Monday July 28

by


Tough luck,

—————–

Matt’s Notes

Since we know how full and satisfying Papa’s life was in the end, we know he would eventually master the feelings of loneliness and displacement and sadness he felt so often when he wrote his 1924 diary. His capacity for joy and optimism and contentment, the signs of which we also see clearly in many of his entries, would win out and define him for those who knew him later.

We know, too, that this diary, with its details about his father’s death, is in part a long study of how he mastered the attendant feelings of (in his own words) “lost Paradise,” the final loss of his youth, and the understanding that he couldn’t go home again. Somewhere between its lines lie the clues as to how a young man like Papa — forced by circumstance from his native country, faced with the pressure of supporting his family back home, compelled to help support his sisters’ families in New York, depressed by the contrast between his idealistic image of how he wants his life to be and how it really is, and later faced with the suicide of his sister, the extermination of his European family by Nazis, and countless other trials — could become so whole and generous when he had every right to be embittered and selfish.

But still, even though we know 1924 was a year of tremendous change for Papa, even though we know the wisdom he acquired through his trials was essential to the evolution of his character, his diary is not a novel and does not have neat, clean turning points or moments of sudden revelation. He still had to live each day of the year, and he still had to go through long periods when his true character failed him and his sadness became bottomless, when he felt so helpless in the face of circumstance that he could sit down with pen in hand and, unable to see into the future, find nothing to say except “tough luck.”

Tuesday July 29

by


——————

Matt’s Notes

Ever since his father died back in May, Papa has shown a tendency to leave his diary pages blank when he’s feeling especially low. He’s shown a pronounced shift into such a mood over the last week or so, though I’m not sure whether something specific triggered it or whether it’s just part of the ebb and flow of mourning. (It does seem to have roughly coincided with his return to work after a forced three-week break, so even though he’s happy to be making money again, perhaps the monotony of factory work has given him a sense of inertia.)

Wednesday July 30

by


Had an Executive meeting
in my house (Camp)

I am saddened, I am
so much out of luck
What will be the end
I am keeping my hard
luck toughts from my friends
and from my sisters,

I am so heavily indebted
the prospect for the future
is not bright, and all
that is boring and ebbing
the life out of me.

—————

Matt’s Notes

I think the second-to-last line of this entry reads “that is boring and ebbing,” but I’m not quite sure I’m reading the word “boring” right. Here’s how it looks:

In any event, I suppose that’s a minor point considering everything else Papa has to say. I’ve wondered at times whether he confided in his friends or showed outward signs of worry during more trying times, but he answers that question today when he writes “I am keeping my hard luck thoughts from my friends and from my sisters.” I suppose his friends, especially those in “The Maccabean” (a chapter of the Zionist fraternal order B’nai Zion in which Papa was an officer) and his sisters looked to him for too much support, relied too much on his seemingly endless strength, for him to show them how overwhelmed he felt at times.

But could his friends and family really not know? In recent days Papa’s been struck anew by sadness over his father’s death, his financial woes, and the monotony of bachelorhood. He’s felt especially low. I wonder if he mentioned his efforts to keep his concerns under wraps today because he thought he might have inadvertently revealed them during the Maccabean meeting in his apartment. Did he feel like his spare furnishings, the big radio around which his private time revolved, the telephone he installed specifically to relieve his loneliness, were all physical evidence of the internal struggles he hoped to hide?

Whatever the reasons he brought it up today, we know now how alone he really was in his sorrow. He had no guidance but his own, no confidant but his diary, no one to tell him him “the prospect for the future” was, in fact, quite bright. It’s all the more remarkable, then, that he eventually found his way.

Thursday July 31

by


[no entry]

—————-

No word from Papa today, but here’s what was going on in the world:

ALL-DAY FIGHT OPENS MOVE TO GAIN MERCY FOR FRANKS SLAYERS; Defense Seeks to Show Mitigating Mental Disease by Testimony of Experts. [Clarence Darrow opened his defense in the Leopold and Loeb trial, though he would eventually advise his clients to plead guilty. Eventually spared the death penalty, Loeb would be murdered in prison while Leopold was paroled after 33 years.]

CROWDS GREET DAVIS ON WAY TO NEW YORK; Candidate, Warmly Welcomed at Rockland and Bath, Makes Brief Speeches. [Democratic Presidential candidate John W. Davis, back from an eleven-day vacation in Maine, began his campaign in earnest.]

Rye Bread Cost Rises in Vienna. [I figure Papa might have been interested in the price of bread in Vienna since he was Austro-Hungarian. Rye bread was, according to the Times, “the people’s (sic) staple diet it Austria.”]

THOMAS HITS DAVIS FOR STAND ON LABOR; Socialist Nominee for Governor Says Democratic Leader Has Never Acted for People. [As a union activist, Papa would probably have read anything about John W. Davis’s relationship with labor.]

GOMPERS OPPOSES ENDORSING PARTIES; Declares Federation Executive Won’t Pick Any Candidates at Atlantic City Meeting. [After some well-publicized consideration, Samuel Gompers decided not to throw the support of the American Federation of Labor behind any Presidential candidate, saying “…the one hope for the wage earners on the political field lies in being partisan to principles and not to political organizations.”]

AIR MAIL MAKES GOOD; And New York-San Francisco Service Will Be Continued. [After a thirty-day trail of transcontinental airmail, the Postal Service decided to make the New York-San Francisco run permanent. According to airmailpioneers.org, “The schedule required departure from the initial termini in the morning and arrival at the end of the route late in the afternoon of the next day.” Night flying, only a two-year-old practice among Postal Service pilots, made this schedule possible.]

Friday Aug 1

by


Just strolled around with
some friends this evening

————-

Matt’s Notes

With temperatures in the low 70’s and no signs of rain, this was a lovely night for a stroll. Papa certainly went to synagogue to say Kadish for his father before joining his friends.

Here’s how he looked in his summer hat:

And here are some street scenes from the 20’s:

———–

Image sources: “Signaling to offices, curb market, New York City (1922)” and “People looking at plants in park, New York City (1920)” . Since these shots are of Bryant Park and Wall Street, respectively, they really have nothing to do with Papa and his friends on the Lower East Side in the summer of 1924, but I figured they were interesting anyway (the Wall Street shot). Both are from the Library of Congress with no known restrictions on publication.

Saturday Aug 2

by

Again a baseball game
Life is so monotonous
Visited relatives in the
Bronx.

———

Matt’s Notes

I assume Papa caught the Giants-Pittsburgh matchup at the Polo Grounds en route to his relatives in the Bronx. (If the Yankees were in town he might have seen them, but they were in St. Louis playing the Browns.) Papa would have taken the 9th Avenue Line to the Polo Grounds at 155th street, jumped off, watched the game, and jumped back on to cross over into the Bronx.

Alas, failing to sense Papa’s terrible ennui, the Giants worsened his mood by losing, 7-6.

Image source:

Sunday Aug 3

by


Another fruitless day

Looking back I see that I
have almost the same identical
ideas of 10 years ago, I am
still single and still in search
of happiness but more vigorous.

While some younger folks
who once sang the same songs
as I still do, of a love to come
are long married and [are] fathers or
mothers, and I am still weaving
my dreams.

They have realized their sought
happiness and have other ideas now
which matrimonial evolution brings along
But even to dream of a romance
(that might not come perhaps)
is also beautiful, even if painful
as in my case, because of my
great longing.

————-

Sigh. I’m going on vacation for two weeks and will only have spotty Internet access, but I hope to get a few posts in here and there. But I think this entry is an appropriate note on which to pause. It reads like the words of a chorus, or as if Papa himself has stopped at the end of an act, turned to his audience, and summed up everything sad and wistful and lovely about this moment in his life.

Since his arrival in America eleven years ago, Papa has been, I think, in a sort of limbo, with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new. He senses this and acknowledges it when he says he has the “same identical ideas of ten years ago,” though I’m not sure he knows why. When he came here he was already eighteen, a young adult ready to take his next step into maturity. Suddenly, though, the terrain changed on him, and perhaps the unfamiliarity froze him in place just as he was about to move forward. Or maybe the simple need to survive and work and get oriented, or the happy distraction of living with and supporting his sister after she arrived, prevented certain facets of his character from developing in the way they might have. To outside observers he was a competent, upstanding, generous young man, but still something held him back.

So what was it? Lately I’ve come to think that the very source of comfort and strength that kept him going through his early years in this country may have been the very force that kept him in place: his love for his family back home, especially for the father he admired so much. By idealizing them, fantasizing about the day he might be with them again, entertaining impossible thoughts of bringing them over from Sniatyn, he may have prevented himself from leaving them behind. Without knowing it, he allowed his need to depend on them to prevent him from exploring his own independence. Instead, he became practiced at weaving dreams and singing songs of what might be, but not as good at embracing what was.

I think he knew all this. In this entry he acknowledges his stasis, contrasts himself with others who have changed through “matrimonial evolution,” shows how much he, too, would like to feel the force of change. Yet he has a poet’s attachment to his state of perpetual loneliness, unable to reject his beautiful capacity for dreaming even though it pains him. Still, I wonder if something new is happening to him, if something significant has triggered this ode to his “great longing.” Could it be that he’s taking a long, last glance at something he’s preparing to let go?

Papa has been preoccupied with the sense of “lost paradise” he’s felt since his father died in May. I think what he really lost was his attachment to the old country and his impossible, boyish need to remain partly in the world he once knew. The death of his father may have jolted Papa in the same way his arrival in America did eleven years before, unexpectedly shaking the past’s hold on him. Is he ready, at last, to plant both feet in America, to stop living so much in his dreams and instead start embracing what’s tangible? As he pauses today to take stock of his life, is he planning to start the next act? Are we seeing the sign of internal change that would allow him, the following year, to be less restless, to meet, commit to, and pursue the woman he would marry and with whom he would start his own family?

⇐ Previous 7 Days|Next 7 Days ⇒