Hard To Be A Jew, Felix Poem by gershon hepner

It’s hardly inexplicable
why some should find despicable
the music Felix wrote. When Shaw
declared with Shavian guffaw
that it was far too sentimental,
he was being far more gentle
than antisemites who deplored
the man, although he had restored
not only Bach and Handel but
some Schubert, as a Jewish mutt.

For far too long he’s not been able
to lose the sentimental label,
though surely if he’d been a gentile
his works would share the top percentile
with his contemporaries like Schu-
mann. It was hard to be a Jew
when he grew up, and still was when
he wsa the target of the pen
of critics such as GBS.

I love his works, I must confess,
although his grandpa, one supposes,
the great philosopher called Moses,
would have considered him uncouther
than I do, since he so loved Luther.
It wasn’t faith that made him stupid,
but love for Jenny Lind, her Cupid,
though we who’re proud not to be narrow-
minded should forgive the arrow
he shot into himself, in love,
when falling, without wings of dove,
like Icarus, because he flew
too near the sun, creative Jew.

The end of this poem was inspired by an article by Jessica Duchen the Independent, January 12,2009 on Mendelssohn’s infatuation with Jenny Lind which may have led to his suicide (“Conspiracy of silence: Could the release of secret documents shatter Felix Mendelssohn's reputation? ”) , and inspired my poem “On Wings of Love by Death Made Free.” The first part of this poem was inspired by an article by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim on recently rediscovered music by Mendelssohn:

On the night of Nov.9,1936, the Nazis tore down the statue of Felix Mendelssohn in front of the Leipzig Gewandhaus. The conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, in town with the London Philharmonic, had toured the site only the previous day. When he returned to lay a wreath, he found only flowerbeds. In truth, critics had been chipping away at Mendelssohn's pedestal almost since his death, at the age of 38, in 1847. The first was Wagner, whose anti-Semitic diatribe against the Jewish-born Protestant composer insidiously mixed racist and musical slurs, branding Mendelssohn's music derivative, superficial and impotent. A second line of attack came from England. In the backlash against Victorianism at the end of the 19th century, the composer who had been a regular guest in English homes, concert halls and Queen Victoria's palace became an easy target. George Bernard Shaw ridiculed his 'kid-glove gentility, his conventional sentimentality, and his despicable oratorio-mongering.' Although Mendelssohn's music is perennially popular with audiences - not to mention newlyweds, who continue to stride down the aisle to the 'Wedding March' from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' - it has never been able to shake off these accusations, which are exacerbated by comparisons with other composers' works: Mendelssohn lacks the stormy passion of Beethoven, the revolutionary zeal of Wagner, the virtuosic brilliance of Chopin or Liszt. A collection of newly discovered piano works by Mendelssohn, presented by Italian pianist Roberto Prosseda on a CD released April 22 and in a current series of recitals at New York's Bargemusic, set out to rehabilitate the man whom Schiller called the Mozart of his age.



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