The Concept and Cultural Significance of the’ Schlemiel’
Eniko Maior, Partium Christian University, Oradea
My paper deals with the type-figure of the schlemiel. The concept of the “schlemiel” is one of
the most important type-figures that Yiddish culture has produced. First, it appeared in
religious texts, a few centuries later it became present in Yiddish literature, and subsequently
it gained ground in European literature as well. At the beginning of the 20th century, with the
mass immigration of Jews to the Golden Land, it reached the American ground, and by the
second half of the century it became one of the best known type-figures that Yiddish literature
has given to the world.
So let us start with the roots and causes of the appearance of the term. I think that the
centuries’ long persecutions, as well as the lack of a homeland gave birth to this ethnic
specific type-figure. Bonnie K. Lyons had perfectly expressed the causes and the main
reasons for the appearance of the term:
Jewish tradition and Jewish history, especially centuries of dispersion, exile, precariousness,
homelessness, and powerlessness, gave rise to a distinct historical attitude toward humanity and heroes.
Pervading Yiddish culture and literature is a questioning, in fact an underplaying, of conventional
heroism, even a distinctly anti-heroic bias, no doubt in part based on clear perception of the selfdestruction resulting from usually vain gestures – and a powerless victim’s sense of how what passes
for the heroic can be egotistical, narcissistic, and brutal. Simply surviving decently and living to tell a
tale are often sufficiently problematic. And if heroes are absent or found wanting, the ordinary man is
elevated, or at least evoked with love. Dos kleine menshele, the little man, with all his imperfections and
foibles, is accepted and embraced. Likewise a wide range of human emotions, including ordinary, nonadmirable feelings, is explored. The ordinary man struggling with his everyday problems is the core of
Yiddish literature; the heroic individual and sharply climactic plot are conspicuously absent (qtd. in
Fried 63).
I think that Lyons’s idea best explains our hero’s character. It is not a hero in the general
sense of the word, a hero who we envy for his greatness and for his power, but rather a
product of centuries’ long persecutions and pogroms. It is a character that accepts life’s
hardships and does not try to fight with the inhuman condition in which he finds himself, but
rather tries to survive somehow. It does not want to save the world. The concept does not
carry the main characteristics of the well-known type-figure hero but rather reformulates it
and introduces a new type of hero. In Melvin J. Friedman’s words, the schlemiel
has always been an essential part of the Jew’s exploded myth of heroism, a reminder of his fallibility
and insecure position in the Diaspora. The name itself, with its mixed Hebrew, Yiddish, and German
origins, has been linked traditionally to one sort of failure or another. The schlemiel has always stood
firmly opposed to a view of the world which embraces Horace’s famous dictum, “Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.” For him the only value worth considering is to stay alive, to survive at any cost (141).
As we can infer from Friedman’s statement, the hero in Jewish literature is built in a different
way. It is a rebel/victim hero who, because of the Jews’ never ending struggle for survival,
tries only to survive. There is no need for a hero who is a fighter, but for one who can get to
his feet after each defeat that life prepares for him. It is a hero who believes in the power of
afterlife where he will be rewarded for his patience and never-ending optimistic belief in a
better life. Usually, the character is a male of Jewish origins who has strong faith in the values
of Judaism, even if he does not practice the rituals of his religion. He believes in the so-called
“great human” values (love, faith in God etc.) and tries to behave in accordance with them.
The concept, according to various literary critics, first appeared in the Talmud, and
from there got into Yiddish literature. The term plays a significant role in Yiddish literary
works as it represents the born-loser of Yiddish novels, short stories and plays. In the 19th
century, it made its first appearance in European literature and from there, with the mass
immigration of Jews to the New World, it traveled to America. This configuration, a
European import, has become an essential building block and component of Jewish-American
culture, with particular emphasis on the literary culture. The first appearance of the term can
be noticed in the short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer which were published in Yiddish. This
is why the term got into the American literary mainstream relatively late. But if we have a
look at the American culture we can see that the type-figure can be already seen in Chaplin’s
movies. The hero’s victory is rather an alleged one. In the short stories and novels of the first
generation of Jewish-American writers (for example Henry Roth and Isaac Bashevis Singer),
the schlemiel carries the same characteristics as in Europe. It is the type-figure of the outcast,
the outsider who cannot belong to any group or nation. But, at the same time, it must be a Jew
whose incapacity to deal with everyday life lies in his character. This sounds a little bit
strange but it is a double-faced character. It is an outsider but one of Jewish origins, although
one of the characters under discussion is a Roman Catholic who, by the end of the novel, will
become Jewish and will even get a circumcision. On the other hand, the concept will undergo
several changes. It will have to find a new identity in a world where the question of survival
will be replaced by the problem of acculturation.
In accordance with the idea mentioned earlier, Jewish-American writers make a New
Covenant with God. As Gilman asserts: "the New Covenant does not imply blind allegiance
to national and cultural interests. It means, instead, a call in the rhetorical tradition of
Jeremiah for both introspection and cultural renewal in the light of an ideology that sees
America as a new way of life” (qtd. in Girgus 335). In Europe the Jewish writers wrote in
order to guide their people to God, but in America the situation has changed. There were no
more closely-knit family ties, the old shtetl (village) life was gone and Judaism and religion
lost ground in front of the great American dream: democracy and liberalism. In this new
environment it is not surprising that the concept will change so as to fit the American dream.
The Jews had to convert to the rights of American citizenship, so the cultural change was
inevitable. The writers – Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and so on, to mention
the most important ones – do not want to lead their people to God or to fight wars. In the
novels of Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow the type-figure of the schlemiel
appears under several different guises. At the core of the character we can find the wellknown concept from Europe: the born-loser. But in the case of Malamud the most important
idea is that of suffering for the other, while in the case of Philip Roth it is the frustrated
youngster who has been terrorized by the strict rules of Judaism and who wants to become a
normal American citizen. In the case of Saul Bellow, our hero does not find his place in this
new world and cannot succeed in becoming a normal citizen; he tries not to identify himself
with Jews and even changes his name, as it is the case of Tommy Wilhelm in “Seize the Day”
(1956).
European Literary Roots
The configuration of the schlemiel penetrated the European literary culture in the first
half of the 19th century. Viewed in this light, the appearance of the novel Peter Schlemihl,
the Shadowless Man (1813) by Adelbert von Chamisso (1781- 1838) can be considered
symbolic. He was born in France, in 1781, as Louis Charles Adelaide de Chamisso, but
his family ran away after the French Revolution and settled in Berlin. He spent his youth
there, but the truth is that he did not feel like a real Prussian. During the Napoleonic war,
he had several problems because he did not want to fight against the Emperor, so he
moved to the estate of a friend and stayed there till the end of the war. Chamisso wrote his
novel there, in this very difficult and troubled time of his life. The story is about Peter,
who sells his shadow for Fortunatus’ lucky purse. But he soon discovers that a man cannot
live without his shadow even if he has unlimited material resources. It is the story of a
marginal man. The novel is a romanticized Faust legend, the protagonist being the
romantic figure of the Wandering Jew. There are various legends about this figure, and in
my opinion Peter wanders because he cannot live in society, he is an outcast. He is
different from the others and this is why he cannot find harmony and peace. He cannot be
saved, not even through love. His love affair turns out to be a total failure. Peter Schlemihl
cannot live in the community, he is the quintessential outsider. The allegiance to the Jews
as a nation without an actual country – till 1948 – is visible here. Peter does not belong to
any country, nation or group. He travels from country to country, wanders over unknown
lands but without his shadow he cannot find peace. The psychic anxieties of a socially
excluded man can be traced in the following quotation: “Remember, my friend, while you
live in the world to treasure first your shadow and then your money. But if you choose to
live for your inner self alone, you will need no counsel of mine” (Chamisso 89).
As we can see from the previous chapters, the main character of the novel, Peter,
carries some of the characteristics of the type-figure of the schlemiel. He is not a real
schlemiel but shares some common features. Leslie Field spoke about the motif of
wandering in connection with the concept of the schlemiel:
A fairly common view is that the most comprehensive definition of the schlemiel has come from Golda
Meir, then Prime Minister of Israel, when, not long ago, she whimsically traversed time and space to
encompass a whole people as schlemiel. Half in jest, Mrs. Meir observed that most of the world’s oil
was ‘in the wrong places.’ She said that ‘Moses led the Israelites through the desert for 40 years and
ended in the one place in the Middle East with no oil’ (122).
I think that Peter shares only this feature with the type figure of the schlemiel. Chamisso’s
novel brought widespread popularity to the term, and Sadan argued that it came to be used in
a specific way “to represent the man fated to be different, homeless, alien, and Jewish” (qtd.
in Wisse 126). The term can stand to represent all Jews, wherever they are, claims Sadan. But
it is very interesting to see that in one of the novels chosen for subsequent discussion we have
a Gentile who, as I am going to show, can be considered, after many essential moral
transformations, a schlemiel. He fulfills the necessary requirements to be one of them and till
the end of the novel he identifies himself with the Jews in accepting to suffer for the others
and even undergoes circumcision. This idea of suffering for the other is considered by
Malamud as a typically Jewish characteristic, but one which does not characterize the
schlemiel. This concept is used only by Malamud, and he is the only writer who endows a
Gentile with the basic characteristics of a schlemiel and who, by the end of the novel, will
become a real schlemiel. But, as will be shown, this idea of suffering for the other
characterizes only Malamud’s schlemiels and not the schlemiels of Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth and other writers of Jewish origin.
Beside Adelbert von Chamisso, we have to mention Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). In
Heine’s opinion, the type-figure serves as the metaphor for the artistic quest itself. According
to Heine, all artists are the descendants of the first schlemiel. Referring to the one mentioned
in the Bible, he considered it to be the fate of the poets, as we can see in his poem Hebrew
Melodies (1851) :
Who, sweet Daphne erst pursuing,
When he clasped the nymph’s white body,
Found his arms about the laurel –
He the heavenly Schlemiel! (264).
Later in the poem, he retold the above-mentioned story of Zimri, (which I have mentioned
earlier), making him innocent and having a totally different view about the term. Heine called
all poets the descendants of that first schlemiel:
This Schlemihl I was founder
of the race of Schlemihls:
We are lineally descended
From Schlemihl ben Zuri Schadday (265).
I do not agree with Heine who tries to restore social injustice through the type figure of the
schlemiel, as in this way the term in question loses its original meaning. As I have mentioned
earlier, the term represents the man fated to be luckless or inept. I do not think that we can
call poets or artists to be luckless or inept. The other thing is that the schlemiel does not
change. It cannot be identified with our well-known and beloved figure.
As we can see the type-figure of the schlemiel is a European term that will travel to the
Golden Land and will undergo several changes. The detailed study of these changes will be
the subject of another conference paper.
Works Cited
Chamisso, Adelbert von. Peter Schlemihl the Shadowless Man. Whitefish, MT.: Kessinger
Publishing, 2004.
Fiedler, Leslie A. The Jew in the American Novel. New York: Herzl P, 1959.
Fried, Lewis ed.-in-Chief. Handbook of American-Jewish Literature. An Analytical Guide to
Topics, Themes, and Sources. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood P, 1988.
Friedman, Melvin J. The Schlemiel: Jew and Non-Jew. in Literary Imagination. Vol. IX, No.1
(spring 1976): 139-153.
Girgus, Sam B. “A Poetics of the American Idea: The Jewish Writer and America” in
Prospects. Volume 8, (1983): 327-348.
Heine, Heinrich. Poetry and Prose. New York: Citadel P, 1948.
Pinsker, Sanford. The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in the Yiddish and American Jewish
Novel. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1971.
Wisse, Ruth. The Schlemiel as Modern Hero. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1971.