From Plotzk to Boston

From Plotzk to Boston, by 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
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: From Plotzk to Boston
Author: Mary Antin
Commentator: Israel Zangwill
Release Date: February 21, 2007 [EBook #20638]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** 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