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Jan. 29th, 2014 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIt seems that I'm doomed to accidentally ambush myself with Fiddler on the Roof feelings every couple of years or so. Last time around, it was when I rewatched Fiddler for a Purimgifts assignment; this time I decided to read the new(ish) translation of Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son, which includes all the short stories that Fiddler is based on, plus a novel and a half about the Adventures of Plucky Orphan Immigrant Motl.
So Fiddler on the Roof isn't exactly the happiest musical in the world, right? I mean, over the course of the story, one daughter marries into cheerful poverty, one daughter marries a revolutionary and then has to go into exile in Siberia, one daughter marries a Russian and becomes dead to her family, and then EVERYBODY gets kicked into Diasporic exile.
After which -- okay, I'll just summarize the TVTropes discussion on the topic, which is kind of hilarious to read in an awful way as various concerned internet denizens slowly come to the horrified realization that the future of the three daughters who remain in Poland and Siberia includes, in very short succession, World War I and attendant conscription and pogroms, Red October and even more pogroms, the Polish-Soviet War, and the Holocaust. Eastern Jewish history: fun for the whole probably-doomed family!
Anyway, that's what happens in Fiddler, which is the schmaltzy feel-good version. An incomplete list of things that happen in the original Tevye stories that are even worse than the things that happen in Fiddler on the Roof:
- Golde dies
- Daughter 4 falls in love with a rich kid who jilts her, and then commits suicide
- Daughter 5 decides to be the good daughter and marry a rich man selected by the matchmaker, who turns out to be an asshole, and then loses all his money so she doesn't even have the comfort of being rich
- Motl dies
- .... but at least that means Tzeitel and her kids go off to America with Tevye instead of sticking around for more historical fun in Poland? SILVER LINING, I GUESS
I mean, because Sholem Aleichem's Tevye voice is great and chatty and full of character, it's not like it feels like a Worthily Depressing Narrative while you're reading it -- we're not talking Thomas Hardy here by a long shot -- I'm JUST SAYING.
Anyway, the thing I'm not having a lot of success at conveying here is that I have a LOT of feelings about Tevye and his daughters and their absolute determination to go their own way and follow their chosen paths no matter what. But as much as I appreciate Tevye And His Daughters, what I REALLY want is a book entitled Tevye's Daughters And Also His Other Daughters, because we get these fascinating very small hints in the stories of what their relationships are to each other as they enter into these very different lives, and I want so much more! Like, there's a whole bit in the Bielke story when Tevye's like "you don't have to marry rich if you don't want! YOU COULD MARRY A NICE YOUNG REVOLUTIONARY LIKE HODEL," and Bielke's all "DAAAD I'm not HODEL >:(" and then there's everybody's reactions to Chava, and ahh! When is Purimgifts this year? Because I know what I'm asking for.
(Actually what I really want is for someone to rewrite my story out Chava and Fyedke and Hodel and Perchik and THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, except ... more of it ... and better ...)
- and I was so busy having feelings about Tevye and his daughters that I now don't have much room to talk about Motl the Cantor's Son, but I liked it! Motl is a bratty ten-year-old with an older brother named Elyahu who's juuuust sort of technically an adult, a sad mother and a dying father; eventually the whole family ends up making its way to America, minus (now-dead) father and plus brother's wife, brother's inventor BFF, and brother's inventor BFF's wife. Mostly I was struck by how real the whole family felt to me, especially the brothers -- like, Elyahu clearly loves Motl a lot and Motl also gets on EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS LAST NERVES. This is a feeling I know well. Sholem Aleichem writes amazing siblings. WHICH IS WHY HE SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN MORE ABOUT TEVYE'S DAUGHTERS AS SISTERS. Anyway.
So Fiddler on the Roof isn't exactly the happiest musical in the world, right? I mean, over the course of the story, one daughter marries into cheerful poverty, one daughter marries a revolutionary and then has to go into exile in Siberia, one daughter marries a Russian and becomes dead to her family, and then EVERYBODY gets kicked into Diasporic exile.
After which -- okay, I'll just summarize the TVTropes discussion on the topic, which is kind of hilarious to read in an awful way as various concerned internet denizens slowly come to the horrified realization that the future of the three daughters who remain in Poland and Siberia includes, in very short succession, World War I and attendant conscription and pogroms, Red October and even more pogroms, the Polish-Soviet War, and the Holocaust. Eastern Jewish history: fun for the whole probably-doomed family!
Anyway, that's what happens in Fiddler, which is the schmaltzy feel-good version. An incomplete list of things that happen in the original Tevye stories that are even worse than the things that happen in Fiddler on the Roof:
- Golde dies
- Daughter 4 falls in love with a rich kid who jilts her, and then commits suicide
- Daughter 5 decides to be the good daughter and marry a rich man selected by the matchmaker, who turns out to be an asshole, and then loses all his money so she doesn't even have the comfort of being rich
- Motl dies
- .... but at least that means Tzeitel and her kids go off to America with Tevye instead of sticking around for more historical fun in Poland? SILVER LINING, I GUESS
I mean, because Sholem Aleichem's Tevye voice is great and chatty and full of character, it's not like it feels like a Worthily Depressing Narrative while you're reading it -- we're not talking Thomas Hardy here by a long shot -- I'm JUST SAYING.
Anyway, the thing I'm not having a lot of success at conveying here is that I have a LOT of feelings about Tevye and his daughters and their absolute determination to go their own way and follow their chosen paths no matter what. But as much as I appreciate Tevye And His Daughters, what I REALLY want is a book entitled Tevye's Daughters And Also His Other Daughters, because we get these fascinating very small hints in the stories of what their relationships are to each other as they enter into these very different lives, and I want so much more! Like, there's a whole bit in the Bielke story when Tevye's like "you don't have to marry rich if you don't want! YOU COULD MARRY A NICE YOUNG REVOLUTIONARY LIKE HODEL," and Bielke's all "DAAAD I'm not HODEL >:(" and then there's everybody's reactions to Chava, and ahh! When is Purimgifts this year? Because I know what I'm asking for.
(Actually what I really want is for someone to rewrite my story out Chava and Fyedke and Hodel and Perchik and THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, except ... more of it ... and better ...)
- and I was so busy having feelings about Tevye and his daughters that I now don't have much room to talk about Motl the Cantor's Son, but I liked it! Motl is a bratty ten-year-old with an older brother named Elyahu who's juuuust sort of technically an adult, a sad mother and a dying father; eventually the whole family ends up making its way to America, minus (now-dead) father and plus brother's wife, brother's inventor BFF, and brother's inventor BFF's wife. Mostly I was struck by how real the whole family felt to me, especially the brothers -- like, Elyahu clearly loves Motl a lot and Motl also gets on EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS LAST NERVES. This is a feeling I know well. Sholem Aleichem writes amazing siblings. WHICH IS WHY HE SHOULD HAVE WRITTEN MORE ABOUT TEVYE'S DAUGHTERS AS SISTERS. Anyway.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-30 01:35 am (UTC)And I tend to hear people in the know about the Pale of Settlement look askance at it as being too kitschy. Like stereotypical Chagall works. And just like Chagall painted crucifixions, Sholem Aleichem wrote what you described. What we think we know is not the truth.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-30 02:06 am (UTC)(This was in my very, very rural Iowa school district. In which there were no string players. And no Jews. The director had to teach everyone how to pronounce mazel tov, with only mixed success.)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-30 02:26 pm (UTC)I was actually surprised by how much I liked the movie when I saw it again as an adult -- I hadn't seen it in years and years, and I was expecting to be able to dismiss it as over-the-top and kitschy, and I couldn't. I felt feelings!
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Date: 2014-01-30 02:27 pm (UTC)(. . . also, wow, that MUST HAVE BEEN an experience.)
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Date: 2014-01-30 04:41 pm (UTC)I am literally shaking with laughter from this description. That must have been awesome. Did you have to wear stilts?
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Date: 2014-01-30 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-30 05:33 pm (UTC)No-- I sat on Lazar Wolf's shoulders, and wore a huge padded trailing dress that covered both of us.
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Date: 2014-01-30 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 01:59 am (UTC)It must have been a heck of a fun show to do orchestra for, though.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 01:59 am (UTC)