QotD
From "The Kitchen", by Alfred Kazin (in A Walker in the
City, 1951, Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc):
You could melt their hearts with it; the effect of the violin on
almost everyone I knew was uncanny. I could watch them
softening, easing, already on the brink of tears -- yet with
their hands at rest in their laps, they stared straight ahead at
the wall, breathing hard, an unforeseen smile of rapture on their
mouths. Any slow movement, if only it were played lingeringly
and sagely enough, seemed to come at them as a reminiscence of a
reminiscence. It seemed to have something to do with our being
Jews. The depths of Jewish memory the violin could throw open
apparently had no limit -- for every slow movement was based on
something "Russian," every plaintive melody even in Beethoven or
Mozart was "Jewish." I could skip from composer to composer,
from theme to theme, without any fear, ever, of being detected,
for all slow movements fell into a single chant of der
heym and of the great Kol Nidre sung in the first
evening hours of the Day of Atonement, in whose long rending cry -- of
contrition? of grief? of hopeless love for the Creator? -- I
relived all of the Jews' bitter intimacy with
death."
[I recently stumbled
across this passage in The Uses of Prose (Ernest
Earnest, 1956, Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.), and it
remined me of a recent conversation regarding the number of
Jewish world-class violinists. Not seeing anything in my
quotes-file more appropriate for "the saddest day" in the Jewish
calendar (Tisha B'Av, which starts tonight at sundown), I figured
I'd use this today. I hope it's a reasonable choice -- I'm
always afraid I'll miss some crucial nuance when dealing with
holidays from traditions other than my own.]
(Post a new comment)
|
