Object of the Month

“在一个对他们知之甚少的世界的眼中”:玛丽·安廷给埃勒里·塞奇威克的一封信

玛丽·安廷给埃勒里·塞奇威克的信,1911年6月1日手稿

Letter from Mary Antin to Ellery Sedgwick, 1 June 1911

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  • [ This description is from the project: Object of the Month ]

    This letter, written by Mary Antin to Ellery Sedgwick on 1 June 1911, 两位通讯员之间的第一次通信是在 Ellery Sedgwick papers. 安汀的这封信是为了回应对她的短篇小说的编辑和批评, “Malinke’s Atonement.” As the editor of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, Sedgwick published several pieces of Antin’s in the magazine, including installments of her autobiography, The Promised Land.

    Mary Antin (1881-1949)

    Maryashe Antin生于1881年6月13日,父母是Israel Pinchus和Esther (Weltman) Antin Polotsk in the Russian Pale of Settlement, in what is now Belarus. In 1891, Israel Antin immigrated to the United States, settling in the West End neighborhood of Boston. Although he struggled to earn a living during this time, he saved enough to allow the family to join him in 1894.

    Once in Boston, Mary Antin and her siblings started school. 她的父亲认为教育是一种工具,可以让他的孩子们在新的国家里取得成功, as Antin writes in The Promised Land:


    His children should be students, should fill his house with books and intellectual company; and thus he would walk by proxy in the Elysian Fields of liberal learning. 至于孩子们自己,他不知道有什么更有把握的办法能使他们进步和幸福.


    Antin proved herself an adept student and talented writer. 她在6个月内升了4级,并在13岁时发表了一首诗《og体育平台》. 1899年,安廷被誉为“波士顿最新的文学神童” Boston Sunday Post for her first publication From Plotzk to Boston (the publisher misspelled the name of Antin’s hometown), 她把写给波洛茨克一位叔叔的信从意第绪语翻译成英语. 1901年,她与地质学家Amadeus William Grabau(1870-1946)结婚。, 以及她在哥伦比亚师范学院(1901-1902)和巴纳德学院(1902-1904)的大学经历。, 把她介绍给更多的朋友和支持她工作的人.


    A champion of immigrants

    Antin’s experience was not a common one. She used her voice and influence, both in her writings and on the speakers’ circuit, to champion immigrants. In 1914, her third book, 敲我们大门的人:一本完整的移民福音, was published. Written at a time of rising xenophobia, 安提恩主张在美国民主理想的背景下推进移民. This xenophobia was also present in Antin’s Boston. As the city changed with the addition of Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants, Jonathan Sarna and Ellen Smith write in The Jews of Boston, 美国佬乐观的人道主义信念,相信教育和民主的力量会影响移民的提升,但现在让位于一种吞噬人的恐惧:一些老牌家庭的成员开始相信自己的种族, their country, and their whole way of life was imperiled.”

    但“教育和民主的力量”是玛丽·安廷的精神支柱, and she believed in these institutions deeply. 迎接她的是波士顿和美国的机会,与她的家人和数百万其他犹太人在此期间逃离的严酷的俄罗斯统治和反犹主义形成了鲜明对比, and she wanted others to share in the same. 她经常向团体讲述她的经历以及公民和民主的重要性,并反对国会提出的反移民立法. 然而,对移民的态度继续偏离安廷自己的观点. In 1917, a literacy test for immigrants was passed by Congress, followed by the restrictive immigration acts of 1921 and 1924.


    The letter

    尽管安汀以一种积极的方式写了她自己的经历, 这封信指出了她在为广大美国公众撰写东欧犹太人的文化和宗教生活时所面临的一些担忧和挑战. It is unknown whether Sedgwick, from an upper-class family with deep New England roots, was familiar with this history, but he was familiar with his readers. 在给塞奇威克的信中,安汀承认了这种脱节:


    Your praise, I must confess, flatters me; some of it surprises me. 我永远无法知道我的Malinke或Rösele在你眼中og体育平台样子, no matter how fully you express yourself; but what you and others have said does give me some idea of the figures my poor Jewish people make when standing detached from their overwhelming history, in the sight of a world that knows them but little. Malinke, to me, is Malinke with a thousand years of Jewish sorrows behind her, and a thousand years of empty hope. 当我听到批评我的人的声音时,我才意识到og体育平台那几个世纪的记录是多么的少. 我一定要记住这样一个事实:并非所有的事情都在读者的脑海里,而在作者的脑海里.


    《og体育官网》讲述的是波洛茨克一个贫穷的年轻女孩质疑犹太律法,发现自己的信仰受到了考验,但她的信仰受到了拉比的教育,从而得到了回报. It is a story about a very different way of life, one which Antin once knew but had long since left behind. 安汀对这些犹太人角色——以及他们所代表的真正的人——有着深刻的责任感,这一点在这段话中很明显. 从这封信中我们知道塞奇威克建议缩短故事, 直到他的回答,我们才知道他还建议删除俄语术语(这一点值得注意), however, that the Yiddish word tref, which means “not kosher,” was kept in the story). The continuing correspondence between the two highlights their mutual respect for each other’s work; from Sedgwick’s autobiography, we know he felt Antin “brought to The Atlantic abundant life from a new quarter.”


    Later years

    During World War I, 安廷在与丈夫的亲德忠诚斗争中挣扎,而她则团结起来支持盟军的事业. 他们婚姻中的困难给安廷带来了严重的健康问题, and she retired from public life. 1919年,格拉博离开美国来到中国,在北京大学教授地质学. Antin left New York for Massachusetts, where she split her time between Boston, Winchester, and Gould Farm, a residential therapeutic community in Great Barrington. She died on 15 May 1949 in Suffern, New York.

     

    By Stephanie Call, Curator of Manuscripts

    马萨诸塞州历史协会的犹太历史收藏

    For further reading

    Antin, Mary. From Plotzk to Boston Boston: W.B. Clarke & Co., Park Street Church, 1899.

    ----. “Malinke’s Atonement,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1911, p. 300-319.

    ----. The Promised Land Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912.

    ----. They Who Knock at our Gates:《og体育平台》波士顿:霍顿·米夫林出版社,1914年版.

    “Boston’s Latest Prodigy,” Boston Sunday Post, 12 February 1899, p. 13. Available online through NewspaperArchive (an online database); Boston Public Library card holders may access through the BPL's Newspapers web page.

    McGinity, Keren R. 《真正的玛丽·安汀:在应许之地执行任务的女人,American Jewish History, vol. 86, no. 3 (1998), p. 285–307.

    Nadell, Pamela S. "Mary Antin," The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Jewish Women’s Archive, 23 June 2021. (Viewed on April 22, 2024)

    Sarna, Jonathan, Ellen Smith, and Scott-Martin Kosofsky, eds. The Jews of Boston, 2nd ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005.

    Sedgwick, Ellery. The Happy Profession Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1926.