_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Language and Literature (A Companion to _MENDELE_) --------------------------------------------- Contents of Vol. 01.001 April 13, 1997 1) Introductory remarks (Leonard Prager) 2) _The Stories of David Bergelson_ (Larry Rosenwald) _____________________________________________ 1) Introductory remarks Dear Mendelists: _TMR_ has been brooded over for some time by a number of Mendelists and the egg has more or less hatched itself (though much of the necessary warmth was provided by our shames). The projected publication is designed to fulfill a number of functions which _Mendele_ has somehow either wholly neglected or attended to only sporadically. We Mendelists have failed not only to review new Yiddish books and books in the field of Yiddish in various languages, we have not even developed a systematic way of listing them. We have made virtually no effort to revaluate older works, reconsider the existing canon of Yiddish writers, explicate difficult Yiddish poems, analyze Yiddish short fiction, films and plays, report on currect live performances of Yiddish music and drama, or scrutinize translations from Yiddish. We have heard only occasionally from the linguists, the sociolinguists, the onomasticians about new books and dissertations in their fields which touch on Yiddish. Reports on books dealing with Hebrew, Aramaic, Judezmo and other Jewish languages and reports on research in East European Jewish history, social and economic life, religion and culture can only illuminate Yiddish studies. The linguistic dimension of the Shoah, in all its shades and colors, needs to be examined. We have not only neglected bibliography; we have forsaken the Yiddish book itself, ignoring the bibliophilic dimensions of printing and illustration. No one in _Mendele_ has ever reported on a private Yiddish book collection. We have missed extended, essay-length discussion of individual words, names, idioms, phrases, proverbs, curses, folkways -- with, if possible, lists of references (and pointers to past mention in _Mendele_). There is a need for biographical sketches of writers, journalists, editors, actors, directors, composers, lyricists, prompters, preachers, publishers, printers, teachers, activists and others in the Yiddish world -- whose names are missing or poorly reported in existing encyclopaedias and handbooks. _TMR_ will not replace _Mendele_ or usurp any of its unique qualities, including its unlimited coverage (in the great British "Notes and Queries" and great Jewish "shayles-tshuves" traditions) of virtually anything related to Yiddish language, literature, folklore, music and the culture from which they arose. The sheer scope of _Mendele_ has precluded its being a more "normal" review. There are a lot of Mendelists who want a "review" and the _TMR_ (the suggested short title) is a response to this collective wish. I sincerely hope that those who opposed the idea of _Mendele's bifurcation will learn to like the _TMR_, where _derkherets_ will be the rule and polemics and personal attacks will have no place. TMR's success depends on all of us returning to the Yiddish word and making it an important part of our lives. Lomir zikh nemen tsu der arbet. Mit di beste grusn, Leonard Prager, Editor Technical information _TMR_ is a copyrighted publication and reproduction of any of its contents (short quotations excepted) requires written permission. _TMR_ is a refereed publication and all submissions will be read by qualified readers. Submissions (book reviews, essays) will be in ASCI via email or on PC diskettes via post. Letters to the editor will be published subject to limitations of space. For further questions regarding style and format, write to the editor. _____________________________________________ 2) The Stories of David Bergelson: Yiddish Short Fiction from Russia (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), translated and with an introduction by Golda Werman, foreword by Aharon Appelfeld. Aharon Appelfeld writes in his preface to this volume that "David Bergelson is the most important Yiddish writer, following the three classical authors who established modern Yiddish literature" (ix). Some readers will share this view, others will not; but clearly Bergelson is a big figure in the landscape of Yiddish literary history. Dan Miron, in _A Traveler Disguised_, calls him "in many respects the most accomplished and significant writer of Yiddish fiction after the three 'classics'" (21). Sol Liptzin, in his _History of Yiddish Literature_, calls his early novel, _Nokh Alemen_, "the tenderest masterpiece of impressionistic writing" (196). The sober prose of the _Nayer Leksikon_ states that Bergelson "created exemplary works of impressionistic, psychological, and sociological narrative art," and quotes Bal Makhshoves' claim that "Bergelson's" style was a special accomplishment, distinguished for restraint, subtlety, and innovative imagery." So a new translation of three of Bergelson's stories would seem to be cause for rejoicing: these three stories, we would say, are now available to readers who cannot read Yiddish, or cannot read it well, and they have thus become part of the case that as lovers of Yiddish literature we wish to make on behalf of that literature to the readers and critics of the literary world. And these particular three stories would seem to reveal three different aspects of Bergelson's talent. The first of them, "Remnants," is like some heartwarming story by Perets, but is more ironic and even grotesque than Perets' stories usually are; the second, "Impoverished," is like a miniature Chekhov play, centered on expected visits from exalted relatives that take place without gratifying anyone's expectations; and the third and longest (it takes up 130 of the book's 157 pages of text), "Departing," is like some great Russian novel that has gotten condensed into a collage of vignettes, pieced together to tell the whole story of several lives in their movements between the city and the shtetl, and between tradition and modernity But such rejoicing would depend on our being able to say that the translation adequately represented the original text; and if we look closely at a representative passage of the translation, and compare it with the original, we shall, I think, find it difficult to say that. I believe that God is in the details; accordingly, I beg the indulgence of MENDELE's readers and quote the beginning of "Departing" (Opgang) in extenso; I follow it with Werman's translation, and then with an alternative translation of my own. (My thanks to Dovid Braun for help with my translation.) TEXT (_Ale verk_, Buenos Aires: Ikuf, 1962, vol. 2, pp. 181-182) Shpet nokh halbn tog hot men mekaber geven Meylekhn oyfn kleynshtetldikn rakitner besoylem. Ale zaynen avekgegangen aroyf barg mit der bokhersher levaye, un in shtot, vos ligt, vi in a nest, oysgebet tsvishn grine baarbete berg, iz demolt akegn a por sho geven azoy shtil, glaykh in ir iz mer keyner nisht geblibn. A poshete goyishe fur iz demolt ongelofn barg-arop mit tseyogte ferd un hot aylndik durkhgeshvindlt tsvishn di tsvey shures topoln, vos in onheyb berizhinetser veg; ire reder hobn geshvind geyogt iber der hiltserner greblie, vos in eyn ek shtot, un zeyer treysldike klaperay hot opgehilkht biz der hiltserner greblie, vos in tsveytn ek. Dort, in ot dem tsveytn niderikn ek, hot a vaserl shtil gemurmelt arum a shteyn; a goye hot gevashn gret, an eplboym iz geshtanen un geblit, un gor nisht - keynem hot nisht geart, vos der himl iz tsu shvues tsu gantse teg farvolknt. Plutsem hobn zikh derhert gleklekh klingen. Iber der shtot hot zikh geshvind farshpreyt di yedie, az fun vokzal iz ongekumen Meylekhs shvester, di fremdshtetldike provizorin. M'hot vegn dem gegebn tsu visn oyfn besoylem, m'iz mit Meylekhs shvester ahin aroyfgeforn un di kvure hot zikh farhaltn. Ale hobn zi demolt gezen tsum ershtn mol, ot di fremdshtetldike shvester Meylekhs. Zi iz geshtanen tsvishn di yunge karshnbeymer nebn ofenem keyver un hot geveynt. Un alemen iz dortn baglaykh fremd geven say ir ponim, say ir kol. WERMAN TRANSLATION We buried Melech in the late afternoon. Everyone in the shtetl was at the small cemetery on top of the hill and for a few hours Rakitne looked like a ghost town. The only sign of life was a droshky rattling between the rows of poplar trees on the Berizshinets Road. We could hear the wheels clattering over the wooden dam in the shtetl. The droshky passes an apple tree in bloom and a small rippling brook in which a peasant woman is beating her laundry over a stone. The day is cloudy and gray and unusually chilly for this time of year. It is almost the Pentecost Holiday. Suddenly the shrill sound of a whistle pierces the air. The train bringing Melech's sister from a distant province has arrived and the funeral is delayed while a delegation goes down to meet her. She is a stranger to us, standing over the open grave near the young cherry tree, crying. MY TRANSLATION Late in the afternoon, they buried Meylekh in the cemetery of the small town of Rakitne. Everyone had gone up the hill with the young man's funeral; and in the town, couched, as if in a nest, between green cultivated hills, it was, for a few hours, as quiet as if no one lived there any more. A simple peasant wagon came down the hill, its horses spurring along, then zig-zagged in a rush between the two rows of poplars at the beginning of the Berizhinets Road; its wheels hurried quickly over the wooden dam at one end of the town, and their clattering echoed as far as the wooden dam at the other end. There, at the other, lower end, a stream gurgled quietly around a stone; a peasant was washing her laundry, an apple tree stood in bloom, and there was no reaction - no one cared - that with Shavuot near, the sky was covered with clouds for whole days at a time. Suddenly the ringing of bells was heard. The news spread quickly over the town that Meylekh's sister, a pharmacist from out of town, had arrived from the train station. This was made known at the cemetery; Meylekh's sister was accompanied up the hill; and the burial was halted. They all saw her for the first time, this out-of-town sister of Meylekh's. She stood among the young cherry-trees, by the open grave, and wept. And to everyone there her face and her voice were those of an outsider. * * * To me, it seems that Werman's translation significantly alters Bergelson's text. To begin with, it rearranges Bergelson's paragraphing, which is one of his expressive instruments. His paragraphing shapes the story: 1) a single-sentence paragraph on the funeral; 2) a paragraph contrasting the funeral in the cemetery with the empty town; 3) a paragraph on the peasant wagon; 4) a paragraph of suggestive landscape-painting; 5) a paragraph on the arrival of Meylekh's sister. Of these five paragraphs, the only one Werman leaves unchanged is the fifth. What is her rationale for this reconfiguration? Moreover, Werman's translation omits information that Bergelson's narrator wants to tell us. It leaves out, for example, the situation of the town, nested between green hills; the configuration of the town, stretching from one wooden dam to another; the fact that the inauspicious weather does not matter to anyone; the movement of the news of Meylekh's sister's arrival through the town; and the fact that the townspeople are seeing Meylekh's sister for the first time. Of the information that is retained, a lot is presented in an order other than the one Bergelson designed. When, for example, should we learn that the name of the town is Rakitne? Bergelson says, in the first sentence; Werman says, in the second. In what order should we see the images described in Bergelson's fourth paragraph? Bergelson says, first the stream, then the peasant woman doing her washing, then the apple tree in bloom. Werman says, first the tree, then the brook, then the woman. Bergelson wants to tell us twice, emphatically, in two non-contiguous sentences, that Meylekh's sister is a stranger to the town; Werman condenses these two sentences into a single phrase. Werman also makes some things up. It is she, and not Bergelson, who says that the wagon is "the only sign of life"; she, and not Bergelson, who says that the weather is "unusually chilly for this time of year." It is she, and not Bergelson, who chooses to make the narrator a member of the town, and thus shapes an important aspect of the narrative viewpoint, not only by translating the Yiddish "m'hot" as "we buried" (a possible rendering), but also by adding in two gratuitous "we"'s where the Yiddish gives no occasion for them. Finally, there are what seem to me arbitrary rewritings. Werman replaces Bergelson's bells with her whistles; she speaks of the arrival of a train, where Bergelson speaks of the arrival of Meylekh's sister from the train station; Werman has "a delegation" go down from the cemetery to meet Meylekh's sister, where Bergelson has some people (Yiddish "m'iz") go up with Meylekh's sister to the cemetery. Now Werman offers a rationale for her mode of translation in her introduction, and it is necessary to look at it before venturing a final judgment on her work. She writes, "Bergelson's Yiddish syntax is complex; his language is both rich and precise; and he uses musical devices, including sound patterns and repetition. The problems of capturing the rhythms of the original language in another tongue are legion. When rendered faithfully, these constructions often grind painfully on the English reader's ear. Since my goal was to make Bergelson's work live in English as it does in Yiddish, I had to make compromises. I had to render Bergelson's flowing Yiddish into readable English and, at the same time, keep as close to the essence of Bergelson's work as I could without making the translation sound foreign" (xxxii). But this is not, I think, a sound rationale, either theoretically or practically. First, theoretically: the idea that a translation must not sound foreign is a familiar orthodoxy, but it is not for that reason true. It is most eloquently criticized by Bergelson's contemporary Franz Rosenzweig, the great German-Jewish philosopher and translator, who in defending what was criticized as the excessive Hebraism of the Bible translation he did with Martin Buber, writes as follows: "if we believe that not only a passage called to our attention by a particular circumscribed doctrine but any human utterance may conceal the possibility that one day, in his time or in my time, God's word may be revealed in it, then in that case the translator must, so far as his language permits, follow the peculiar turns of that potentially revelation-bearing utterance" (_Scripture and Translation_ 64). Bergelson's work is not the Bible, of course; but what Rosenzweig says here of the Bible, namely that revelation may be carried by any turn, any detail of the text, seems to me true of Bergelson's writing and of any great literary writing whatsoever; and if every turn of the text may carry revelation, then every turn of the text insofar as possible should be retained, even if that makes the text sound foreign. In a way, though, this theoretical argument is beside the point. The fact is, Werman's "compromises" are in practice simply unnecessary. Nothing in the more literal rendering of Bergelson's text that I tentatively propose would "grind painfully on the English reader's ear." Nothing there is any odder, any more "foreign," than what any reader of literary prose is already used to. What in a more literal rendering of Bergelson's text is any more "foreign" than, say, the wonderful first sentence of Cynthia Ozick's "Envy, Or, Yiddish in America"? "Edelshtein, an American for forty years, was a ravenous reader of novels by writers 'of' - he said this with a snarl - 'Jewish extraction.'" We need to trust the readers of translations, as we trust readers of literature, to accept the challenges that writers of literature present them with. A translation that alters its original as Werman's does, and that does so without any compelling rationale for its alterations, is in my judgment not so much bad as unusable. I do not think we can tell readers ignorant of Yiddish that reading these translations will give them a sense of Bergelson's art; and we cannot use these translations as part of our case for Yiddish literature. If we wish to make these stories part of our case for that literature, we shall, in my judgment, have to translate them again. I'd like to conclude on a personal note. _Mendele_ is a remarkable community, of which, as I know, Golda Werman and I are both parts. And I know that a review like this can put some strain on such a community. But I have not written this review ad feminam. I would be happy to be corrected, if I have made errors in points of Yiddish. I would be happy to be disagreed with in points of theory. And above all I would be happy if one effect of this review were to make judgments of translations more central to our Yiddishist community. I think we tend to greet all new translations from Yiddish literature in the way that the Wall Street Journal greeted the Penguin Anthology of Modern Yiddish Verse: "this is the best kind of holocaust memorial, because . . . it resurrects the culture that Hitler did his worst to kill." And we should of course continue to greet new translations in that way. But I think we can, and should, begin to ask harder and more productive questions about the translations actually produced, because I think such questions will in the end enrich our community. Larry Rosenwald 28 March 1997 __________________________________________________________________ The Mendele Review Editor: Leonard Prager 13/35 Dr. Kauders St. Haifa 35439, Israel email: RHLE302@uvm.haifa.ac.il