Yiddish lit in translation discussion

The first title I hope the group will be reading is Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer. For anyone familiar with Yiddish literature in translation of our generation, this collection is probably the most known and beloved body of work outside Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye Stories. For the reader it’s a wonderful introduction to Singers collection of short fiction,of which he compiled many volumes in English translation,but overall the publication of Singer’s work in English and the manner in which his work was translated is very unique to any writer I can think of. Singer,unlike other writers whose native tongue was English,did not publish his stories in the chronological order in which they were originally written and published in the Yiddish press. Also,as his work continued to appear and he had acquired greater and greater prominence due to the publication of his stories in high-end magazines such as the New Yorker by the early seventies and Playboy magazine, Singer became very aware that a huge portion of his work was being read by readers who either had no experience with Yiddish literature,and no understanding of life in pre-war Poland which is where many of his stories take place. It has been documented in several books that Singer,almost exclusively working with female translators rewrote his stories for Western readers. These female translators are a legend to themselves and there is even a documentary called Singer’s Women,because of his relationship with his translators. Because of the vast publication of his work in English,among Yiddishists,it is generally considered that this was the only reason why Singer eventually won the Nobel Prize for literature. Personally I have always loved his work with its crazies and swirling passion, but I believe many had felt at the time when he had won the prize it really should have gone to Abraham Sutzkiver who many perceived as a far greater writer.

So we begin our journey through the world of I.B Singer, a master of the short story form.

The group can decide if we want to approach this collection a few stories at a time to avoid spoilers, or complete the entire reading of the book and give warning about spoilers for those who have not yet completed the work.

I leave these decisions to the conscience and wisdom of this group.

I think we should do a story or two at a time - to avoid spoilers. When do we start reading?

Hi Anna, if people who want to participate have copies, then
let's try and start this weekend. I agree with you about two stories at a time.

count me in too. I've been meaning to reread some of the Singer stories (which were my gateway into Yiddish lit back 15 years ago or so)

It will be great to have you reading the stories with us Daniel. Is your plan to read them in the original or in translation? I think it would be very interesting if you could talk about the occasional passage from the Yiddish,how the text is different from the English one. My understanding is that Singer is very difficult to read in the original,and therefore difficult to translate his work. Any thoughts?

most of them are pretty hard to track down in the original because they were rarely published in book form, so I'll be mostly reading along in the English (the ones in the Collected Stories at any rate)
But I can definitely say something about the differences between his Yiddish and English styles

Thank-you Daniel. Don't want to put any pressure on you-but I believe the Yiddish book center online book library now has Singer's work as it has reached beyond the copyright line. I'm sure I read
this somewhere-but whatever you wish to do will be a great contribution and I look forward to our beginning. I was hoping
to complete the first two stories this past weekend and didn't get around to it so hopefully it will happen in the next few days.

One question Daniel-do you know if Singer published any of his
stories in book form, or was that entirely for a predominantly english audience. I've never considered this before.

Gimpel the Fool and The Man From Cracow

The first two stories in Singer’s first collection published in English are as masterful as any of his work. What is so remarkable is that he says all of the stories in this collection had been written in the last ten years-slightly after the war up until the beginning of the fifties.

Gimpel would be considered Singer’s most beloved story and it a story of comedy and terrible deafeat but tremendous faith and grace at the end. Gimpel was the first story I had read by Singer when I was at university-it was part of a massive and ground-breaking anthology of Yiddish literature translated into English-edited by Irving Howe and published in 1954,about the same time this first collection in English was published. The story was introduced in a popular Jewish magazine and translated by the then not so famous Saul Bellow. I know of no other works that Bellow translated from Yiddish to English,and I wonder why he did this one. Perhaps he was comisioned to do the job. Re-reading the story lent me to wonder who read a Tresury of Yiddish stories in 1954,it is a massive book and covers a huge collection from the history of Yiddish lit including the Soviet period. Of course I don’t remember one story written by a woman in the collection but that was typical for that time. One can assume that this story like so many others of Singer’s work first appeared in the Yiddish daily forward. There would have been a significantly greater number of readers who could read Yiddish back then. So why and for whom was the anthology first produced. Again one can only assume it was written for readers who were children of Yiddish speakers. Yiddish for most of the past century was spoken by a majority of jews who learned in their homes, but they couldn’t read the language. So here was an opportunity for the children to understand(heavily dramatized)the world where their parents and grand-parents came from.

The second story-The Man From Cracow really surprised me because it was even more expansive and full of wonderment than Gimpel. I was just not prepared for the horror,the hysteria and the whirl of incredible imagination Singer brings to this sensational story. The more you read Singer the more you start to see how frequently he repeated himself and in English The Man from..is the first but he returns to this theme of demons,etc throughout his work.

Finally,it is hard to understand the position of Singer in today’s reading culture. His work is repeatedly misogynistic, almost all of his women,excluding Yentl perhaps are hysterical,sex crazed harlots. Many of them appear with so much passion and furor that their shirts are ripped open as in this story.

Singer once said all of the greatest writers had only one story to tell and throughout his work he did repeat himself over and over again. But he was a master of the imagination,he could reduce the greatest tumult of the world into a single phrase,and I will always love him for this.

I finally got a chance to read both of these stories and enjoy them thoroughly. Singer's mention of the town in Poland where one side of my family comes from was a very nice bonus.

It is hard for me to make any conclusions on how Singer portrays women as I'd like to read more of his stories to see if there is a pattern. Gimpel the Fool story made me think about the depth of one's belief. No matter what challenges or disasters happened to Gimpel he always a little bit of room in his heart to hope things would turn out OK.

The second story highlighted a point that some of us struggle at times. It is very hard to change somebody's opinion if they don't want the opinion to be changed. The rabbi did not approve of the ball and did not think anything good would come out of it but he knew the whole town would move on with or without his approval.

I found both stories still to be timely as the issues that Singer highlights in them are still current and we face them frequently.

The third story in the collection The Wife Beater is pretty heavy.