The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 5, 1927, Page 10

A Proletarian Magazine _ MAGAZINE became a year old. Not remark- able. Many magazines become a year old. Seme are even lucky enough to become many years old and nobody takes notice of it. But last Sunday afternoon a crowd composed Jargely of workers jam- med Webster Hall, New York, and cheered and laughed, and applauded because a certain infant reagazine, printed on poor paper with small smudgy type, was celebrating its firs’ birthday. The magazine in question is called “The Ham- mer.” It is a Jewish Communist monthly, published in the cultural interests of the Jewish working class by a group of Jewish writers and publicists under the chairmanship of Moissaye Olgm. And to observe this festival of its first birthday, “The Hammer” invited a group of distinguished Jewish writers, most of whom have becn its contributors, to held a symposium on art and’ its place in the class struggle. The crowd too had: come to celebrate, filling the pit and balcony, and those unable to find seats sprawling over railings and sills or standing up, as I did, for four exciting, mcredible ‘hours. A Yom-Tov, a holiday! “The Hammer” is a year old! They had come, these workers, to hear what their writers, their poets and story-writers and journalists, the makers of their magazine, had to tell them about the problems of their art. The writers are all men who have come close to the Jewish masses in a way that the average American intellectual would find incredible. When John Howard La%on, for-example, sincerely and deliber- ately sets about the task of bridging the gulf be- tween himself and the common people, he is try- ing self-consciously to do what these Jewish writ- ers are always deing naturally and instinctively: to write in a proletarian way. : Olgin opened the symposium with a discussion cf the history of “The Hammer” and its aims in helping to formulate a Jewish culture rooted in- exorably in the ‘implications of the class struggle. He then introduced J. Opatochu (Joseph Optaov- sky), one of the greatest of living Jewish novelists and short story owriters. Opatechu has treated in his work the life of peasants and the reactions of elemental people in cities. His stories are full of the nostalgia of vast distances, the plodding of brute forces, written ia a language that is fresh and fluid and full of sap. Hver physically he has the awkward, massive :solid- ity of a tree stump. Opatochu began by praising the work of the magazine in “endeavoring te give literature a new but part of the way in their acceptance of Com- munism and the identification of their ideals with the ideals of the struggling .proletariat. “We Communists,” he said, “ask that the new Jewish culture be Jewish in form and proletarian in content. But so many of you writer’ would have it the other way around. You want to cling to the moth-eaten culture of the Jewish bourgeoisie and merely content yourselves with an externally pro- letarian manner and a perfunctery sympathy with the Commemist cause. “The Hammer,’ if it is tommean anything to the Jewish masses, ought to be not merely a collection of poems and stories, but a mighty weapon for the Jewish proletariat in the bitter struggle with those forces that threaten and oppress it.” Fromghe applause that burst forth when_ Ep- stein had finished, it was plain that the audience was decidedly partisan. Olgin arose to introduce the next sneaker, and the noise subsided irito ex- pectant silénce. The battle was on. Epstein had made his challenge and his indictment. The Jew- ish writers would have to answer for their misdeeds, Who would be chosen to lead the defense? The name of H. Leivik was called. It is a namé that during the last few years has become known thronghout the JeWish-speaking world. His play of the life of garment workers, “Shop,” has been running for many weeks at the Irving Place The- ater. And his poetic drama, “The Golem,” is now being produced by the Habima players. Besides be- ing the most important of the younger Jewish play- wrights, Leivik is also one of the finest® of the poets. And his background, moreover, is unequivo- cally revolutionary. He-was nota “convert” to the workers’ cause. This small, lithe man, with the tall, precipitous forchead under a crop of yellow hair, had spent some of the best years of his life in Siberian dungeons for his Bundist activities in Czarist Russia. And he has written of those black days bitterly and tenderly in numerous poems. Leivik’s glittering blue eyes are ablaze as he walks to the center of the stage. He speaks hastily, passionately, stumbling over his words, trying to clarify his ideas. Litcrature is an end in itself, he says, not a mere tool. The word to the artist is sacred, ITeivik resents the “demands” that® the Connsunist theorists make of the artist. It is wrong and pernicious to ask the artist to abdicate his in- divitiuality and merge it in the interests of the masses. He denies that the truly progressive Jew- ish artist is seeking to shirk the responsibilites of the class war. “The life of the artist is eternal struggle,” says Leivik. “He doesn’t run away; he orientation,” and concluded with a plea for widen+ ‘seeks struggle, it is necessary to his existence.” ing of its interests, the inelusion of spontaneous creative forces that lie outside the immediate field of the class struggle. This plea, uttered rather un- obtrusively, proved to be the proverbial match that set off the powder. The symposium immediately developed into a controversy between two opposing points of view. On one side were ranged the poets, playwri¢hts and story writers,. and on the other were the writers on political and economic sub- 3 jects, the point of dispute being: what should be the proper relationship between the artist and the class struggle. Melech Epstein, editor of “The Freiheit,” opened . tac the attack by accusing the writers of having gone Unele Sam’s shadow advances towarjs Mexico and Central America, carrying a brief case marked 3400 claims—$300,000,000.” : LES SHON ek AMEN RAAT SAMO ae aii ah ing sob L. Talmy, of “The Freiheit” staff, suave and eminently rational, made the rebuttal. Talmy posed a few questions. “Why is it that here in America, where we have so many important Jewish writers, there exists no truly unified and homogeneous Jew- STAMPING PRESS. By A. B. MAGHL ish literature and culture? And why is it that in the Soviet Union, where Jewish writers are com- paratively few and immature, we already sce the beginnings of a Jewish ‘literature and culture that is truly organic? “You artists and writers constitute in yourselves so many beautiful and distinguished personalities. How much more beautful and distinguished would your personalities become, how. much more freely, more deeply would they develop if they were ‘in- timatéely ‘associated with the mighty movement of the workers towards the creation %f a new order and a new life.” The ‘final shots in the ‘battle were fired by the poets, M. UL. Halpern and Aaron Layeles-Glanz. Halpern, who-after a hiatus of two years has re- cently reassociated himself with “The | Freiheit,” declared that the writer was typical af the en- vironment and the people from whom he sprung, that ‘the workers ‘themselves were not yet psychol- ogically ‘proletarian and therefore ‘the writer could not be expected to be psychologically ‘proletarian. Laycles-Glanz, who was one of the founders ‘and leaders of the In-Sich (Introspective) movement in Jewish poetry, discussed ‘standards of intclligi- bility in art in relation to recently published state- ments accredited to enin. The rest of the program consisted of the reading of original poems by Hal- pern, Leonid Feinberg and S. Kurz, a by Shachna Epstein of “The Freiheit,” and perform- ances by several members of the Habima players. As I think of those four ‘impetuous hours in Webster Hall, one or two inciéents stand out lumin- ously in my mind. There was the joyous tumult that ‘broke forth recklessly when ‘Olgin introduced Abraham Raisin, beloved Jewish ‘tale-writer and folk-poat, who has become ‘a regular ‘contributor to “The Fretheit.” Though he is only in his early fifties, Raisin has been writing for 35 veers, and he is at present the most widely known and read Jewish literary figure. Many of his poems have heen set to nrusic and sung by the Jewish masses for years. Raisin is most assuredly an immortal. Not so much because of his artistic achievement; that I consider greatly overrated. He is not to be compared with the great Yehoash who died re- cently, and there are several among his younger contemporaries who have written poetry that is more subtle, more searching and dynamic. But none of these possesses the intimacy and the simplicity of Raisin. None has come so close to the heart of the Jewish masses, the everyday folk who ‘take their poetry with their bread and butter. _An unforgetable afternoon. “The Hammer” is a year old. I am looking forward to next year and the years after and to many birthdays. I am look- ing forward to a “Hammer” ‘that will continue to beat upom the strongholds of capitalist society and powerfully to forge and shape ‘the culture of ‘the militant Jewish proletariat of America, The Stamping Press thumps out a monotone Of time and space And feeling and desire. For all things are centered in the Stamping Tress All day long In constant rythm Never missing a beat Going thump, thump, thump And feeling and desire And hope—— ; And a frail, bent woman And nods, nods, nods, nods Nods to the steady rythm Of the Press. ' Sits and watches the Machine Which: thump, thump, thump, thump Like some grim gigantic heart of iron Beats out a monotone of love and life (Thump, thump, thump, thump) —MAX GELTMAN. } Se