A Death: Notes of a Suicide

by Zalman Shneour, Daniel Kennedy (Introduction)

In a Yiddish take on Notes from Underground, a dark, expressionist love affair develops in a large, unnamed Eastern European city between the young, impoverished, and violently self-loathing teacher, Shloyme—and a hungry, spiteful, and unsettlingly sensual revolver. Purchased from a friend ostensibly to protect him from the pogroms sweeping the empire, the weapon instead opens a portal to Shloyme’s innermost demons, and through it he begins his methodical mission to eradicate any remnants of life and humanity in him and pave the way for his self-destruction. A Death takes the form of a diary that follows the Jewish calendar, describing hallucinatory demons and parasitical urges as its author spends his remaining days excising all his responsibilities and acquaintances from a life now devoted to not living.

Written in Yiddish in 1905 and published with immediate success in Warsaw in 1909, A Death utilizes the influences of Dostoyevsky and Schopenhauer to depict a distinctly Jewish experience of homelessness and uprooted modernity. Zalman Shneour’s short novel presents a much lesser-known strand of Jewish decadent literature and an authorial voice that has been buried for too long. This introduction of Shneour’s inaugural novel is his first appearance in English since 1963. Its exploration of alienation, mental health, toxic masculinity, and violence is remarkably contemporary.

Born in Shklow, Zalman Shneour (1887–1959) was a major figure of Jewish modernity and one of the most popular Yiddish writer between the World Wars. He wrote poetry, prose, and plays in both Yiddish and Hebrew. Like many of his generation, his life was spent moving from city to city in search of literary community or escaping political turmoil: from Odessa to Warsaw to Vilne, and on to such Western cities as Bern, Geneva, Berlin, Paris, New York (where he died), and Tel Aviv (where he is buried). His psychological fiction brought the insights of Nietzsche and Freud into the narrative world of Eastern European Jewish life.

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, Judaism

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Zalman Shneour (born Shneour Zalkind; 1887-1959) was a prolific Yiddish and Hebrew poet and writer. A scion of the Shneerson dynasty that has led the Lubavitch Hasidic movement since its inception.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was awarded the Bialik Prize for Literature (1951) and Israel Prize for Literature (1955).

Hebrew name: זלמן שניאור

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Proto-incel Shloyme has seen through life's facade and decided it's time to hasten his end. The time is very early in the twentieth century. With no World of Warcraft to distract him or online forums in which to mope around with other embittered young men, he is alone in his shabby rented room with his dark thoughts and newly acquired revolver. Soon he begins preparations: the severing of his few human ties, the resigning from his tutoring jobs, the ridding of his meager possessions. He gets drunk with his one 'friend' and delivers a diatribe that scares the friend off. He shares other internal monologues that at times crossed thematic paths with another book I'm reading, Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. I can't say I loved the book, but I liked it well enough. For its time it is impressive. However, it's not encouraging to read a fictional 'diary' from well over 100 years ago of someone who would perfectly fit the profile of so many contemporary mass shooters.

[Perry Ruhland · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of books about disaffected, angry young men looking to die violently in publication (Potentially my biggest-ever understatement), but I'm fairly certain this is the best one

[Anna-Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually me if i was an incel

[Reuben Woolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is amazing, I can’t recommend it enough. I read it as an inheritor of the Dostoevsky tradition (something it is very explicit about), and the dialogue with various Dostoevsky texts — not just Notes from the Underground, which is the most obvious one based on plot alone — is rich and fascinating. It’s a deeply bleak and very short book, so you come the other side of it in a very strange mood, which I suppose is a credit to the consistently intense atmosphere and idea that run through it. The translation by Daniel Kennedy is also excellent — characters are distinctly voiced, the bizarre quirks and eccentricities of the prose are rendered nicely, it feels altogether like an exciting read.

Read this book!

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one I'll return to, and Shneour is an author I'll be digging in deeper on. "A death" reads like the Yiddish take on "Notes From Underground," a love story between a young man and his newly purchased revolver, offering some existential reflections on life, philosophy and religion — sometimes bordering on dreary self-indulgence — through the eyes of a well-educated but marginalized narrator whose dissolution forms the structure of the novel. It also offers some profound glimpses into everyday life in a bustling Yiddish civilization before the wars.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few good lines stuck between the ramblings of a grown man with mommy issues who just needs to get laid

[Ariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently have read the book A Death: Notes of a Suicide. This book was one of the most intense and interesting books that I have read in awhile. This book is about a man Shloyme who is struggling greatly with depression because he decided to leave his old life behind and start this new life in a new Eastern European city. This book right before World War I happened so the world was in a pretty messy place. This book was translated from Yiddish and the main character is a Jewish man living in Europe. The author wrote the book that the perspective that you are reading through is the main character and trust me this character goes through a lot throughout the book. The man goes through a lot within this pretty short book and goes into great detail about what goes through his mind. Although this book was written so long ago many of what is a lot of what is written about within the story is still relevant to this day. As I explained before the man is struggling greatly with depression and within the first pages the book states, “The son of that weak, nervous man -- getting along so well with a loaded gun, keeping it always in m pocket, constantly feeling its pleasing weight against my thigh (...) on those nights I remove the gun from its sheath and press its cool metal to my burning cheek (Shneour, 18). At the beginning of this chapter, Shloyme explains how he gets anxious around almost everything which is a sign of him having anxiety and it feels that he can’t do anything, but get nervous. Then he goes on to explain how he feels that all the other people surround him are all perfect and they don’t get nervous. He is comparing himself to others which is one of the main reasons people develop a mental illness because they are striving to be like someone else which is not something that is possible to achieve. He then contradicts and explains how he doesn’t get nervous around a gun while others do. Through just by the few pages you can already tell that he struggles greatly with mental illness and how he has suicidal thoughts that control his life. It seems like the goal of the author of this book was to show the reader what goes through someone that suffers from mental illness and what exactly goes through their head every day.
Many of my personal friends suffer from mental illness and at times it is hard for me to help them because I have never been in their shoes. This book explained what it is like to go through a depression episode by explaining Shloyme thoughts, “How can you go and watch something you’ve seen so many times already? I left. I’ve stopped paying visits to my acquaintances” (Shneour, 51). Through this quote, he feels like he is living the same life over and over again. He needs a break from his life so he begins to block out his friends and family. This is also known as a depression episode where you stop reaching out to people that normally make you happy. Whenever I saw these types of depression episodes displayed on the tv, I always wondered how someone could cut out everyone around them and think that would make them feel better. This book showed for at least Shloyme that he didn’t want to face this sad life that he was living. He felt that if he cut everyone out that he could start over, but it lead him to pick up unhealthy habits. Within the next page, he explains what he is going to write on his suicide note, he says, “It would be better to leave behind just a little note, a single line on a thin strip of paper: ‘No one is to blame for my death and everyone is to blame” (Shneour, 52). He is thinking about what he should state on this suicide note and I feel like this sentence really opened my eyes. He is explaining that even though it truly isn’t anyone’s fault if someone were to just say to him ‘everything is going to be ok’ or even truly asked how is doing it could prevent him from taking his own life. It gave me a little reminder to always check in on your friends because you never really know what they going through. This book went into great depth around mental health and really opened my eyes to what it is like to live with a mental illness. I am very much a sucker for a sad story and this was one of the saddest books that I have read. Overall, I would recommend reading this book, but be ready to get uncomfortable at times and maybe be listening to some happy music in the background.

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't really liked a lot of the literature that has followed in the footsteps of Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground." In fact, I find that one of the least interesting of Dostoevsky's work. That said, I liked a lot of this. There is something more here than just some ugly, shut-in, incel complaining about the everything the world has done wrong to him. Especially in today's world, when there are so many people (in the U.S. anyway) lamenting "I'm white and I'm male and everyone hates me and the whole world is against me and I am being persecuted." Just none of that nonsense sits well today.In this book, it really feels like the stresses and strains of life are tearing apart the protagonist's sanity, and less like he's just sitting in his room grumbling about the world. And then there is the slightly Kafkaesque nature of his relationship with the revolver that throws in something new. Perhaps the best of this strain of literature.

[Zac Hawkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There's still an abscess left over, an infected sore, as large as the globe...it feels only its own pain, with eternity.
Eternity is us, us and us alone, a great pity for them that are still alive...what was it the crucified one said?
'Him? 'God, forgive them, they know not what they do' that is how it went.'
No, that wasn't it, 'God, forgive them, they know not what they live.'
Yes. Yes. That's it."

[G.S. Richter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty bang-on for a diary of suicidal ideation. Doubtless novel for its time. Not sure why the publishers caved to the impulsion to label it a story of "toxic masculinity." These people just cannot help themselves.

[Mark DiStefano · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just as much of an essential read as Notes from the Underground. A brilliant, brilliant book.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zalman Shenour was an edgy boy.