Mrs. Klug was giving a benefit and therefore sang several new songs and made a few new jokes. But only her opening song held me wholly under her influence, after
that I had the strongest reaction to every detail of her appearance, to her arms, stretched out when she sings, and her snapping fingers, to the tightly twisted curls at her
temples, to her thin shirt, flat and innocent under her vest, to her lower lip that she pursed once while she savored the effect of a joke (“Look, I speak every language,
but in Yiddish”), to her fat little feet in their thick white stockings. But when she sang new songs yesterday she spoiled the main effect she had on me, which lay in the
fact that here was a person exhibiting herself who had discovered a few jokes and songs that revealed her temperament and all its strong points to the utmost
perfection. When this display is a success, everything is a success, and if we like to let this person affect us often, we will naturally—and in this, perhaps, all the
audience agrees with me—not let ourselves be misled by the constant repetition of the songs, which are always the same, we will rather approve of it as an aid to
concentration, like the darkening of the hall, for example, and, as far as the woman is concerned, recognize in her that fearlessness and self-awareness which are
exactly what we are seeking. So when the new songs came along, songs that could reveal nothing new in Mrs. Klug since the old ones had done their duty so
completely, and when these songs, without any justification at all, claimed one’s attention purely as songs, and when they in this way distracted one’s attention from Mrs.
Klug but at the same time showed that she herself was not at ease in them either, part of the time making a failure of them and part of the time exaggerating her
grimaces and gestures, one had to become annoyed and was consoled only by the fact that the memory of her perfect performances in the past, resulting from her
unshakeable integrity, was too firm to be disturbed by the present sight.
7 January. Unfortunately Mrs. Tschissik always has parts which show only the essence of her character, she always plays women and girls who all at once are
unhappy, despised, dishonored, wronged, but who are not allowed time to develop their characters in a natural sequence. The explosive, natural strength with which she
plays these roles makes them climactic only when she acts them, in the play as it is written, because of the wealth of acting they require, these roles are only
suggestions, but this shows what she would be capable of. One of her important gestures begins as a shudder in her trembling hips, which she holds somewhat stiffly.
Her little daughter seems to have one hip completely stiff. When the actors embrace, they hold each other’s wigs in place.
Recently, when I went up to Löwy’s room with him so that he could read me the letter he had written to the Warsaw writer, Nomberg, we met the Tschissik couple on
the landing. They were carrying their costumes for Kol Nidre, wrapped in tissue paper like matzos, up to their room. We stopped for a little while. The railing
supported my hands and the intonations of my sentences. Her large mouth, so close in front of me, assumed surprising but natural shapes. It was my fault that the
conversation threatened to end hopelessly, for in my effort hurriedly to express all my love and devotion I only remarked that the affairs of the troupe were going
wretchedly, that their repertoire was exhausted, that they could therefore not remain much longer and that the lack of interest that the Prague Jews took in them was
incomprehensible. Monday I must—she asked me—come to see Sedernacht [Seder Night], although I already know the play. Then I shall hear her sing the song
(“Hear, O Israel”) which, she remembers from a remark I once made, I love especially.
“Yeshivahs” are talmudic colleges supported by many communities in Poland and Russia. The cost is not very great because these schools are usually housed in old,