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When Ytzig Met Shtrul: On Schmoozing and Jewish Conspiracy in Romanian Art
Humor Breaks the Code: Confirming or Dispelling Convictions
But what if the artists had made clear their intentions, revealing the dialogue by
simply writing it next to the image? What if the viewers had been given the op¬
portunity to eavesdrop on the conversation? The caricaturists saw this through.
Starting with the end of the 1850s, when the Romanian political caricature
made its debut, the representations of the foreigners were consistently metonymic.
Rather than real types, the caricaturists preferred symbolical personifications of
nations. The interaction of the characters was therefore not interpersonal, but in¬
ternational. Based on this acknowledgment, the Jew or the Jews, when a group
was configured, represented the Jewry. At the beginning of the 1890s, alongside
the metonymic ethnotypes, social types, of different ethnicity, underwent an am¬
plitude increase on the caricaturists’ sheets. ‘The readers discovered a fresh dose
of humor in these self-referential—often denominated and engaged in real inter¬
ethnic and intraethnic interaction—new figures. The Jewish chit-chat, with its
strange topics and funny talk, capitalized on this context, popping up constantly
in illustrated epigrams and gag cartoons.
In 1889, the Romanian caricaturist Constantin Jiquidi had one of his drawings
published in the Revista Noud”® magazine (ill. 224). Two Jews are gazing at one
another in a face-to-face standstill. Close-by, another Jew is addressing the viewer,
revealing, by means of an epigram, what goes on: “They'd cheat each other in no
time,/ But what use, try as they may,/ Neither one will get a dime:/ They are both
Jews, aren’t they?"" It seems the artist has an informer. The verses are not distant,
they do not have the impersonal voiceover of a narrator, as they belong to a Jew,
a double-agent that is entitled to know and to report on what his comrades are
discussing. The situation is reminiscent of a central and eastern European belief
that one Jew’s deceitfulness is useless in the face of another. Zwei Juden wissen, was
eine Brille kostet (Two Jews both know how much a pair of glasses costs), says an
old German proverb (Schwarzfeld 2004: 126).
As we move to another example, we find a different Jewish rendezvous (ill.
223). Two friends are discussing spiritedly, probably debating on the newspaper
that one of them is holding in his hand. An epigram gives us the chance once
more to find out the topic of discussion. This time, the Jews are debating politics:
“Beresh Leibu and Avram/ Got politically involved,/ With some matters that are,
damn,/ Usually in a bathhouse solved!.” The drawing is a mockery of the politi¬
cal affairs that the Jews are apparently handling. The political involvement of the
two does not consist in policy practices or acting on behalf of a given political
role, but in a mare tittle-tattle of what goes on in the country. Moreover, when
20 Revista Nouä, no. 10, November 1889.
21 The translation of the epigrams from Romanian and the adaptation were realized, preserving the
phonetic rhymes, by the author himself. Intentional licenses, meant to ridicule the way Jews talked,
were however irreproducible.
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