Mary AntinLa terra promessaConclusionsThiswork is based on the translation of the first three chapters of "ThePromised Land", an autobiography written by Mary Antin and firstpublished in 1912. Mary Antin was a Jewish immigrant who in 1894 hadmoved from Russia to America with her family, to settle down inBoston and start a new life. Unlike other immigrant autobiographies,which were usually read only by small groups of readers, most of thembelonging to the same national group of the author, this book wasquite a success and it was read not only by Jewish immigrants but bya large American audience. Butwho was Mary Antin? She was not yet thirty when she began to writethis book about her life, but she felt that there was somethingtypical in her not long existence that was "worth recording",because it was "illustrative of scores of unwritten lives",that is, those of the Jewish immigrants coming from Eastern Europe.Therefore, by telling the story of her life, she also wanted to showus "a page of modern history" that she herself hadexperienced. Shewas born in 1881 in Polotzk, a town 200 km north from Minsk inBielorussia: at that time Polotzk had about twenty thousandinhabitants, and half of them were Jews. In fact Bielorussia was partof the so called Pale of settlement, an area extending from Lithuaniaon the Baltic sea to Crimea and Bessarabia on the Black sea, and fromthe Russian-German border to a line west of Smolensk and Kharkov.This was the area where all the Jews of the Russian Empire werecompelled to live and work during the whole of the 19thcentury until the 1917 revolution, a sort of large-scale ghetto withmany problems due to overpopulation, overtaxation, unemployment andgreat competitiveness, especially in the commercial field, let alonepogroms and persecutions. Antin'searly childhood was quite happy: her mother's family was well todo and her parents ran a little store successfully. Her father Israelwas even able to fulfil her greatest desire, that is, to send her toschool: for some months Mashke (this was her Yiddish name) and herelder sister Fetchke were allowed to attend lessons with a teacher, arebbe, an unusual thing for Jewish girls. Unfortunately,things took a bad turn when she was still a little girl: her fatherfell ill, and after a while the same thing happened to her mother.Family business declined, and a lot of money was spent on doctors andmedicines. Her mother had to stay in bed for a year and a half, buteven after her recovery things continued to go badly, until herfather decided to leave Russia and seek his fortune in America. In1891 he sailed to Boston, and even though he still was not earning aliving, the other members of his family joined him three years later:his wife Esther and four children, Fetchke, Mashke, Joseph andDeborah. Thefirst step on the way to Americanisation was made almost immediately:the whole family changed their Jewish, "impossible" firstnames with new, "strange sounding" American ones. SoFetchke became Frieda, Mashke Mary and Deborah Dora, while theirmother Esther was nicknamed Annie. Theirfather's various businesses, as usual, were not successful, andthe Antins often had to move from one shabby flat to another, and allof them were located in the worst Boston slums. But he knew that thereal chance was for his children: unlike in Russia, where it wasalmost impossible for Jews to be allowed to attend public schools,and private lessons were very expensive, whereas in America publiceducation was free and compulsory for all children. Hewould have liked all his children to attend school, but unfortunately this difficult economic situation did not allow it: so his eldestdaughter, Frieda, who was of legal age to work, was engaged as aseamstress, while Mary, only two years younger (she was thirteen) wasallowed to "dance at the May festival of untroubled childhood"(p. 58). Her father told the school officials that she was eleven, sothat she might study four years instead of only two, but this fact isnot mentioned in "The Promised Land". Teachers realised almost immediately that Mary Antin was a brilliant pupil andlearnt English very quickly: that same year a brief composition ofhers was published in the journal Primary Education becauseher teacher, Miss Dillingham, wanted to show what a little Russiangirl, who had never heard a single word of English before her arrivalin Boston, could do in a few months at school. Afterfour years of grammar school, Mary was admitted to the Boston Latinschool for girls, but she never completed her studies: she gave upschool after three years without a diploma. Later she attended somecollege courses at Yale as a special student. Inthis period she made acquaintance with important personalities of theBostonian cultural scene, such as Edward Everett Hale and the Lazarussisters, in particular Josephine, who repeatedly suggested her towrite about her life, and to whom "The Promised Land" isdedicated; and Ellery Sedgwick, editor of The Atlantic Monthly,who published all her short stories and many excerpts from her mainworks. Herfirst work, "From Plotzk to Boston" (Plotzk is amisspelling for Polotzk), was published in 1899, and it was anaccount of her transatlantic voyage, that she had formerly describedin a letter to her uncle Solomon. That Yiddish letter was freelytranslated into English and published first on the AtlanticMonthly and then as a book. Butmore than a decade was to pass before other works by Mary Antin wouldbe brought to light. In this period she met William Amadeus Grabau, ayoung palaeontologist who, like her, was a member of the NaturalHistory Club, and whom she married in 1901. Then they moved to NewYork, and William began to teach at Columbia University; in 1907 Marybore him their only daughter, Josephine Esther Grabau. In1911 Ellery Sedgwick published "Malinke's Atonement",the first of her short stories, mostly set in her native Polotzk.Some of these short stories are inspired by actual episodes ofAntin's life, in particular "Malinke's Atonement"and "The Lie", issued in 1913. In the same year she alsopublished "The Amulet". In1910 her husband planned a tour in Europe for the following year, andin particular in Stockholm, a city not far from Polotzk. She realisedthat going back to Polotzk would influence all her childhood memorieswith new impressions, so she decided that the moment to write hadcome. The result was a handwritten draft, divided into ten longchapters, five set in Polotzk and five in Boston. Beforeits publication in1912 there were some significant additions andexcisions to the text, which was reorganised in twenty shorterchapters. "ThePromised Land" was not only a great success, but also a workthat raised many topical issues for the American society of thosedays: immigration, Americanisation and the right to be consideredlegitimate American citizens. Reactions were mostly positive: Antinwas praised for her patriotism and her linguistic accomplishments,and her book was regarded as "a treatise on sociology". Butshe was also criticised for being an individualist and an egotist. Afterthis book Antin published other short stories, essays and articles,but her literary activity was now set aside in favour of her newcareer as a lecturer. She held conferences all over the United Statesabout her favourite subjects: immigration, assimilation, education,American citizenship, Jewish life in the Pale and Zionism. Alreadystressed by this successful but tiresome activity, and by higher andhigher criticism raised by her ideas, especially among "realAmericans" and nativists, she suffered a nervous breakdowncaused by the separation from her husband, who moved to Peking toteach at the local University. Afterwhat has been defined her "truly golden years in literature",that is the first half of the 1910's, Antin wrote mainly essaysand articles about social issues: the most important of these essaysare perhaps "They Who Knock at Our Gates" (1914) and herlast published work, "House of the One Father" (1941),again about the problems of immigrants and their assimilation. Inthese works Antin tries to merge her Hebrew origin with her Americanpatriotism: she stresses that at the beginning of Americanism thereis the fact that all men have one father, and so she demonstrates theHebrew sources of American democracy Inher last years Mary Antin lived in poor circumstances, grieved by thenews that came from Europe, especially from her native Polotzk: where7,000 Jews were killed in an attack by German soldiers. She died onMay 15, 1949. ThePromised Land is a text clearly divided into two parts, one aboutAntin's childhood in Polotzk and the transatlantic voyage toBoston, the other about her new life in America, her education andAmericanisation. The first four chapters explain the livingconditions of the Jews in the Russian Empire, and the story ofAntin's family starting from her great-grandfather; the rest ofthe book is based only on her personal memoirs and childhoodrecollections. Thistext gives a good account of Jewish life in the 19thcentury Russian Empire, with many Hebrew and Yiddish terms that Antinexplained in a glossary at the end of the novel, but also in the textor through footnotes. This glossary contains 120 words, includingproper names and toponyms. Thetext is also rich in different tones and stylistic devices,particularly in the first pages, that show us a 19thcentury Polotzk seen through the eyes of a little Jewish girl. Thishappens at a physical level, with many adjectives like great,biglarge, that mimic the limited perspective of achild, to whom everything seems larger and higher than to adults, orother adjectives like wonderful or beautiful, thusreproducing the typical mood of children to whom the most obviousthing is a great discovery. But also on a lexical level we can findsomething typical of the language of children: many repetitions and anarrow lexical range. Terms like peopleplacething,that have a generic meaning, appear many times in these first pages,with different references, but are not substituted by synonyms ormore specific terms because they imitate the limited language ofchildren. Thereis also a strong influence of the Bible, which is not a thing towonder at in a book set in a 19th century Jewishcommunity, but which is remarkable for putting a biblical painting oneveryday life and matters not strictly religious, thus linking everyaspect of life to the fulfilment of biblical promises and prophecies.In fact we can find biblical hints in the whole structure of thebook, first of all in its title and in the chapter titles; thereforewe can say that the Bible has not only an incidental influence but itis part of the structure that forms the meaning of the whole book. Translating a book that is in itself a sort of cultural translation was not very difficult, having so many explanations in the text and in the glossary, not only of single words, but also about traditions, ceremonies, festivals and everyday life. Yiddish and Hebrew terms have been left in the translation, and some footnotes have been added when these terms are not explained in the text; some of them reproduce the explanations in the glossary of the original version. Stylistic devices have been respected, even if this has led to some repetitions in the first pages. Biblical references have been translated with reference to the Nuovissima versione dai testi originali, Edizioni San Paolo. Punctuation marks have been left like in the original, except a few cases where a more rational version has been chosen. Some footnotes have been added about geography and history, for a better comprehension of chronological references and about important historical personalities. |