Among the Nations: Three Tales and a Play About Jews -- The Alien Corn; Silbermann; Loyalties; Tamar
(Ludwig Lewisohn edited and introduced this collection of ...)
Ludwig Lewisohn edited and introduced this collection of literature about Jews. Contained within are The Alien Corn by W. Somerset Maugham, Silbermann by Jacques de Lacretelle, Loyalties by John Galsworthy and Tamar by Thomas Mann.
Lewisohn was a novelist and translator and a founding faculty member of Brandeis University.
Island Within (Library of Modern Jewish Literature)
(A novel by a modern American Jewish writer. Arthur Levey,...)
A novel by a modern American Jewish writer. Arthur Levey, a young psychoanalyst, leaves an American wife to journey on some obscure mission to eastern Europe on behalf of his race.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
(From the prolific author of criticism, autobiography, phi...)
From the prolific author of criticism, autobiography, philosophy, drama and fiction comes The Case of Mr. Crump. This influential critic of American Jewish assimilation returns in this work of fiction.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
(
This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
(Translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. Appears to be First Americ...)
Translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. Appears to be First American Edition, punlished in 1942 by the Viking Press. Grey cloth covers and red and god gilt over title and author. "To the Child Manon in Remembrance" Article about Franz taped on inside of back cover.
Ludwig Lewisohn was a German-born American teacher, literary critic, novelist, editor, and Zionist. He was a professor of comparative literature at Brandeis University from 1948 to 1955.
Background
Ludwig Lewisohn was born on May 30, 1882 in Berlin, Germany, the only child of Jacques Lewisohn and Minna Eloesser Lewisohn. His parents were first cousins, middle-class Jews of modest means whose families had lived for generations in northern Germany. His father, an agnostic who read Huxley and was deeply interested in literature and music, was temperamentally unsuited to his career as merchant and businessman; inclined to Utopian scheming, he was in almost continuous financial distress. But he exerted enormous influence upon his son, who wrote of him that "I have scarcely a sound interest in literature or philosophy the impulse toward which had not come to me from his teaching and example. " When Lewisohn was eight, his father suffered a breakdown, following financial failure, and immigrated with his wife and child to the United States. They settled in St. Matthews, South Carolina, a cotton-ginning town.
Education
Lewisohn was tutored by his mother, then briefly attended a school run by a Baptist minister. His father failed in business and moved his family to Charleston, where Lewisohn entered high school when he was eleven. A teacher praised his "ear for verse, " and a Charleston newspaper printed some of his early articles and book reviews. At the College of Charleston, Lewisohn studied diligently, read omnivorously, and, in 1901, received the Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. With money borrowed from friends he then went to New York to attend Columbia University. In 1903, after two years of study, primarily in English literature, he earned a second Master of Arts. He left Columbia without a doctorate.
Career
Lewisohn worked for two years on the editorial staff of Doubleday, Page, and Company. Then he returned to Charleston to try his hand as a novelist and short-story writer. Charles Hanson Towne accepted three stories for Smart Set, but Lewisohn was otherwise obliged to turn out potboilers, written, he said, "against every human and artistic instinct of my nature. "
Although he preferred to teach English literature, in 1910 Lewisohn became an instructor of German at the University of Wisconsin. He was aided in getting the position by the poet William Ellery Leonard, his friend since they had been fellow students at Columbia. Lewisohn stayed at Madison one year, then moved to Ohio State University, where he taught German language and literature until 1919. During these years he published a number of important literary studies, among them an impressive seven-volume edition (1912 - 1917) of Gerhart Hauptmann's dramas, many of which he also translated. His book The Modern Drama (1915) was a selection of essays on modern European drama; The Spirit of Modern German Literature (1916) brought together some of his Wisconsin lectures; and The Poets of Modern France (1918) was a perceptive, well-informed study, with biographical and bibliographical sketches. In 1919, he published A Book of Modern Criticism, an influential anthology of excerpts from the works of two dozen French, English, German, and American critics. (It was perhaps characteristic of Lewisohn, no shrinking violet, to include in the collection more of his own writings than any other contributor's. )
Lewisohn believed his academic career in the Middle West was hopelessly impeded by prevalent anti-Semitism. His pacifistic views and pro-German sympathies during World War I further increased his difficulties. Feeling isolated and discontented, he left the teaching profession and joined the staff of the Nation as drama editor; he was made an associate editor the following year, and held that post until 1924. His theater criticism was reprinted in The Drama and the Stage (1922) and The Creative Life (1924).
From the mid-1920's to the mid-1930's Lewisohn lived abroad, mostly in France. His increasing interest in Zionism led him to make a journey to Palestine; he recorded his impressions of Israel (1925). From 1943 to 1948 he was editor of the New Palestine, and from 1947, the American Zionist.
Lewisohn's numerous novels--from The Broken Snare (1908), for which Theodore Dreiser helped him find a publisher, to In A Summer Season (1955)--focused on two major themes, the struggles of the Jewish people and the problem of marriage and divorce. The novel Don Juan (1923) was based on his own marital experience. The novels were probably too tendentious and too close to autobiographical verity to be first rate, although some of them, including The Case of Mr. Crump (1926), The Island Within (1928), and Stephen Escott (1930), surpassed mediocrity by a considerable margin and were widely read and discussed. In 1932 he published his work Expression in America (1932). The book was Freudian in approach and emphasized the ways in which sexual inhibition had affected the writing of American literature. Although the egotism and self-indulgent rhetoric that marred Lewisohn's later books were to some degree present in this one, the work remains an achievement of genuine distinction.
In 1948, Lewisohn joined the original faculty of Brandeis University as professor of comparative literature; he taught there for the rest of his life. The novels he wrote in his last years received poor reviews, but his writings on Jewish affairs and a book on poetry, The Magic Word (1950), were acclaimed. Lewisohn died in Miami, Florida.
As a college student at Charleston and, increasingly, at Columbia Lewis first became aware of the anti-Semitic prejudice for which his early years in South Carolina had not prepared him. He was convinced that scholarships and teaching jobs were denied him because he was Jewish. Lewisohn became an ardent Zionist advocate. The Jewish problem, he declared in his autobiography, "is the decisive problem of Western civilization. By its solution this world of the West will stand or fall, choose life or death. " He urged American Jews to repudiate assimilation and to find their way back to Israel.
Quotations:
"Sex, contrary to the common uninstructed opinion is not peripheral and localized but persuasive. It is like one drop of the most powerful coloring matter in the world dropped into a great jar of colorless water. It tinges every atom of the water. "
"A Jew remains a Jew. Assimilalation is impossible, because a Jew cannot change his national character. Whatever he does, he is a Jew and remains a Jew. The majority has discovered this fact, but too late. Jews and Gentiles discover that there is no issue. Both believed there was an issue. There is none. "
"Democracy, which began by liberating man politically, has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion. "
"There are philosophies which are unendurable not because men are cowards, but because they are men. "
Personality
The lack of a sense of humor seems to have been Lewisohn's most notable deficiency. The philosopher Morris R. Cohen, fully aware of Lewisohn's eminent capabilities, found him "humorless" and "rigidly self-important. " His was perhaps the case of a romantic who too naively accepted the exalted promises of American life in his youth, then later, when confronted with galling racial prejudices, felt persecuted. His later work was occasionally tainted by a whining, self-reverential note, and at times by an icy arrogance. The writer Sisley Huddleston, who frequently visited Lewisohn's literary salon in Paris in the 1920's, compared Lewisohn's appearance with that of his self-proclaimed Master: "In spite of a pronounced Jewish cast of features, " Huddleston wrote, "Lewisohn, with his high forehead, his clean-cut face, his long hair brushed back, bears a striking resemblance to the portraits of Goethe. " The description must have immensely pleased its subject.
Quotes from others about the person
"There is no writer today, who is so frankly, sometimes so embarrassingly, and on occasion so annoyingly intimate in his self-revelation. " - philosopher Irwin Edman
"No one can read these studies without being stimulated by the genuine respect for human and humane values that inspire whatever Mr. Lewisohn writes, even when it seems most wrong-headed. " - George F. Whicher
Connections
In Charleston, on December 12, 1906, Lewisohn married his first wife, Mary Arnold Crocker Childs, a poet and dramatist, who wrote under the name "Bosworth Crocker. " Before they were divorced, in 1937, Lewisohn had an "alliance" with Thelma Spear, a singer and poet, who helped him maintain a literary salon in Paris and, in 1933, bore him a son. On February 6, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland, Lewisohn married Edna Manley, a young journalist; although Thelma Spear's claim to be Lewisohn's legal second wife was denied by Maryland officials, she was, after much litigation, awarded custody of their son. Edna Manley Lewisohn collaborated with her husband in writing Haven (1940), the third volume of his autobiography, after Upstream (1922), and Mid-Channel (1929). They were divorced early in 1944, and on February 8 of the same year Lewisohn married Louise Wolk, who survived him.