The Human Touch

The Woodcuts on this page are by Solomon Judovin, wood engraver and book illustrator, now resident in Leningrad.

Judovin was born about thirty-seven years ago in the little town of Bejenkovici, in the government of Vitebsk, Russia. This fact is of consequence only because that little place of his birth and boyhood is the life-blood of his art. Without the memories of that village, his art would lack its chief support. His wood cuts are a loving record of Jewish life in Eastern Europe; the streets, the houses, the rooms, the people, the communal and religious rites which bind them, the humor and tragedy are all lovingly cut into the narrow limits of his wood blocks.

He is chiefly gifted in his ability to crowd a tumult of life in several square inches of wood, without seeming to crowd the scene. “Why,” one of his colleagues asked him, “do you not work with broader strokes; why are your blocks so crowded?” “Because,” he replied, “life in these villages is crowded, and I would not be true to my “model” if I cut into the block with large strokes.”

I suspect also that a poor artist who has only so much wood, or copper, or stone, or canvas is going to #rowd more into each square inch, or foot, or yard than a dilettante who has all the materials he needs. As a matter of fact the strokes in the reproduced blocks are rather more generous than is Judovin’s wont, but whether his prints are reduced or enlarged the character of his work and the character of the people and the scenes he portrays are preserved intact. Note the attitude of the two figures, how much is implicit in them of the story of patience and resignation and submission to the dictates of Providence. I hope to have the opportunity to reproduce other examples of Judovin’s work.

I have never met Solomon Judovin, but I have before me as I write an amateurish snapshot, in which the hair on the back of his head looks like the foliage atop the hill in the distance against which he is posed. He looks stocky, unprepossessing, the greater part of his figure swathed in a white Russian smock which the wind apparently has bellied out so that he seems more sleek than he really is. His face, however, looks bronzed and hard and lean. He looks like a workman and I dare say that many workmen could envy him his masterly hands.

His poverty made him a wood block cutter whereas, had he been well-to-do, we might have heard of him as a painter. But at the age of twenty he found it was impossible to support his painting and gave it up. In Vitebsk he was one of a group of artists of whom the now world-renowned Marc Chagall was a member. Today he is Leningrad’s foremost book illustrator, and though he does his tasks with commendable despatch, we can see by looking at his woodcuts that his heart is with the village of his youth. In 1927 a monograph was published on the man and his work, one of the writers discussing him as artist, the other taking up his social message. It is to Isac Friedlander, New York artist, that I owe my knowledge of Judovin and the opportunity of reproducing specimens of his work.

I REMEMBER

The More unlike your present life your past has been the more likely are you to carry in your mind complete etchings and woodcuts, so to speak, of your early days. The memories may not be pleasant, perhaps, but they are sure to be clear and individual.

Looking closely at Judovin’s prints I realize how the very contrasts between the life of a pre-war European village in the Pale and the life of a cosmopolitan city whether in Europe or America, must have helped to cut deeply into the memory recollections of that village life. In brief, contrasts preserve memories. Jews brought up in American cities have nothing of individuality to recall. Those brought up on East Sides, in large towns, may have something more. I have remarked in novels of immigrants how the further West they go, the further do they move from the sense or the knowledge of a group life. Maybe such memories are gained at too high a price in deprivation and danger, but sometimes the loss of them is not always balanced by a gain of other things

What, for example, do I remember of my boy hood?

We lived on the East Side. I was approximately five when we came from the other side. I think that we lived on Allen Street, and I remember the “L” ran some height above the high stoop. I remember the public library on Rivington street, where I used to spend hours on end and from which I borrowed fat illustrated biographies of Lincoln and Stanley. For no reason at all I was interested in African exploration, and I recalled that early interest when, a year ago, a life of Stanley by Jacob Wassermann, of all people, came out. I remember the line of pushcarts on Grand and Rivington and Allen, and how with a few pennies I could gorge myself with halvah, or corn meal cake—which, in another form my mother would serve me, with milk and cheese—or sweet—potatoes served hot from itinerant ovens. There were worse things that my digestive tract seemed to have absorbed with no evil after-effects. I remember the book and stationery shop on Rivington street where, when I was flush, I would buy paper-backed thrillers, the title of one of which, “Who Killed the Man?” always stayed in my mind, although I have forgotten the slightest detail of the book; I believe it was anonymous. And I remember how I would buy for a few cents a copy of those paper-backed serials, “The Boys of “76,” and the rest of that, no doubt, drivel. I remember going as far west as the Bowery and looking with fascination into the saloons, and once, when I had travelled as far north and west as the Wanamaker Building, I looked northward with fascination, as if to say, There lies the great world!

I hated to study Hebrew, I remember, and that I believe was because the melamed was neither a kindly nor attractive person. I am living proof of the fact that it is impossible to compel learning. I remember also that for a brief period, when I was under a more able melamed, I actually advanced, but that was not for long. The subject of Hebrew did not seem pleasant, it was represented as something that must be learned, and so I did not learn it. I remember also that the synagogue meant only that within it there was the possibility of hearing good choral music. But I remember helping to tear more than one herring in a loft-synagogue somewhere around Essex or Norfolk street, south, I think, of Orchard, after post-Sab-bath services.

Yes sir, I remember lots of things. But I find that my memories are becoming blurred and, after all, I am not writing my autobiography here. I who was born in a country village, of which I have no recollection, remember that my first notion of what constitutes countryside was gained from a summer visit to—of all places—Paterson, N. J., where I saw patches of grass and trees, and where houses were small, and roosters awoke you at dawn and chickens scratched for food in gravel and there were loose stones in the gutters. In Paterson, New Jersey!