Morris Rosenfeld, the "poet of the ghetto" . Dopo l’assassinio dello zar Alessandro II (1881), in Russia furono promulgate le leggi antiebraiche. Nei decenni successivi si verificò una vasta emigrazione degli Ebrei of Russia to the United States of America. It was formed so that the allocation of Jews after the destruction of the European Communities, today is the largest settlement of the Jewish Diaspora in the world. Morris Rosenfeld (1862 - 1923), the "poet of the ghetto" sang the illusions and stories of cruel exploitation dell'emigazione of the Jews in those years. Leon Bloy drew an extraordinary profile of the poet in the pamphlet
The blood of the poor , published in Italy by Studio SE Editorial by Giancarlo Pavanello
. We represent the vibrant chapter in this space, with the hope of contributing to the knowledge one of the greatest poets in the Diaspora, the sublime as little known in our country.
Dionysius Scyllacensis
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Morris Rosenfeld, a lawyer of the Holy Sepulchre
of Leon Bloy
History of the Jews
stands in the history of mankind, like a dam
bar a river, to raise the level.
Léon Bloy.
Yes! The lawyer of the Holy Sepulchre! And this is a Jew, a jew quite extraordinary poet, who has never converted. But it was deep in Jew and, therefore, the greatest poet I have ever had the poor, and this allowed him to come near the tomb of Jesus Christ, infinitely closer to the majority of Christians.
We know that Godfrey of Bouillon did not accept to be king of Jerusalem, but only the '
Lawyer or Defender of the Holy Sepulchre, "not wanting", say the
Assises , "bringing the crown of gold where the King Kings brought a crown of thorns. " For the poet, Morris Rosenfeld can not speak nor kingship nor a golden crown, but the poor never had such a defender. The holy city of his fathers, which he won, it is poetry itself, which is the Jerusalem of the poor and the suffering.
poet of the poor, miserable himself, is expressed in the language of the poor. "Ruined and exhausted from long exile, driven out and scattered in foreign countries, we have lost our language and our sacred dignity of the past and, today, we must be satisfied sighs exhaled by a poor dialect and derisive, which we have mastered dragging from people to people. " But poets do what they want. This cosmopolitan jargon format with the shreds of all languages \u200b\u200bhas been able to turn it into music harp crying.
Morris (Moses-Jacob) Rosenfeld was born in Russian Poland. There, on the shore of a placid river now furious and now, his father, a poor fisherman, told him stories of rebellion and suffering to ennoble his c uore. "Not always a people we were only able to cry ...." Called to perpetuate the lineage of the suffering and to be even poorer than it had been his ancestors, was comforted by the memory for a lifetime of his humble childhood spent near a river, hills and forests.
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The sun sets behind the mountains ... The water flows, always flowing, murmuring a language that no one knows. A boat slips in the distance, without rowing machine, without a rudder, it seems that is driven by demons. In this boat there is a crying baby ... long golden curls falling over her shoulders, and watching the poor little sigh ... And the boat continues to slip. Waving a white handkerchief, he greets me from a distance, I said goodbye, that poor, beautiful child. And my heart begins to tremble. It seems that something cry ... Tell me, what then? Oh, I know this child proud. My God, my childhood that leaves me!
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clear spring that soon turns into a torrent of bitter tears. But the poor man is not a rebel. His nature leads him to cry out for vengeance: True Jew complained, he knows only cry on his wretched brethren than on himself. But her tears were a force invocation of the most terrible outbreak of despair. Do not really know if there is something more frightening poetry of the verses which have the title in a cloud
:
. Stop, wild cloud, stop.
And tell me where you come from and where you go. Why are you so gloomy, heavy and black?
I'm afraid of you, you scared my soul.
. . .
Tell me you horrible wind, the hunt here Russia's black?
. . . Perhaps you
ports
The old patience, soon Explode, bloody and wild . . .
While I held his face toward the sky, Suddenly a drop fell from the cloud;
A drop fell bitter in my mouth -
Amara, bitter bile.
It seems to me, brothers - actually, I'm sure,
Oh, yes, yes, I think a tear Jewish, a drop of blood, a tear
Jewish - what a fright! I ripped the soul and I lose my mind. A tear Jewish! - I recognized her immediately.
But it is a mixture of gall, brain and blood. A tear
Jewish! - I recognized immediately. Sa
persecution, pogroms and miseries.
Oh, tear a Jewish feel this smell The horrible blasphemy than two thousand years ... The tear Jewish ... Now I understand that a cloud was
. This man crushed in the bottom of crypts, appears to have felt more sadness than any other scary and supernatural than Holy Week, which lasts for two thousand years and that is the whole story of the Hebrews from Vendizione of their firstborn. But, more than any other, has succeeded in capturing the beauty. Some of his poems are like echoes in a tomb of the great liturgy of
darkness, drawn entirely from the Book of God which the Jews to all parts of the earth, trying to read through them toward the dark fabric
Velamen :
. A book old and torn. The cover stained with blood and tears. I know this book? Of course I know, this book, I have no doubt. The holiest of holy books. We have already given so much for this poor book ...
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And this cry sublime scene in front of the Jewish immigrants and their miserable baggage on the benches in New York:
. with them in those bundles, - see? - There is a treasure del mondo, - la loro Thora! –
Come potete dire che è povera una simile nazione?
Un popolo che attraversa la notte e le tombe;
Che sa passare tra l’orrore, il fuoco e la morte,
Per salvare ciò che gli è sacro e caro? Un popolo che sa resistere a tante sventure; Che sa soffrire tanto e dare il proprio sangue;
Che non teme niente e nessuno;
Che rischia la propria vita per pochi poveri figli.
Un popolo che continua a bagnarsi nelle lacrime;
Che ognuno colpisce e tortura con gioia;
Che vagabonda da millenni nei deserti,
E non ha ancora perduto il coraggio?
Per pronunciare il nome di un simile popolo, You must clean your lips. - On your knees, or countries!
Who talks like that is in the eyes of the world, beneath a worm. But it has infinitely reason and God himself would not have been able to speak better. The Jews are the elder brothers of all when everyone will have an order, their proud owners will be considered more honored to lick their feet vagabonds. Since everything has been promised to them and, in the meantime, do penance for the land. The right of primogeniture can not be nullified by a penalty, as it is rigorous, and the word of honor God is immutable, since "his gifts and his call are irrevocable." Who said this is the greatest among the converted Jews, and Christians who claim to make unrelenting eternal retribution
Crucifigatur should remember that. "Their crime," says St. Paul "was the salvation of nations." Unheard of that people is this, in which God asks permission to save the human race, after asking him his flesh to suffer more? This means that his passion would not have met if he had not been imposed by her beloved, and any other blood than that from Abraham would not have been effective wash away the sins of the world?
course, Rosenfeld, who was only a very ignorant laborer, St. Paul should not have read that the Jews do not read at all. But his genius as a poet and the profound meaning of his race made him imagine these things. As soon as he began to sing, his place - I've already said in the beginning - it was the right of the tomb of Jesus Christ. Without knowing it, by repeating the allegations of the People and immortal, not having been a poet if not for the poor, he found himself - in the most mysterious - to be the Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre, King without a crown and without the cloak of poetry those who mourn lost at sentinel the Tomb of the God of the poor slain by his ancestors. Then, by the sheer force of more adorable, his Judaism was passed, flooded from all sides by a feeling of universal brotherhood with the poor and the suffering of all the earth.
His perpetual wandering, very Jewish, predisposed him to this.
the reign of Alexander III and his minister Ignatiev, the situation of Jews in Russia had been made untenable. Reviled, persecuted, massacred, that empire had become a savage hell for them. Rosenfeld took the drone of the wandering life and left.
"For four years," writes one of his admirers' sospinsero the winds from one place to another, for four years, ogni ondata della miseria lo inghiottiva e lo rigettava per poi lasciarlo in balìa di un’altra ondata; per quattro anni fu scosso da un specie di febbre che esiste solo nel popolo ebraico, la ricerca di un focolare . Questa spietata febbre che, da venti secoli, non dà tregua ai figli di Israele; questa vita da cane vagabondo, senza diritti e senza stima, senza nazione e senza speranza, camminando, camminando sempre, dall’Oriente all’Occidente e dal Nord al Sud, varcando monti e attraversando Oceani, pregando e gridando, piangendo e lottando, questa vita ignobile e iniqua, si può ben dire che il nostro l’abbia conosciuta ».
Nella sua ode In mezzo all’Oceano , two Jews, who have been refused entry to America, returning to Europe:
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Who are you, miserable, tell me,
that you can impose silence on the most terrible distress,
you that you have no tears or sobs
Even at the door of the dreadful death?
. . .
"We had an apartment and have it destroyed, burned
what we hold most sacred;
of our dearest and the best have made piles of bones.
The others were deported, with their hands tied.
. . .
We are Jews, Jews dispossessed,
Without friends and without joy, without hope of happiness.
. . .
Siamo miserabili simili a pietre,
La terra ingrata rifiuta di offrirci un asilo.
. . .
Sia che il vento soffi e imperversi, e urli con furore,
Sia che ribollisca, schiumi e arroventi l’abisso,
Qualsiasi cosa accada, noi siamo Ebrei abbandonati ».
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Se gli Ebrei sono degni di un tale poeta, gli perdoneranno di aver pianto spesso su altri che non erano Ebrei. Al di là dell’immane sventura dell’antico popolo di Geova, l’anima universale di Rosenfeld scopriva altre sventure e non nascondeva di averne il cuore straziato. La sua situazione era ben adatta per conoscerle! Era stato visto lavorare tra i più poveri workers of all nations, in Amsterdam, London, New York, where for ten years, he had no other means to live the sad job of stonemasons factory. His verses sull'infame slavery of the factories are perhaps the most painful.
Abbruttito from the day's work, the worker returns home. I expect his wife and son
.
work from home
drives me soon And do not let me return to that later.
Alas, is alien to me my own flesh!
Stranger eyes of my son!
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His wife speaks of their child. It's good all day and does nothing but ask his father. But now he sleeps. The poor man approaches the cradle of the child. He shows him a coin and tells him to wake him, to show him.
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A dream moves his little lips.
"Oh, where is, where is my dad? '.
Rest there, full of anguish, pain and
of bitterness, and I think
"When you wake up tomorrow, my son,
no longer find me."
.
One day, finally, the poet, having been noticed, left the factory and some strange patron offered him a job even worse, the journalist, who almost immediately became intolerable, "- Oh, riapritemi the doors of the factory. Endure everything. - Suck my blood, factory, oh, suck my blood! Cry softly. I will do my hard work. I will do so without protest. - Can I get paid for my chisels. But my pen must belong to me alone. "
His pen! This is the word that you need to write? At every moment the chisel carvers Rosenfeld makes me think of those images of long ago, those artists barbarians, puerile and sublime, they did not know no science and no art, because they never had lessons from other teachers who were not the their suffering, and worked as best they could, with poor instruments, under the high windows of a huge building site compassion.
Whether singing the punishment of wandering people, or the torments of hell factory murderer, or the lament of the unhappy seduced so painful ("I remember the night I have dishonored?") Or the eternal beauty of the gentle nature and terrible always see him while he sculpted, with pain, a hard wood, perhaps inappropriate for this, with a humble knife that he sharpened on the grindstone twenty times a day inconsumabile hearts without pity. And things do not always proceed as he wants. That wood is similar to iron and sometimes affect the instrument on some unexpected node invincible and that disturbs the composition. And also the naive artist, no way, do not always know how to conclude this or that figure started. Then the knife stride with fury and he knows how to turn the difficulties in inventions that are raging.
Despite the complexity of his work, Rosenfeld says it all when it is called the poet of the proletariat . And it is more than anyone else, as being essentially proletarian Jew el'Ebreo. But the proletariat - as the tears - it belongs to every people and every time. But the tears are heavier than Jewish. They have the weight of countless centuries. Those of our poet was generous to a large number of unfortunates who did not belong to his race, and now behold these precious tears on the scale of the Judge of human pain that does not look in my face or peoples or individuals.
When the Father wants the firstborn summarizing its place, I think the most wonderful night light up the banquet, while the sweet crescent moon will indicate where there is the Holy Sepulchre and the tears of all the poor will shine equally, fantastically, deep of heaven!
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The Wailing Wall - Jerusalem
L'ultimo viaggio 
L'ultimo viaggio 
