Saul Steinberg: A Biography Read online

  1907 to 1912 were the years in which the political became personal for the Steinberg family. Shortly after the first Balkan war erupted in 1907, Saul’s father, Moritz (sometimes called Moise), served two terms in an artillery regiment in the Romanian army. The first time he had to impersonate his brother Martin, who had gone to Denver, so that penalties or punishment would not be inflicted on the family still in Romania; the second was under his own name. Moritz was called sporadically to postings in other parts of the country until World War I began in 1914, but he was mostly at home until Romania entered the conflict in 1916; after that, his regiment was officially mobilized and he was largely absent until 1917.

  Moritz, born in the town of Hus¸i on September 7, 1877, was the second son of Nathan (also known as Nachman) Steinberg and his second wife, Clara (sometimes called Henka or Hinke), whose patronymic was never recorded. Nathan had one child from his first marriage, Berl, who became the first of the three sons who went to the United States to settle in Arizona. He was followed by two of Moritz’s brothers, who would play important roles in Saul’s Americanization: Aaron, a younger brother who took the name Harry when he settled in New York and became a printer, and Moitel, an older brother who called himself Martin after he moved to Denver and became a businessman. Despite the several migrations that pogroms had forced on the Steinberg family, Moritz had a cautious and timid nature and never gave serious thought to following his brothers to America; he stayed in Romania, preferring the devil he knew to the one he did not.

  Both Saul’s parents came from families of Russian origin. The Steinbergs had been Romanian for only two generations, having migrated westward from Sevastopol to Odessa, then to Tiraspol before they eventually crossed the border to settle in the northeastern principality of Moldavia. Saul’s mother, Roza (she later changed the spelling to Rosa), was also born to ethnic Russians who had fled pogroms, but they had done so much earlier and had been living in Walachia for at least six generations.

  As a boy, Saul remembered hearing his mother claim that her side of the family had the higher status; as an adult, he had his own distinct perception of where both sides of his family ranked on the social scale. By the generation of his maternal grandfather, born Iancu Itic, the family had taken the name Jacobson, totally forgotten its Russian origin, and been assimilated into Romanian culture and tradition. Iancu Itic was a well-off wine merchant who was also married twice and who fathered a great number of children, by some accounts as many as sixteen. Many of his children were also wanderers, and both sons and daughters emigrated to France, the United States, and Palestine (now Israel). Six of his sons and five of his six attractive and highly eligible daughters played roles of varying importance in Saul’s life, but Iancu Itic was memorable as “a peculiar sort of Romanian…almost absorbed by the peasants and the local color” with “a talent for making good wine.” Saul appreciated the old man’s earthy qualities but was far more attracted by the glamour of his paternal grandfather, Nathan Steinberg, who began his career as a sergeant-major in the Romanian army.

  Grandfather Steinberg was a man who took pride in all things military and whose martial bearing helped him prosper after he opened a military tailor shop in Buzău, a garrison town sixty miles from Bucharest. Romanian officers were his best clients, and as was typical of the age, he “trussed [them] up in corsets under brightly sashed tunics … every shining perfumed hair in place, an occasional monocle fixed immovably in the eye, cigarettes dangling from their lips.” They were truly “Ruritanian dandies” whose elaborate getup stole the scene from their ladies, so much so that when World War I began, an order forbidding junior officers to wear eye shadow had to be issued. Nathan Steinberg was renowned for the fancy uniforms he created, all festooned with elaborate gold braid, and he liked to wear some of them himself. His formidable mustached likeness as well as his resplendent sartorial creations became familiar totems for the military figures that later populated his grandson’s art.

  It was in Buzău that the boy Saul first cast his artistic eye on the cityscape, which he saw as one of empty streets because all the citizens were in the cafés. This was when he first became aware of the pleasure of looking at girls, as they seemed to be the only people on the sidewalks, all of them splendidly dark-haired and decked out in school uniforms. When he wrote down one of his favorite recurring adolescent dreams, it became a paean of four-letter words about how all his neighbors were parents of dying girls begging him to fuck them, as that was the only way they could be cured.

  Buzău was where his mother’s family had been comfortably settled for several generations and where she was working as a seamstress on the trousseaus of rich girls when she met Moritz Steinberg. He and Roza Iancu Itic Jacobson were married there on December 6, 1911. Moritz was then working as a printer and bookbinder in Râmnicul-Sărat, about thirty miles north of Buzău, and he took Rosa there to her first home as a married woman, away from her five sisters, to whom she was close. Rosa became pregnant in Râmnicul-Sărat and suffered at least one miscarriage, possibly more, before she gave birth to a daughter, on April 9, 1913. Raschela (Rasela or Rachel, always called by the diminutive Lica or Licuta), was born prematurely and grew into a delicate child who was a puzzle to her large and robust mother.

  Rosa was strong and outspoken and, depending on her mood of the moment, did not hesitate to erupt in joy or rage. The household was dominated by her swift mood changes, but Lica floated through these episodes seemingly unfazed, growing into a thin, quiet, thoughtful little girl, seldom crying or asking for attention and appearing mature far beyond her years. Family lore had it that she was a twin, but the other fetus did not develop and instead became a dermoid cyst in Lica’s neck, which troubled her all her life and may have been responsible for various complications that led to her relatively early death at the age of sixty-three.

  Such a lump was troubling to a mother reared in a culture where superstition and folklore reigned supreme, but what was even more upsetting in a country with a large Muslim population was Lica’s left-handedness. Rosa subjected the child to a “very dramatic” campaign to force her to use her right hand, and what Lica had to endure before she was “broken” made her awkward, hesitant, and terrified forever that she might inadvertently do something with her left hand. Rosa was proud that she succeeded in breaking Lica’s natural affinity and, in this as in all things concerning her family, bragged about imposing her formidable will.

  There were many other instances of Rosa bullying Lica as a child, about everything from correcting her posture to prodding her to be more outgoing as a teenager. In her mind, she did these things because she loved her daughter, and in her overbearing way she did, even as she alternated bullying with trying to coddle and protect Lica. She treated Lica this way even after she had become a responsible and self-sufficient adult with a husband and two children. Lica was not joking when she claimed to be forever grateful to Saul for being born thirteen months after she was, because she was no longer an only child and he diffused their mother’s meddling behavior. Lica attributed whatever shred of independence she managed to gain to the fact that after Saul’s birth, as a son, he became the primary focus of Rosa’s attention.

  Rosa carried Saul to full term, but he too was a delicate baby, and he became a spindly boy, thoughtful, introspective, and plagued by childhood diseases and vague illnesses. When he was twelve going on thirteen, he contacted something mysterious that was thought to be rheumatic fever, and Rosa kept him bedridden for six months. Caring for Saul distracted her from totally dominating Lica’s formative years, which gave the girl just enough freedom to grow up with a strong sense of self. Lica adored Saul and he returned her sentiment, so brother and sister shared an attitude of quiet conspiracy toward their increasingly domineering and powerful mother, who was known to them in private as “the General.”

  The quiet Moritz remained slim and slight throughout his life, but Rosa packed on enough weight to give the appearance of a dreadnaught in full sail as sh
e slashed and battled her way to primacy in all things connected with her family. No one addressed the subject directly when Saul’s earliest published drawings began to feature Zia Elena, a huge battle-ax of a woman with a body like Rosa’s and a face like Mussolini’s, or later, when he drew couples with formidable, oversized women and cowering little men. Not until he was nearing the end of his life did he venture to describe his initial interpretation of the phrase sub rosa, remembering the shock of recognition he felt when he admitted to himself that he, his sister, and his father were powerless under Rosa’s domination. Her two children and two grandchildren never openly discussed her character and personality while she was alive; only after her death did they feel free enough to call her a “horror” and a “terrorist” and admit that her “selfish and authoritarian” manner had brought them emotional pain.

  From the day Rosa accepted Moritz’s proposal, she set the terms for who would be in charge within the marriage. Her first rebellion against the status quo came when she refused to accept a situation most Romanian women of her generation always agreed to unquestioningly: to take in a child their husband had fathered out of wedlock. Moritz told Rosa he had a daughter, Sophia, born in Galest in September 1911, whose mother had died giving birth and to whom he proved his devotion by giving her the Steinberg name. Rosa knew that Moritz loved the little girl and wanted her to be raised as their own, and when she refused, he told her he wanted to continue to provide for the child’s upkeep, which she also refused to let him do. Saul’s memory of this family drama was of how Rosa threw hysterical, mean-spirited tantrums whenever Moritz raised the subject. And so Sophia remained in Galest with her mother’s family, and if Moritz sent money or exchanged letters with this daughter, he kept it to himself. Sophia kept the Steinberg name, and Lica and Saul were fascinated, if not haunted, by the rumor of a half-sister and by their father having another, totally private life. However, they knew better than to speak of it to Rosa.

  Rosa did many things that embarrassed them—for instance, the way she behaved on their holiday excursions to the Black Sea resorts, where they stayed in genteel hotels. Although she claimed to be an observant Jewish matron, she did not follow Jewish dietary laws at home. The only time she did so was when she took her own food to hotels that boasted of their cuisine and insisted that the chefs cook her food under her direction and to her satisfaction. There were many things she thought were her due; she would rudely spear choice morsels from Moritz’s plate, or brag that she could overcome her insomnia only by reaching over to pull his pillow out from under his sleeping head and add it to her own pile, even if she woke him in the process.

  Saul Steinberg, his parents, and his sister. Black Sea, 1926. (illustration credit 2.1)

  One day at dinner she told Moritz and the children the story of how she had taken a seat on a park bench to rest her feet while out shopping. At the other end of the bench sat an old Jewish couple, the woman bedecked in jewels and snoring loudly. When the woman woke up, she told Rosa proudly that she had ordered her husband to stay awake and guard her jewelry while she napped. Rosa related the story as a fine example of a perfect husband’s perfectly obedient behavior. No one commented, especially her children, who accepted such stories quietly.

  Even in their teenage years, the last they lived at home together, the brother and sister were often too shy and embarrassed to discuss their mother with each other. As two middle-aged adults, Saul and Lica tried to analyze their mother’s character and decided that Rosa’s method of controlling her family was to play the role of the chronic victim. Saul knew how intelligent she was and how she was probably frustrated by all the political and social events in the larger world that had conspired to disrupt her well-being so many times. He festered, while Lica was better able to shrug off the way Rosa managed to turn worldwide catastrophes into events whose only meaning was that they upended her personal life. Even more, Saul hated himself for what he called his “radar with mother,” a love-hate affinity that dominated the household and created distance and formality between him and his gentle father, who learned to fear his stern adult son almost as much as he feared his formidable wife.

  While Saul was growing up and forever after when it came to his family, the only person he loved without reservation was Lica. She was “the only taboo, the untouchable.” He adored her with “the perfect intangibility of love.”

  Steinberg and his sister as schoolchildren. (illustration credit 2.2)

  SAUL STEINBERG DID NOT have many memories of his first four years of life. He was between six and eight months old when they left Râmnicul-Sărat to live in Buzău and be near Rosa’s family while Moritz came and went according to his army postings. Moritz, unlike his staunchly military father, who was celebrated for his leadership abilities, was a lowly soldier in the artillery, charged with grooming the enormous workhorses that dragged the caissons and cannons. Even though he hated horses and was often frightened of them, he put up with the work for a time, but the beatings he endured because he did not do the job properly led him to desert before the war was officially over. He went into hiding in his father’s attic, where he stayed until all Romanian conscripts were decommissioned and it was safe to come out. While living in the attic, he disguised himself by growing a beard and wearing peasant’s clothing, topping it off with the towering lambskin headgear called the caciula, which the infant Saul thought made him look like a prehistoric monster. Saul’s strongest memory was of being caught up in his father’s arms and scratched by his beard.

  MORITZ WENT INTO THE ATTIC WHEN Saul was three and emerged when Saul was five, in 1919. He thought it safe to move his family to Bucharest, and there Saul’s lasting memories of his native country began. After the war, Jews were finally given full citizenship and permitted to engage in various businesses. Goaded by Rosa, Moritz did not resume his job as a printer and bookbinder in Râmnicul-Sărat but instead allowed her and her brothers to convince him that he could make a better living in Bucharest if he followed them there and set up a business that would mesh with some of theirs. They were sign painters and shopkeepers, and they told him of machinery he could buy at bargain prices to establish a fabrica de cartonaje, a firm that he named Victoria and that specialized in the manufacture of cardboard boxes of all sizes and shapes. It was a profession Moritz did not like in a place he disliked even more, on the misnamed Street of the Sun, the Strada Soarelui, where a nondescript flower market provided the only spot of color in an alley where rats prowled like cats and horses struggled to pull carts perilously overloaded with boxes up a steep hill through what seemed a never-ending tunnel of wind.

  The boxes ranged in size from the tiny ones that held lipstick to the massive crates that held individual boxes of matzos for Passover, which became a huge moneymaker and the major source of income. Moritz taught himself to design specialty boxes for everything from cigars to candy, and with two of his brothers-in-law who were sign painters made magisterial cardboard wreaths for wedding decorations and funeral services. The brothers took on many other forms of advertising that required Moritz’s collaboration, all of which distinguished his work and made him a respected craftsman rather than a simple manufacturer, a profession of lesser status.

  Moritz designed and manufactured bright blue canvas bags in which children carried their books and lunches, the 1920s version of the status bag that all schoolchildren wanted, with its manufacturer’s label, “Atelier Steinberg,” prominently displayed on the back. When Saul began elementary school, he was the envy of all the other children because his name was on the schoolbag and the bag was his father’s creation. It brought him a high degree of respect, not to mention the admiration of all the little girls, and he strutted proudly whenever he carried it.

  Saul had few of the usual toys that children cherish, because there were very few toys in Romania, which had been so ravaged by World War I and postwar reparations that until the mid-1920s its people survived on clothing and foodstuffs distributed through international relief o
rganizations. This was yet another of the many “humiliations” that Rosa (enjoying her role of chronic victim) railed against when Moritz’s brother Harry sent much-needed boxes of food and clothing from the Bronx. There were times when the family could not have survived without these care packages, but Rosa always managed to find fault with something or other—a coat that was too thin or too heavy, packets of food that were too savory or too stale.

  Despite the lack of ordinary toys, to Saul, his father’s factory was a wonderland. His favorite toys were scraps of embossed paper, colored cardboard, and rubber stamps, but most of all he liked the large wooden blocks of type used to create letters for posters. When his adult drawings began to feature personified letters and numbers, he disagreed with critics who thought it revolutionary and said it was “not such a great invention—it was something always known to me.” He spent long days playing on the factory floor, “extremely high on elementary things, like the luminosity of the day and the smell of everything—mud, earth, humidity, the delicious smells of cellars and mold, grocers’ shops.” Throughout his life he filled his art with visual descriptions of smells, and the occasional jottings in his diary and much of his correspondence describe various smells that gave him pleasure or brought back memories of pleasures past. Smell was the sensation that evoked memory, and he likened everything in the factory to “the smell of an artist’s studio, of collages.” There were great vats of glue and pots of ink, wood being cut and shaved into standards for holding the hand-lettered signs or type for printing the words that decorated the large funeral wreaths. Vast stacks of paper had their own smells, some of which he later associated with their colors and textures.

  There were visual images as well. When the workers (mostly women and girls) made candy boxes, they used glossy paper on which they glued a chromolithography of a famous painting. Saul liked to watch them make lipstick holders, the first group of workers deftly twisting cardboard cylinders onto which others further down the line glued gold and silver foil, while still others awaited their turn to apply sequins and sparkles as the finishing touch. Early on, even before he reached puberty, he liked to watch the girls who worked on the factory floor line up before his father for their pay packets on payday. His observant eye noted the strutting boyfriends, fathers, and pimps who waited with outstretched hands to take their women’s wages and head for the nearest tavern to drink them away.