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    From Plotzk to Boston
    From Plotzk to Boston
    From Plotzk to Boston
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    From Plotzk to Boston

    By Mary Antin and Israel Zangwill

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1970
    Author

    Mary Antin

    Mary Antin (1881-1949) was a writer and activist whose work reflected the American immigrant experience. Born in the Russian Empire but raised in the U.S., Antin was a bright child whose exceptional writing quickly impressed her teachers. In 1899, she published her first book, From Plotzk to Boston, which was an early detailing of her emigration story. She was then encouraged to write an autobiography, which became The Promised Land, her most popular and acclaimed work.

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    • 3/5
      Brief account of a young girl and her family's journey from Russia to America. The father has preceded them and after 3 years, they are finally able to join him. The children and their mother encounter multiple obstacles along the way, especially in passing into Germany. Since cholera was raging at the time, passengers were subjected to special steamings and cleanings of themselves and their belongings. Prices for passage were often increased.The voyage across the Atlantic was particularly difficult, with seasickness prevalent among the passengers. It is hard to imagine these difficult journeys when travel today is so much simpler.#FromPlotzkToBoston #MaryAntin

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    From Plotzk to Boston - Mary Antin

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of From Plotzk to Boston, by Mary Antin

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

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    Title: From Plotzk to Boston

    Author: Mary Antin

    Commentator: Israel Zangwill

    Release Date: February 21, 2007 [EBook #20638]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM PLOTZK TO BOSTON ***

    Produced by Arie Tuinman and the Online Distributed

    Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

    produced from images generously made available by The

    Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

    From Plotzk to Boston

    BY

    Mary Antin

    WITH A FOREWORD BY

    Israel Zangwill

    BOSTON, MASS.

    W. B. CLARKE & CO., PARK STREET CHURCH

    1899

    COPYRIGHT, 1899

    BY MARY ANTIN

    PRESS OF PHILIP COWEN

    NEW YORK CITY

    DEDICATED TO

    HATTIE L. HECHT

    WITH THE LOVE AND GRATITUDE OF THE AUTHOR

    FOREWORD

    The infant phenomenon in literature is rarer than in more physical branches of art, but its productions are not likely to be of value outside the doting domestic circle. Even Pope who lisped in numbers for the numbers came, did not add to our Anthology from his cradle, though he may therein have acquired his monotonous rocking-metre. Immaturity of mind and experience, so easily disguised on the stage or the music-stool—even by adults—is more obvious in the field of pure intellect. The contribution with which Mary Antin makes her début in letters is, however, saved from the emptiness of embryonic thinking by being a record of a real experience, the greatest of her life; her journey from Poland to Boston. Even so, and remarkable as her description is for a girl of eleven—for it was at this age that she first wrote the thing in Yiddish, though she was thirteen when she translated it into English—it would scarcely be worth publishing merely as a literary curiosity. But it happens to possess an extraneous value. For, despite the great wave of Russian immigration into the United States, and despite the noble spirit in which the Jews of America have grappled with the invasion, we still know too little of the inner feelings of the people themselves, nor do we adequately realize what magic vision of free America lures them on to face the great journey to the other side of the world.

    Mary Antin's vivid description of all she and her dear ones went through, enables us to see almost with our own eyes how the invasion of America appears to the impecunious invader. It is thus a human document of considerable value, as well as a promissory note of future performance. The quick senses of the child, her keen powers of observation and introspection, her impressionability both to sensations and complex emotions—these are the very things out of which literature is made; the raw stuff of art. Her capacity to handle English—after so short a residence in America—shows that she possesses also the instrument of expression. More fortunate than the poet of the Ghetto, Morris Rosenfeld, she will have at her command the most popular language in the world, and she has already produced in it passages of true literature, especially in her impressionistic rendering of the sea and the bustling phantasmagoria of travel.

    What will be her development no one can say precisely, and I would not presume either to predict or to direct it, for the wind bloweth where it listeth. It will probably take lyrical shape. Like most modern Jewesses who have written, she is, I fear, destined to spiritual suffering: fortunately her work evidences a genial talent for enjoyment and a warm humanity which may serve to counterbalance the curse of reflectiveness. That she is growing, is evident from her own Introduction, written only the other day, with its touches of humor and more complex manipulation of groups of facts. But I have ventured to counsel delay rather than precipitation in production—for she is not yet sixteen—and the completion of her education, physical no less than intellectual; and it is to this purpose that such profits as may accrue from this publication will be devoted. Let us hope this premature recognition of her potentialities will not injure their future flowering, and that her development will add to those spiritual and intellectual forces of which big-hearted American Judaism stands sorely in need. I should explain in conclusion, that I have neither added nor subtracted, even a comma, and that I have no credit in discovering Mary Antin. I did but endorse the verdict of that kind and charming Boston household in which I had the pleasure of encountering the gifted Polish girl, and to a member of which this little volume is appropriately dedicated.

    I. Zangwill.

    PREFATORY

    In the year 1891, a mighty wave of the emigration movement swept over all parts of Russia, carrying with it a vast number of the Jewish population to the distant shores of the New World—from tyranny to democracy, from darkness to light, from bondage and persecution to freedom, justice and equality. But the great mass knew nothing of these things; they were going to the foreign world in hopes only of earning their bread and worshiping their God in peace. The different currents that directed the course of that wave cannot be here enumerated. Suffice it to say that its power was enormous. All over the land homes were broken up, families separated, lives completely altered, for a common end.

    The emigration fever was at its height in Plotzk, my native town, in the central western part of Russia, on the Dvina River. America was in everybody's mouth. Business men talked of it over their accounts; the market women made up their quarrels that they might discuss it from stall to stall; people who had relatives in the famous land went around reading their letters for the enlightenment of less fortunate folks; the one letter-carrier informed the public how many letters arrived from America, and who were the recipients; children played at emigrating; old folks shook their sage heads over the evening fire, and prophesied no good for those who braved the terrors of the sea and the foreign goal beyond it;—all

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