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S. An-sky | |
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| Native name | ש. אַנ-סקי |
| Born | Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863-10-27)October 27, 1863 Chashniki,Russian Empire |
| Died | November 8, 1920(1920-11-08) (aged 57) Warsaw orOtwock,Poland |
| Pen name | S. An-sky |
| Occupation | Writer, journalist, ethnographer |
| Language | Yiddish,Russian |
Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863 – November 8, 1920), also known by hispen nameS. An-sky,[a] was aJewish author, playwright, researcher ofJewish folklore, polemicist, and cultural and political activist. He is best known for his playThe Dybbuk orBetween Two Worlds, written in 1914, and forDi Shvue, the anthem of the Jewish socialistBund. In 1912-1914, he led theJewish Ethnographic Expedition to thePale of Settlement.
In 1917, after theRussian Revolution, he was elected to theRussian Constituent Assembly as aSocial-Revolutionary deputy.[1]
Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport was born inChashniki,Vitebsk Governorate,Russian Empire (nowBelarus), but spent his childhood inVitebsk. He was from a poor religious family, and he had only aheder education. His mother ran a tavern. He left his home and moved toLiozno in his late-teens, and worked as a tutor; he was ostracised by his community for "disseminating radical ideas".[2] He wrote his first novel, "History of a Family", in Yiddish, it was translated and published in Russian in 1884.[2]
Rappoport was actively involved in revolutionary movements, initially as a populist (known asnarodniki) and later as a member of the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party. At this time, he changed his name from Jewish to Russian, Semyon Akimovich. In 1880s, in the spirit ofGoing to the People movement,[3] popular among populists, he moved toEkaterinoslav region, where he worked as a tutor and in the "salt- and coal-mining industry". He believed in the importance of education of Russia's peasants and participated in activities such as collecting workers' songs and giving public readings, which led to his arrest in 1888. In 1892, he was introduced to the literary circles of St. Petersburg, where he started to write under a pen name S. An-sky. He moved to Paris in 1892, and lived in Europe until 1905. He mainly wrote in Russian, but eventually started to write in Yiddish too. He also worked as a secretary for Russian philosopherPetr Lavrov in Paris. He had a short marriage to a "French-Russian woman". After Lavrov's death, An-sky movet to Switzerland, where, together withViktor Chernov, he founded a populist Agrarian Socialist League. In 1904-1905, he was an editor of Yiddish socialist journalKampf un kempfer (The Fight and the Fighters).[2]
An-sky returned to Russia in 1905, after the revolution. He debated prominent figures likeSimon Dubnow,Chaim Zhitlowsky, andShmuel Niger on various issues, including Jewish revolutionary dedication, Christian imagery in Jewish literature, and the trilingual vision of modern Jewish literature. An-sky also became active in Jewish publishing, editing and contributing to several Jewish journals and encyclopedias. From 1908 to 1918, he traveled extensively, lecturing on Jewish cultural topics while remaining involved in Socialist Revolutionary politics. He published works on anarchism and revolutionary plays, and was arrested in 1907 "for disseminating revolutionary propaganda". He had another failed marriage in 1908, to Esther Glezerman.[2]
In 1912-1914, An-sky with a small team went for an ethnographic expeditions to the Pale of Settlement, collecting thousands of photographs, folk tales, songs, and artefacts.[4][2] Based on the collected materials, An-sky wrote his most famous work, playThe Dybbuk. It was soon translated to Yiddish, and is now regarded as one of the most famous plays of theYiddish theatre.
During the World War I and until the October Revolution of 1917, An-sky worked for Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims; in 1920 he published his memoir of this times,Khurbn Galitsye (The Destruction of Galicia).[2] After the revolution, he escaped toVilna and then to Warsaw, where he died of a heart attack[2] on November 8, 1920.[5]
Under the influence of the Russiannarodniki movement, An-sky became interested inethnography, as well as socialism, and became a political activist. Between 1912 and 1913, An-sky headed theJewish Ethnographic Expedition, financed by Baron Vladimir Günzburg and named in honor of his fatherHorace Günzburg, which traveled throughPodolia andVolhynia in thePale of Settlement. They documented the oral traditions and customs of the native Jews, whose culture was slowly disintegrating under the pressure of modernity. According to his assistant Samuel Schreier-Shrira, An-sky was particularly impressed by the stories he heard inMiropol of a local sage, thehasidic rebbe Samuel of Kaminka-Miropol (1778 – May 10, 1843), who was reputed to have been a master exorcist ofdybbuk spirits. Samuel served as the prototype for the character Azriel, who is also said to reside in that town.[6] HistorianNathaniel Deutsch suggested he also drew inspiration forThe Dybbuk from theMaiden of Ludmir, who was also rumored to have been possessed, thus explaining her perceived inappropriate manly behavior.[7] He composed a detailed ethnographic questionnaire of 2,087 questions.[8]
An-sky's ethnographic collections were locked away in Soviet vaults for years, but some material has come to light since the 1990s.[9] The State Ethnographic Museum at St. Petersburg holds a good deal of it.[10] Some of his vast collection of cylinder recordings made on these expeditions were digitized by theVernadsky National Library of Ukraine, which holds the collection.[11] Deutsch compares the An-sky's expedition materials togenizah, particularly to theCairo genizah.[8]
His ethnographic report of the deliberate destruction of Jewish communities by the Russian army in the First World War,Khurbn Galitsiye (The Destruction of Galicia), has become a major source in the historiography of the war's impact on civilian populations.[12]
Initially he wrote inRussian, but from 1904 he became known mainly as aYiddish author.
He is best known for his playThe Dybbuk orBetween Two Worlds, written in 1914. The play was first staged in the Elyseum Theatre inWarsaw, on December 9, 1920, one month (at the end of the 30-day mourning period) after the author's death.[13] It was subsequently translated into a dozen or more languages and performed thousands of times all over the world. It is still being produced, along with numerous adaptations, as well as operas, ballets, and symphonic suites. (For example, in 2011 there were seven different productions.) It is considered the jewel of the Jewish theatre.[14] In the early yearsThe Dybbuk was considered so significant that parodies of it were written and produced.[15]
AlthoughThe Dybbuk is An-sky’s best-known work, he published many works of literature, politics and ethnography. HisCollected Works, which do not include all his writings, comprise fifteen volumes.[16] An-sky wrote a number of other plays, four of which are included in this collection, long out of print. One (Day and Night) is, likeThe Dybbuk, a Hasidic Gothic story. The other three plays have revolutionary themes, and were originally written in Russian:Father and Son,In a Conspiratorial Apartment, andThe Grandfather. All four have recently been republished in a bilingual Yiddish-English edition.[17]
An-sky was also the author of the songDi Shvue (The Oath), which became the anthem of the Jewish SocialistBund party. He was the author of the poem (later made into a song) "In Zaltsikn Yam" (In the Salty Sea), which was also dedicated to theBund.
