Abstract
The author of this 1934 image, a Brooklyn native, had just returned from a year in Cologne, Germany, an eye-opening year for a precocious young woman, alive to adventure, with a thirst for experience, and a witness to early Nazi rallies. Her portrait is drawn from a sketch positing the clearly demarcated ethnic neighborhoods of Brooklyn’s slums as a microcosm of “the great social problems of the world—nationalism, economic rivalry, petty jealousies.” It crystallizes two related notions—nationality and borders—at the base of European Gypsy experience, in actuality and as a literary trope.
Innocent of nationalism, here as in Europe, the gypsies are the great disintegrating force in the frontier lines. Into the family of nations they come, riding in motorized caravans, with bedding, phrenology charts, pots and pans, silks, lace and exotic human freight. With disarming boldness they pierce all barriers.
Ruth Gruber, “Brooklyn Slum Aided”
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© 2008 Valentina Glajar and Domnica Radulescu
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Smith, M.S. (2008). Vsevolod Garshin’s “Medvedi” (“The Bears”). In: Glajar, V., Radulescu, D. (eds) “Gypsies” in European Literature and Culture. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611634_5
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