Leah, the Forsaken (1862) is a strong English-language
adaptation by the American playwright John Augustin Daly of
the hugely popular German-language Deborah (1849) by a
Jewish-German-Austrian playwright, Salomon Hermann Mosenthal.
Deborah was translated or adapted into more than a
dozen European languages and given titles as various as Deborah,
D'vorah, Leah, Miriam, Naomi, Rebecca,
Ruth, Lysiah, Clysbia, and The Jewess. Trying to
recall the original name, Bloom manages only to add another
one to the list: "What is this the right name is? By
Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No." Gifford speculates
that he may be thinking of "the Alsatian-Jewish actress Elisa
Rachel (1821-58)," who played the title role in some
performances of Mosenthal's Deborah. But he may simply
be remembering Leah's sister in the book of Genesis.
The tragic story of Leah runs as follows: In the
early 1700s in a violently antisemitic Austrian village, a
young Catholic man named Rudolf falls in love with a
passionate Jewish girl who has fled a pogrom in her native
Hungary and is passing through the town, where by law she
cannot settle even for a night. He offers to run off with her,
but their conversation beneath "a large ruined cross" in the
forest is overheard by an apostate Jew named Nathan, who has
assimilated into Gentile society for two decades by hiding his
past and becoming more intolerant than the natives. Nathan
brings the unwelcome news to Rudolf's father Lorenz, and
convinces father and son to let him test Leah by going to the
forest and offering her money to renounce her love, but he
pockets the gold and falsely tells Rudolf and Lorenz that Leah
has accepted it. Rudolf repudiates Leah and marries the
Austrian girl that his father has picked out for him, only to
learn the truth from Leah after the wedding. Five years later,
she shows up outside the couple's house, tenderly embraces
their daughter, calls out the parents, and denounces Nathan.
Nathan is led away by the police, and Leah falls dead at
Rudolf's feet.
This spectacular starring role attracted many famous
actresses of the late 19th century, including the Czech Fanny
Janauschek, the Italian Adelaide Ristori, the American Kate
Bateman, the French Sarah Bernhardt, and the American Milly
Bandmann-Palmer. In addition to longing to see Mrs.
Bandmann-Palmer "again" in the part, Bloom recalls his father
telling him how two more of these leading ladies played the
role: "Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in
that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon
to get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And
Ristori in Vienna."
But one scene from Leah that deeply impressed Rudolph
Bloom did not feature the heroine. Over and over again, he has
told his son about a moment when Nathan's Jewish identity is
discovered. Nathan has lived in constant fear of being
recognized by Jews from his old country, and Leah's band of wandering Hungarian Jews
poses a mortal threat to him. In the third act this threat
comes to life: "The scene he was always talking about where
the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his
fingers on his face. / — Nathan's voice! His
son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father
to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of
his father and left the God of his father. / Every
word is so deep, Leopold."
The scene in act 3 shows a "dilapidated Hut" where Leah has
brought the blind old Abraham and Sarah to stay the night.
Nathan enters it and tries to bribe Sarah to leave Austria and
take Leah with her, but Abraham appears, saying, "I hear a
strange voice, and yet not a strange voice. . . . There was a
man at Presburg, a man whose name was Nathan. He was a singer
in the synagogue. It is his voice I hear. . . . It was said he
became a Christian, and went out into the world. . . . He left
his father to die in poverty and misery, since he had forsworn
his faith, and the house of his kindred." Nathan tries to
silence him all the while he is speaking, but Abraham says, "I
will not be silent. I hear the voice of Nathan. (passing
his hand over NATHAN's face) And I recognize
the features of Nathan." Nathan grabs him by the throat and
strangles him. He "loosens his grip from which ABRAHAM
sinks supinely; at the same moment a thunder-bolt strikes
the cabin, and the storm increases) / SARAH. (screams)
He is dead!"
It seems clear that Leah, the Forsaken spoke
powerfully to Rudolph Bloom because, like Leah, he was a Jew
who left his native Hungary and wandered west. His particular
interest in the scene with Nathan and old Abraham, however, is
not so easy to explain. Perhaps he felt guilt over having
"left the house of his father and left the God of his father"
(Rudolph converted to Catholicism to marry Ellen Higgins). But
his conversion cannot truly be called an apostasy, because
Rudolph continued to live with Jews and he quietly preserved
the memory of the religious traditions he was raised in,
passing them down to his son.
Leopold Bloom went much further, rejecting the Jewish faith
completely and, after living
among Jews for the first few years of his marriage,
leaving them behind to associate
with Gentiles. Any guilt that his father may have felt
while watching the craven and murderous Nathan must have been
perpetuated in his own recollections of his father's words.
His thoughts about how Nathan abandoned his father to poverty
and death are immediately followed by thoughts of his own
father's death: "Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go
into the room to look at his face. That day! O, dear! O,
dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for him."
The reader of Lotus Eaters learns, then, that Bloom
suffers from a psychic affliction very much like Stephen's: natural grief over
the loss of a parent has become amplified by religious guilt.
In Bloom's case more time has passed and the ailment is not as
crippling ("Well, perhaps it was best for him"), but his
response to Leah contributes significantly to the
mental parallels that the novel is constructing between its
male protagonists.
