Pinhas Kahanovich (1884–1950), better known as Der Nister, remains one of the most enigmatic Yiddish writers of the twentieth century. His works—phantasmagoric stories, fables for children, historical novels, and reportages of the Holocaust—have fascinated many Yiddish literary scholars, including Chone Shmeruk, Dan Miron, Gennady Estraikh, David Roskies, Harriet Murav, Avrom Novershtern, Ber Kotlerman, Daniela Motovan, and now Mikhail Krutikov.
Among the many questions Krutikov poses in his new book, is how a writer of such caliber, such complexity, and such nonlinear plot lines ended up in the Soviet Union when he had the option to be somewhere else, including Paris, where his brother immigrated. Krutikov challenges previous scholarship that considered 1929 to be the last year of the author's artistic freedom. Instead, he argues that one should analyze the works that Der Nister produced during the last twenty-one years of his life on their artistic merits, and think of his works as “witnessing the people,” rather than concealing from them.
The second major innovation of Krutikov's approach is to think of Der Nister as part of a larger European tradition, rather than its by-product. Just as in his previous book on Meir Weiner, Krutikov chooses to study Der Nister as a European and Russian intellectual, in conversation with Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, and Andrei Bely, as well as Rabbi Naḥman of Bratslav and Y. L. Peretz. In addition, Krutikov sets out to demonstrate that “Der Nister's position in Soviet literature . . . was not as marginal as assumed” (17).
The book is built chronologically: chapter 1 addresses a collection of stories called Gedakht (Imagined), with a special focus on multiple readings of the celebrated story “Under a Fence” (1929). In this chapter, Krutikov situates Der Nister within the context of politics in Ukrainian literary circles, as well as the formation of Soviet Yiddish writing. Two points caught my attention: Der Nister's attitude toward Zionism and his fight to attract readers. Regarding the latter, Krutikov mentions that while Der Nister's writing enjoyed quite a bit of popularity among writers, his books were in low demand among general readers, who preferred Yiddish classics. I wonder whether Der Nister's departure from symbolism can also be explained by his desire for a wider audience. Regarding attitudes to Zionism, Krutikov cites an episode when Der Nister took offence when the Ukrainian writer Yuri Smolich asked him about the nature of Zionism, thinking that Smolich implied his affinity with the movement. Krutikov argues that in his explicit denial of any connection to Zionism, Der Nister possibly betrayed anxiety about being associated with the movement.
Chapter 2 is devoted to Der Nister's first attempts as a realist writer and a detailed analysis of his reportage-style work called Hoypshtet (Capitals), devoted to Moscow, Kharkiv, and Leningrad. Krutikov not only points out silences in Der Nister's work, such as not mentioning the famine in Ukraine, but also analyzes his use of symbolism in descriptions of weather and nature in relation to stories that he is telling. Krutikov brilliantly juxtaposes his work with the travel notes of Walter Benjamin's Moscow visit in 1925 and reports that unlike Benjamin, who mentioned Jews on numerous occasions, to Der Nister there seem to be no traces of Jewish presence in Moscow.
Chapter 3 focuses on Der Nister's failed attempt to reinvent himself as a children's writer. He was familiar with this audience, as he worked (together with his friend Marc Chagall) in the Malakhovka Children's House for Jewish youth in the 1920s. The project failed, Krutikov argues, because his stories turned out to be too violent and too uncertain. For example, “Kozekl-royt” (The little red Cossack) includes a show trial, performed by the same actor, who plays both the accuser and the accused. Krutikov concludes that the writer's “power of imagination enabled him to speak for both the accuser and the accused, the perpetrator and the victim” and offers an insight into Der Nister's take on the destructive force of totalitarianism on the human personality (136).
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on Der Nister's historical novels Fun fiftn yor (From the year 1905) and Di mishpokhe Mashber (The family Mashber). The latter was published in summer 1939, and a second expanded edition appeared in Vilna in June 1941. In addition to beautiful readings of both novels, Krutikov also uncovers some astonishing facts about the circumstances of writing them. For example, it turns out that Der Nister lived in severe poverty while working on this piece, and he was supported by the generosity of his brother, then living in Paris. Letters that Der Nister wrote to his brother in 1932 are no less concealed and dramatic than some of his works. In one letter he asks for funds to support his writing because he needed to change his style to be acceptable in the Soviet Union. Another letter, presumably answering a question about current life, suggests that his brother read Pravda and other Soviet newspapers, where “every article is like a poem” (162). To me, a refusal to describe one's own daily life and such a reference to newspapers signaled not only the worry about reporting the truth for ideological reasons, but also a satire on how one was supposed to write in the Soviet Union—cheerfully reporting achievements and silencing poverty and discrimination.
The final chapter examines Der Nister's writings from 1939–1949. He spent part of the war in Central Asia, to which he was evacuated in 1941, and moved to Moscow in 1943. During the war, Der Nister wrote a number of important short stories depicting the destruction of European Jews during the Holocaust. Krutikov suggests that they were based on stories that Der Nister likely heard in Tashkent from Polish Jewish refugees, or that were told to him on the train in 1945, when he travelled to Birobidzhan together with a group of Jewish survivors. Krutikov emphasizes how Der Nister's talent for seeing hidden beauty in human behaviors and choices allowed him to produce some of the most important works of Holocaust writing during the war.
I think that Der Nister would have really liked Krutikov's book. It gives justice to Der Nister without making him into a saint, villain, or a misguided idealist, but instead sees him as a writer searching for his path: attempting different genres, learning to raise funds, negotiating the worlds of publishing and reception, and, the biggest of all, living through the most turbulent time of the twentieth century. Above all, it makes one want to read and reread Der Nister's works, which is probably the goal that Krutikov set before writing this book. It is accomplished spectacularly.
