Gogol's pig snouts

[Deborah Hoffman]

Ironically (?) the Jews also use the image of the pig to indicate falsehood and hypocrisy, comparing individuals engaged in deception with a pig who can pretend to be kosher by stretching out its cloven hooves (one of the two required signs for a kosher animal) even though it does not possess the second sign of chewing its cud. The original source (I believe) is Rashi (a medieval commentator) but the idea shows up over and over again in subsequent rabbinic literature.
   
  The Koran also associates Jews with pigs (Suras 5:60-65, 2:65 and 7:166). To be fair Sura 2:65 only speaks of Sabbath-breakers, and it is a later commentator who understands it as a reference to Jews, an image that still shows up in sermons in modern times. Though it is difficult to say which group inspired the other in this matter.
   
  Not perhaps directly on point but I thought you might find it interesting.
   
  
>Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:44:32 +0000
>From: Will Ryan 
>Subject: Re: Gogol's pig snouts
>
>The literature on the association of Jews and pigs and the devil in 
>European polemic literature is, regrettably, fairly large. A classic 
>study is Isaiah Shachar, The Judensau : a medieval anti-Jewish motif and 
>its history, London : Warburg Institute, 1974. Try Google with 'Judensau 
>devil' for a depressing list of shameful references. Specifically on 
>snouts try Van Welie-Vink, W.A.W., Pig Snouts as Sign of Evil in 
>Manuscripts from the Low Countries, Quaerendo 26, 1996, 213-228.
>Will Ryan
>>Dan Newton wrote:
> >Richard Taruskin says that the pig snouts in Gogol's "Sorochinskaia
> >iarmarka" are evidence of Gogol's antisemitism (the first one appears to the
> >Jewish pawnbroker who has cheated the devil out of his red jacket), and by
> >extension, of Musorgskii's (the opera).
>> 
> >Do you know of any other instances of pig snouts as manifestations of the
>> devil? Of antisemitism? Both? Any ideas as to origin?
>> 
> >Big thanks in advance.
> >Dan
> 



Deborah Hoffman, Esq.
Russian > English Legal and Literary Translations

A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life. -- R. G. Collingwood

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