Cosmopolitan Albert Yossipovici Finds, Before Death, He is Not Pole or Turk, or Frenchman – but a Je

There are many stray Jews in the world, ‘stray’ not through their own fault, or in a bad sense of the word, but ‘stray’ because of the exceptional conditions in which the Jewish nation lives—dispersed all over the world, yet at home nowhere.

Such a Jew was Albert Yossipovici, the news of whose early death recently shocked the French literary world. Yossipovici was but little known to the general public, yet he was an exceptionally gifted author, a profound thinker, who had in the course of his short life written several books which were hailed in the French literary world as great and fundamental works. Modest and retiring by nature, loving peace and quiet above all things, he lived in a small place near Cairo, on the banks of the Nile. And it is there that, at the early age of 40, he died.

SETTLED IN TURKEY

The father of Albert Yossipovici was a Polish Jew, a doctor by profession, who emigrated to Turkey in order to take over an inheritance that had been left to him by relatives of his who had settled in Turkey. He took his family over with him, set up in practice in Constantinople, and led a happy and prosperous life. Soon he became a Turkish subject. After some years he moved to Cairo, mainly for the sake of his children’s education. His son Albert, the future author, he sent to school in France, and afterwards to the French University at Cairo. Poland, Turkey, France—three entirely different national cultures in the course of a short 20 years.

But, on the surface, at least, Albert had not suffered from these constant changes. On the contrary, the effect of the intermingling of these various cultures had been to make of him a dreamer, a thinker. While at the University he met another ambitious and talented young man, Albert Adas, who became his life-long friend. Together they wrote a very remarkable book, “The Restless”, dealing with the life of the blind. The young authors were not yet 20 years old, at this time. The book had only a very small sale, but among those who did read it, it attracted much attention. Maeterlinck hailed it as a great and important book, and prophesied for the young authors great futures.

PRAISED BY MIRBEAU

Yossipovici and Adas wrote another psychological novel together, “The Book of Gaha the Simpleton”, which made a name for them in the world of literature, and to which the great Octave Mirbeau referred as “a work of genius.” Soon afterwards the two young authors separated, each to go his own way. Some years later Adas died, at the early age of 28, of an incurable disease.

Yossipovici, in the meantime, had obtained a post under the Egyptian Government, which, however, did not take up much of his time. He lived a quiet and secluded life in the country, not far from Cairo. He soon assimilated the atmosphere of Egypt, and almost became part of it. It was here that he wrote his next novel, “Beautiful Said”, and became known as one of the best portrayers of both the old and the new Egypt.

Was Yossipovici with the stamp of the Polish, Turkish, French and Egyptian cultures upon him, conscious of these fundamental transformations? Undoubtedly, and in the course of years he came to regard it as his Great Tragedy. And in the knowledge of this tragedy, he ultimately came to feel that he was—neither Pole, nor Turk, neither Frenchman nor Egyptian, but—a Jew, a Jew pure and simple.

It was in this frame of mind that Yossipovici, the stray son of a dispersed nation, started on his greatest work, “David among the Gentiles.” It was an autobiographical psychological study, and in it this thinker portrayed the great tragedy of a “child among aliens.” In it he brought out all the thoughts and emotions and inner conflicts that developed in his hero, David. They were his own emotions, and it was his own tragedy, that he portrayed, a tragedy that he had endured in silence for many years.

It was to be his Swan Song, and it was never completed, for death interrupted his work in the very middle. Fifteen chapters remained to be written. Yet those who have been able to read his manuscript have been deeply impressed by this remarkably fine portrayal of character.

And so this pilgrimage ended. Albert Yossipovici died not a Pole, not a Turk, not a Frenchman and not an Egyptian, but a Jew. He had returned to the fold.