, Influența orientală, 2, Prefața. 326 Șăineanu, Carieră, 47–48; Sainéan, Carrière, 46–47. On Jewish hopes for Carp and his ministry and for Arion, see Astruc, “Israélites de Roumanie,” Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite universelle, 33–34. Iancu, Juifs, 216.

ZD_Book.indb 124

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

Romania

125

Figure 6. Title page of the first volume of Şăineanu’s study of Near Eastern and especially Ottoman influence on Romanian language and culture, Influența orientală asupra limbei şi culturei române (Bucharest, 1900). https://thereaderwiki.com/ en/Lazăr_Şăineanu

other supporters of Șăineanu could scarcely be heard. (Once again, Take Ionescu was absent.) The vote against Șăineanu’s naturalization won, though interestingly enough, it was close: 48-45. Forty-five deputies recognized the importance of his scholarship and must have agreed with the report of a local newspaper: “If M. Lazăr Șăineanu can not acquire naturalization, then to what Jew could it ever be accorded?” The Apărarea națională trumpeted “The Fall of Lazăr Șăineanu” in its headlines. Our ancestors are tingling with joy in their tombs... How might a Jew teach us the Romanian language, when his ancestors had a heart and soul abysmally different from ours... Honor to the forty-eight deputies who resolved to reject the Jew; shame on the forty-five so-called Romanians who voted to naturalize him... May the Jews not try to enter the fortress of Romanianhood, for they will fall into disgrace, just like Lazăr Șăineanu.327 327 Șăineanu, Carieră, 49–50, 93–96: excerpts from the Apărarea națională, 16 December 1900; La Roumanie, 16–17 December 1900, and Advantul, published in Galați, 30 December 1900; Sainéan, Carrière, 47–49, 55–56 (he included here only the article from La Roumanie).

ZD_Book.indb 125

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

126

Part One

Š  Repairing and Describing His Life: The Philological Career In the next days, the stunned Șăineanu and his family began to think what to do. One of his first actions was to try to restore the important Jewish friendship of his past, not with Schwarzfeld, who had observed his antics up close, but with Gaster in England. On December 20, his letter went off: Honored friend, Much has happened to me since our last amusing time together. I have worn myself out in a difficult endeavor, both moral and social. But in the midst of all the troubles, I have not forgotten for a moment the connection which unites us and, at least for me, in a faith which is indissoluble. Our relation of friendship is too deeply rooted and too sincere to be shaken, not even for a moment, by a difference in points of view, be they of a moral order. I hope, however, that after this sincere explanation, I need not return to this past action, which constitutes in any case the latest fatality in my life. As of today, my situation is still not clear. As long as I imagine malicious men, my expectations are the more pessimistic. I am waiting for this month and the next one to decide on a final direction for my situation. In the midst of this moral agitation, I have had the good fortune to be absorbed in my work on the Influenţa orientală. Dear friend, I have addressed to you one of the first copies and I ask you, when you have the time, to give it some attention. I dare to ask you for a service, if by chance the work interests you. Since the number of copies which I can dispose of personally is very small, I am limiting those I am sending out to a few specialists, and not to reviews. Thus, I would be much obliged if perhaps you would be willing to write about my work in the Archiv für slavische Philologie, where there once appeared Korsch’s review of the works of Miklosich. And what have you been doing? And what of your family? Have you at least escaped troubles and can envision a tranquil future? In many other aspects of life, I am missing good fortune. What keeps up my courage are my wife and daughter, the only joy in my life. In this respect at least, I have been favored and to these two dear ones, I owe the rest of my energy and much of my inspiration.

ZD_Book.indb 126

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

Romania

127

In expectation of your news, I ask you to give my most sincere greetings and those of my wife to your wife and the Friedlander family. And a warmest handclasp from L. Șăineanu328

Gaster never responded to this letter, nor did he send a review of the Influența orientală to the Archiv für slavische Philologie. Some time later, when Șăineanu’s mother-in-law Rose Samitca was in London, she visited Gaster on Lazăr’s behalf: he wanted to renew their friendship. As Gaster recalled the visit, he answered her, “There is only one way. Another bath.” “But it is only nominal,” Rose responded, “his wife and children [sic for child] are not baptised.” Gaster objected that Șăineanu was “persisting in his apostasy.” And that was the end of it.329 By January 1901, Șăineanu had determined to emigrate to Paris, following the path that his brother had denigrated some months before. While Cecilia was packing their belongings, Șăineanu wrote two pieces marking the end of his life in Romania. On January 15, Nicolae Iorga published a long review of the Influența orientală in the prestigious periodical, Noua revistă română. Iorga was by now replacing Xenopol as Romania’s most important historian. A rightwing nationalist and believer in “Romania for Romanians … and only for the Romanians,” Iorga idealized the Latin and peasant past of his countrymen and saw them as inheritors of “eastern Romanity.”330 Șăineanu, he said, was “wellknown among our serious scholars for his fine works in philology, though also published with scholarly errors.” Such was the case once again with his new book on the “Turkish influence, even more, the Oriental influence on us from ... the point of view of philology and cultural history.” Iorga gave only a few examples of historical errors, instead concentrating on alleged mistakes in etymologies and definitions. Șăineanu failed to distinguish between a true Romanian word and a foreign word. What he took to be “Turkisms” were mostly words with a character specific to a Romanian locality.331

328 Lazăr Șăineanu to Moses Gaster, Bucharest, 20 December 1900 in Gaster, CF, 179–80. 329 Moses Gaster, “Things that Were,” 35 in Gaster Collection, University College London Library, MSS and Rare Books, Ms. C. 330 Boia, History, 53, 60, 64–65. Oldson, Providential Anti-Semitism, 132–37. 331 N. Iorga, “Studiile d-lui Șăineanu despre influențile orientale exercitate asupra noastră,” Noua revistă română, 3, no. 26 (15 January 1901): 58–65.

ZD_Book.indb 127

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

128

Part One

Șăineanu, more thin-skinned than ever, responded in the next issue two weeks later, expressing regret that Iorga had not discussed the main issues of the book, but had limited himself to philological minutiae in a field in which he was not a specialist. Șăineanu then addressed the minutiae, thereby encouraging responses from Iorga that would go on for several months. Șăineanu’s alleged errors on the Tatars were among Iorga’s targets.332 Much more significant was Șăineanu’s compelling account of his whole experience in Romania, “an autobiographical memoir,” published in both Romanian and French: A Philological Career in Romania (1885–1900): The Story of a Naturalization (figures 7–8). He wrote it as he prepared to leave, signing his preface 10 February 1901 and dedicating it to his daughter Elisabeth so that she may one day understand the sorrowful years in her father’s life.333 Șăineanu reports his contributions to the study of the Romanian language and literature—and tells of his ardor in that cause. He attributes his troubles to antiSemitism linked to nationalism, as it shaped the actions of irresponsible and unscrupulous members of the ruling elite. He does not blame the Romanian peasants, who over the centuries have kept their “generous and tolerant soul.”334 (Șăineanu surely knew of continuing anti-Jewish episodes in Romanian villages, but was here making a strategic exception: the Romanian people, to whom he wanted to belong, were not at heart anti-Semitic.) No, the fault lay with “the unworthy conduct of some aberrant political figures, who seem determined to compromise [the Romanian nation] in the eyes of the world.” He goes on to name them, recount their misdeeds, and provide further evidence with documents in the appendices: Urechiă, first and foremost, but the Liberal Party leader Dmitrie Sturdza important as well; the faithless Conservative Party minister Take Ionescu; the editor and Academician Jacob Negruzzi; the Conservative Minister of Justice Dissescu, whose “juridi-

332 Șăineanu’s answer appeared in the Noua revistă română, 3, no. 27 (1 February 1901): 128–30. Iorga answered in the same issue with the sarcastic title “Cum raspunde d. Șăineanu cînd îl lauzi,” (130– 36). He had, after all, said some positive things about the book, or so Iorga claimed. Further critiques of the book from Iorga: no. 28 (15 February 1901): 180–87; no. 29 (1 March 1901): 223–28; no. 30 (15 March 1901): 269–77; no. 31 (1 April 1901): 324–32; no. 32 (15 April 1901): 369–79. 333 The Romanian edition was published only in Bucharest; the French edition was printed in Bucharest but had a Parisian distributor as well. Lazăr Șăineanu, O carieră filologică (1885–1900) (Bucharest: Emile Storck. 1901); Lazare Sainéan, Une carrière philologique en Roumanie (1885–1900). Les peripéties d’une naturalisation. Mémoire autobiographique (Bucharest: Emile Storck and Paris: Larousse, 1901), dedication. 334 Sainéan, Carrière, v-vi, “une âme généreuse et tolérante.”

ZD_Book.indb 128

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

Romania

Figure 7. Title page of Lazăr Şăineanu’s autobiographical text describing his antiSemitic ill-treatment in Romania, O Carieră Filologică (1885–1900). Istoricul unei Împămînteniri (Bucharest, 1901).

129

Figure 8. Title page of the French translation of Şăineanu’s autobiographical text, Une Carrière philologique en Roumanie (1885– 1900). Les Péripéties d’une naturalisation (Bucharest, 1901).

cal rigorism” was suspiciously partisan; the vicious deputy Șoimescu.335 Sometimes he presents their anti-Semitism as a holdover, along with other unenlightened ideas, from the days of “oriental despotism” (here he uses a trope he had undermined in his own book) and Phanariote rule. But other times, more presciently, he talks of it as a contemporary phenomenon: “the future historian of Romanian chauvinism will follow with interest these latest convulsions of patriotic delirium, such as it is produced in the modern form of anti-Semitism.”336 In contrast to the Epoca article by his brother Constantin, Lazăr lays no blame for this situation on the Jews. The only remarks critical of Jews he puts in the mouth of anti-Semites. He casts himself as a Jew throughout, and though 335 Sainéan, Carrière, viii, “la conduite indigne de quelques politiciens égarés, dont la dernière ambition semble être de compromettre [la nation roumaine] aux yeux du monde”; 18, 41–43; “le rigorisme juridique,”41. 336 Sainéan, Carrière, v–vii, 24:”[le] despotisme oriental”, 47: “Le future historien du chauvinisme roumain suivra là avec intérêt les dernières convulsions du délire patriotique, tel qu’il se produisit sous la forme moderne de l’antisémitisme.”

ZD_Book.indb 129

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

130

Part One

many Romanian readers would have heard of his baptism, he makes no direct mention of it.337 He does play down, however, and even misrepresents his own contribution to Jewish emancipation during the 1880s. That he omits reference to his Dialectological Study of Judeo-German could be justified, as the book was not directly connected to the Romanian language. That he claims never to have published anything on current politics—an action prohibited to “foreigners” in Romania under penalty of expulsion—was disingenuous, for if his articles in Fraternitatea and the Anuar pentru Israeliți were about the past, they had implications for the present. His “solemn declaration,” repeated from an earlier publication, that “no line from my hand has appeared in any Jewish journal in Romania or abroad” was simply not true.338 Indeed, one of the articles published in the Jewish Anuar was his “Jews or Tatars or Giants,” the essay that Urechiă and others had used as the major evidence for Șăineanu’s lack of patriotism. Șăineanu takes full responsibility for that essay, though he reports its publication only in Convorbiri literare and Romania and omits its appearance in a Jewish setting. It was, he says, an “objective” effort to explain “a strange association of ethnic names” dating from medieval times. He quotes the controversial paragraphs: Khazari Jews are present in Wallachia along with Romanian peasants and a population of local Jews. “From these passages…M. Urechiă concluded that I was arguing for the earlier presence of the Jews over the Romanians and that I was thus an adversary of the continuity of the Romanian element in Dacia. [Such a] conclusion accords with my study as scholarship accords with the intelligence of M. Urechiă.” (In support of this crack, Șăineanu includes in the appendix to the Romanian edition of his book disparaging reviews of Urechiă’s publications and an exposé of his false claims to memberships in learned academies.)339 337 Sainéan, Carrière, 20 (Urechiă), 22 (Sturdza), 32 (Hasdeu, Urechiă), 44 (Soïmescu). As suggested above, his comment about having “having informed himself on the contemporary religious problem and come to a certain clarity about it” (“c’est là également que j’ai eu l’occasion de me mettre au courant du problème religieux contemporain, et qu’il m’a semblé être arrivé à une certaine clarté à cet égard”) during his time in Berlin (Carrière, 39) seems to be an indirect reference to his baptism, but he does not efface his Jewish identity at any point in the memoir. 338 Sainéan, Carrière, 36–37; 36: “je déclare solennellement qu’aucune ligne de ma main n’a paru dans les journaux israélites du pays et de l’Étranger.”. 339 Sainéan, Carrière, 18–20; 18: “je me proposais d’élucider cette bizarre association de noms ethniques en l’expliquant par une hypothèse historique.”; 20 “tel est l’étude absolument objective”; 20: “M. Urechiă. . .a conclu que j’aurais soutenu l’antériorité des Juifs sur les Roumains, et que je serais, par conséquent, un adversaire de la continuité de l’élément roumain en Dacie, une conclusion qui s’accorde avec mon étude comme la science avec l’intelligence de M. Urechiă.”

ZD_Book.indb 130

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

Romania

131

Șăineanu adds two other elements to account for his torments. The first is Article VII of the Constitution, which provided the procedure by which those who were non-Orthodox Christians could seek naturalization as Romanian citizens. Whereas in his Haskalah days, he had opposed the very category of “foreigners,” “étrangers,” for those born in Romania, he focuses now only on the abusive practices that had grown up around the article: rules that were themselves in contradiction to the constitution and drawn-out procedures that allowed the law to be used as a “vindictive weapon by one’s adversary”: The manner in which naturalizations are carried out for so-called foreigners, that is, for Jews born in [Romania], and in particular those who deserve well of the country, constitutes a shameful degradation of one’s character and dignity, an attack on human nature.340

Finally, Șăineanu calls attention to the state of scholarship in Romania more generally. It is a new country, “intellectual work has barely begun,” traditions of scholarship scarcely exist. Whether or not a successor carries on his teaching is a matter of indifference to a man like Hasdeu.341 Smarting from the most unworthy of attacks and from the final rejection of his naturalization, Șăineanu takes comfort in the thought that his books would win him an honorable position in “any civilized country in Europe,” including the one just published, The Oriental Influence on Romanian Language and Culture. He concludes in farewell: I am proud to be able to give this book to the country as supreme proof of my love for the Romanian language and people. If it is my destiny to finish my days on foreign soil, I will be seen as always faithfully devoted to this language, to which I have given the most beautiful years of my life and will at least console me for my lost fatherland.342 340 Sainéan, Carrière, 3, 24–27, 42; 26: “une arme vindictive, entre les mains de votre adversaire”; 27: La façon dont se pratiquent les naturalisations pour les soi-disant étrangers, c’est-à-dire pour les Juifs nés dans le pays, en particulier pour ceux qui ont bien mérité de la patrie, constitue une honteuse dégradation du caractère et de la dignité, un réel attentat contre la nature humaine!” 341 Sainéan, Carrière, 44–45; 44: “Nulle part de continuité, de respect pour une tradition.” 342 Sainéan, Carrière, 44–45, 48–49; 49: “des oeuvres qui m’auraient valu une position honorable dans n’importe quel pays civilisé de l’Europe,” 49:‘’Je suis fier de pouvoir, à cette heure, donner au pays ce livre, comme suprême témoignage de mon amour pour la langue et le peuple roumains. Si c’est mon destin de finir mes jours sur le sol étranger, on me verra toujours fidèle au culte de cette langue, à laquelle j’ai consacré les plus belles années de ma vie, et c’est elle qui me consolera tout au moins de la patrie perdue.”

ZD_Book.indb 131

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35



ZD_Book.indb 132

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:35

Pa r t Two

France

The New Émigré By early April 1901, Șăineanu, his wife, and daughter were established in their Paris apartment, and Lazăr was complaining to his brother about the terrible spring weather. By early May, he had applied to the police and the ministry of justice for the right for the family to be domiciled in France, with the intention of becoming naturalized there. He had been made a member of the Société de Linguistique de Paris, presented by the great Michel Bréal himself and the IndoEuropeanist Victor Henry, and the Société des Traditions Populaires had also welcomed him to its ranks. He was corresponding with his “cher maître” Gaston Paris about his next article in Romania and announcing to him that henceforth his name was “Lazare Sainéan”—and so we will now call him as well.1 These early months were a bracing contrast to his recent life in Romania. Still, the France into which Sainéan was entering as a would-be citizen had political quarrels and movements of its own, some resembling those in Romania. Dreyfus, now pardoned, was just publishing Cinq années de ma vie 1894– 1899, and the country was polarized around his case. Leagues had been formed in defense of the army and the church; some were monarchist as well, but all were against Dreyfus and virulently anti-Semitic. Among them was La Ligue de la Patrie Française, which had included scholars and intellectuals among its founders in 1898 and had some 500,000 members by the time Sainéan came to France. If Sainéan saw that list, he would have been disappointed to note the 1 The family left Bucharest in March 1901 (SSI 3: 477). Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 11 April 1901, 19 May 1901, in Sainéan, Lettres, 11–12. ANF, BB/11 3885–303 Xo1, document 1: request from Lazare-Moise –H. Sainéanu for domicile in France for himself, his wife, and his daughter, 11 May 1901. BSLP, 12 (1901–1903): iv, viii, meetings of 4 and 18 May 1901. Lazare Sainéan to Gaston Paris, Paris, 25 May 1901, ANF, Nouv. Acq fr. 24456 (Correspondance Gaston Paris), ff. 20–23.

ZD_Book.indb 133

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

134

Part Two

names of the recently deceased Charles Marty-Lavaux, editor of what then passed for the standard edition of Rabelais’s oeuvre; Arthur Chuquet, professor of Germanic languages and literature at the Collège de France; and the great Occitan lexicographer Frédéric Mistral.2 In contrast to Romania, however, the Société de Linguistique de Paris offered Sainéan an institutional setting where Jews were welcome and Dreyfusards flourished. Along with the founder Michel Bréal, Salomon and Théodore Reinach were members of the Société, Salomon now a curator at the Louvre and an important cultural critic. Their older brother, the well-known political figure Joseph Reinach, was one of the mainstays of the Ligue française pour la défense des droits de l’homme, and his Histoire de l’affaire Dreyfus was being published as Sainéan arrived in France.3 Sainéan could also see Joseph Halévy at Linguistic Society gatherings: Halévy was the teacher who had introduced Amharic manuscripts to Sainéan’s brother in his pre-baptism days when he was still called Mariu. At the May 1901 meeting where Sainéan’s membership was confirmed, Halévy gave a talk on the earliest word for a “sage” in the Semitic languages. Sainéan, who had written on the history of Romanian words for “philosopher,” offered a comment.4 A month later the Society awarded its new Bibesco Prize to Sainéan’s Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române. Founded by Prince Alexandre Bibesco, the prize—limited to works written in French, Romanian, or Latin—brought 1,000 francs to the author of the best book published during the past five years on the Romance languages, especially on Romanian. Sainéan’s book won over several others submitted by Romanian scholars, including 2 Dreyfus, Cinq années. At the end, Dreyfus describes how his brother Mathieu persuades him to drop his immediate request to appeal the guilty verdict of the Rennes trial so that he can be granted pardon. Dreyfus issues a statement anticipating his later efforts with his brother to seek a new verdict and rehabilitation: “[Liberté] n’est rien pour moi sans l’honneur . . . Je veux que la France entière sache par un jugement définitif qui je suis innocent” (327). On the various Leagues, see Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies, 118–34. “Première déclaration de la ‘Patrie Française’ et liste des premiers adhérents,” in Jules Lemaître, L’Action républicaine et sociale de la Patrie française: discours prononcé à Grenoble le 23 décembre 1900 (Paris: La Patrie Française, 1900), 27, 30, 32. Marty-Lavaux died a year after the Ligue was founded in 1898. 3 List of members for the year 1901, BSLP, 12 (1901–1903): xliii. Burns, France and the Dreyfus Affair, 78–79, 107, 129, 134; Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies, 13, 71–73, 114; McAuley, House of Fragile Things, 75; Joseph Reinach, Histoire de l’Affaire. 4 “Séance du 18 mai 1901,” BSLP 12 (1901–1903): viii-ix. Șăineanu, “Le sens du mot philosophe dans la langue roumaine,” Romania 17 (1888): 599–602. Halévy also discussed the similarity between a word in Turkish, Hungarian, and Slav, and Sainéan may have responded on this as well. C. Șăineanu, Amintiri, 30, 35–36; M. Șăineanu, L’Abyssinie, “Ouvrages consultés.”

ZD_Book.indb 134

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

Fr ance

135

the Histoire de la langue roumaine of Ovid Densușianu. Densușianu, in his post at the University of Bucharest, must have smarted at his loss to the Jewish philologist to whose departure from Romania he had contributed.5 In the linguistic world into which Sainéan was entering, Michel Bréal was still a major figure for him, and he would acknowledge Bréal’s role in the next years.6 But that world was increasingly framed by the ideas of Antoine Meillet. Meillet, now in his mid-thirties, had been a student of Bréal and Fernand de Saussure. An accomplished and wide-ranging Indo-Europeanist, he was in 1901 teaching comparative grammar and the Zend language of Persia at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and the Armenian language at the École des Langues Orientales. (He would in the next years also publish books on Latin and ancient Greek.)7 While the elderly Bréal continued as secretary of the Société de Linguistique and actively participated in its discussions, Meillet would soon take over as its intellectual leader. Meillet offered his agenda in his Introduction à l’ étude comparative des langues indo-européennes of 1903 and again in his inaugural lecture of 1906, when he succeeded Michel Bréal in the chair of Comparative Grammar at the Collège de France. Language was a social phenomenon.8 The linguist described the phonetic and morphological systems of the language or cluster of related languages under scrutiny and the history of changes within them. In doing so, he drew on the anatomical, physiological, and psychological conditions that affected human speech. (The psychological included, for instance, the human preference for speech forms that were analogous—say verbs conjugated with similar endings—to those that were anomalous.) Universal phonetic and morphological laws governed language change, but, said Meillet, they established only possibilities for the direction of change. His5 “Séance du 8 mai 1901,” “Séance du 29 juin 1901,” BSLP 12 (1901–1903): v-vii, xvi-xx. Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 30 June 1901, in Sainéan, Lettres, 13. Writing his brother immediately after the awarding of the prize, Sainéan did not yet realize that the full Romanian edition, with all three volumes, had been honored. But he savored the fact that French scholars had appreciated a work that had been dismissed by the Romanian Academy, with which he had left the book before his departure. 6 Sainéan, Création métaphorique, 2: Preface. Lazare Sainéan, Presidential address, 18 January 1908, BSLP 15 (1907–1908): vi-vii. Reminiscence of a gathering with Bréal and his students in SSI, 3: 482. 7 List of members of the Société de Linguistique and their posts as of February 1902, BSLP 12 (1901– 1903): xlii. On Meillet’s work and its importance, see Iordan and Orr, Romance Linguistics, 296–308. 8 Meillet, Introduction à l’ étude comparative. Antoine Meillet, “L’État actuel des études de linguistique générale,” inaugural lecture to the course in comparative grammar, Collège de France, 13 February 1906, in Meillet, Linguistique historique, 1–18.

ZD_Book.indb 135

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

136

Part Two

torical and social factors also made a difference. The mixture of populations through conquest, migration, and other exchange led to language borrowing of all kinds. Social structure had a major impact on how people spoke. Even the customs for making marriage—endogamous or exogamous—were important, affecting whether infants first learned language from parents who spoke alike or spoke differently. Indeed, the subject of Meillet’s first set of lectures at the Collège de France was the relation between the development of language and other “social facts.”9 Like his teachers, Meillet had discarded any link between race and language and the Darwinian associations of the nineteenth century. He did continue to make judgments, but not so as to discourage a wide exploration of language. The Indo-European family of languages was “the most important in the world,” but he looked forward to further comparative study of the Semitic family of languages. The Indians of North America and the blacks of Africa were perhaps “inferior [in] civilisation,” but there was “nothing primitive” about their languages, whose grammatical systems were “very delicate and complex.”10 Thus, when shortly after his arrival in Paris, Sainéan turned to the study of argot as a “popular language” of France, he could expect encouragement not only from Bréal but also from Meillet. When Sainéan gave a talk drawn from his Oriental Influence to the Linguistic Society in the summer of 1901, his model was one that Meillet would approve: a Romance language of the IndoEuropean family, spoken continuously by the population of Romanian lands into which Turkish words of another language family had been added as loan words (emprunts).11 When Sainéan described Judeo-German, as he did at Society meetings several months later, he could hope that Meillet would again support his choice.12 9 Meillet, Introduction, 373–74; Meillet, “État actuel,” 15–18. Meillet, Linguistique historique, 15, 17: clear statements of the anatomical, physiological, and psychological elements in linguistic formation and, since language is a “social institution,” the importance of considering social and historical elements in language change. 10 Meillet, Introduction, 28, 49–51, 378, 412. 11 Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 1 June 1901, 30 June 1901, in Lettres, 12, 14. Lazare Sainéan, Presentation on whether there were pre-Ottoman elements in the Romanian language. Sainéan showed that pre-Ottoman elements were few, but that Ottoman elements were numerous. Sainéan’s talk was given a few weeks before his book was awarded the Bibesco Prize. BSLP 12 (1901– 1903): ix. 12 Lazare Sainéan, Presentation on the impact of Yiddish on the pronunciation of Hebrew by Ashkenazi Jews, 30 November 1901, BSLP 12 (1901–1903): xxiii; Lazare Sainéan, Presentation on the origins of Judeo-German speech, 11 January 1902, BSLP 12 (1901–1903): lxix.

ZD_Book.indb 136

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

Fr ance

137

Along with the Société de Linguistique, Sainéan had a second intellectual setting for his aspirations in France, that of Gaston Paris and of Paris’s now celebrated former student Joseph Bédier, who was shaping the next generation of teachers of French as he lectured at the École Normale.13 Sainéan did not always receive encouragement from the man he called his “maître.” Paris had just published a book on the fifteenth-century poet François Villon, yet another step in his quest to portray the literature, language, and spirit of the French nation. Here Paris had described as “deplorable” that poet’s association with the Coquillards, a gang of petty thieves, pickpockets, card sharks, and pimps. Villon had learned to speak their jargon (as argot was then called) and more than once took part in their misdeeds. Paris warmly praised most of Villon’s poetry: its versatility in poetic forms, its mixture of the comic and the serious, and its originality in taking the self for its subject. In contrast, the ballads written in the “jargon de la Coquille ... added nothing to Villon’s glory as a poet ... They have no value of any kind.”14 Gaston conceded that the ballads in jargon may have had an audience when they were published in 1489, along with the rest of Villon’s poetry, but “today they would be of interest only to philologists.” Nonetheless, when Sainéan told Paris that he was embarking on a scholarly study of “l’ancien Argot, the language of criminals,” Paris was shocked. “Such a study is not worthy of a true philologist.” As we will see, Sainéan stuck to his plan, determined to show Paris that a serious linguistic study of “ jargon” was possible.15 In contrast to this outburst on argot, Paris had continued to encourage the study of the “popular languages” of France, the patois, even while treasuring the literary French that had become the national tongue. His call for a linguistic atlas of France, which Sainéan had read and perhaps even heard when first delivered in 1888, had found a willing respondent in Jules Gilliéron. Gilliéron had created a long questionnaire for such an atlas: “how do you say ‘quel âge as-tu?’” (how old are you?), “how do you say ‘abeille?’” (bee), and the like. His 13 Both were members of the Société d’Histoire littéraire de la France, centered on literature rather than language, and Paris was its current president. Gaston Paris was a life-member of the Société de Linguistique de Paris and gave a speech in honor of Michel Bréal at a Society banquet in December 1900, but rarely attended meetings. Bédier was not a member of the latter, his interests focusing on literature rather than language. Meeting of 1 December 1900, BSLP, 11 (1898–1901): clxxxi. Corbellari, Bédier, 144, 144 n. 36. 14 Paris, Villon, 67, 116, 136–37, 151. 15 Paris, Villon, 117. The edition referred to by Paris is François Villon, Le Grant Testament Villon et le Petit. Son codicille. Le Jargon et ses balades (Paris: P. Levet, 1489). SSI, 3: 484.

ZD_Book.indb 137

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

138

Part Two

collaborator Edgar Edmont then visited 639 communes across France and nearby parts of French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland and put these questions to men and a few women of different status and age. From Edmont’s phonetic record of their responses Gilliéron created the atlas, devoting each page to one word or phrase. At the meeting of the Société de Linguistique in June 1901, two weeks after Sainéan’s induction, he heard an announcement of good news: the Atlas Linguistique de France would shortly be published.16 Sainéan was to make use of this linguistic treasure by Gilliéron, whose Revue des patois galloromans he had admired for years and whose acquaintance he now sought. Especially important was Sainéan’s relation with Joseph Bédier, whom he was now to call “his dear friend.” The two had already met in their student days at one of Paris’s weekly gatherings at his home.17 Then in his Basmele of 1895, Sainéan had drawn attention to Bédier’s newly published edition of medieval Fabliaux for its compelling critique of the Indian origin of those tales, the view stubbornly held by their teacher Paris. Bédier had allowed in that book for the possibility of the independent creation of similar tales in different places, a central belief for Sainéan, although the more likely scenario for Bédier was a single creation in some locality and its rapid dissemination. Whereas the authors of folk tales for Sainéan were unknown generations of villagers, the creators or reshapers of fabliaux for Bédier were wandering clerics and minstrels, catering to a bourgeois audience, and in important instances, one knew their names.18 In his work on Tristan et Iseut, Bédier had developed his argument further. Having published his reconstruction of the story in modern French prose, Bédier edited one of the medieval French poems about Tristan. He was finishing up his commentary on the origins of such tales during 1901, and Sainéan had ample opportunity to hear his views. Elements of the tale had come into France early from Celtic sources, so Bédier claimed; trouvères and troubadours had circulated motifs from the tale in their ballads. Finally, an archetype had been created, “the romance of Tristan,” a biographical tale of the love and death of Tristan and Isolde. The story had been brought together by a poet, “a man of genius,” around the early twelfth century. The later versions are variations of this archetype.19 16 Meeting of 1 June 1901, BSLP 12 (1901–1903): ix-x. 17 Sainéan, Création métaphorique, 1: Avant propos, Novembre 1904: “notre cher ami M. Joseph Bédier.” SSI, 480–81. 18 Bédier, Fabliaux, 2nd ed. (1895). Corbellari, Bédier, 98–99, 114–15. 19 Thomas, Le Roman de Tristan. Poème du XIIe siècle, ed. Joseph Bédier, 2 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1902–1905), 2: 101–103, 116, 133, 155–72, 186–87 (“homme de génie”). Corbellari, Bédier, 170–88. According to Corbellari, Bédier had finished these volumes by early November 1901 (163, n. 1).

ZD_Book.indb 138

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

Fr ance

139

As he began to contemplate studying the popular languages of France, Sainéan surely had to take seriously Bédier’s view, so different from his own accounts of how such tales were created, where “the people,” not a single genius, were the source. At least here, in contrast with his native Romania, he could sustain his own position within a circle of scholarly friendship and collaboration.

Š  Living and Making a Living; Some Translations Along with the intellectual excitement of his new life in France, Sainéan had to address the hard questions of how he was going to make a career and support his family. He had an annual income of 3000 francs from his investments, so he told the government officials right after his arrival, but the rent for the family’s apartment on the boulevard de Clichy was already eating up 1600 francs. Several months later, the family moved to a somewhat cheaper flat in the Latin Quarter, and then in 1904 settled nearby on the rue Berthollet, where they owed the landlord only 735 francs per year.20 Cecilia must have counted on regular gifts from her parents, as the Samitca publishing house continued to flourish in Craiova, and Sainéan presumably expected some income from his publications. But how to insert himself into French academic life? Gaston Paris responded promptly to Sainéan’s arrival. He welcomed French translations of some of Sainéan’s Romanian studies for publication in Romania and counseled him on places for publishing others. Especially important, he tried to find a post for Sainéan teaching Romanian philology and language at the section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études devoted to the “historical and philological sciences.” Paris had been called by Michel Bréal to teach at the EPHE at its foundation in January 1869, and the two of them were still on the supervisory board of the history/philology section in 1901. Yet Paris’s efforts fell through. Courses in non-Romance languages were being offered—Ethio20 ANF, BB/11 3885–3030 Xo1 Sainéan, Lazare: 11 May 1901, request for residency permit, address: 43 boulevard de Clichy; December 1902, request for naturalization, address: 3 rue des Feuillantines, 5e arrondissement; 1 June 1904, request for naturalization, address: 28 rue Berthollet. The Sainéan family had already moved to the rue des Feuillantines by September 1901, when Lazare wrote his brother Constantin from that address, Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 9 September 1901, Lettres, 14.

ZD_Book.indb 139

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

140

Part Two

pian, Zende, and Arabic, for example—but evidently a separate course in Romanian was not wanted.21 More telling for the future, Paris did not integrate Sainéan into his own long-established course at the EPHE on Romance Philology. Paris was teaching it jointly with a Hispanist and with Antoine Thomas, a specialist in the historical etymology of the French language.22 Slightly older than Sainéan, Thomas had studied years before with Gaston Paris and Arsène Darmesteter. When Darmesteter died suddenly in 1888, Thomas had been asked to write parts of the historical/philological essay that opened the great Dictionnaire général de la langue française, which Darmesteter had been working on with Adolphe Hatzfeld for the past seventeen years. By 1899, Thomas was teaching medieval French literature and language at the Sorbonne, the chair once held by Darmesteter, and had joined Gaston Paris’s course on Romance Philology at the EPHE. There he gave lectures on the Vulgar Latin from which French had evolved. During the academic year 1900–1901, finding his academic duties too onerous, Thomas asked Mario Roques, a brilliant young participant in the seminar, to be his substitute in lecturing on Vulgar Latin and its dialects. So successful was Roques that Thomas asked him again for the following year.23 Thus, in the summer of 1901, when Sainéan was seeking a way to teach Romance philology at the EPHE, the most likely opening for him was already filled, and filled by a gifted scholar some of whose interests were uncannily like his own. The young Roques had studied with Paris, Thomas, and Bédier, to whom he became very close, and was now finishing a thesis on the writings of Gregory the Great. But Roques also had learned Romanian at the École des Études Orientales and would put that language to use in later publication and teaching. He quickly became interested in Gilliéron’s linguistic geography and 21 Gaston Paris to Lazare Sainéan, Paris, 20 March 1901 in SVSc, 143. Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 19 May 1901, Lettres, 12; SSI, 3: 479. Bähler, Paris, 124–126. 22 EPHE Sciences historiques et philologiques , “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1898–1899, Philologie romane,” Annuaire 1900, 62–64; “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1899–1900, Philologie romane,” Annuaire 1901, 91–93; ” Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1900–1901, Philologie romane,” Annuaire 1902, 80–83; “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1901–1902, Philologie romane”, Annuaire 1903, 36, 71–74. Bergounioux, Origines, 142–44. Bähler, Paris, 125–26. 23 Thomas, Essais de philologie française. Adolphe Hatzfeld and Arsène Darmesteter, with the assistance of Antoine Thomas, Dictionnaire général de la langue française du commencement du XVIIe siècle jusqu’ à nos jours (Paris: C. Delagrave, 1895–1901), 1: xxv, 3–32, 360–61, 496–99. EPHE, Sciences historiques et philologiques “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1900–1901,” Annuaire 1902, 83; “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1901–1902,” Annuaire 1903, 74. Bähler, Paris, 59, 289–90, 331.

ZD_Book.indb 140

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

Fr ance

141

was to collaborate with him in the future. In 1903, at Paris’s death, Roques was giving lectures in his own right in the Romance Philology seminar at the EPHE, as well as teaching the historical grammar of the French language at the École Normale. A few years later he would also become professor of Romanian at the Études Orientales.24 Back in 1901, Gaston Paris was not going to jeopardize Roques’s career for Sainéan, as much as he wanted to help the latter. He turned the Romanian émigré toward another solution: to propose a course in the EPHE’s Section for Religious Studies on the folklore of eastern Europe. Sainéan did so, giving it the additional title “the folklore of the Balkans in its relation with classical mythology,” essentially the theme of his Basmele. His proposal was accepted as one of the “free” courses, that is, courses given not by the directeurs d’ études and maîtres de conférences on the EPHE staff, but by outsiders, and paid, if at all, very modestly. “It’s a purely ‘honorary’ post,” Sainéan wrote to his brother, “but I’ve accepted it to get started. It’s true that it will take hard work, but still I’m feeling proud.”25 The Section for Religious Studies was an exciting center, if Sainéan wanted to take advantage of it. Among others on the permanent faculty, Sylvain Lévi, professor at the Collège de France and ardent Dreyfusard, was lecturing on the religions of India, while the young sociologist Marcel Mauss had just been appointed to teach the religions of “non-civilised peoples.” In his course that year, the Catholic Modernist Alfred Loisy was expounding his literary and historical approach to the Bible, an approach that had already led to his being fired from the Institut Catholique and would soon bring condemnation from Pope Leo XIII.26 Sainéan might well empathize with such rejection. 24 EPHE, Sciences historiques et philologiques, “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1899–1900,” Annuaire 1901, 91–93; “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1900–1901,” Annuaire 1902, 82–83; “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1901–1902,” Annuaire 1903, 74; “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1902–1903,” Annuaire 1904 (Paris, 1903), 82–84; “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1903–1904,” Annuaire 1905, 69–72. Bähler, Paris, 151–54, 336. Corbellari, Bédier, 50, 147, 311–13. Jean Frappier, “Nécrologie. Mario Roques (1875–1961),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 4, no. 14 (1961): 219–21. Mario Roques, “L’Évangéliaire roumain de Coresi (1561),” Romania 36 (1907): 429– 34. Gilliéron and Roques, Études de géographie linguistique. 25 EPHE, Sciences religieuses, Un rapport sommaire sur les conférences de l’exercice 1901–1902 (Paris, 1902), 27, 47. SSI, 479. Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 30 November 1901, in Lettres, 15. Writing his brother on 8 March 1903, Sainéan says that though he is teaching the course, “nothing has changed in regard to my finances since my arrival [in France]; I am still reduced to my own resources” (17). 26 EPHE, Sciences religieuses, Un rapport sommaire sur les conférences de l’exercise 1901–1902, 29, 32– 33, 46 . “Alfred Firmin Loisy 1857–1959,” Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology, ed. Wesley Wildman and Derek Michaud (online). Loisy’s Religion d’Israel, a literary and historical

ZD_Book.indb 141

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

142

Part Two

Alas, his association with the EPHE lasted two years at most. The course started well enough: Sainéan’s opening lecture on “the current state of affairs in folklore studies” was promptly published in Henri Berr’s Revue de synthèse historique and reviewed favorably by Salomon Reinach in an anthropological journal, though received somewhat critically by the reviewer in Durkheim’s L’Année sociologique.27 (These responses were coming from vanguard intellectual circles.) There Sainéan put to rest the Indian origin of the tales and the anthropological focus on the tales as sources for prehistoric or ancient customs. Rather the recurrence of certain themes, such as the successful outcome for actors who appeared at first weak and unlikely, was due to essential creative qualities of human culture, or as Sainéan put it, in an expression of his deeply held belief: The creative power of the popular imagination, inventing for the sole pleasure of invention, and especially of concepts destined to lead to the emergence of the moral concerns of their world.28

Sainéan went on to examine the anthropological and historical themes in the tales and then turned to their narrative form and language. Nine persons attended them over the year, a number dwarfed by the 149 crowding into the lecture hall for Loisy, but still a little larger than the seven following Isidore Lévy’s cours libre on the religion of the ancient northern Semites.29 During the reading of the Old Testament, was published in early 1901. It also attempted to bring anthropological findings to bear on the evolution of religion. 27 Sainéan, “L’état actuel.” Salomon Reinach, “L’histoire du folklore,” L’Anthropologie, 13 (1902): 541– 43. Salomon was currently embroiled in a controversty over the authenticity of a golden tiara recently acquired by the Louvre, but was still very attentive to Sainéan’s text. Salomon Reinach, “La tiare de Saitaphernès,” L’Anthropologie, 14 (1903): 238–48; McAuley, House of Fragile Things, 75–77. The critical review by Henri Hubert appeared in L’Année sociologique 6 (1901–1902): 271–72. 28 “La puissance créatrice de l’imagination populaire, inventant pour le seul plaisir de inventer, et surtout des conceptions destinées à faire ressortir les préoccupations morales de ce monde à part.”Lazare Sainéan, “L’État actuel,” 148. 29 EPHE,Sciences religieuses, Un rapport sommaire sur les conférences de l’exercise 1901–1902, 45–47. Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 28 January 1902, in Lettres, 15–16. SVSc , “Curs de Folklor Balcanic,” 131–32. One of the auditors in Sainéan’s class was the Romanian linguist and folklorist Iosif Popovici (1876–1928). Popovici was at the same time taking Gaston Paris’s seminar, for which he prepared a book review of Sainéan’s Influenţa orientală asupra limbei şi culturei române (EPHE, Sciences historiques et philologiques, “Rapport sur les conférences de l’année 1901–1902,” Annuaire 1903, 72).Interestingly enough, when Popovici returned to Romania, he published in the periodical Transilvania what Sainéan called a “diatribe” against the Influența orientalață. Sainéan mocked the article, quoting other scholars to the effect that it was full of errors. SVSc, 83–84. On Popovici’s career, see Bîrlea, Istoria, 419–21.

ZD_Book.indb 142

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:36

Fr ance

143

last weeks of his lectures in June 1902, Sainéan was cheered to learn that the Institut de France had awarded its prestigious Volney Prize in comparative and general linguistics to the historical volume of his Influența orientală.30 Sainéan’s course was announced again for 1902–1903, and in early March 1903 he wrote to his brother that he was giving his lectures. But something went wrong, for in the annual report for that year, the EPHE administrators claimed that the “the cours libre on the Folklore of Eastern Europe, though authorised, did not take place.” They went on to say that henceforth any request to give a cours libre would have to include a detailed plan for its classes, which suggests that there were gaps or unexpected shifts in the subjects of Sainéan’s lectures.31 As we will see, during the spring of 1903, he was rethinking his whole plan for future research. Such a shift may have unsettled his lectures on Balkan tales. After 1903, the 44-year-old Sainéan never again held a teaching position in France and seems to have made little effort to remake himself for some niche where he could fit.32 Reviews of his publications in the next years were positive, and there were to be more prizes in the offing. Antoine Thomas, who never invited him to teach in his Romance Philology seminar, supported him later for a role on a major French literary enterprise, as we will see. Perhaps word had got around that Lazare Sainéan was a splendid scholar but a poor teacher. Whatever the case, Sainéan and his family had to live from their own resources. In seeking naturalization in France in 1902–1904, he assured officials he had a private income, and one of them added in the margin of Sainéan’s request that “the applicant seems to have a comfortable situation.” Cécile was worried, however, and for a time in late 1902, she wanted Lazare to become a French citizen on his own in order to save on the naturalization fee, a reserva30 Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 22 June 1902, in Lettres, 16. Antoine Meillet had won the prize in 1898 for his Recherches sur l’emploi du génitif-accusatif en vieux slave (1897). 31 EPHE, Sciences religieuses, Un rapport sommaire sur les conférences 1901–1902 et le programme des conférences pour l’exercise 1902–1903, 51: Sainéan’s course on the “Folklore de l’Europe orientale: La classification et les thèmes des contes balkaniques” is announced as a Cours libre for 1902–1903. EPHE, Sciences religieuses, Rapport sommaire sur les conférences de l’exercice 1902–1903 , 97 : “Le cours libre sur le Folklore de l’Europe orientale, pour lequel une autorisation avait été accordée à M. Lazare Sainéan, ancien professeur à l’Université de Bucarest, n’a pas eu lieu.” Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 8 March 1903: “Je continue toujours mon cours ‘libre’ à l’École des Hautes Études,” in Lettres, 17. In his later “Histoire de mes ouvrages,” Sainéan says “j’ai continué pendant deux ans à enseigner à l’École des Hautes Études.” (SSI, 3:480). 32 Constantin Șăineanu affirmed his brother’s lack of employment in Sainéan, Lettres, 15 n. 2, 46 n. 3 and in his biography of his brother, Șăineanu, 46.

ZD_Book.indb 143

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

144

Part Two

tion which might well have thwarted the success of the application. By 1904, when they had moved to their cheaper apartment on the rue Berthollet, she changed her mind and joined his request. In July 1904, Lazare Sainéan, his wife Cécile, and daughter Elisabeth were declared French citizens, among the roughly 2,000 persons naturalized that year.33 Henceforth, Sainéan depended on scholarly associations to keep his professional ties afloat. He was an early member of the Société amicale Gaston Paris, founded right after the master’s death in March 1903, and he worked with Joseph Bédier and Mario Roques as they prepared their bibliography of Paris’s far-flung publications.34 Sainéan’s most important institutional base in the next years was, as already suggested, the Société de Linguistique de Paris. He attended many of its bi-monthly meetings, where fifteen to twenty linguists listened to and commented on each other’s presentations. Meillet and Bréal were always there, giving talks and responding helpfully to Sainéan’s etymological offerings. He and Antoine Thomas had ample occasion to debate the origin of old French words. Though Sainéan had no students of his own, he could welcome young Marcel Cohen as a member in 1905, comment on his presentation on the lingo used by pupils at the École Polytéchnique and note with satisfaction the impact on Cohen of his own work on popular languages. (Cohen would later have a distinguished career as a linguist.) He could meet the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, who was received as a member in 1908, and hear his new evidence on the languages of social groups, especially children.35 And Sainéan could savor his own role in the Society, becoming Vice President and then President in 1908. In that capacity he presented the Bibesco Prize, which 33 Archives Nationales de France, BB11 3885-3030 xo Sainéan Lazare: documents of 2 December 1902, 12 March 1903, 1 June 1904, 11 July 1904. After Cécile’s refusal to join Lazare’s request, the Garde des Sceaux informed Sainéan in the spring of 1903 that he did not at present fulfill the legal requirements for naturalization and that he could apply again after 8 May 1904. If his wife did not join his request, however, it would not be received. 34 Bähler, Paris, 151: the Society, made up of friends and former students of Paris, met twice a year and published a bulletin. Joseph Bédier and Mario Roques, Bibliographie des travaux de Gaston Paris (Paris: Emile Bouillon, 1904), Avertissement: “M. L. Sainéan nous a donné plusieurs indications fort utiles.” 35 For instance, on 1 June 1902, Thomas gave a talk on the Provençal word degatier (rural policeman) and Sainéan added his comments; on 17 January 1903, Sainéan gave a talk on the French word chanfrein and Thomas responded (BSLP 12: lxxxviii, xcx). Among other talks given by Sainéan with responses by Bréal, Meillet, Thomas and others: BSLP 12: civ-cv, 25 April 1903; 13: xx, 16 April 1904; 13: xcvi, 1 April 1905; 14: cxlvix, 13 January 1906; 14 clii, 24 February 1906; 14: clv, 7 April 1906; 14: ccix, 23 February 1907. Marcel Cohen: BSLP 14: cxliii-cxliiii, 2 December 1905; 15: x-xii, 4 April 1908. Arnold Van Gennep: BSLP 14: ccxiv-ccxv. 18 May 1907; 15: xiv, 30 May 1908.

ZD_Book.indb 144

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

Fr ance

145

his Oriental Influence had won seven years before, to none other than Mario Roques for his learned edition of the earliest printed text in Romanian, a sixteenth-century translation of the book of Genesis. It was his friend Moses Gaster who had years ago signaled the importance of this text.36 Sainéan’s daughter Elisabeth recalled the family’s experience during those years: My father, a great scholar and relentless worker, whose life was entirely given over to his books and his philological studies, hardly ever went out and attended the theatre only on rare and grand occasions. My mother... always loved to be out in the world and had a passion for the theatre. From the age when I was old enough to be admitted to the theatre, five or six [1901-1902], she took me to matinées at the Odéon, and a little later to the Comédie française.

In 1903, Cécile sent Elisabeth to a free drama class at the Mairie of the 6e arrondissement. “I was on the stage for the first time at age seven.”37 Meanwhile sitting at his apartment desk, Sainéan had started off by making French translations of some of his Romanian works. As he wrote his brother in October 1901, “I realize, to my regret, that all my activity in the Romanian sphere is non-existent for foreign scholars... So I’ve decided to redo in French those of my Romanian writings that deserve it.” In fact, his “Days of the Old Woman” and his “Jews, Tatars, or Giants” had appeared in French in Romania in 1889, but it seems these essays had not caused a stir in France as they had, especially the latter, in Romania. Now versions of his Oriental Influence appeared in the journal Romania and the Revue internationale de sociologie, while readers of Mélusine could peruse there his fascinating “Wicked Fairies” and a piece on Romanian names for the devil. The Revue des traditions populaires published several more in 1901–1902. He began a major reworking of his big Basmele for a French edition, a “strenuous task” that stretched into months.38 36 BSLP 14: cxlvii, Dec. 1905, Sainéan elected second vice-president; cciv, 22 December 1906, Sainéan elected first vice-president; 15: vi, 21 December 1907, Sainéan elected president; 16: i-iv, 21 November 1908, Bibesco Prize. 37 Elisabeth Nizan [stage name of Elisabeth Sainéan], retirement speech from the Comédie française, December 1936, 2–4, Bibliothèque de la Comédie française, Dossiers Elisabeth Nizan. 38 Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 13 October 1901, 30 November 1901, 4 March 1902, in Lettres, 14–16. Lazare Sainéan “Éléments orientaux en Roumain”; “Le régime et la société en Roumanie “; “Les Fées méchantes.” SSI, 3: 478–79. SVSc, 85–86.

ZD_Book.indb 145

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

146

Part Two

Two of Sainéan’s decisions on translation are surprising. On the one hand, he did not undertake a French translation of his Semasiology, surely one of his most innovative works. Since Michel Bréal had published his Essai de sémantique in 1897, only a few years before, Sainéan may have thought his own book, so dense with Romanian examples, would no longer have an impact. Or perhaps he did not want to appear to be trespassing on a subject now associated with the initiative of his “cher maître.” On the other hand, Sainéan did revise and make a French translation of his Dialectological Study of Judeo-German, a text he had abandoned in 1892. In October 1901, Sainéan wrote his brother that for a time he was putting aside his research on the argot of France for the sake of Judeo-German.39

Judeo-German for the French Scholar Sainéan tested the waters a few months later, presenting a paper at the Society’s January meeting on “The Origin of the Judeo-German Speech” (“L’origine du parler judéo-allemand”). It was derived, he said, from the ancient dialects in Middle High German spoken in the parts of Germany where the ancestors of the Jews had once lived and was now widely used among Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. Bréal was among his listeners and made a comment, but the other important Jewish linguist in the Society, Joseph Halévy, did not attend. A distinguished specialist in early Semitic languages, Halévy was currently committed to the revival of Hebrew as the language for contemporary Jews. Perhaps he looked with dismay at Sainéan’s stress on Yiddish, especially coming from a scholar whose relation to Judaism was now so uncertain. Still, the meeting was a success, ending with the decision of the Society to publish a French translation of Sainéan’s book on Yiddish in its Mémoires, where, as we have seen, Bréal, Saussure, and Meillet published some of their most important findings. The 1889 Romanian original had been little noticed in France: the Revue des études juives had simply listed the book in its bibliographical section. A discussion of medieval Judeo-French by the late Arsène Darmesteter had appeared in 1890, but his goal there was to retrieve evidence for early French and “by philology to find the common soul of two races” rather than to study Judeo-German 39 Michel Bréal, Essai de sémantique. Lazare Sainéan to Constantin Șăineanu, Paris, 13 October 1901, 30 November 1901, in Lettres, 14–15.

ZD_Book.indb 146

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

Fr ance

147

Figure 9. Opening page of the French translation of Lazare Sainéan’s study of the Yiddish language, “Essai sur le Judéo-allemand et spécialement sur le dialecte parlé en Valachie.” Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 12 (1903):90.

for its own sake, as Sainéan intended to do in his book.40 Insofar as scholarly interest in Yiddish was reviving, it was currently centered in Germany and focused on that language as a source for early German or even Slavic tongues.41 In 1871, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war, Alsace had passed to the newly created Germany: the region where Yiddish would be most likely to be used and studied was no longer part of France. To be sure, in Paris Yiddish could be heard in the Marais, a district called the Pletzl, where working-class Jews from eastern Europe crowded the streets making caps and garments and arguing radical politics. Not exactly a hang-out for scholars. Undeterred, Sainéan published his text in 1903, with minor revisions as Essai sur le judéo-allemand et spécialement sur le dialecte parlé en Valachie, première partie (figure 9). Gaster, who had been the dedicatee of the original Romanian book, is absent from this French edition, as are the references to his other 40 Revue des études juives, 19 (1889): 157; 20 (1890): 156 “par la philologie [de retrouver] l’âme commune des deux races.” 41 Baumgarten, “Recherches sur la dialectologie yiddish.”

ZD_Book.indb 147

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

148

Part Two

former friend, Moses Schwarzfeld. Sainéan’s mother, however, is present in an important foot-note: “My mother, who died in 1888, spoke the Judeo-German of Wallachia to perfection, and it’s to honor her memory that I’ve become engaged in this type of research, a little outside my specialty.” He then went on to locate himself in her Jewish world more explicitly than he had in his 1889 edition: for information on the Yiddish spoken in Romania and Wallachia in particular, “I’ve drawn in part on my personal acquaintances.”42 The Essai sur le judéo-allemand had several important reviews in German philological periodicals, but aroused little immediate response in France— again just a mention in the Revue des études juives.43 This was in contrast with his booklet on the current state of folklore studies, published about the same time and which, as we have seen, drew much notice.44 Academic interest in Yiddish would be developed further in France only in 1919, when the Alsatian Ernest-Henri Lévy was appointed maître de conférences at the Université de Strasbourg, once again part of France in the wake of World War I.45 Meanwhile Sainéan’s promised sequel to the Essai on Wallachian Yiddish never appeared, and references to Yiddish or to Judéo-Provençal in his later work, though pithy, are few.46 Without a teaching post in France, Sainéan never had an institutional base from which to instruct. Without a group to sustain 42 “…ma mère (morte en 1888) parlait en perfection le Judéo-allemand de Valachie, et c’est pour honorer sa mémoire que je suis engagé dans ce genre de recherches un peu en dehors de mes études spéciales.”;“…j’ai tiré parti de mes connaissances personnelles.” Sainéan, EJA, 90–196; reference to Sainéan’s mother, 95 n. 1. 43 Revue des études juives 45 (1903): 151, mention of the French edition in the bibliographical section. (Could the Jewish editors have had reservations about a book on Yiddish authored by an apostate, a meshumad?) Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,” 153, 153, n. 13a. In his autobiographical reminiscence Sainéan mentioned a review written by Landau in the Zeitschrift für deutsche Mundarten (SSI, 3: 479, n. 1.). 44 SVSc, 88–89. Sainéan, L’état actuel des études de folklore. As we have seen, this was Sainéan’s inaugural lecture for his course on Balkan folklore for the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Salomon Reinach, “L’histoire du folklore,” in L’Anthropologie (1902): 451–53, reprinted in Reinach, Cultes, mythes, 122–24. 45 On Lévy, see Baumgarten, “Le manuscrit de Cambridge (1382),” 73 and nn. 23–25. The work of Arsène Darmesteter on medieval Judéo-French was carried in the United States by David Simon Blondheim (1884–1934), a professor at Johns Hopkins University. In 1925, Blondheim published Les Parlers judéo-romans et la Vetus Latina (Paris: Champion). Sainéan sent him a gift copy of his Schiţă biografică with the inscription “A M. D.-S Blondheim L’ éminent auteur des Parlers judeo-romans Hommage de L. Sainéan Paris ce 24 avril, 1932” (copy in the possession of the Hill Memorial Library of Lousiania State University). 46 Sainéan gives a description of Judéo-Provençal in SSI (3:390–98). He ends with a call for further research on the impact of Judéo-Provencal in Provence, Italy, and Spain. He does not mention the publications on Yiddish of Ernest-Henri Lévy during the 1920s, so it is not clear to what extent he was keeping up with the literature.

ZD_Book.indb 148

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

Fr ance

149

his scholarly interest and without a political goal in which his weakened Jewish identity signified, he turned his energies elsewhere.

Š  The Popular Languages of France His move, however, was not to Romanian folklore and linguistics. Far from his Romanian source materials, distanced by choice from the Romanian émigré community in Paris, and ambivalent about the country that had denied him citizenship, Sainéan stopped work on most of his Romanian topics, except for periodically updating his dictionaries of the Romanian language. These were then published in Romania by his wife’s family or other houses in Bucharest.47 Sainéan now turned all his energy into what he called “the popular languages of France.” By 1907 he had produced a book on the Argot ancien, that is, French “slang,” as it could be traced from the fifteenth century to his own day (figure 10). Few French scholars had ever looked at such a topic. FranFigure 10. Title page of Lazare Sainéan’s book on the history and character of French slang, L’Argot ancien (Paris, 1907). University of Toronto Library.

47 SVSc, 53, editions of the Dicţionar universal al limbei române, published in Craiova, 1908, 1914, 1922, 1925.

ZD_Book.indb 149

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

150

Part Two

cisque Michel had pioneered in 1856, with a vocabulary list and a defense for the study of argot: though marred by scatological terms and lacking syntax, it was still a “gay, amusing, mocking” tongue, spoken by people of the middling and lower orders. More recently, the literary figure Marcel Schwob had reviewed the literature on “la langue spéciale des classes dangereuses de la société.” Sainéan had sought Schwob out and gratefully received source materials from him.48 In L’Argot ancien, Sainéan concentrated on what he called the argot des malfaiteurs, “thieves’ slang.” With multiple examples from printed texts over the centuries, Sainéan showed how the slang languages were constructed from mostly indigenous words (some found in old French, some found in French provincial dialects), and then kept secret. The book received enthusiastic reviews and in 1908 was awarded the Volney Prize by the Institut de France, given for an outstanding book in comparative philology. ”Après ce livre,” said Antoine Meillet, “l’étude scientifique d’argot est fondée.” “After this book, the scholarly study of slang is established.”49 Sainéan followed up in the next years with three more books centered on the French popular tongue. In a 1912 collection of source materials (figure 11), he began to present the argot ancien as more than “thieves’ jargon”. Rather its employ in soldier’s barracks and Paris workshops led to its transformation into the everyday speech of Parisians. To illustrate further, he brought out L’Argot des tranchées in 1915, an account of the special terms used currently among French soldiers as he had found them in letters to the newspapers and in diaries. (It brought a shock to some readers: were French-speakers beginning to talk like Apache Indians?)50 His efforts came to a head in Le Langage parisien au XIXe siècle (1920, Figure 12). Here Sainéan offered evidence that the remains of the secret idiom 48 Francisque Michel (1809–1887), Études de philologie comparée sur l’argot, Introduction, i-xxxv, especially ii-iii, xxxi. Marcel Schwob (1867 -1905) and Georges Guieysse, Étude sur l’argot français. In the Introduction to his L’Argot ancien, 2, Sainéan acknowledged the previous work of both men and thanked Schwob, and dedicated Les Sources de l’argot ancien to the memory of Francisque Michel and Marcel Schwob, “initiateurs des études argotiques”. SSI, 486. SVSc, 92. 49 Sainéan, L’Argot ancien. See especially his Introduction, 2–42. Meillet’s review of L’Argot ancien in BSLP 15 (1908): lxiii-lxi. Reviews of L’Argot ancien in SVSc, 91–94; Volney Prize, 91. 50 Sainéan, L’Argot ancien, with historical Preface (1: vii-xv) and texts. L’Argot des tranchées, including a reproduction of the sources. Brief reference to the Sabir, the Arabic/French mixture spoken by Algerian troops, 56. For critical assessments of the latter book by Marcel Cohen and R. Gauthiot, see BSLP 20 (1916): 69–82. Sainéan had first submitted his manuscript to the newspaper Le Temps, and the reproach of “langue des apaches” was made by its editors (SSI 3: 498).

ZD_Book.indb 150

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

Fr ance

151

Figure 11. Title page of Lazare Sainéan’s collection of texts illustrating the development of French slang over the centuries, Les Sources de l’argot ancien (Paris, 1912). University of Toronto Library, Internet Archive.

“are found in the popular Parisian language of our day.” “L’argot moderne” was in fact the open tongue of millions of Parisians and other French, as he could show in books and words from over the centuries. He hoped his study would contribute to the creation of a new dictionary, one conceived “dans un esprit plus large, conformément aux progrès de la science et de la démocratie”, “in a large spirit, in accordance with the progress of knowledge and democracy.” Published in 1920, Le Langage parisien was awarded the Volney Prize for 1922.51 Again a winner! Meanwhile during these same busy years, another theme had captured Sainéan’s attention, the role of metaphor in popular speech and imagination. Targeted here were those traditional linguists always seeking the sources for French words in Latin or Low Latin. In a set of articles in 1905-1907, Sainéan traced the uses and meanings around words concerning the cat, the monkey, the dog and the pig, as well as their sounds—both a semantic and a phonetic analysis. Along with fables and animal tales, he turned to current sources on the language prac51 Sainéan, Langage parisien, vii-xi (quotation, xi): “se sont fondus dans le langage populaire parisien de nos jours.” SVSc, 99–101.

ZD_Book.indb 151

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

152

Part Two Figure 12. Title page of Lazare Sainéan’s book on the language spoken in the streets of nineteenth-century Paris, Le Langage parisien au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1920). University of Toronto Library, Internet Archive.

tices and vocabulary of children. As he described the many places animal images were found, Sainéan could once again celebrate the creative terms that bore witness to “the spontaneity of the popular spirit and its constant activity.”52

Rabelais Sainéan’s essays had many readers, one of whom was to turn his scholarship in a new direction. Working in the University of Paris Library one day in 1906, he was approached by Abel Lefranc, who was currently enthralling listeners with his lectures on French literature at the Collège de France. Another staunch Dreyfusard, Lefranc saw Rabelais as one of the fathers of “free thought” and his writings as the embodiment of the French national spirit. As such, he had founded the Revue des études rabelaisiennes not long before and had now created a Society devoted to the study of the sixteenth-century figure. Their most important goal was a critical edition of Rabelais’s great novel. The current one went back to 1868–1870, and its editor, Charles Marty-Laveaux, had agonized 52 Sainéan, Création métaphorique, introduction, 2–22, quotation, 3: “la spontanéité de l’esprit populaire, ainsi que son incessante activité.”

ZD_Book.indb 152

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:37

Fr ance

153

Figure 13. Title page of Lazare Sainéan’s two volumes on the language of Rabelais, La Langue de Rabelais (Paris, 1922). University of Ottawa Library, Internet Archive.

about matters of punctuation and spelling. Lefranc sought a publication that would give Rabelais his rightful place in the development of French literature.53 Impressed with Sainéan’s recent articles, Lefranc asked him to contribute to his new Revue. Sainéan agreed, never dreaming, as he wrote later, that “from this moment on, the linguistic study of Rabelais was going to become the great preoccupation of my life.” The vocabulary of the French writer was immense, reflecting “toute la vie des hommes de la Renaissance sous ses aspects les plus divers,” “the whole life of the people of the Renaissance, in its most diverse aspects.” Sainéan plunged in with enthusiasm, reviewing the literature on Rabelais and writing essays on, say, nautical terms in Rabelais’s text.54 53 SSI, 3:501. On Abel Lefranc, see Robert Marichal, “Abel Lefranc 1863–1952,” Annuaire de l’École pratique des Hautes Études (1956): 13–19 and Jacques Lavaud, “Publications de M. Abel Lefranc,” in Mélanges offerts à M. Abel Lefranc (Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1936), xi-xxxv. Les Oeuvres de Maistre François Rabelais accompagnées d’une notice sur sa vie et ses ouvrages, ed. Charles Marty-Laveaux, 6 vols. (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1868–1902). The first three volumes, 1868–1873, covered the books of Rabelais’s novel. Glossaries were added in 1881 and 1902. 54 SSI, 501–502: “…l’étude linguistique de Rabelais allait devenir, dès ce moment, la grande préoccupation de ma vie.”; “…toute la vie des hommes de la Renaissance sous ses aspects les plus divers.” Articles in the Revue des études rabelaisiennes by Sainéan include “Les termes nautiques chez Rabelais,”8 (1910): 1–56 and “Rabelaisiana,” 10 (1912), 258–82, 451–80.

ZD_Book.indb 153

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

154

Part Two Figure 14. Lazare Sainéan in 1928. From “Luca Vornea” [pseudonym for Lăzar Şăineanu], Schiţă biografică urmată de o bibliografie critică. Bucharest: Editura Averul, 1928, frontispiece. Photograph of frontispiece made by Michael van Leur. Courtesy of the Louisiana State University Library.

Struck by Sainéan’s breadth and linguistic training, Lefranc then invited him to join his editorial team as philologist for the edition of Rabelais. Initially he had been thinking of the French-born philologist Antoine Thomas to play that role. Busy with his work on the Dictionnaire général and his teaching, Thomas decided he had no time left for Rabelais. Encouraged by Thomas, Lefranc then turned to the Romanian-Jewish immigrant to serve in his stead.55 When the edition appeared, Gargantua in 1912–1913 and Pantagruel in 1922 (the latter delayed because of the War), it was filled with footnotes by L. S.56 Sainéan then went on to write further on the French storyteller, culminating in 1923 in the massive two volumes of his Langue de Rabelais (figure 13). Sainéan brought a political perspective to this welcome project: a sense of gratitude to France, “the noble country which has welcomed us, my family and me, with sympathy, and which has always been my intellectual fatherland and 55 SSI, 503. Adolphe Hatzfeld and Arsène Darmesteter, eds., Dictionnaire général de la langue française du commencement du XVII siècle jusqu’ à nos jours (Paris: Charles Delagrave, 1902). Antoine Thomas’s editorial role is mentioned in a note from the publisher. Thomas, then teaching philology courses at the Sorbonne, had worked with Hatzfeld after the death of his teacher Arsène Darmesteter (p. xxv). In a 1907 essay on Rabelais’s use of the term “baragouin” (gibberish), Sainéan thanked Thomas for archival references (Sainéan, “Notes linguistiques,” 392). 56 Rabelais, Oeuvres (1912–1922).

ZD_Book.indb 154

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

Fr ance

155

become the only fatherland of my dear child.”57 Such sentimental loyalty fuelled his presentation of Rabelais not as a late medieval figure (as some historians of literature were wont to do), but as a creator of the “l’idiome national” of France, of its “civilisation nationale.”58 Sainéan now drew on his extensive background—his familiarity with the new linguistics, the techniques he had honed through his research on the popular languages of Yiddish, Romanian, and French—to chart the “veritable ocean” of Rabelais’s lexicon. He tracked words, phrases, and metaphors to every feature of French life, from scholarly treatises on natural philosophy to cooking, crafts, sex, games, magic, proverbs, and much more.59 Especially interesting is Sainéan’s response to the question of whether Rabelais’s language was polyglot. Sainéan had earlier defined Yiddish, à la Hugo Schuchardt, as a mixed language. He had also challenged the nationalist Romanian purists by documenting the Turkish and “Oriental” elements in Romanian. With Rabelais he took a different tack. Those of Sainéan’s contemporaries who argued for Rabelais’s language as polyglot stressed its learned sources—Latin, Greek, and Italian. For its geographical source, they evoked the language as spoken in the Touraine region in central France, where Rabelais had been born. Sainéan expanded such borders. Rabelais’s language was infused with social mixture, as he incorporated words anywhere from village custom to urban crafts; and with geographical mixture, as he took words from Breton sailors and fisherman and made extensive use of dialectal words and patois from Languedoc and Provence. “Nothing escaped his verbal virtuosity, including the cries of animals and the shouts of children … Every period, every province, and every social class speaks its languages, its dialects, its patois.” Rabelais’s language was “indigenous” to France, but was still a mixed inclusive language. At the same time, it had a universal appeal.60

57 Sainéan, Langage parisien, xii. “…le noble pays (as he put it in one of his dedications) qui nous a accueillis, les miens et moi, avec sympathie, qui a toujours été ma patrie intellectuelle et qui est devenu l’unique patrie de mon enfant cherie.” 58 Sainéan, Langue de Rabelais, 1: x, 450 59 Sainéan devotes his first volume to these themes. “Véritable océan” in Langue de Rabelais, 2:1. 60 Sainéan, Langue de Rabelais, 2:3. “Rien n’a échappé à sa virtuosité verbale, jusqu’aux cris des animaux et des enfants. . . Tout se reflète dans son lexique, le plus vaste et le plus universel qu’on connaisse. . . Toutes les époques, toutes les provinces, toutes les classes sociales y parlent leurs langues, leurs dialectes, leurs patois.”

ZD_Book.indb 155

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

156

Part Two

Sainéan’s mentor Abel Lefranc promptly hailed the richness and range of Sainéan’s Langue de Rabelais and anticipated its “succès éclatant.” And indeed, the book won high praise in reviews from France and Germany, and a prize from the Institut de France.61 In 1924 the life of Lazăr Șăineanu/Lazare Sainéan seemed to have reached a happy equilibrium (figure 14). He had recently served as Vice-President of the Société des Études Rabelaisiennes. In the wake of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, he had rejoiced that Romania had finally granted citizenship rights to its Jewish population, expressing his pleasure in the Introduction of his Romanian dictionary. He was in touch with Aristide Blank, scion of a Jewish banking house in Romania, and himself a major financier, and important patron of the arts. Blank had subsidized the publication of La Langue de Rabelais, and Sainéan then dedicated the book to him.62 Meanwhile his daughter Elisabeth, encouraged by her theatre-loving mother, had begun acting as a child and studied at the Conservatoire national d’art dramatique (her father had given his permission “if it leads you to the Comédie française,” he had joked). In fact, she had been received in the Comédie française in 1915 as one of its youngest members. At the very time that La Langue de Rabelais appeared, his daughter, under her stage name Elisabeth Nizan, was a frequent presence on the French stage and had performed in England.63 Sainéan also enjoyed the strong support of his wife Cécile, “compagne inséparable de mes travaux,” as he said in dedicating to her his Langage parisien in 1920.64

Les Sources Indigènes and Disappointment In fact, things were soon to fall apart for Lazare Sainéan, if not so seriously as they had years before in Romania. In 1925 appeared the first two volumes of his 61 SSI, 3: 507, reproducing Lefranc’s review in the Revue du XVIe siècle (1922). 62 Sainéan, Langue de Rabelais, 1: xi. Aristide Blank (1883–1960) is the subject of an unusually full and careful Wikipedia entry. By the early 1920s, Blank was close to Crown Prince Carol and also involved with several publishing and literary ventures of his own. He used his influence against anti-Semitism where he could. 63 “S’il t’amène à la Comédie française”. Nizan’s career in the theater and radio is documented in the Dossiers Elisabeth Nizan, Bibliothèque de la Comédie française: engagement, July 1915; retirement speech of Mlle Nizan, Sociétaire de la Comédie française, December 1936 recounting her studies starting at age seven, her father’s reaction (p. 5), and her career and stage appearances. A dossier from 1923 shows her performing in Manchester. 64 Sainéan, Langage parisien, dedication: “the inseparable companion of my work”. Elisabeth Nizan recalled this affectionate dedication in her retirement speech from the Comédie française.

ZD_Book.indb 156

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

Fr ance

157

Sources indigènes de l’ étymologie française (figure 15), the third would follow in 1930. Here he pushed his argument for the indigenous origins of the French language to an extreme. Any word for which a Latin or Germanic origin could not be established was to be attributed either to the popular use of “métaphore linguistique” or simply to “spontaneous creation” by the people. By “linguistic metaphor,” he meant word-images that crystallized into a verbal word or phrases, often independently from the usual phonetic rules for pronunciation. For example, traditional etymologists had claimed the word charabia, or “gibberish,” came from the distant Arabic, while this Parisian word originated in a local term from the Auvergne for “la tumulte ou charivari d’un marché des chevaux,” “the tumult or charivari of a horse market.” Scholars were seeking afar what was close to home.65 Eager to establish his claims, Sainéan assembled origins for word after word, from French and other tongues, in three large volumes. Some of his conjectures were quite unlikely, and his tone toward those with opposing views was ungenerous. Reviews were mixed. Writing in the Modern Language Review, a Scottish linguist found Sainéan quite wrong in his critique of the traditional quest for the origin and chronology of words, but still found his new methods “the most stimulating work on French lexicography of recent years.”66 Antoine Meillet, assessing it for the Bulletin of the Société de Linguistique de Paris, thought it raised a good question: from the fifteenth/sixteenth century on, a number of words appear in French, “populaires, argotiques,” which cannot readily be traced back to Latin origins or local borrowings. But Sainéan’s own findings were unconvincing, “a collection of hypotheses most of which could be established, if at all, only after extensive research.” Still, one must not forget that Sainéan was almost the only one doing research on the popular lexicon of early modern French: If a foreigner, obliged to leave his own country where he had been denied the means of making his livelihood, had not come to France where he tried to accomplish this task [i.e., the popular lexicon of early modern French], we

65 SSI, 1–7, quotation, 7. 66 F. S. Shears, review of Les Sources indigènes, Modern Language Review 22 (1927): 472–74. See also the critical review by Oscar Bloch of Sainéan’s follow-up volume, Autour des sources indigènes (Florence: Olschki, 1935), which Bloch found repetitious and ill-supported by evidence. Bloch still acknowledged the importance of the questions raised by Sainéan (BSLP 37 [1936]: 75–77).

ZD_Book.indb 157

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

158

Part Two

would hardly know that [the popular lexicon] existed or perceive its importance or the methods of dealing with it or its extreme difficulty.67

Sainéan could take heart in reading Meillet’s words and a few other warm reviews, but he was still devastated by the fact that most French periodicals ignored his book, even Romania, to the memory of whose founder, Gaston Paris, Sainéan had dedicated it.68 As he confessed to his brother: Since the publication of Les Sources Indigènes, the void around me has increased. Indeed, here, in regard to social relations, I am always still ‘the intruder.’ The only thing that counts, here as elsewhere, is to belong to the university or to be a member of the Institut.69

Indeed, Sainéan never “belonged” to a university. After his ill-fated course at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1902-1903, he had given some lectures there in 1923. That was the end of it. By the mid-1920s he had also stopped attending events at the Société de Linguistique de Paris, where he had once served as president. He had even dropped off Lefranc’s editorial team for the continuing Rabelais edition, “yielding [his] place [on the Rabelais edition] to younger and more enterprising forces,” as he put it.70 As for friends, the person he mentions the most is Henri Clouzot, an historian of the arts and crafts and part of Lefranc’s initial editorial team for the Rabelais edition. “Mon cher ami, Clouzot,” Sainéan writes of him to his brother; “l’ami Clouzot” is helping me with the proofs for Les Sources indigènes.71 67 Antoine Meillet, review of L. Sainéan, Les Sources indigènes in BSLP27 (1926–27): 114–17. “Si un étranger, obligé de quitter son pays où les moyens de travailler lui étaient refusés, n’était venue en France où il tente d’accomplir cette tâche, on ne saurait à peine qu’elle existe, on n’en apercevrait ni l’importance, ni la méthode, ni l’extrême difficulté” 68 Sainéan reproduced an excerpt from Spitzer’s review in the Literaturblatt für romanische und germanische Philologie of 1927 in SVSc, 199 and SSI, 3: 517. 69 Sainéan, Lettres (“mes trois conférences sur ‘le langage populaire’,” 18 July 1923), 55. “Depuis la publication des Sources Indigènes, le vide s’est élargi autour de moi. En fait, ici, sous le rapport social, après une trentaine d’années d’activité désintéressée, je reste toujours ‘l’intrus.” La seule chose qui compte, ici comme ailleurs, c’est d’appartenir au corps universitaire ou d’être membre de l’Institut.” 70 I have gone through the minutes for the meetings of the Société de Linguistique de Paris from 1924 to 1933 (BSLP, 26–33), and Sainéan was not listed as a current member. SSI, 3:504 “…en cédant la place à des forces plus jeunes et plus entreprenantes.” 71 Sainéan, Langue de Rabelais, I: xi (acknowledges many suggestions from Henri Clouzot). Sainéan, Lettres, 47, 73. Already in 1912, Sainéan was thanking Henri Clouzot for reading the proofs of his Sources de l’argot ancien (Sources, xv).

ZD_Book.indb 158

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

Fr ance

159

Figure 15. Title page of the final volume of Lazare Sainéan’s study of the origins of French words, Les Sources indigènes de l’ étymologie française (Paris, 1930). Courtesy of the University of Toronto Library.

He does not seem to belong to a circle, however. Thinking back in 1928, Sainéan recalled with some nostalgia his early period of collaboration with Moses Gaster and Moses Schwarzfeld.72 Did his tie to Clouzot, one wonders, ever bring him the same warmth?

Š  Summing Up In his last years, Sainéan continued to seek examples, some might say obsessively, in support of his Sources indigènes. Indeed, such a volume appeared not long after his death in 1934.73 This was also a time for him to think back on his life: he left such a reflection in 1930 in a “Fragment de biographie intellectuelle” dedicated to his brother Constantin, and then published in the Sources indigènes. (Here he concentrated on his Paris years, for he had already recounted his Romanian saga in his accusatory Carrière philologique en Rou72 SVSc, 9. 73 See note 66 above on his volume.

ZD_Book.indb 159

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

160

Part Two

manie of 1901.) The minor tone here is grievous, as he has not received the institutional support that he deserved. The major tone is celebratory, as he reviews his works over the decades and concludes with what he considers the distinctive element in his work as a linguist: “history and sociology always put to the service of philology.”74 In leaving Romania in 1901, so we recall, Sainéan had said of his Influenţa orientală, “I am proud to give this book to the fatherland (pays) as supreme witness of my love for the Romanian language and people. If it is my fate to finish my days on foreign soil, you will see me always faithful to this language.” In France, he had in fact developed a further loyalty: now he spoke of France as “notre pays,” “our fatherland,” and celebrated French as a language of the people, at its most universal from the pen of François Rabelais. In his intellectual autobiography, he affirms, “J’ai pu ainsi servir deux patries et deux langues,” “I have thus been able to serve two fatherlands and two languages.”75 His book on Yiddish, which had come out in French, he consigned to a footnote, adding, however, that the study had”inspired numerous works.” Indeed, it had encouraged the work of others, and had also won praise that he may never have heard, as when back in 1913, the great Yiddishist Ber Borokhov had recommended it to his Zionist Marxist faithful.76 Still somewhat uncertain about where he belonged, Sainéan could nonetheless feel confident that he had served.

Languages and “the People” in the 1920s and 1930s Looking at the state of linguistic and social studies in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Sainéan might be impressed—and we along with him. Antoine Meillet was dominating the scene from the École Pratique des Hautes Études, seconded there by Marcel Cohen, whose innovative studies included Le Parler arabe des Juifs d’Alger and an examination of languages in Ethiopia.77 The interdisciplinary approach so important to Sainéan was a highlight of periodicals now being founded: the Annales of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, whose first issue would 74 SVSc, 477–521; quotation, 520: “…l’histoire et la sociologie constamment mises au service de la philologie.” 75 Sainéan, Langue de Rabelais, 1:xi: “notre pays”; 2:2–3: “Tout se reflète dans son lexique, le plus vaste et le plus universel qu’on connaisse.” SVSc, 521. 76 SVSc, 479 n. 1: “…suscité de nombreux travaux.” Gininger, “Sainéan’s Accomplishments,”178. 77 Bergounioux, Origines, 347–48. Marcel Cohen (1884–1974), Le parler arabe des Juifs d’Alger (Paris: H. Champion,1912); Couplets amhariques du Choa (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1924); Documents subarabiques en autocopie (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve 1934).

ZD_Book.indb 160

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

Fr ance

161

come from Strasbourg in 1929; and Humanisme et Renaissance, which Eugénie Droz would bring off the press in 1934. Sainéan’s earlier publications on Rabelais were of special interest to the latter.78 “Languages” and especially “the people” were not just academic themes in those years. The German Völkisch movement, with its infusion of racism into the word “people,” had its supporters in France. This touched Lazare Sainéan when his work received the endorsement of the influential writer Léon Daudet in L’Action française. Critic of democratic institutions in France and author of vicious anti-Semitic portraits going back to the Dreyfus affair, Daudet had found Sainéan’s work on Rabelais and argot “admirable,” and in 1932 called him “the greatest scholar of the language and syntax of the Renaissance.” Still smarting from the “silence” with which the Lefranc circle had greeted his Sources indigènes, Sainéan was delighted, assuring his brother Constantin that Daudet had praised his work more than once. Nonetheless, he welcomed support at the very same time from the liberal Leo Spitzer, as we will shortly see.79 Sainéan’s last years were spent with his wife Cécile, sometimes in a Swiss village, but mostly in Paris. Despite ill health he persisted in assembling his Autour des sources indigènes: études d’ étymologie française et romane, and wrote Constantin in January 1934 about new research he hoped to do. He died three months later before he could see Autour des sources fresh off the press in Florence.80 His funeral notice in Le Figaro pays tribute to him, but also attests to the public persona of his actress daughter Elisabeth: “les obsèques de M. L. Sainéan, philologue distingué, auteur d’intéressants travaux sur la ‘langue de Rabelais,’ père de Mlle Nizan, sociétaire de la Comédie française.”81 He is buried in a section of Montparnasse cemetery where both Jews and Gentiles were interred. (The stone, provided by Elisabeth, simply said “Philologue 1854–1934”.)82 As for his complicated religious trajectory, it received varied 78 “Rabelaisiana” is already a theme in Humanisme et Renaissance 1 (1934). 79 Léon Daudet, “Rabelais lu à haute voix,” L’Action française 25 (28 January 1932), 1, “…le plus grand érudit du langage et de la syntaxe de la Renaissance.” Sainéan, Lettres (18 February 1932), 66; (6 June 1932), mention of Leo Spitzer. For an example of Daudet’s anti-Semitism, see Léon Daudet, L’AvantGuerre. Études et documents sur l’ éspionnage juif-allemand en France depuis l’affaire Dreyfus (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1915), xi. 80 Sainéan, Lettres, 65–74. 81 Le Figaro 109, no. 134 (14 May 1934), 77. 82 Cimetière Montparnasse 40, P.A. 1934. His flat stone, to which the names of Cécile Sainéan and Elisabeth Nizan were later added, is near the graves of Jewish families with Hebrew inscriptions on their stones, but also close to those with no religious indication or with names that are clearly non-Jewish

ZD_Book.indb 161

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

162

Part Two

public treatment shortly after his death. In Comoedia, organ of Elisabeth’s Comédie française, he is simply “of Romanian origin, coming to France in his youth.” Léon Daudet spoke of him more slyly as “of Romanian origin and Jewish race, like my friend Marcel Schwob,” both Jews being exceptions to his ordinary distaste.83

Two Jewish Critics on Sainéan’s Life Major responses by Jewish writers, however, took Sainéan’s life story head on, giving him his due both as a scholar and as a Jewish man. Let us conclude with two examples, our first one a critic. Now in his thirties, Meyer Abraham Halevi (1900–1977) had studied in France at the Sorbonne and at the French rabbinical college, and then in 1926 had founded the Society for Jewish Studies in Romania and an associated periodical, Sinai.84 (Sainéan would surely have been reminded of his similar initiatives with Gaster and Schwarzfeld back in the 1880s.) Halevi opened his obituary with a description of the anti-Semitic obstacles in the way of a Jew who hoped to become a citizen of Romania. Here he was willing to arouse some empathy from the reader, who then arrives at Șăineanu’s “apostasy.” Halevi evoked the young Eliezer’s mood in his early essay on Moses Mendelssohn and the folly of his hope “to adopt the language and aspirations of the nation among whom you live.” Despite these “assimilationist sins,” Șăineanu had made substantial contributions to the Jewish community through his early writings on Jewish history and his book on Evreo-German, “the first serious attempt at a purely scientific study of Yiddish.” Halevi ended on a Zionist note: Șăineanu wished to solve the Jewish problem entirely on an individual basis via assimilation, intermarriage, apostasy, and the like. He did not know, or did not want to know, that the question is more of a social, cultural and or names with crosses. His mixed burial area is in contrast with the 5th division, where the sociologist Émile Durkheim (d. 1917) is buried and where all the gravestones have Jewish indications. 83 “La Mort d’un philologue: Lazare Sainéan,” Comoedia (13 May 1934), “…d’origine roumaine, venu en France depuis sa jeunesse.” Léon Daudet, “La Langue de Rabelais et les travaux de Sainéan,” L’Action française 29, no. 3 (3 January 1936), 1: “…d’origine roumaine et de race juive, comme mon ami Marcel Schwob.” 84 Măriuca Stanciu, “Halevy, Meyer Abraham,” translated by Mircea Anca, https://yivoencyclopedia. org/article/aspx/Halevy_Meyer_Abraham

ZD_Book.indb 162

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:38

Fr ance

163

national one; in other words, the emancipation of the Jewish individual depends on the liberation of the Jewish collective.85

Of course, Sainéan had not seen the solution to the Jewish question as an individual one. Though his conversion had been a fruitless and disastrous mistake—an action about which he was ashamed and never subsequently spoke, as we have seen—his life and writing in France showed him committed to the ideals of secular citizenship and scholarly collaboration. The man who emerges from Leo Spitzer’s 1927 portrait has a different spir86 it. Spitzer (1887–1960) was then teaching at Marburg and still early in a distinguished career as a Romance philologist which, due to the Nazi menace, would take him years later to the United States. His first publications were on themes close to those explored by Sainéan: a 1910 dissertation on word formation in Rabelais, and a 1918 book on the presence of foreign words in German and the “fantastic intolerance” of linguists who wanted to purge these words. (We recall that as a youth Sainéan had done the same with Turkish words in Romanian). Spitzer, too, wanted philologists to broaden out: at the time he was writing his review of Les Sources indigènes, he was especially drawing on psychology.87 Spitzer described Sainéan’s etymological program in detail. (Along the way, he also noted his own contributions.) Sainéan’s work had been “groundbreaking and revolutionary.” Where had this originality come from? Spitzer recounted Sainéan’s life as he knew it, starting with examples from the “jüdischer und rumänischer Philolog”—no concealing here of the young Lazăr Șăin! He knew or said nothing about Sainéan’s conversion and citizenship troubles, but merely quoted a melancholy line from him: “ma vie traversée par tant de déconvenues,” “my life crossed by so many disappointments.”

85 Meir Halevi, “Lazăr Șăineanu (1859–1934),” Di Vokh, 18–19 (1935), translated by Shaul SeidlerFeller. I am grateful to Menachem Butler for locating this text and to Shaul Seidler-Feller for his translation. 86 Leo Spitzer’s review of Les Sources indigènes was first published in Literaturblatt für romanische und germanische Philologie 48 (1927): 27–36. It covered only volumes 1–2, as the third volume was not published until 1930. Sainéan provided an excerpt in SVSc, 517–18. 87 A good summary of Leo Spitzer’s life and contribution is René Wellek, “Leo Spitzer (1881–1960),” Comparative Literature 12, no. 4 (1960): 310–34. Leo Spitzer, Die Wortbildung als stilistisches Mittel exemplefiziert an Rabelais (Halle, 1910); Leo Spitzer, Fremdwörterhatz und Fremdvölkerhasz. Eine Streitschrift gegen die Sprachreinigung (Vienna: Manzsche Hof-Verlage und Universität Buchandlung, 1918). I had the pleasure of meeting Leo Spitzer when he lectured at Smith College in the late 1940s.

ZD_Book.indb 163

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

164

Part Two

Spitzer went on to comment on the woefully inadequate acknowledgement of a publication record of over forty-five years, which had added so much to the legacy of his teacher Gaston Paris. What to make of a French philologist who could think of nothing better to say about Sainéan than that he was “bookish”?88 Spitzer then concluded, “Perhaps it is precisely his fate of living in a foreign land and independent of the judgment of his fellow academics that cast him as an outsider. ‘Woe to you for being a stranger.’”89 Can we perhaps turn Leo Spitzer’s insight around? If Sainéan’s first work was fuelled by his closeness to the Jewish Haskalah, his turn toward the languages of the people of Romania and especially of France took him into settings where he was a newcomer. Whatever his later lament, his creativity and willingness to go against the grain may have been deepened precisely because of his position as an “outsider.” Sainéan had served three peoples through his studies of language and conjured up realms of human curiosity and wide-ranging exchange. It is a lasting legacy.

88 Spitzer, Literaturblatt 48 (1927): 36, 36 n. 1. The French critic here was Albert Dauzat (1877–1935). In the course of his essay, Spitzer characterized Sainéan as “one of the greatest Romance-language specialists of our day and one of the greatest Romanian philologists” (“Uns aber soll es unbenommen bleiben, in Sainéan einen grossen Romanisten unserer Tage und einen der grössten Sprachforscher Rumäniens zu verehren”). 89 Spitzer, Literaturblatt 48, 36. This section of Spitzer’s review is not included in Sainéan’s excerpt of the Schiţă (120).

ZD_Book.indb 164

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

Š  Abbreviations ANF – Archives Nationales, France BSLP – Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris CF – Moses Gaster, M. Gaster in Corespondenţă. Edited by Virgiliu Florea. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1985. EJA – “Essai sur le Judéo-allemand et spécialement sur le dialecte parlé en Valachie.” Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 12 (1903): 90–196. EPHE – École Pratique des Hautes Études MC – Moses Gaster, Memorii [Fragmente]. Corespondenţă. Edited by Victor Eskenasy. Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 1998. SSI – Lazare Sainéan, Les Sources indigènes de l’ étymologie française. 3 vols. Paris: E.de Bocard, 1925–1930. SVSc – Lazăr Şăineanu, under the pseudonym Luca Vornea. Schiță biografica de Luca Vornea. Bucharest: Adeverul, 1928.

ZD_Book.indb 165

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

ZD_Book.indb 166

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

Š  Bibliography Aarne, Antti and Stith Thompson. The Types of the Folktale. A Classification and Bibliography. FF Communications No. 74. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia Academia Scientiaraum Fennica, 1928. Aarslef, Hans. From Locke to Saussure. Essays on the study of language and intellectual history. London: Athlone, 1982. Andrei, Nicolae, Gabriela Braun, and Albert Zimbler. Institutul de Editură și Arte Grafice Samitca. Craiova: Aius, 1998. Antohi, Sorin. Imaginaire culturel et réalité politique dans la Roumanie moderne. Translated by Claude Karnough and Mona Antohi. Paris and Montreal: Harmattan, 1999. Astruc, Isaac. “Israélites de Roumanie.” Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite universelle 25(1900): 23–58. Avé-Lallemant, Friedrich Christian Benedict. Das deutsche Gaunerthum in seiner social-politischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinen heutigen Bestande. 4 vols. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1858–1862. Bachelin, Léo. Sept contes roumains. Translated by Jules Brun. Paris: Firmin Didot,1894. Badea, Georgiana Lungu, ed. Repertoriul traducătorilor români de limbă franceză, italiană, spaniolă (secolele al XVIII-lea și al XIX-lea). Timișoara: Editura Universității de Vest, 2006. Bähler, Ursula. Gaston Paris et la philologie romane. Geneva: Droz, 2004. Bar-Avi, Israel. O Istorie a Evreilor Români. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Cenaclul Literar Menora, 1961– 1971. ———. Viaţă şi Opera lui Moses Schwarzfeld 1857–1943. Tel Aviv: Tipografia Hasefer Hehadaş, 1958. Baumgarten, Jean. Introduction à la littérature yiddish ancienne. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1993. ———. “Le manuscrit de Cambridge (1382): de la philologie germanique aux études yiddish.” Revue germanique internationale 4 (1995): 69–85 (mis en ligne le 06 juillet 2011). ———. “Les recherches sur la dialectologie yiddish et leurs répercussions sur le champ yiddish.” Revue germanique internationale 17(2002):65–79. ——— and Céline Trautmann-Waller, eds. Rabbins et savants au village. L’ étude des traditions populaires juives, XIXe-XXe siècles. Paris: CNRS, 2014.

ZD_Book.indb 167

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

168

Bibliography Bédier, Joseph. Les Fabliaux. Études de littérature populaire et d’ histoire littéraire du Moyen Âge. 2nd ed. Paris: Libraire Émile Bouillon, 1895. ——— and Mario Roques. Bibliographie des travaux de Gaston Paris. Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1904. Bergounioux, Gabriel. “La science du langage en France de 1870 à 1885: Du marché civil au marché étatique.” Langue française 63 (September 1984): 7–41. ———. Aux origines de la linguistique française. Textes choisis et présentés par Gabriel Bergounioux. Paris: Pocket, 1994. Berkowitz, Michael. Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Bîrlea, Ovidiu. Istoria folcloristicii româneşti. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică română, 1974. Birnbaum, Pierre. Jewish Destinies. Citizenship, State, and Community in Modern France. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. Boia, Lucian. History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001. Bopp, Franz. Grammaire comparée des langues Indo-Européennes. Translated by Michel Bréal. 5 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale and Imprimerie Nationale, 1866–1874. ———. Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit, Şend, Armenischen, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Litauischen, Altslavischen, Gothischen und Deutschen. 3 vols. Berlin: F. Dümmler and Paris, Friedrich Klincksieck, 1857–1861. Bowern, Claire and Bethwyn Evans, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics. London: Routledge, 2014. Bréal, Michel. Essai de sémantique (Science des significations). Paris: Librarie Hachette, 1897. ———. Hercule et Cacus, étude de mythologie comparée. Paris: Durand, 1863. ———. Introduction à la grammaire comparée des langues Indo-Européenes de M. Fr. Bopp. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1866. ———. “Les lois intellectuelles du langage. Fragment de sémantique.” Annuaire de l’encouragement des études grecques en France 17 (1883): 133–42. ———. Mélanges de mythologie et de linguistique. Paris: Hachette, 1877. Burns, Michael. France and the Dreyfus Affair. A Documentary History. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. Campbell, Lyle. Historical Linguistics. An Introduction. 3rd ed., Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2013. Cihac, Alexandru. Dictionnaire d’ étymologie daco-romane. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Ludolphe St. Goar, 1870–1879. Close, Elizabeth. The Development of Modern Rumanian Linguistic Theory and Practice in Muntenia 1821–1838. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Cohen, Stuart A. English Zionists and British Jews. The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1895–1920. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. Corbellari, Alain. Joseph Bédier, Écrivain et philologue. Geneva: Droz, 1997. Cosquin, Emmanuel. Contes populaires de Lorraine, comparés avec les contes des autres provinces de France et des pays étrangers. Paris: F. Vieweg, n.d. [1887]. Costantini, Emanuaela. “Neither Foreigners, nor Citizens. Romanian Jews’ Long Road to Citizenship.” In Tullia Catalan and Marco Dogo, eds., The Jews and the Nation-States of Southeastern Europe from the 19th Century to the Great Depression. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.

ZD_Book.indb 168

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

Bibliography

169

Crăciun, Camelia, ed. Lumea evreiască în literatură română. Representations of the Jewish World in Romanian Literature. Iași: Editura Universităţii Alexandru Ian Cuza, 2013. Darmesteter, James. Ormazd et Ahriman, leurs origines et leur histoire. Paris: F. Vieweg, 1877. Daskalov, Roumen and Alexander Vezenkov, eds. Entangled Histories of the Balkans. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Daudet, Léon. “Rabelais lu à haute voix.” L’Action française 25 (28 January 1932): 66. ———. “La langue de Rabelais et les travaux de Sainéan.” L’Action française 29 (3 January 1936): 1. Décimo, Marc. Sciences et Pataphysique. Comment la linguistique vint à Paris. De Michel Bréal à Ferdinand de Saussure. 2 vols. Paris: Presses du Réel, 2014. Densușianu, Ovid. Histoire de la langue roumaine. 2 vols. Paris: Ernest Le Roux, 1901. ———. Les Prises de Cordres et de Sebille. Chanson de geste du XIIe siècle, publiée d’après le manuscrit unique de la Bibliothèque Nationale. Paris, 1896. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, C. Opera lui C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Bucharest: Cartea Românescă, 1983. Drăgan, Mihai. B.P. Hasdeu. Iași: Editura Junimea, 1972. Dreyfus, Alfred. Cinq années de ma vie, 1894–1899. Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier, 1901. Efron, John M. German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Eliade, Mircea. Despre Eminescu și Hasdeu. Iaşi: Junimea, 1987. Elyada, Aya. “Bridge to a bygone Jewish past? Abraham Tendlau and the rewriting of Yiddish folklore in nineteenth-century Germany.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 16 no. 3 (2017): 419–36. Endelman, Todd M. Leaving the Jewish Fold. Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Eskenasy, Victor. “Notes on Moses Gaster’s Correspondence with Jewish and Romanian Intellectuals.” Romanian Jewish Studies 1, no. 2 (Winter 1987): 77–96. Espagne, Michel. “Le cercle positiviste de Leipzig: Une anthropologie en germe.” Revue germanique internationale 10 (2004): 81–95. Florea, Virgiliu. “Dr. M. Gaster. ‘I am a bit of a Romanian Scholar.’” Studia Judaica 1 (1991): 61–74. Freimark, Peter. “Language Behaviour and Assimilation. The Situation of the Jews in Northern Germany in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 24, no. 1: 157–77. Garry, Jane and Hasan El-Shamy, ed. Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature. A Handbook. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2005. Gaster, Moses. Gaster Papers. A: Autobiography. C: “Things that were.” Manuscripts and Rare Books, University College London. ———. History of the Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews: the cathedral synagogue of the Jews in England situate in Bevis Marks, a memorial volume written specially to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of its inauguration, 1701-1901. London: n.p., 1901. ———. Memorii [Fragmente]. Corespondenţă. Edited by Victor Eskenasy. Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 1998. ———. Moses Gaster în Corespondenţă. Edited by Virgiliu Florea. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1985. ———. Moses Gaster. Literatură Populară Română. Bucharest: I.G. Haimann, 1883.

ZD_Book.indb 169

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

170

Bibliography ———. Romanian Bird and Beast Stories. Publications of the Folk-Lore Society, no. 75. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1915. ———. Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, Mediaeval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha, and Samaritan Archaeology. New York: Ktav, 1971. German History from the Margins. Edited by Neil Gregor, Nils Roemer, and Mark Roseman. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. Gilliéron, Jules and Mario Roques. Études de géographie linguistique, d’après l’Atlas linguistique de France. Paris: Champion, 1912. Gilman, Sander L. Love + Marriage = Death: And other Essays in Representing Difference. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Gininger, Chaim. “The Correspondence between Alfred Landau and Lazăr Şăineanu.” Yivo Bleter 13 (1938): 283–98. ———. “Sainéan’s Accomplishments in Yiddish Linguistics.” In The Field of Yiddish. Studies in Yiddish Language, Folklore, and Literature, edited by Uriel Weinreich, 147–72. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1954. Goia, Vistian. B. P. Hasdeu şi Discipolii săi. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1987. Golb, Norman and Omeljan Pritsak. Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982. Gomperz, Theodor. Essays und Erinnerungen. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1905. ———. Theodor Gomperz. Ein Gelehrtenleben im Bürgertum der Franz-Josefs-Zeit: Auswahl seiner Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, 1869-1912. Edited by Robert A. Kann. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1905. Graetz, Heinrich. History of the Jews, From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. Translated by Bella Löwy et al. 6 vols. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1891– 1898. Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology. Translated from the fourth edition by James Steven Stallybrass. 4 vols. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882. Grossman, Jeffrey A. The discourse on Yiddish in Germany from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2000. Grünbaum, Max. Jüdischdeutsche Chrestomathie. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Hebräischen Literatur. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1882. Halevi, Meir. “In Memoriam: Lazăr Şăineanu (1859–1934).” Di Vokh 18–19 (June 1934): 3 (in Yiddish). Hașdeu, Bogdan Petriceicu. Cuvente den bătrîni. 3 vols. Edited by G. Mihăilă. Bucharest: Editura Didactică și Pedagogică, 1984. ———. Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae. Dicţionarul limbei istorice şi poporane a Românilor. 4 vols. Bucharest: Socecu and Teclu, 1886. ———. Istoria critică a Românilor. Edited by Grigore Brăncuş. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1984. ———. Istoria Toleranțeĭ religióse în Romănia. Bucharest: Tipografia Lucrătorilor, 1868. ———. Oltenescele de B. Petriceicu-Hasdeu. Patru discursuri. Originele Craiovei, Hristû și Tudorû Vladimirescu. Craiova: Samitca, 1884. ———. Studii de lingvistică şi filologie. Edited by Grigore Brâncus. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1988. ———. Studiu asupra Judaismului. Industria naţională, industria streină și industria ovreéscă, faţă cu principiulu concurrenţei. 2d. ed. Bucharest, 1901.

ZD_Book.indb 170

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

Bibliography

171

Hasdeu, Julie B. P. Oeuvres posthumes, 3 vols. Paris: Librairie Hachette; Bucharest: Librairie Socec, 1889–90. Herșcovici, Lucian-Zeev. “Hebrew ‘Maskilim’ Writers in Romania, 1850–1900.” Studia Judaica 6 (1997): 147–68. ———. “Le mouvement de la Haskalah parmi les juifs de Roumanie. 2 vols. (PhD diss., Université Paul Valéry, 2009). ———. “The Role of Historiography in the Emancipation of Romanian Jewry before World War I.” Shvut 16 (1993): 201–17. Herzl, Theodor. The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl. Translated by Harry Zohn and edited by Raphael Patai. 5 vols. New York and London: Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, 1960. ———. Tagebücher, 1895–1904. 3 vols. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1922–1923. Hitchins, Keith. The idea of nation. The Romanians of Transylvania 1691–1849. Bucharest: Editura Științifică şi Enciclopedică, 1988. ———. Rumania 1866–1947. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Hoffman, Adina and Peter Cole. Sacred Trash. The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza. New York: Schocken, 2011. Iancu, Carol. Le Combat international pour l’ émancipation des Juifs de Roumanie. Documents et témoignages. Tel Aviv: Université de Tel Aviv, Centre Goldstein-Goren pour l’histoire des Juifs de Roumanie, 1994. ———. Les Juifs en Roumanie (1866–1919). De l’exclusion à l’ émancipaton. Aix-en-Provence: Éditions de l’Université de Provence, 1978. Iordache, Anastasie. Take Ionescu. Bucharest: Mica Valahie, 2011. Iordachi, Constantin. “The Unyielding Boundaries of Citizenship: The Emancipation of ‘Non-Citizens’ in Romania, 1866–1918.” European Review of History 8, no. 2 (2001): 158–71. Iordan, Iorgu, ed. Istoria Lingvisticii Românești. Bucharest: Editura Stiinţifică și Enciclopedică, 1978. ——— and John Orr. An Introduction to Romance Linguistics. Revised by R. Posner. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970. Jarnik, Jan Urban. Index zu Diez’ Etymologischen Wörterbuch der Romanischen Sprachen. Berlin: Langenscheidt, 1878. ———. Sprachliches aus rumänischen Volksmärchen. Vienna: C. Fromme, 1877. Katz, Dovid. “On Yiddish, in Yiddish and for Yiddish: 500 Years of Yiddish Scholarship,” in Identity and ethos. A Festschrift for Sol Liptzin on the occasion of his 85th birthday, edited by Mark H. Gelber. New York, Berne, and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986, 23–36. ———, ed. Dialects of the Yiddish Language, Papers from the Second Annual Oxford Winter Symposium in Yiddish Language and Literature, 14–16 December 1986. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1988. Kerk, Gregor, Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte. Graz: Leuchner and Loubensky, 1887. Kornberg, Jacques. Theodor Herzl. From Assimilation to Zionism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1993. La Grasserie, Raoul de. Études de grammaire comparée. Des relations grammaticales considérées dans leur concept et dans leur expression, ou de la Catégorie des Cas. Paris: Jean Maisonneuve, 1890. Lavaud, Jacques. “Publications de M. Abel Lefranc.” In Mélanges offerts à M. Abel Lefranc, xi– xxxv. Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1936.

ZD_Book.indb 171

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

172

Bibliography Lehmann, Winfred P. A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. Leskien, August and Karl Brugmann. Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen aus dem preussischen und dem russischen Litauen. Strassburg: Karl Trübner, 1882. Leviţchi, Leon. Dicţionar român-englez. Bucharest: Editura 100+1 Grammar, 1998. Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics. Edited by Haro Stammerjohann. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2009. Livezeanu, Irina. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building, and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Lötze, Hermann. “Zur jüdisch-deutschen Literatur.” Archiv für Literaturgeschichte 1 (1870): 90–101. Ma’aseh Book. Book of Jewish Tales and Legends. Translated by Moses Gaster. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1934 (facsimile edition 1981). Marian, Simion Florea. Ornitologia poporană română, 2 vols. Cernăuți: R. Eckhardt, 1883. Marichal, Robert. “Abel Lefranc 1863–1952.” Annuaire de l’École pratique des Hautes Études (1956):13–19. McAuley, James. The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. McGann, Jerome J., ed. Historical Studies and Literary Criticism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Marrus, Michael. The Politics of Assimilation: A Study of the French Jewish Community at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Meillet, Antoine. Introduction à l’Étude comparative des langues indo-européennes. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1903. 8th edition. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1937. ———. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. 2d ed. Paris: Librairie ancienne Honoré Champion, 1926. Mendelssohn, Moses. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. G. B. Mendelssohn. 5 vols. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1843–1845. Michel, Francisque. Études de philologie comparée sur l’argot. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1856. Mihăilă, G. “Locul lui H. Tiktin in Lingvistica Romănească.” DacoRomana n.s. 9–10 (2004– 2005). Miklosich, Franz. Die türkischen Elemente in den südost- und osteuropäischen Sprachen. 2 vols. Vienna: K. Gerold, 1884. ———. Über die Mundarten und die Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europa’s. 12 vols. Vienna: Karl Gerold’s sohn, 1874. Millet, Gabriel. La Collection chrétienne et byzantine des Hautes Études. Rapport sommaire sur les conférences de l’exercice 1902–1903. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1903. Miron, Dan. A Traveler Disguised. The Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Monfrin Jacques. Études de philologie romane. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2001. Müller, Max. Lectures on the Science of Language. 9th ed. London: Longman Greens, 1877; 2d series. London: Longmans Greens, 1868. Nerlich, Brigitte. Semantic Theories in Europe, 1830–1930: From Etymology to Contextuality. Amsterdam and London: John Benjamins Publishing, 1992. Netea, Vasile. Take Ionescu. Bucharest: Meridian Publishing House, 1971.

ZD_Book.indb 172

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

Bibliography

173

Neumann, Victor, and Armin Heinen, eds. Key Concepts of Romanian History: Alternative Approaches to Socio-Political Languages. Budapest: CEU Press, 2013. Nordau, Anna and Maxa. Max Nordau. A Biography. New York: The Nordau Committee, 1943. Nordau, Max. “Ma Vie,” in Écrits sionistes, ed. Baruch Hagani. Paris: Librairie Lipschutz, 1936, 36–39. Oișteanu, Andrei. Inventing the Jew. Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and other CentralEast European Cultures. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Oldson, William O. A Providential Anti-Semitism. Nationalism and Polity in NineteenthCentury Romania. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991. Olender, Maurice. Les langues du paradis. Aryens et sémites, un couple providential. 2d. ed. Paris: Seuil, 2000. Ornea, Zigu. Viaţa lui C. Dobrogeanu Gherea. Bucharest: Cartea Românescă, 1982. Paliga, Sorin. “Etymology and Ideology: Substratum Heritage and the Slavic Influence on Romanian.” Opera Slavica 30, no. 4 (2020): 5–22. Paris, Gaston. Les Contes orientaux dans la littérature du Moyen Âge. Paris: A. Franck, 1875. ———. Esquisse historique de la littérature française au Moyen Âge. Paris: Armand Colin, 1907. ———. François Villon. Paris: Hachette, 1910. ———. “Les Parlers de France: Lecture faite à la réunion des sociétés savantes le samedi 16 mai 1888,” Revue des patois gallo-romans 2(1888): 161–67. Petcu, Marian. Istoria jurnalismului din România în date: Enciclopedie cronologică. Iași: Editura Polirom, 2012. Poghirc, Cicerone. B. P. Hasdeu, lingvist şi filolog. Bucharest. Editura Ştiinţifică, 1968. Pott, August Friedrich. Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien. Ethnographisch-linguistische Untersuchung, vornehmlich ihrer Herkunft und Sprache. Halle: E. Heynemann, 1844–1845. Propp, Vladimir. The Russian Folktale. Translated and edited by Sibelan Forrester. Detroit: Wayne University Press, 2012. Presner, Todd. Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Rabelais, François. Les oeuvres de maistre François Rabelais: accompagnées d'une notice sur sa vie et ses ouvrages. Edited by Charles Marty. 6 vols. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1868–1902. ———. Oeuvres. Edited by Abel Lefranc, Jacques Boulenger, Henri Clouzot, Paul Dorveaux, Jean Plattard, and Lazare Sainéan. 4 vols. Paris: H. and E. Champion, 1912–1922. Reinach, Joseph. Histoire de l’Affaire Dreyfus. Paris: Éditions de la Revue Blanche, 1901. Reinach, Salomon. “L’histoire du folklore.” L’Anthropologie (1902): 451–53. ———. Cultes, mythes, et religions. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1905. ———. Manuel de philologie classique, 2d ed. 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1883. Renan, Ernest. Histoire Générale et Système comparé des Langues Sémitiques. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1855. ———. Le Judaïsme comme race et comme religion. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1883. Rizescu, I. H. Tiktin: Omul şi Opera. Bucharest: Editura Ştiinţifică, 1971. Robins, R. H. A Short History of Linguistics. 2nd ed. London and New York: Longman, 1979. Le Roman de Tristan, par Thomas, poème du XIIe siècle. Edited by Joseph Bédier. 2 vols. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1902–1905.

ZD_Book.indb 173

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

174

Bibliography Roszkowski, Wojciech and Jan Kofman, eds. Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2015. Rotman, Liviu. Ha-evrah bi-re’ i ha-inukh: bet ha-sefer ha-Yehudi-ha Romani, 1851-1914. Education as a Reflection of Society. The Jewish-Romanian School. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, the Goldstein–Goren Center for the History of Jews in Romania. 1999. Săghinescu, V. Liţeratii jidani: Lazăr şi Mariu Şăineanu (Luzăr şi Marc Şaia). Mihail Canianu (Moisă Cahana), profanatorĭ limbeĭ romîne şi ștințeĭ. Craiova: Editura Ziarului “Dorul Românului,” 1899. ———. Vocabular Romînesc. Iași: Alexandru, 1901. Şăineanu, Constantin [Mariu]. L’Abyssinie dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, ou Le règne de Sartsa-Dentel (Malak Sagad) (1563-1594) d’après des annales éthiopiennes inédites. Bucharest: F: Gobl, 1892. ———. Amintiri. Bucharest: Tipografia Universul, 1947. ———. Dicționar Franceso-Român. Craiova: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, n.d. [1897]. ———. Dicționar Româno-Frances. Dictionnaire roumain-français. Craiova: Ralian and Ignat Samitca, n.d. [1898]. ———. Lazăr Şăineanu 1859-1934. Bucharest: Editura Cultura Poporului, 1935. ———. Limbile Semitice. Schiță istorică-linguistică. Bucharest: Codreanu and Săviou, 1895; published also in the Anuar pentru Israeliți 18 (1896–1897). Şain, Lazăr. Moisi Mendelsohn [sic] viaţa şi activitatea sa. Studiu biografic. Bucharest: Tipografia Hajoetz, 1880. ———. “Calomnia luărei sîngului istoricul ei in Romănia.” Fraternitatea. Anuar pentru Israeliţi 5 (1882–1882): 62–66. Şăineanu, Lazăr. Autorii români moderni: Bucăți alese în versuri și în prosă din principalii Scriitori al secolului al XIX-lea. Bucharest: Joseph Göbl, 1891; 3rd ed., Craiova, Ralian and Ignat Samitica, 1895. ———. Basmele române în comparațiune cu legendele antice clasice și în legătură cu basmele popórelorŭ învecinate și ale tuturorŭ popórelorŭ romanice. Studiu comparativŭ. Bucharest: Carol Göbl, 1895; new edition, edited by Ruxandra Niculescŭ and Preface by Ovidiu Bîrlea. Bucharest: Minerva, 1978. ———. Dicţionar Germano-Român. Bucharest: Socecu, 1887. ———. Dicţionar Româno-German. Bucharest: H. Steinerg, 1889. ———. Dicţionar universal al limbei române. Craiova: Samitca, 1896, with later editions 1908, 1914, 1922, 1925. ———. Elemente turceştĭ în limba română. Bucharest: Tipografia Academieĭ Române, 1885. ———. Ielele. Dînsele, Vîntoasele, Frumoasele, Şoĭmanele, Măĭstrele, Milostivele, Zînele. Studiu de mitologiă comparativă. Bucharest: Tipografia Academieĭ Române, 1886. ———. Încercare asupra semasiologiei limbei române. Studie istorice despre transiţiunea sensurilor. Bucharest: Tipografia Academieĭ Române, 1887. ———. Influenţa orientală asupra Limbei şi Culturei Române. 2 vols. Bucharest: Socecŭ, 1900. ———. Istoria Filologieĭ Române. Studiĭ Critice. Bucharest: Socecŭ, 1892. ———. Istoria Filologieĭ Române cu o privire retrospectivă asupra ultimelor decenii (1870–1895), 2nd ed. Bucharest: Librărieĭ Socecŭ, 1895. ———. [under pseudonym Luca Vornea]. Lazăr Şăineanu. Schiță Biografică urmată de o Bibliografie Critică. Bucharest: Editura Adverul, 1928.

ZD_Book.indb 174

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

Bibliography

175

———. “Notes sur le vocabulaire Roumain. Les sens du mot ‘philosophe’ dans la langue roumaine.” Romania 17 (1888):599–602. ———. Raporturile între Gramatică și Logică: c’o privire sintetică asupra părților cuvîntuluĭ. Studiŭ de linguistică generală. Bucharest: Stabilimentul Grafic I. V. Socecŭ, 1891. ———. Studii folklorice cercetări in domeniul Literaturei populare. Bucharest: Socecŭ, 1896. ———. Studiu Dialectologic asupra Graiului Evreo-German. Bucharest: Eduard Wiegand, 1889. Also published in the Anuar pentru Israeliți 12 (1889–1890): 53–126. Sainéan, Lazare. L’Argot ancien (1455–1850). Ses éléments constitutifs, ses rapports avec les langues secrètes de l’Europe méridionale et l’argot moderne. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1907. ———. L’Argot des tranchées d’après les Lettres des Poilus et les Journaux du Front. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1915. ———. Autour des Sources Indigènes: études d’ étymologie française et romane. Florence: Olschki, 1935. ———. O Carieră filologică în România (1885–1900). Istoricul unei împămînteniri memoriu autobiografic. Bucharest: Émile Storck, 1901. ———. Une Carrière philologique en Roumanie (1885–1900). Les péripities d’une naturalisation. Mémoire autobiographique. Bucharest: Émile Storck and Paris: Larousse, 1901. ———. La Création métaphorique en français et en roman. Images tirées du monde des animaux domestiques. 2 vols. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1905–1907. ———. “Les Éléments orientaux en Roumain.” Romania 30 (1901): 539–66; 31 (1902): 82–99, 557–89. ———. “Essai sur le Judéo-allemand et spécialement sur le dialecte parlé en Valachie.” Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 12 (1903): 90–196. ———. “L’État actuel des études de Folklore.” Revue de synthèse historique 4, no. 11 (April 1902): 147–74. Also published as a book, Paris: Cerf, 1902. ———. “Les Fées méchantes d’après les croyances du people roumain.” Mélusine 10 (1900– 1901): 217–26, 243–54, 256–58. ———. “Les Juifs ou Tartares ou géants.” Romania 18 (1889): 494–501. ———. “Jidovii sau Tătarii sau Uriaşii. Excursione istorico-lingvistcă.” Convorbiri literare 21 (September 1877): 521–28. Reprinted in Anuar pentru Israeliţi 11 (1888–1889): 153–60. ———. “Les jours d’emprunt, ou les jours de la Vieille.” Romania 18 (1889): 107–27. ———. Le Langage parisien au XIXe siècle. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1920. ———. La Langue de Rabelais. 2 vols. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1922–1923; Geneva: Slatkine reprints, 1976. ———. Lettres de L. Sainéan, le grand philologue (1859–1934), edited by Constantin Şăineanu. Paris: Paul Geuthner; Bucharest: Imprimerie Tirajul, 1936. ———. “Notes linguistiques sur Rabelais.” Revues des Études Rabelaisiennes 5 (1907): 391– 412. ———. “Rabelaisiana.” Revue des Études Rabelaisiennes 10 (1912): 258–82, 451–80. ———. “Le régime et la société en Roumanie pendant le règne de Phanariotes.” Revue internationale de sociologie 10 (1902): 717–48. ———. “Les sens du mot ‘philosophe’ dans la langue romaine.” Romania 17 (1888): 599–602. ———. Les Sources de l’Argot ancien. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré et Édouard Champion, 1912. ———. Les Sources indigènes de l’Étymologie française. 3 vols. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1925–1930.

ZD_Book.indb 175

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

176

Bibliography ———. “Les termes nautiques chez Rabelais.” Revue des Études Rabelaisiennes 8 (1910): 1–56. ———. “Toldot Yaa’akov Psantir” (in Hebrew). Otsar ha-Sfrut (Treasury of Literature) 3(1889):85–93. ———. “Zilele babei şi legenda dochiei.” Convorbiri literare 22 (1888): 193–220. Sandu, Vasile. Viaţa lui B.P. Hasdeu. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1989. Schindler, Bruno, ed. Gaster Centenary Publication. London: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1958. Schleicher, August. Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der Indogermanischen Sprachen, 2nd ed. [1st ed. 1861]. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau; London: Williams and Norgate; Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1866. ———. A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages. Translated by Herbert Bendall, 2 vols. London: Trübner, 1874–1877. ———. Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft, 2nd ed. [1st ed. 1863] Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1873. ———. Die Deutsche Sprache. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1860. ———. Les langues de l’Europe moderne, trans. by Hermann Ewerbeck. Paris: Lagrange and Garnier, 1852. ———. Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Uebersicht. Bonn: H. B. Konig, 1850. ———. La théorie de Darwin et la science du langage. De l’ importance du langage pour l’ histoire naturelle de l’ homme. Translated by M. de Pommayrol. Paris: Librarie A. Franck, 1868. ———. Über die Bedeutung der Sprache für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1865. Schorsch, Ismar. “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy.” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 34, no. 1 (January 1989): 44–66 Schuchardt, Hugo. Hugo Schuchardt-Brevier. Ein Vademecum der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Edited by Leo Spitzer. Halle: Verlag Max Niemeyer, 1922. ———. Slawo-deutsches und Slawo-italienisches. Dem Herrn Franz von Miklosich zum 20 November 1883. Graz: Leuschner and Lubensky, 1884 [sic for 1885]. Schwarzfeld, Moses. Evreii în literatura populară română. Studiu de psichologie populară. Bucharest: Eduard Wiegand and C. C Saviou, 1892. ———. Evreii în literatura lor populară sau cum se judecă evreii insuşi; studiu etnico-psischologic. Bucharest: Tipo-litografia Universala, 1898. Schweighofer, Astrid. Religiöse Sucher in der Moderne: Konversionen vom Judentum zum Protestantismus in Wien um 1900. Berlin, Munich, and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015. Schwob, Marcel and Georges Guieysse. Étude sur l’argot français. Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1889. Seidman, Naomi. A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1997. Şorer, Jehiel Michael. La Răspântie de Veacuri: Evreii în 1900–1901. Bucharest: Doron Shorrer, 2004. Sorkin, David. Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment. London: Peter Halban, 1996. Spaëth, Valérie. “Michel Bréal et Arsène Darmesteter: deux savants juifs face au langage, aux langues et au pouvoir.” Langages 182, no. 2 (2011): 25–39. Spitzer, Leo. Review of L. Sainéan, Les Sources indigènes de l’ Étymologie française. In Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie 48 (1927): 27–36.

ZD_Book.indb 176

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

Bibliography

177

———. Die Wortbildung als stilistisches Mittel exemplifiziert an Rabelais. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1910. ———. Fremdwörterhatz und Fremdvölkerhasz. Eine Streitschrift gegen die Sprachreinigung. Vienna: Manzsche Hof-Verlage und Universität Buchandlung, 1918. Stanciu, Măriuca. “The End [sic] 19th Century Cultural Elite and the Origins of Romanian Anti-Semitism (Two Classical Authors of Romanian Literature: Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Vasile Alecsandri).” Studia Hebraica 5 (2005): 69–76. ———. “Medieval Documents on the Jews in the Romanian Principalities as Reflected in the Jewish Press.” Studia Hebraica 6 (2006): 135–47. Stanislawski, Michael. Zionism and the Fin de Siècle. Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. Steinschneider, Moritz. “Jüdisch-Deutsche Literatur, nach einem handschriftlichen Katalog der Oppenheim’schen Bibliothek (in Oxford) mit Zusätzen und Berichtigungen.” Serapeum 9 (1848): 313–17, 321–36, with successive articles in volumes 10, 25, 27, and 28. Stern, Adolphe. Din Viaţa unui Evreu-Român. Edited by Țicu Goldstein. 3 vols. Bucharest: Editura Hasefer, 2001. Studies in Jewish Folklore, ed. Frank Talmage. Cambridge, Mass.: Association for Jewish Studies, 1980. Tendlau, Abraham. Sprichwörter und Redensarten deutsch-jüdischer Vorzeit, als Beitrag zur Volks-, Sprach- und Sprichwörter-Kunde. Frankfurt: Heinrich Keller, 1860. Thomas, Antoine. Essais de philologie française. Paris: Bouillon, 1897. Tort, Patrick. Évolutionnisme et linguistique; suivi de August Schleicher, La théorie de Darwin et la science du langage; De l’ importance du langage pour l’ histoire naturelle de l’ homme. Edition réalisée avec le concours de Denise Modigliani. Paris: J. Vrin, 1980. Tourtoulon, Charles de. Des Dialectes, de leur classification et de leur délimitation géographique. Paris: Jean Maisonneuve, 1890. Trautmann-Waller, Céline. Philologie allemande et tradition juive. Le parcours intellectuel de Leopold Zunz. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998. ———, ed. Quand Berlin pensait les peuples: Anthropologie, ethnologie, et psychologie, 1850– 1890. Paris: CNRS, 2004. Trencsényi, Balázs. The Politics of National Character. A Study in Interwar East European Thought. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. Urechiă, V. A. Legende Române culese și adnototate. Bucharest: Socecŭ, 1891. ———. Şăinizme. Conferinţă ţinută la Ateneu în seara de 29 Martie 1898. Bucharest: La Biserica Albă, 1898. Vennemann, Theo and Terence H. Wilbur. Schuchardt, the Neogrammarians, and the transformational theory of phonological change. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum Verlag, 1972. Voicu, George. Radiografia unei expatrieri: cazul Lazăr Şăineanu. Bucharest: Institutul Naţional pentru Studierea Holocaustului din România, 2008. Volovici, Leon. Nationalist ideology and anti-Semitism. The case of Romanian intellectuals in the 1930s. Translated by Charles Kormos. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991. Weinberg, Werner. “Language questions relating to Moses Mendelssohn’s Pentateuch translation.” Hebrew Union College Annual 55 (1984): 197–242. Weinreich, Uriel, ed. The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Yiddish Language, Folklore, and Literature. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York, 1954. Wellek, René. “Leo Spitzer (1881–1960).” Comparative Literature 12, no. 4 (1960): 310–34.

ZD_Book.indb 177

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:39

178

Bibliography Wendehorst, Stephan. Bausteine einer jüdischen Geschichte der Universität Leipzig. Leipzig: Leipzig University Press, 2006. Willingham II, Robert Allen. “Jews in Leipzig: Nationality and Community in the 20th Century.” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2005. Wistrich, Robert S. and Todd Presner. Laboratory for World Destruction: Germans and Jews in Central Europe. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Zink, Michel, ed. Le Moyen Âge de Gaston Paris. La poésie à l’ épreuve de la philologie. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004. Zunz, Leopold. Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden, historisch entwickelt. Berlin: A. Asher, 1832.

ZD_Book.indb 178

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

Š  Index Abramovich, S.Y., 33–34 Adevărul, 85 Agricola, 33 Alliance Israélite, 44, 92, 110, 121–123 Alianţa Antisemită, 91. See also antiSemitism Aligheri, Dante, 57 Annales, 160–161 anti-Semitism: in Romania: limitation of citizenship, 5–7; stereotypes, 8; nationalist exclusion, 7; Hasdeu’s Studii assupra judaismului, 43, 44–46, 73–74; Urechiă’s Şăinizme, 85; Alianţa Antisemită, 91; restrictions on education, 91–92, 92 n. 235, 110, 112; Nordau speech on, 97; Canianu’s Literati jidani, 106, 109; and baptism, 110, 112, 131; Șoimescu’s speech, 120–121; blame for economy, 122; Apărarea națională article, 125; in France: Dreyfus affair, 97; Dreyfusards, 105–106; anti-Dreyfusards 133–134. See also Dreyfus affair Anuar pentru Israeliţi (Israelite yearbook), 5, 16, 16 n. 28, 18, 35, 56, 59, 87, 104, 107, 110, 115, 130 Apărarea națională (National defence), 121, 124, 125. See also anti-Semitism Apuleius, 70 Archiv für Slavische Philologie, 126, 127 argot, 136, 137, 138, 146, 150, 161 Arion, Constantin, 124 Aristotle, 49

ZD_Book.indb 179

Atlas linguistique de France (Linguistic atlas of France), 22, 137–138 Autorii români moderni (Contemporary Romanian authors), 48, 48 n. 112, 79 Autour des sources indigènes: études d’ étymologie française et romane (On indigenous sources: studies of French and Roman etymology), 161 Avé-Lallemant, Friedrich Christian Benedict, 30, 30 n. 64, 34 Bachelin, Léo, 64, 64 n. 159 Balzac, Honoré de, 58 Barasch, Iuliu, 17 n. 29, 45, 57. See also Iuliu Barasch Historical Society Basmele române (Romanian folktales), research for, 60–61; folktales as popular constructs, 61–62; fundamental motifs, 62 – 63, versus original Aryan myths, 63–64; versus Indianist theory, 64–65; anthropological explanation, 65–66; analytical classification, 66–67; tales with Roma, 68–69; and Jews, 69–70; wins Academy prize, 70–73; reviews of, 77–78, 78 n. 196; 80, 138, 141, 145 Beck, Rabbi Moritz, 36–37, 107, 127 Bédier, Joseph, 25 n. 50, 65, 78 n. 197, 137, 137 n. 13, 138–139, 140, 144 Benfey, Theodore, 9 n. 10, 64, 65 Berlin, Moses, 41 Bevis Marks synagogue, 88 n. 234, 93, 93 n 240 Bibesco, Prince Alexandre, 134

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

180

Index Bibesco Prize, 134, 136 n. 11, 144–145 Blank, Aristide, 156 n. 62 Bloch, Josef, 74 Bloch, Marc, 160 Bloch, Oscar, 157 n. 66 blood libel, 16, 16 n. 28, 76 Bogdan, Ioan, 118–119 Bopp, Franz, 9–11, 10 nn. 12; 13, 13 Borokhov, Ber, 160 Bourget, Paul, 103, 103 n. 269 Bovo-Bukh, 31, 31 n. 66, 40 Brăescu, Alexandru, 119–120, 119 n. 316 Bréal, Michel, 13–14, 13 n. 20, 14 n. 22, 16, 19, 19 n. 36, 20, 21 n. 44, 27 n. 54, 28, 37, 40, 49, 92, 105, 133–35, 136, 137 n. 13, 139, 144, 146 Britannicus, 80 Brugmann, Karl, 25–27 Buxtorf, Johannes, 30 Canianu, Mihail, Caragiale, Ion Luca, 82–83, 83 n. 208, 89, 90 Carol I, king of Romania, 55, 59, 64, 124 Carol, royal prince, 112, 112 n. 298 Carp, Petre, 47–48, 60 n. 148, 124, 124 n. 326 Cataragiu, Lascăr, 59 Choral Temple, 107, 115 Chovevei Zion, 87, 88 Chrestomathie roumaine (Romanian chrestomathy), 89, Chrysander, Wilhelm Christian Justus, 30 n. 64 Chubinsky, Pavlo, 41 Chuquet, Arthur, 134 Cihac, Alexandru, 15, 81 Cinq années de ma vie 1894–1899 (Five years of my life 1894-1899), 133, 134 n. 2. See also Dreyfus, Alfred Clouzot, Henri, 158–159, 158 n. 60 Cohen, Marcel, 144, 160 Collège de France, 13, 20, 92, 134, 135, 136, 141, 152, Comédie française, 145, 156, 161, 162 Comoedia, 162 Contes populaires de Lorraine (Folk-Tales of Lorraine), 65 Convorbiri literare (Literary conversations),

ZD_Book.indb 180

18, 53, 59, 60 n. 148, 61 n. 151, 119, 120, 130 Cosquin, Emmanuel, 65, 165 n. 66 Costin, Miron, 53, 55, 55 n. 131, 74 Crémieux, Adolphe, 44, 46 n. 105 Cuvente den bătrîni (Words from the elders), 11 n. 16, 12 Damé, Frédéric, 81, 84 Darmesteter, Arsène, 19 n. 36, 21, 21 n. 44, 50, 77, 106, 140, 146, 148 n. 45 Darmesteter, James, 16, 16 n. 27, 77 Darwin, Charles, 10 Daudet, Léon, 161, 161 n. 79, 162 Degeneration, 96, 96 n. 248 “Deluded Dragon, The,” 69, 69 n. 173. See also Basmele române Demetrescu, Traian, 57 Densușianu, Aron, 80, 80 n. 202 Densușianu, Ovid, 51 n. 122, 83–84, 84 n. 211, 135 Der Judenstaat (The Jewish state), 88, 97, 108 dialects: French, 22, 22 n. 45, 23, 150, 155; German, 37, 38, 39, 146; Judeo-German, 28, 30, 37, 39, 40, 42, 42 n. 96, 43; Romanian, 8 n. 8, 51, 81, 82, 86; 25–26, 37, 51, 140 Dictionnaire d’ étymologie daco-romaine (Dictionary of Daco-Romanian etymology), 81 Dictionnaire général de la langue française, 140, 154 Dicționar germano-român/ româno-german, 19–20, 28, 28 n. 58, 82 Dictionariulu limbei române (Dictionary of the Romanian language), 81, 121 Dicționar universal al limbei române (Universal dictionary of the Romanian language): background of, 81; scope of, 81–82; sources of, 82; positive reviews of, 82–83, 83 nn. 208, 209; Densușianu’s criticism of, 83–84, 84 n. 212; Urechiă’s denunciation of, 84–85; 86, 87, 104, 149, 210 Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden (The worship sermons of the Jews), 31, 33 Dissescu, Constantin, 113, 128

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

Index Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Constantin, 89, 90 n. 229 Doktor Kohn, 100–102, 101 n. 262. See also Nordau, Max; Zionism Dons, Anna Elisabeth, 99–100, 99 n. 259, 100 n. 261 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 58 Dreyfus, Alfred, 77, 97, 105, 133, 134 n. 2 “Dreyfus affair”, 95, 97, 105, 106, 161, Droz, Eugénie, 161 Dumas, Alexandre, 58 Durkheim, Émile, 142 École des Études Orientales, 58, 135 École des Langues Orientales, 20, 135 École Normale, 137, 141 École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), 20, 22, 28, 135, 139–43, 158, 160 Edmont, Edgar, 138 Egalitatea (Equality), 71, 74, 85, 85 n. 215, 87 Eliade, Mircea, 15 n. 26, 43 n. 98 Elemente turcești în limba română (Turkish elements in the Romanian language): 15, 15 n. 25, 21, 81, 82, 94 n. 244, 95, 163 Eminescu, Mihai, 6–7, 35 n. 74, 80 Emmanuel, David, 89, 90, 90 n. 230 “Emperor’s Twelve Daughters, The,” 64, 64 n. 159. See also Basmele române Epoca (Age), 83 n. 208, 122, 129 Eskenasy, Victor, 4 n. 2 Essai de sémantique (Essay on semantics), 146 Essai sur le judéo-allemand et spécialement sur le dialecte parlé en Valachie (Essay on Judeo-German and especially the dialect spoken in Wallachia), 147–148; response to, 148. See also Judeo-German; “L’Origine du parler judéo-allemand”; Studiu dialectologic asupra graiului evreogerman Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae (Romania’s great etymological dictionary), 15, 56, 81. Evreii în literatura populară română (The Jews in Romanian literature), 52, 69 n. 175, 89 fabliaux (fables), 24, 65, 138. See also folklore/folk-tales

ZD_Book.indb 181

181

“Făt-Frumos,” 63, 64, 69. See also Basmele române Febvre, Lucien, 160 “Fées méchantes,” 76. See also Ielele. Dînsele, vîntoasele... “Fickle Widow, The,” 69. See also Basmele române Field of Yiddish, The, 1 folklore/folk-tales, 2, 4, 5, 15, 20, 23, 24, 27, 29, 37, 50, 61, 62, 64, 66–67, 76, 79, 83, 116, 138 141, 142, 143, 148, 149. See also fabliaux Foy, Karl, 111, 111 n. 293 “Fragment de biographie intellectuelle” (Fragment of an intellectual biography), 159–60 Fraternitatea (Fraternity), 4, 13, 13 n. 21, 16, 16 n. 28, 17, 87, 130 French language, 2, 3, 8, 20–21, 28, 33, 49, 103, 137, 138, 140, 141, 144, 155, 160. See also La Langue de Rabelais; L’Argot ancient; L’Argot des tranchées; Le Langage parisien au XIXe siècle; Les Sources indigènes de l’ étymologie française Friedländer, Lucy Leah, 93 Friedländer, Michael, 93 Gargantua, 154 Gaster, Moses: friendship with Şăineanu, 4; role in Şăineanu’s Ielele, 15, 15 n. 25; correspondence with Şăineanu, 4, 4 n. 2, 18–19, 25, 28, 47, 48, 55, 58, 60–61, 71, 71 n. 179, 77, 86, 89, 89 n. 228, 92–93, 95, 98 n. 256, 100, 103, 103 n. 270, 107; reaction to Basmele române, 72; introduces Şăineanu to England and Jewish community, 93–94; introduces Şăineanu to Nordau, 95–96; news of Şăineanu’s baptism, 114–115; end of friendship with Şăineanu, 116; last letter from Şăineanu, 126–127; 6, 7, 11, 16–17, 32, 39, 44 n. 98, 45, 46, 50 n. 120, 51, 52, 60, 70 n. 176, 81, 87–89, 88 nn. 224; 225, 89 n. 226, 92–96, 93 n. 240, 94 nn. 242; 243, 97, 103, 104, 108, 114–115, 145, 147, 159, 162 Gaunersprache (thieves’ cant), 11, 30 Geheimsprache (secret language), 34 Geniza manuscripts, 94, 94 n. 242

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

182

Index Gennep, Arnold van, 144 Ghenadie, Metropolitan-Primate, 70 Gilliéron, Jules, 22, 28, 137–138, 140 Gininger, Chaim, 1, 1 n. 1, 28 n. 57 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 53, 57 Golden Ass, The, 70, 71 Goldenberg, S., 114 Goldschmidt, Rabbi Aaron, 29 Gomperz, Theodor, 108–109, 109 n. 286 Graetz, Heinrich, 33, 111, 112 Gregory the Great, 140 Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Greek and Albanian fairy tales), 60–61 Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, 60, 63 Grünbaum, Max, 31 n. 65 Hahn, Johann Georg van, 60, 61 n. 150, 67 Halevi, Meyer Abraham, 162–163 Halévy, Joseph, 58 n. 143, 134, 134 n. 4, 146 Hamel, Glikl, 1 Haret, Spiru, 91–92, 92 n. 235, 110 Hasdeu, Alexandru, 45, 45 n. 102 Hasdeu, Bogdan Petriceicu, as Şăineanu’s academic supervisor, 9, 9 n. 9, 13, 15, 18, 46; role in publication of Elemente turcești, 15 n. 25; entrusts Şăineanu with daughter’s intellectual progress, 47; asks Şăineanu to serve as his substitute, 47; writes preface to Istoria filologieĭ române, 50, 50 n. 120; supports Şăineanu’s naturalization, 59, 73; hostile article for Urechiă’s newspaper, 121; 9–13, 11 n. 16, 43–47, 43 n. 98, 44 n. 100, 45 n. 101; 102, 46 n. 104; 105, 47 n. 108, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 73–74, 81, 82, 92, 131 Hasdeu, Iulia (Julie), 47, 47 n. 108 Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, 2, 3 n. 1, 7, 17, 32, 35, 36, 39, 57, 87, 107, 131, 164 Hatzfeld, Adolphe, 140 Hayoets (The Counselor), 37 Heine, Heinrich, 57, 107, 111–112 Henry, Victor, 133 Hercules et Cacus, 16 Herzl, Theodor, 88, 88 nn. 224; 225, 89, 95, 97, 99–100, 107, 108 Hildebrand, Rudolf, 29, 29 nn. 59, 60 Histoire de l’affaire Dreyfus (History of the Dreyfus affair), 134

ZD_Book.indb 182

Histoire de la langue roumaine (History of the Romanian language), 134 “History of a Naturalization,” 79 History of the Jews, 107 Hrysant, Valeria, 45, 45 n. 102 Humanisme et Renaissance, 161 Hussar, Iosif, 58 n. 141 Ielele. Dînsele, vîntoasele... (Fairies), 15–16, 16 n. 26, 21, 60, 64, 76, 79, 145 “Ileana Cosânzeana,” 63. See also Basmele române Încercare asupra semasiologiei limbei române (Essay on the semasiology of the Romanian language), 18–19, 20, 21, 27, 46, 51, 62, 64, 76, 82, 84, 146 Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române (The oriental influence on Romanian language and culture): scope of work, 116–118; publication in Convorbiri literare, 118–119; defends mixed character of Romanian language, 124; Xenopol’s response, 119–120; Iorga’s review, 127; Șăineanu’s response, 128; wins Bibesco Prize, 134–135; wins Volney Prize, 143; 94 n. 243, 107, 111, 111 n. 293, 116 n. 306, 125, 126, 131, 136, 145, 160 Institut de France, 143, 150 Introduction à l’ étude comparative des langues indo-européennes (Introduction to the comparative study of Indo-European languages), 135 Ionescu, Take, 91, 110–111, 112, 112 n. 298, 114, 121, 125, 128 Ionescu-Gion, Gheorghe, 89–90 Iorga, Nicolae, 52, 52 n. 124, 119, 127–128, 128 n. 332 Ispirescu, Petra, 28 n. 58, 61 Istoria filologieĭ române (History of Romanian philology): Romanian as a language mixture, 50–51; importance of dialects, 51; ethnic elements in Romanian – the Roma 51; and the Jews, 52; positive reviews from G. Paris and Xenopol, 56; 55, 60, 67–68, 76, 79, 81, 119 Istorie toleranțeĭ religióse în Romănia (History of religious tolerance in Romania), 44, 46

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

Index Istrati, Constantin, 110–111, 112, 123 Işuv Eretz Israel, 87 Iuliu Barasch Historical Society, 17, 17 n. 29, 40, 42, 70, 90. See also Iuliu Barasch Jagić, Vatroslav, 78 jargon, 23, 28, 29, 33, 33 n. 69, 56, 137, 150, See also argot Jarnik, Jan Urban, 83, 83 n. 209 “Jidovii sau Tătarii sau Uriași” (Jews or Tatars or giants): Tatars and giants, 17; Jewish Khazars among the Tatars, 18, 18 n. 33; French translation of, 23, 23 n. 49, 24; as evidence of Șăineanu’s antiRomanianism, 53–54; Brăescu’s criticism of, 120; 41, 59–60, 69, 79, 80, 104, 117, 128, 130, 145 Jiquidi, Constantin, 90, 90 n. 231 Jones, William, 9, 9 n. 10, 24 Junimea literary society, 14, 18, 45, 48, 59, 60 n. 148 Judaism, Science of, 2, 16–18, 33, 41 Judendeutsch, see Judeo-German Judéo-French, 42, 146 Judeo-German (Yiddish): Wallachian dialect of mother, 3; as an ‘artificial language,’ 11; influence on German speakers, 26; as jargon, 28; status in Lepizig, 29, 29 n. 59, 30; extant scholarship on, 30 n. 63; proverbs, 30, 31; Yiddish bible books, 31, 31 n. 65; a ‘women’s language,’ 31 n. 66; disparagement of, 33–34, 71 n. 34; in Romania, 36–37; folk tales, 69–70; status of in France and Germany, 147; 45, 49, 56, 66, 69, 82, 85, 89, 94, 95, 104, 107, 115, 116, 136, 146, 155, 160. See also Essai sur le judéo-allemand; “L’Origine du parler judéo-allemand”; Studiu dialectologic asupra graiului evreo-german Judéo-Provencal, 148, 148 n. 46 Jüdische Merckwürdigkeiten (Jewish curiosities), 34 Jüdische Volk (Jewish people), 96–97 Jüdische Stamm (Jewish race, tribe), 96, 96 n. 250 Kaufmann, Richard, 99, 99 n. 257

ZD_Book.indb 183

183

Khazar(s), 18, 18 n. 33, 54, 69, 74, 80, 104, 120. See also “Jidovii sau Tătarii sau Uriași” “King Lear,” 66 n. 166 Krek, Gregor, 67 Kuhn, Adelburt, 16, 67 L’Action française, 161 La Grasserie, Raoul de, 50 n. 116 La Langue de Rabelais (The language of Rabelais), 1, 153, 154–156, 161 Landau, Alfred, 42–43, 42 n. 96 Lang, Andrew, 61, 62, 62 n. 154, 65 L’Année sociologique, 142 Lanson, Gustave, 103 L’Argot ancien (Old slang), 149, 150 L’Argot des tranchées (Slang of the trenches), 150 Laurian, August, 81, 121 La vie des mots… (The life of words), 21 La Ligue de la Patrie Française, 133 Le Figaro, 161 Lefranc, Abel, 152–54, 153 n. 53, 156, 158, 161 Legende române, (Romanian legends), 79 Legende și basmele românilor (Romanian legends and fairy tales), 61 Le Langage parisien au XIXe siècle (The Language of Paris in the 19th Century), 151–152 Leo XIII, 141 Le Parler arabe des Juifs d’Alger (The Arabic dialect of the Jews of Algiers), 160 “Les jours d’emprunt ou les jours de la Vieille” (The borrowed days or the old woman’s days): synopsis, 23, 23 n. 49; against the Indianist theory, 24–25, 25 n. 50; 27, 28 n. 57, 60, 76, 79, 145 “Les Juifs ou Tartares ou géants,” see “Jidovii sau Tătarii sau Uriași” Le Siècle (The Age), 105, 106 Leskien, August, 25, 27 Les Sources indigènes de l’ étymologie française (The indigenous sources of French etymology), 156–59, 157 n. 66, 161, 163 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 29 Lévi, Sylvain, 141 Levita, Elijah, 31, 31 n. 66, 40 Lévy, Ernest-Henri, 148, 148 n. 46

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

184

Index Lévy, Isidore, 142 Literaţii jidani (Yid writers), 106 n. 279, 109, 109 n. 287. See also anti-Semitism Literaturblatt für romanische und germanische Philologie, 42, Loisy, Alfred, 141, 142 “L’Origine du parler judéo-allemand” (The origin of the Judeo-German dialect), 146 lyceum Matei Basarab, 3 lyceum Gheorge Lazăr, 47, 47 n. 109, 48, 55 n. 132,

Neogrammarian, 25–27, 32, 48 n. 113, Nordau, Max, 95–102, 96 n. 247, 98 n. 256, 99 nn. 257, 258; 259, 100 n. 261, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108 Nordau, Maxa, 99–100, 99 nn. 257, 258; 259, 100 n. 261 Noua revistă română, 127 Novikova, Olga, 96, 99 Negruzzi, Jacob, 59–60, 60 n. 148, 61 n. 151, 71, 119, 128 Nizan, Élisabeth, see Sainéan, Élisabeth

Maasehbuch, 40, 69, 70 n. 176 Maimonides, 93 Maior, Petru, 7 Maiorescu, Titu, 14, 50 n. 118, 53 n. 127, 60 n. 148, 119 Manu, Gheorghe, 59 Marian, Simion Florea, 62 n. 153, 70–71, 71 n. 178 Marty-Lavaux, Charles, 134, 134 n. 2, 164 Mauss, Marcel, 141 Massim, Ioan, 81, 121 Maupassant, Guy de, 58 Meillet, Antoine, 9 n. 10, 135–136, 144, 146, 150, 157, 158 n. 67, 160 Mélusine, 145 Mendelssohn, Moses, 7–8, 29, 32–33, 33 n. 69, 36, 104, 107, 162 Meyer, Paul, 20, 21 n. 42, 22 n. 45, 25 n. 50 Michel, Francisque, 149–150 Micu, Samuil, 7 Miklosich, Franz, 15, 51, 69, 69 n. 173, 81, 116, 126 Miller, Orest, 67, 67 n. 167 Minunele naturei (Wonders of nature), 57 Mistral, Frédéric, 134 Modern Language Review, 157 Molière, 57 Monfrin, Jacques, 20 n. 41, 21 n. 42 Müller, Max, 16, 16 n. 27, 38, 38 n. 81, 63, 64, 65 n. 163, 67, 78 “Muscular Judaism/Zionism,” 98, 98 n. 253, 105. See also Nordau, Max; Zionism

O carieră filologică (1885–1900) (A philological career in Romania, 1885–1900), 128–131, 159–160 Odobescu, Alexandru, 14, 17, 17 n. 32, 47, 50, 53, 71, 72, 92, 92 n. 236 “On Sound Laws: Against the Neogrammarians,” 26 Origin of the Species, 10 Ormazd et Ahriman, 16, 16 n. 27 Ocherk etnografii evreiskogo narodonaseleniia v Rossii (Study of the Jewish population in Russia), 41 Ovid, 124

națiune (nation), 104 neam (kin), 86, 103–104, 104 n. 271 Negriada, 80, 80 n. 200

ZD_Book.indb 184

Pantagruel, 154 Pantchatantra, 64 Paris, Gaston: review of Semasiologiei, Elemente turcești and Ielele, 21; publication of Şăineanu’s articles, 23–25, 133; publication of Şăineanu’s doctoral thesis, 27–28; review of Istoria filologieĭ române, 56; Şăineanu’s possible emigration, 77–78; review of Basmele române, 78, 78 n. 197; reaction to Sainéan’s argot study, 137; finding Sainéan a position, 139–140; 20–25, 20 n. 41, 21 nn. 42; 44, 22 n. 45, 65, 92, 105–106, 137, 137 n. 13 138, 139–141, 144, 158, 164 patois, 22–23, 137, 155 Peter the Lame, 44 “Petit-Poucet,” see “Tom Thumb” “Petru Firicel,” 68 Philippe le Bel, King of France, 106 Pitré, Guiseppe, 78 Picquart, Georges, 105 popor (people), 104, 104 n. 271

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

Index Pott, August, 34, 38 Primitive Culture, 62, 62 n. 154 Propp, Vladimir, 67 n. 167 Psantir, Jacob, 17, 39 n. 86 “Puss in Boots,” 66 n. 166 Rabelais, François, 1–2, 103, 116, 134, 152– 156, 158, 160–163 Racine, Jean, 80 Rădulescu, Ion Heliade, 8, 8 n. 8, 50 n. 119, 71 Raporturile între gramatică și logică (The Relations between grammar and logic), 48–50, 48 n. 113, 56, 61, 94 rasă (race), 103 Răsăritul (Sunrise), 114 Reinach, Joseph, 106, 134 Reinach, Salomon, 16, 134, 142 Reinach, Théodore, 134 Reisig, Karl, 19 Renan, Ernest, 10 n. 13, 18 Revista Israelitică, 4 Revue des études juives, 42, 146, 148 Revue des études rabelaisiennes, 152, 153 Revue des patois gallo-romans, 22, 51, 138 Revue des traditions populaires, 145 Revue de synthèse historique, 142 Revue historique, 56 Revue internationale de sociologie, 145 Romania (journal), 20–21, 20 n. 41, 21 n. 42, 23, 27, 59, 130, 133, 139, 145, 158 Romanian language: Romanian as direct descendant of Latin, 7, 8, 8 n. 8; Schleicher – Romanian as disorganized, 11; Hasdeu’s intermediate position, 11–12; Schuchardt – Romanian not a direct descendent, 13, 13 n. 19; Romanian as a mixed language, 15; G. Paris on Romanian, 20–21; Urechiă and Romanian language, 52–53; 2, 3, 5, 9, 28, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 74, 76, 81, 83, 85, 89, 94, 104, 106, 115, 124, 125, 128, 130, 131, 134, 139–140, 149, 155, 160. See also Dicționar universal al limbei române; Elemente turcești în limba română; Încercare asupra semasiologiei limbei române; Influența orientală asupra limbei și culturei române; Istoria filologieĭ române

ZD_Book.indb 185

185

Românismul din punctul de vedere etnografic, linguistic și psicologic (Romanianism, from an ethnographic, linguistic and psychological point of view), 60 n. 149, 86, 86 n. 219, 92, 94, 94 n. 243 Românul (newspaper), 77, 77 n. 192, 89–90 Roques, Mario, 140–141, 144, 145 Rosenthal, Solomon, 113–114 Rotwelsch (beggars’ tongue), 11, 34 Rousselot, Abbot Pierre-Jean, 22 Rubin, Debora (mother): Wallachian Yiddish language of, 4, 148; death of, 30, 47; role in Șăineanu’s study of Yiddish, 30, 30 n. 63, 148; Studiu dialectologic dedicated to, 32, 36 Săghinescu, V., 84 n. 212, 106, 106 n. 279, 109, 109 n. 287, 121 Şăin, Eliezer. See Șăineanu, Lazăr, and Sainéan, Lazare Şăin, Moses (father), 3 Sainéan, Cécile (wife): marriage to Lazăr Șăineanu, 57–58, 57 n. 138; Samitca family background, 57; birth of daughter Elisabeth, 58; Şăineanu’s problems in Romania, 59; pregnant in Switzerland, 79; visit to Paris, 86, 92; and Max Nordau 98, 98 n. 256; Şăineanu’s baptism, 111, 127; ill in Berlin, 112; move to Paris, 127, 133; support from parents, 139; Şăineanu/ Sainéan remarks about, 59, 126; acquires French citizenship, 143–144; Le Langage parisien dedicated to, 156, 156 n. 64; last years with Sainéan, 161 Sainéan, Elisabeth: birth, 58–59, 59 n. 145; Şăineanu’s baptism, 111; O carieră filologică (1885–1900) dedicated to, 122; arrival in Paris, 133; acquires French citizenship, 144; reminiscence of family life, 145; early drama classes, 145, Conservatoire national and Comédie française, 156, adopts stage name Elisabeth Nizan, 156, 156 n. 63; public persona in France, 161 “Sainéan’s Accomplishments in Yiddish Linguistics,” 1 Sainéan, Lazare: election to the Société de Linguistique, 133–134; wins Bibesco Prize, 134–135, 134 n. 5; intellectual

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

186

Index influences in Paris – Meillet, Paris, and Bédier, 135–139; living situation in Paris, 139; lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, 139–143; acquires French citizenship, 143–144; activities in the Société de Linguistique, 144–145; translations of his Romanian works, 145–146; “L’origine du parler judéo-allemand,” 146; Essai sur le Judéoallemand, 146–148; proposed article on Wallachian Yiddish, 148; writings on the “the popular languages of France,” 149–152; wins the Volney Prize, 151; La langue de Rabelais, 152–156; Les sources indigènes de l’ étymologie française, 156–158; declining activity, 158–159; final years and death, 159–162; Halevi obituary, 162–163; Spitzer’s biographical sketch, 163–164, 164 n. 88. For Romanian period, see Șăineanu, Lazăr Șăineanu, Constantin: newspaper article on Jewish emigration, 122–123; correspondence with his brother in Paris, 133, 141, 141 n. 25, 143, 143 n. 32, 145, 146, 158, 161. See also Șăineanu, Mariu (Mayer) Șăineanu, Cecilia. See Sainéan, Cécile Șăineanu, Lazăr: family and early education, 3; surname Șăin, Schein and Şăineanu, 1 n. 3; friendship with Gaster and Schwarzfeld, 4–5; biography on Mendelssohn, 7–8, 8 n. 7; exposition on Rădulescu, 8, 8 n. 8, 50 n. 119; Hasdeu, Bréal, Schuchardt, and the Faculty of Letters, 9, 13–15; Elemente turcești, 15; essay on Ielele, 15–16; Gaster, Schwarzfeld, and Wissenschaft des Judentums, 16–17; article on blood libel in Romania, 16, 16 n. 28; “Jews or Tatars or Giants”, 17–18; licentiate and the Semasiologiei, 18–20; German-Romanian dictionary, 19–20, 28, 28 n. 58, 82; study in France and relations with Gaston Paris, 20–23, 28; article on the meaning and pronunciation of filosof, 23; “Les Juifs ou Tartares ou géants”, 23; “Les jours d’emprunt ou les jours de la Vieille”, 23–25; study in Leipzig and rejection of Neogrammarianism, 25–27;

ZD_Book.indb 186

Dicționar germano-român, 28, 28 n. 58; receives doctorate, 27–28; research on Judeo-German (Yiddish) and the Studiu dialectologic, 28–40, 47; collection of Judeo-German materials, 40–43; death of his mother, 30; relations with Hasdeu, 46–47; lectures at the University of Bucharest and the Lyceum Ghorghe Lazăr, 47, 48, 55; Autorii români moderni, 48, 79; first attempt at naturalization, 19, 20 n. 39, 47–48, 52–55; Raporturile între gramatică și logică, 48–50, 56; Istoria filologieĭ române, 50–52, 55, 56, 60; Urechiă’s actions against, 52–54, 73–75; glossary for Miron Costin, 53, 53 n. 126, 55; instructor at Şcoala Normală Superioară, 55, 61; medal of merit from King Carol I, 55; marriage to Cecilia Samitca, 57, 58; birth of daughter Elisabeth, 58–59; second attempt at naturalization, 59–60, 70, 73–75; Basmele române, 60–69; wins the Rădulescu prize, 70–72; Hasdeu’s support for, 73; open letter to Urechiă, 75–77; discusses emigration with Gaston Paris, 77–78; proposed autobiography, 79; Studii folklorice, 79–80; reaction to criticism, 80; Dicționar universal and its reception, 81–85; “Romanianism” project, 86, 92; attitude towards Zionism, 88–89, 103; friendships in the Romanian academic community, 89–90; loses position at the Şcoala, 92; sabbatical in Paris, 92; visit to Gaster and Jewish community in London, 93–95; meets with Nordau in Paris, 95, 98, 98 n. 256; decision to be baptised, 103, 106–107, 108–112; rejection of Zionism, 103–106; importance of Yiddish, 104–105; attitude towards Judaism, 107–108; third attempt at naturalization, 113–114; 120–121, 124–125; reactions to baptism, 114–116, 116 n. 305; Influența orientală, 116–120, 115 n. 306; 124; loss of friendship with Schwarzfeld and Gaster, 116, 127; final letter to Gaster 126–127; decision to emigrate, 127; response to Iorga’s criticisms of Influența oriental, 127–128; on anti-Semitism in Romania,

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

Index 128–129; O carieră filologică (1885–1900), 128–131. For French period, see Sainéan, Lazare Şăineanu, Elisabeth. See Sainéan, Elisabeth Șăineanu, Mariu (Mayer): birth, 3; takes Romanian name Mariu, 3 n. 1, 58; doctorate, 58, 58 n. 143; publications in Anuar pentru Israeliți, 87, 87 n. 221; lecturer in French literature and history, 90, 110; Săghinescu’s anti-Semitic attacks against, 106, 106 n. 279, 109, 109 n. 287; academic frustrations, 110; decision to be baptised, 110; thesis on the Falashas, 110–111, 111 n. 292; baptism, 112; adopts baptismal name Constantin, 114, 116 n. 305. See also Șăineanu, Constantin Şăinizme (Scheinism), 84–85, 84 n. 212. See also anti-Semitism; Dicționar universal al limbei române Samitca, Cecilia. See Sainéan, Cécile Samitca, Ignat, 57, 59, 90, 91, 111 Samitca, Iosif, 57, 57 n. 139 Samitca publishing house, 57–58, 79, 81, 90, 109, 111, 111 n. 294, 139, 149 Samitca, Ralian, 57, 58, 91, 111 Samitca, Rose, 57, 127 Satirele și fabulele (Satires and Fables), 57 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 28, 135, 146, Sayce, Archibald, 50, 94 Schecter, Salomon, 94 Scheurer-Kestner, Auguste, 105 Schiţă biografică urmată de o bibliografie critică (Biographical sketch followed by a critical bibliography), 3 n. 1, 154 Schlegel, Friedrich von, 9 Schleicher, August, 9–14, 11 n. 15, 26, 34, 49 Schmidt, Johannes, 49, 49 n. 115 Schuchardt, Hugo, 12–14, 12 n. 19, 26, 37–38, 38 n. 81, 41–42, 43, 45, 49, 51, 81, 86, 155 Schudt, Johann Jacob, 34 Schwarzfeld, Elias, 13 n. 21, 17, 85 n. 215 Schwarzfeld, Moses, friendship with Șăineanu, 5–6; suggests Khazar connection, 18; positive review of Dicționar universal, 85, 87; writes to Gaster about Şăineanu’s baptism, 106, 114–115; end of friendship with Şăineanu,

ZD_Book.indb 187

187

116, 126, 148, 159; 4–6, 7, 16, 17, 18, 18 n. 33, 30, 40–41, 45, 51, 52, 56, 80 n. 202, 85–89, 85 n. 215, 88 n. 225 Schwob, Marcel, 150, 162 Şcoala Normală Superioară, 55, 61, 92 Selig, Gottfried, 30 n. 64 Semasiologiei, see Încercare asupra semasiologiei limbei române Semitic languages, 10, 49, 136, 146 Sinai, 162 Şincai, Gheorghe, 7 Six Years in the Life of a Romanian Philologist (1891–1895), 79. See also O carieră filologică (1885–1900) Slawo-deutsches und Slawo-italienisches (Slavo-German and Slavo-Italian), 37–38, 38 n. 81 Société amicale Gaston Paris, 144, 144 n. 34 Société de Linguistique de Paris, 13, 20, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 137 n. 13, 138, 144, 157, 158, 158 n. 70 Société des Études Rabelaisiennes, 156 Society for Jewish Studies, 162 Șoimescu, N. N., 120–121 Spinoza, 107 Spiru, Haret, 91–92 Spitzer, Leo, 161, 163–164, 163 n. 87 Sprachmischung (mixed language), 12, 12 n. 19 Steinschneider, Moritz, 31, 31 n. 65 Steinthal, Heymann, 11, 19 n. 37, 27, 27 n. 55 Stern, Adolphe, 123 Steuerman-Rodion, Avram, 114 Ştiința Iudaismului, see Judaism, Science of Stoicescu, C.S. , 35 n. 74 Studii asupra judaismului (Studies on Judaism), 43, 43 n. 98, 46, 48 n. 112, 121. See also anti-Semitism Studii folklorice (Folklore studies), 79–80, 80 n. 200 Studiu dialectologic asupra graiului evreogerman (Dialectological study of the Judeo-German language): research for, 28–32; justifications for his study, 32–36; Judeo-German as an independent dialect, 37; ; Judeo-German as a ‘mixed language’, 37–39; dialects of Judeo-German, 39–41; reaction to, 41–44; French translation of,

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40

188

Index 146; assessment by Halevi, 162; 47, 52, 69, 70, 82, 89, 107, 130, 146, 155, 160, 162. See also Essai sur le Judéo-allemand; JudeoGerman; “L’Origine du parler judéoallemand” Sturdza, Dimitrie, 19, 20 n. 39, 54, 54 n. 129, 59, 71, 71 n. 179, 75, 91, 128 Tatar(s), 17, 18, 41, 63, 69, 80, 117, 120, 128. See also “Jidovii sau Tătarii sau Uriași” “The Current State of Affairs in Folklore Studies,” 142 Tendlau, Abraham, 31, 31 n. 65, 33 Thomas, Antoine, 140, 143, 144, 144 n. 35, 154, 154 n. 55 Tiktin, Heimann, 115–116, 115 n. 304, 116 n. 305 Tolstoy, Lev, 58, 96 “Tom Thumb,” 65 n. 163, 78, 78 n. 197 treif, 85 Tristan et Iseut, 138 Trudy etnografichesko-statisticheskoi ekspeditsii v zapadno-russkii krai (Proceedings of the ethnographicstatistical expedition in the western Russia region), 41 Tylor, Edward, 61, 62, 62 n. 154, 65–66, 72 “Two Brothers, The,” 66, 66 n. 165. See also Basmele române Tze’enah Ure’enah (Women’s Bible), 31, 31 n. 66 Une carrière philologique en Roumanie, 1885–1900, see O carieră filologică, 1885– 1900 Urechiă, Vasile Alexandrescu: Șăineanu and Costin glossary, 53, 55; opposition to Șăineanu’s university promotion, 53; opposition to Șăineanu’s naturalization, 53–54, 54 n. 128, 73–75, 74 n. 183, 113, 121, 128, 130, 130 n. 339; open letter from

ZD_Book.indb 188

Șăineanu, 75–77, 77 n. 192; Șăineanu’s academic assessment of, 55 n. 131, 79, 79 n. 199; review of Șăineanu’s Dicționar universal, 84–85, 84 n. 212; Șăineanu’s response, 85–86, 86 n. 217, 90; 52 n. 124, 54 n. 128, 55 n. 131, 60, 69, 74 n. 183, 77 n. 192, 79, 79 n. 199, 84–86, 84 n. 212, 90, 90 n. 230, 91, 92, 113, 114, 121, 124 Valabrègue, Albin, 108, 108 n. 285 “Vasilică the Brave,” 68, 68 n. 171. See also Basmele române Veselovskij, Aleksandr, 18, 18 n. 34 Villon, François, 137 Vocea Tutovei, 114, 114 n. 132 Völkerpsychologie, 27, 27 n. 55, 29 n. 59 Völkisch movement, 161 Volney Prize, 143, 150, 151 Vornea, Luca. See Sainéan, Lazare; Şăineanu, Lăzar Weigand, Gustav, 51 Weinreich, Uriel, 1 Wisdom of Ben Sira, 94 Wissenschaft des Judentums, see Judaism, Science of Wundt, Wilhelm, 27, 27 n. 55, 29 n. 59 Xenopol, Alexandru, 55 n. 131, 56, 56 nn. 135; 136, 119, 127 Yiddish, see Judeo-German Zola, Émile, 58, 96 “Zilele Babei și legenda Dochiei,” (Baba’s days and the legend of Dochia) 23 n. 49, 60. See also “Les jours d’emprunt ou les jours de la Vieille” Zionism, 2, 87–89, 88 nn. 224; 225, 95–106, 98 n. 253, 114, 121, 160, 162 Zunz, Leopold, 31, 33, 33 n. 70, 37, 39

2022. 08. 29. 11:30:40