Papas Diary Project

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Matt’s Notes

Back on May 28, Papa wrote movingly of the last moments he spent with his father before leaving Sniatyn for America in 1913. He was eighteen years old. I think these photos show what he would have looked like at the time (at least they’re the earliest shots we’ve got of him in America):

I like the top one in particular because his hat and coat remind me of young Clemenza’s in The Godfather, Part II, and also because he really looks less American, for some reason, than he does in his later photos. It appears to be a formal studio shot, too, which leads me to wonder why he’s wearing full winter clothes. Maybe it was part of a series he sent back home to show how he looked in various styles of dress.

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Papa leaves his diary entries blank for the next few days, so I’m going to add a few pages to the site I’ve been meaning to work on for a while. First up, a new “Sound and Video” page, accessible from the left navigation, with a collection of all the audio and video files associated with Papa’s diary.

(Now that’s interesting: all this thinking about music and Papa leads me to remember that he used to sing “I Love You, a Bushel and a Peck” to me quite a bit, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. I haven’t thought about that in decades. I wonder how many other memories like this are still waiting to be tapped.)

The contents of the “Sound and Video” page includes:

January 1: The Volga Boat Song was played in the New Years Eve concert Papa attended. Here’s a version from Radio Blog Club:

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January 4

Papa recounts the story of a young Jewish woman who plays Schubert’s Serenade for immigration officials in order to qualify for an artist’s exception to the Jewish immigrant quota laws. It’s here at Radio Blog Club:

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March 21

Papa describes how he listened to a boxing match in which Jewish boxer Abe Goldstein took the bantamweight title. We don’t have any footage of Golstein’s fight, but YouTube does have this 1922 fight featuring Benny Leonard, who was perhaps the most famous Jewish fighter:

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April 6

“Always blues, blues, even the radio is sending me blues through the air,” said Papa one rainy April day. We can’t be sure what he listened to, but here’s 1923 Bessie Smith recording of “Down Hearted Blues” from Last.fm:

And here’s a recording of “Who’s Sorry Now” by the Original Memphis Five from Archive.org:

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April 7

Papa frequently says he listens to an ensemble called The Gypsy String Orchestra on the radio, and while I haven’t yet found one of their recordings, this 1914, Gypsy-influenced Berkes Bela tune from archive.org might be in the ballpark:

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April 28

Papa lists a number of songs the Gypsy String Orchestra played on the radio that day, among them:

“Indian Love Lyrics,” which surely sounded a lot like this 1921 Edison Diamond Disc recording from the Library of Congress:

A “Gypsy Chardash” along the lines of this 1920’s-ish recording by Bibor Olga Ciganyzenekara (Olga Bibor’s Gypsy Ensemble) at Archive.org:

Papa didn’t mentioned the “Gypsy Love Song” specifically, but I thew in this 1923 recording of it, also available at Archive.org:

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These silences from Papa, even when they just go on for two days, feel epic. He has seesawed for several weeks between despair and resolve in the aftermath of his father’s death, looked for ways to exorcise the specter of pessimism with his own idealism. Yet the last thing he wrote about was sending money home to pay for his father’s tombstone. Did the finality of that gesture overwhelm his inherent optimism and temporarily shut down his ability to share his thoughts?

Even though I know the steady, satisfied person he was to become, I still worry when he stops writing, and wish I could say to him “Papa, this is you”:

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“It’s when we have the most to say that we’re silent.”

This is one of my favorite quotes from the Max Ophuls movie The Earrings of Madame de… (which recently played at the Film Forum in New York) and, though it’s spoken by an aristocratic character entirely unlike Papa, it comes to mind as we start our third consecutive day without any word from him.

He has been, throughout the year, quite willing to discuss his most difficult thoughts — whether about his romantic disappointments or intense homesickness or dissatisfaction with life in New York — so his silence is glaring. As I speculated yesterday, it seems to indicate a setback in his struggle with the helplessness he’s felt since his father died. Was the feeling so persistent and unvarying this week that to contemplate it any more through his diary was simply unbearable?

I worry for him when he’s out of touch as if he were alive and traveling and not calling home. I think I also feel a touch of somewhat irrational anger when he leaves his diary pages blank; doesn’t he know how important his words are to me?

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Four days without any entry from Papa.

Papa’s silence started after he wired money home for his father’s tombstone. He would have wondered if the money had found its way there, wondered whose hands it passed between, wondered, now that his father’s grave was part of the landscape, what other transformations had taken place in Sniatyn. He would have wondered if he could even recognize his home town after eleven years. He would have wondered who else he would never see again.

Each night he must have picked up his pen to write in his journal; each night he must have put it back down, weary, perhaps, of his faraway thoughts, angered by their contents, unwilling to give them permanence. But still they persisted. What places did he picture as he lay in bed, staring at his untouched diary on the nightstand? What faces did he see when he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to bring him relief?

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Additional notes:

Though most of the above photos are from the 1930’s, they hint at how many people Papa left behind and why he (like countless others who came to America before and after him) struggled with such remarkable homesickness and loneliness.

The top three photos have notes on the back written in Hungarian script (I think) to Papa by his sister Gitel. Here’s the back of the first one:

It says something like: “Schlojme [Schloyme], Tabale, Chave-Surale, Tabel’s husband — Welwel [Velvel], Fulkale, Fule, Ruchale, Leiser. Sitting: Gerschale with Tabel’s younger children — Josale [Yusale], Chaje-Surale [Chaya-Surale].” Gitel is fourth from the right and left herself out of the note.

Here’s the back of the next one:

It says the people in the photo are (standing, from left) Fule, Leiser, [Chava] Suraly and (seated, from left) Gitel, and Pinkas. There are also a few words directed to Papa, my grandmother (Jean) and mother (Phyllis).

I can’t tell what the back of the third photo says, but maybe someone out there who’s used to reading Hungarian script can chime in:

The fourth photo is, of course, of Papa’s father and mother, Joseph and Fagale Scheurman.