The foundations of this relationship between Tevye and his alter ego or superego are laid bare in Tevye’s first tale, and even more so in Tevye’s letter, which in the original 1894 version serves as its epilogue or appendix. (In the canonical editions it functions as a prologue to the entire cycle under the biblical title “Kotonti—I Am Unworthy,” a reference to Jacob’s humble acknowledgment of the mercies and goodwill shown to him by the angels in Genesis 32:10.) Ostensibly this is a mere thank-you letter for the author’s intention of putting Tevye in a book, an honor of which the dairyman deems himself unworthy. The letter contains, however, implicit background information as well as explicit statements that belie Tevye’s supposed gratefulness and humility. The most interesting is Tevye’s reference to the fact that his acquaintance with Sholem Aleichem goes back quite a few years. Tevye remembers those earlier contacts, although he’s not sure Sholem Aleichem remembers them, since the writer was a rich person in those years, who could afford a summerhouse in Boiberik (the suburb of Yehupetz-Kiev where most of Tevye’s customers reside and where the present meeting between the dairyman and the writer takes place), and Tevye can hardly expect a rich entrepreneur (who also dabbled in writing) to pay attention to a mere dairyman. Circumstances changed, however, once Sholem Aleichem’s fortunes took a dive (which they did in 1890), reducing him, now a writer eking out a living from his scribbling, to a position not unlike that of Tevye himself. Are they not on par as hardworking producers and suppliers of goods (dairy products, stories) who depend on the market and have to find buyers for their merchandise? Not that Tevye forgets the difference between a published author, who is by definition a learned person, and a rustic dairyman. He never fails to acknowledge this difference, to defer to his interlocutor in all matters pertaining to learning and erudition and to find other ways of giving him the ego-massage at which he is an expert (having practiced for years the art of keeping disgruntled customers pleased). Nevertheless, Tevye does not refrain from discreetly reminding Sholem Aleichem of the shrinkage in the social gap between them. For instance, at the end of the first tale he urges both himself and his interlocutor to go back to work and attend to their respective businesses, since neither is in a position to indulge in pleasant conversation for its own sake. Both have to go back to their means of production: “Ir tsu ayere bikhlekh, ikh tsu mayne teplekh un tsu mayne kriglekh. .” (“You to your little books, I to my little pots and to my little jugs”). The list of three diminutives (bikhlekh, teplekh, kriglekh) conveys not only Tevye’s understanding of books as mere containers (like pots and jugs) into which one pours one’s verbal merchandise, but also his sense that he and his interlocutor are both small fry, people who, far from playing important roles in the world, offer the public items to which the language of diminution is applicable.
But why should Tevye tell Sholem Aleichem his story? What, under the changing circumstances, could be the purpose of the telling? It could be quasi commerciaclass="underline" Tevye’s story is something valuable that Sholem Aleichem might want to buy, or as he delicately puts it, “It’s worth your while, I swear, to listen to the entire story from beginning to end.” Sholem Aleichem, in his turn, could pay Tevye back with money or advertisement, or even more desirable, he could pay Tevye by listening to his stories, not only because they are fresh merchandise, grist for an author’s mill, but also because as a writer Sholem Aleichem cannot fail to be charmed by them and thus offer Tevye his needed self-exposure.
This need for self-exposure explains, more than anything else, Tevye’s motivation for bonding with the literary persona, a bond that becomes on both sides progressively stronger, more emotionally charged, and more complex. Sholem Aleichem initially presents Tevye as a type, a jolly character, one of the many that he makes fun of and regales his readers with, but he stops doing so by the second tale, moving ever-larger parts of his mental being into alignment with Tevye’s interiority. As the Hebrew writer J. H. Brenner aptly put it, Sholem Aleichem becomes “Tevye’s bard,” even his “stenographer de gracia dei,”5 taking dictation and adding to his protagonist’s flow of speech the amenities of felicitous écriture.
This symbiosis between two such different entities — a traditional, half-educated, provincial dairyman and the literary persona of a modern writer — may seem strange, but it actually is inevitable, at least as far as Tevye and his needs are concerned. Tevye understands instinctively that only an artist, perhaps a storyteller like himself, can serve as his confessor. What other figure of intellectual or moral authority could he turn to? A rabbi or a Chasidic saint would regard the way he has brought up his daughters as scandalous, for it contradicts the basic tenets of both the Halacha and the tradition. No God-fearing person would permit his unmarried daughters to become friendly with young men of questionable morals, including a Gentile — what can he expect for such a sin other than a terrible retribution? By the same token, blaming God for the consequences of one’s behavior amounts to the worst kind of blasphemy: Tevye should prostrate himself before God and dedicate the rest of his life to repentance — such would probably be the reaction of a traditional sage. Nor could Tevye expect a more positive reaction from a modern secularist or humanist, who would damn him for being passive, unable to fend for himself and protect his family; for evading his moral responsibilities; for shifting the burden of his failings onto an irrelevant God; for being deeply prejudiced against women; for being spiritually swaddled and mummified within an irrelevant textual cocoon; and so on. A moralist would point with derision to his craving for riches achieved through no effort of his own. A socialist would decry his respect for money, power, and social status. A Jewish scholar would laugh at his scholarly pretensions and pronounce him a fake, an ignoramus. In short, everybody but a Sholem Aleichem would regard him as blameworthy. Only a writer can accept him, even look up to him as towering above nondescript humanity through his inspired loquacity and riveting storytelling.
Besides, nobody but Sholem Aleichem would want to listen to Tevye. Even the people who surround him, almost without exception, are sick and tired of him, abhor his incessant talking, and stop listening at the first biblical verse or midrashic gloss. This is why he falls headlong in love with whoever does not immediately recoil from his discourse — like the young revolutionary Fefferl, whom he brings home and who will marry Tevye’s most beloved daughter, Hodl. Tevye will do almost anything for whoever will listen to him. So much more so for Sholem Aleichem, who savors every word he utters, understands the subversive irrelevance of his quotations, and appreciates the wit of his mistranslations. (Of course, almost all of Tevye’s mistakes are intentional and subversive, undermining, for the fun of it, the sacred sources to which he professes loyalty.) Such a listener is to him a heaven-sent boon.