DINA BERDICHEVSKY The Long Endless Railroads, the Blowing of Winds, and the Invention of the Hebrew Mood Toward a History and Theory of the Hebrew Poetics of Mood A certain day in a certain month of the year 1900 I am now in a very turbulent mood [matsav ruah]. What is the reason for it? Because all is one and the same, and perhaps I myself do not know. My only words to you are these: Alexander of Macedon was a great wise man, but we have to go to Berlin, . . . or to Switzerland. —Yosef Hayim Brenner, Hatsida ( Sideways ; my translation) T HIS LETTER WAS written originally in Hebrew in July or August of 1900 by the twenty-one-year-old Jewish-Russian writer Uri Nissan Gnessin, addressed to his friend Shimon Bikhovsky; this was one of the first times that someone spoke of “mood” in Hebrew. In the original Gnessin uses the expression matsav ruah, thus presenting a new, original linguistic Hebrew form for mood, composed of two com- mon nouns, matsav (state) and ruah, meaning both “spirit” and “wind. ” The letter is indeed somewhat moody: we notice its associative mind-set, the signs of the lost and exhausted soul failing to grasp space and time, not knowing the exact date and experiencing how everything constantly moves and yet always remains the same. By mentioning Alexander of Macedon Gnessin most probably hints at Russia, ref- erencing this emperor’ s symbolic status as the distant forefather of the modern Rus- sian Empire. However, despite the greatness of Russia, says Gnessin to Bikhovsky, one has to go farther west, “to Berlin or to Switzerland. ” This article was written during my fellowship in the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture— Simon Dubnow at Leipzig University. I wish to thank my colleagues at the Institute for their important part in this research. I’m grateful to Nicolas Berg, the author of Luftmenschen, for the inspiring, ongoing dialogue on the “lofty” Jewish experience of the twentieth century; to the head of the institute, Professor Yfaat Weiss, for her insights regarding the task of historicizing style; and to Petra Gemke for her assistance in the editing process. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of Comparative Literature for their thorough and insightful readings. Comparative Literature 73:1 DOI 10.1215/00104124 -8738862 © 2021 by University of Oregon Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-literature/article-pdf/73/1/23/848803/23berdichevsky.pdf by TEL AVIV UNIV user on 05 March 2021