Shouting Man
[Munsztlgotsh]

When he is at war
The man is shouting.
When he is at peace
The man is shouting.
When he is in love
When he looks to the skies
When he swims in the sea
The man is shouting.

Old man, you make such a racket!
We cover our ears, but your noise never stops.
A pack of wolves would run from your shouting.
A pack of wives would learn from your shouting.

Someday someone will push you over a cliff,
But it will not be me.
Better to live with the shouting
Than live with the end of the shouting.

When he is in the woods
The man is shouting.
When he is in the desert
The man is shouting.
When he wakes in the morning
When he harvests his grain
When he worships Szatra
The man is shouting.

Translator's comments:

While dining at a Chinese restaurant recently, I received the following fortune: "An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes." At first I read it as a description of a scene--perhaps the first line of a modern short story--before realizing it was intended as a proverb. By coincidence, I had just been working on the translation of Munsztlgotsh earlier that day, particularly the second stanza, which was proving a bit troublesome. The Chinese proverb gave me no help, but it does provide an interesting contrast to the Iddish poem presented here; in this poem, the man is loud simply because he is always loud, rather than because he is angry.

While many of us can certainly imagine (and probably know) men of the type this poem pokes fun at, it is likely that the poem reflects some ancient stereotype of a particular friendly, but uncouth, neighboring tribe. An obvious candidate would be the Endzy; though there are few specific references to them by name in Iddish literature, surviving Endzy poems and stories do suggest a culture that is a bit rough around the edges, and full of what we might now call "machismo".

Some notes on particular lines:

"A pack of wives would learn from your shouting" -- probably intended to mean that nagging wives would learn from his technique, rather than that wives would be cowed and meekly submit to his shouting. The fact that "wives" and "wolves" are parallel in English is a happy coincidence; in Iddish the words are not similar (gospezn, indreytn).

"Better to live with the shouting / Than live with the end of the shouting" -- a typically enigmatic couplet (Iydatszy munzstlo prylnzai / O ertish munzstla prylnzai), placed, as so often happens in these old Iddish poems, in the middle of a light-hearted bit of fluff. It is extremely unlikely that Zen koans could have directly influenced any Iddish literature earlier than the Middle Late period, but they do appear to share a fondness for inexplicable assertions.

"When he worships Szatra / The man is shouting" -- a final little joke, almost a punchline; Szatra is the goddess of rest and silence.