by Larry WithamA MODERN-DAY ART THEFT REVEALS THE SECRETS OF AN EMIGRE FAMILY
WHEN YIDDISH LITERARY scholar Dara Horn heard about the 2001
theft of a small Marc Chagall painting from the Jewish Museum of New York, she
had her theme for a novel. The result is The
World to Come (2006), a work of fiction that combines modern art with aspects of Yiddish
culture, that is, the language tradition of Eastern European and Russian Jewry.
The story opens with the theft of a Chagall painting in
Manhattan, setting the contemporary stage. Just as often, though, the novel flashes back to Chagall’s early art career in the Soviet Union. The people back then will have ties
to the modern-day characters, of course (this being a kind of family saga novel), but there is a third distinct layer to The World to Come
as well.
This is the layer of Yiddish fairy tales, or “symbolist” stories, that Horn incorporates in the narrative, tying them to Yiddish poets associated to Chagall. The Yiddish stories, being
dreamlike, often dissolve the clarity of the novel’s plot. Yet they are consistent in this:
they tell of how suffering people find solace in these Yiddish fantasies—imaginary tales that are often
as cheerful as Chagall’s paintings.
In the
present, we meet Ben and Sara Ziskind, a brother and sister who are children of Russian
émigré parents now deceased. Ben and Sara are the hub of a brainy
family circle. Despite his childhood spinal problems, Ben is a prodigy with
encyclopedic knowledge, “the Wizkind . . . cripple” at school. Sara, a
skilled painter, also has a PhD in art history and marries Leonid, a brilliant
mathematician.
One evening,
Ben attends a cocktail party at the (fictional) Museum of Hebraic Art. On the
wall he sees a Marc Chagall painting that used to be in his mother’s living
room. His mother, Rosalie Ziskind, had been a well-known designer of children’s
books, illustrating Yiddish-type stories with watercolors.
Persuaded
that the painting belongs to his family, Ben steals it and takes it home to
show Sarah. At the museum, Ben had met Erica Frank, a staff member and his
future girlfriend. She logically concludes that he must be the thief (she finds
paperwork saying the painting’s original owner had been Rosalie Ziskind, Ben’s mother).
The mystery
in the plot is how Ben's mother, Rosalie, had obtained an original Chagall, now worth a million dollars, and,
in turn, how it came into the possession of a Russian museum official who had loaned it to the Manhattan retrospective exhibit. Again, this takes the story back to the early days of Chagall,
when he painted in Moscow in the 1920's, soon after the Russian Revolution.
As Soviet
history recounts, painters and Yiddish poets were given leeway in
those years before the rise of Stalin. In parts of this novel, we read of Chagall’s
life as a teacher in a Soviet art collective. He also paints large murals
for the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Chagall's friend is the Yiddish poet Der Nister and his art student is Boris Kulbak, to whom he gives a small painting (the one
in question in the future theft).
In time,
however, the Soviets crack down on both artists and Jews. Chagall emigrates
to Western Europe. Before the deadly purge begins, Boris the artist gives the Chagall painting to his daughter. And Der Nister conceals his handwritten Yiddish
stories in the lining of the Chagall murals. The artwork and writings disappear
into the dark political chaos—until Ben and Sara begin to figure things out in New York.
Their
mother, Rosalie, had indeed owned the Chagall painting. As we learn, she
is actually the daughter of Boris, originally named Raisya. Her name was
changed to “Rosalie” on her arrival in New Jersey as a Russian émigré. Years
later, when Rosalie’s husband died, she needed money to keep the house and send
the children to college. So she sent the Chagall painting to a post-Soviet Russian
art dealer for an appraisal.
The Russian dealer is corrupt, and even worse. On receiving the painting, he wrote back
to Rosalie that it was a fake (fairly common with Chagall’s) and must be
destroyed. Horror of horrors, he is also the very Soviet lackey who had sent Boris (Rosalie's father) to the gulag, and now is lending the painting to the Manhattan Chagall exhibition. Given these horrendous facts, Ben’s theft is justified. Erica Frank, the museum
staffer, now takes his side. Sara, a skilled painter, forges a replica of the on-loan
Chagall and Erica re-installs it at the museum (as if it never left).
More than
this, however, Erica has begun to probe a collection of old Chagall murals in
the dark, cavernous basement of the museum. There she finds the handwritten
stories of the Yiddish poet Der Nister stuffed in the murals. A new realization comes: Rosalie Ziskind, who had accepted professional praise as the "author" of the Yiddish children’s books, had simply copied the lost Der
Nister stories. “Your mother, whose work I very much admired, is a plagiarist
and a fraud,” Erica blurts out, at least at first.
The family,
and Erica, again confront the puzzle of art and forgery. They realize
that if Rosalie had not reconstituted Der Nister’s work as her own, the old
Yiddish stories would have been lost forever, a loss to the Russian Jewish
heritage. (Rosalie had tried to get them published, in fact, but there was no
market for the arcane literature. Under her name, they became popular).
Besides
containing the dreaminess of the Yiddish fairy tales, and despite the obvious
talents of Ben and Sara, The World to
Come is a novel about the constant threat to Jewish survival, both
physically and culturally. Early on, Ben despairs over the end of his family
line: “Don’t you get it? Our family is finished, Sara,” and therefore he stole the
painting as the only thing they had left. What is more, the novel frequently
cites a Yiddish tale, “All-Bridge,” an imaginary span that “leads from the deepest
depths of the abyss to the highest heights of heaven.”
Perhaps
fittingly, if darkly, the narrative ends with Erica in the basement hoping to
revive the Chagall and Yiddish heritages. At that very moment, however, a
terrorist bomb destroys the museum. Ben rushes down into the smoldering dark,
but it’s too late.
The novel closes with yet another Yiddish story, much like a Chagall paintings. Happy
Jewish people are crossing bridges in the sky, floating above ghetto buildings, and
ultimately finding a better world to come.
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