_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 03.017 4 October 1999 1) Yiddish Matters: From the Editor (Leonard Prager) 2) A Response to Joseph Sherman's Review of Five Books on Isaac Bashevis Singer (Golda Gross) 3) On Yoysef Guri's _Klug vi Shloyme hameylekh_ (Leonard Prager) 4) Books and Reprints Received 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 October 1999 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Yiddish Matters a. Sherman on Bashevis/Singer Joseph Sherman's review of five recent books on Isaac Bashevis Singer elicited appreciative voices; Golda Gross (whose letter we are happy to print below) demurred, accusing Prof. Sherman of joining a band-wagon of Singer-detractors. She argues that an immense talent is being traduced and that the best cure for this onslaught is a return to Singer's work, especially the unread tomes waiting to be translated from the pages of the _Forverts_. All of us who engage in the public dissection of Singer's writings should be open for self-examination. I am happy to say that in re-reading Prof. Sherman's _TMR_ review I encountered the word "genius," reminding us of the stature of Yitskhok-Bashevis Zinger (who is not identical to Isaac Bashevis Singer). Immediately I think of the short novel _Der sotn in goray_ -- a small masterpiece; of Bashevis' neo-hasidic tales -- among the very best we have in this genre. As students of Yiddish literature we still have much to learn about the many-faceted art of Bashevis. The substantive (and not merely stylistic) discrepancies between the Yiddish and English versions of many of our author's works (versions often _conflict_ with one another) are vexing problems. The multiplicity of performances is the core of the Bashevis/Singer dichotomy. Work on Bashevis' literary biography needs to be continued; much remains to be done in disentangling the enormously complicated politics of Bashevis-in-translation and in defining the Bashevis/Singer canon. But, of course, it is Bashevis' genius that justifies all this effort. b. Yoysef Guri on Yiddish Folk-Similes In this issue of _The Mendele Review_ I discuss Yosef Guri's recently published lexicon of folk similes, a volume parallel to two others. _Klug vi Shloyme hameylekh_ joins _Az der sof iz gut iz alts gut, shprikhverter_ (1993) and _Vi kumt di kats ibern vaser_ (1997) (reviewed in TMR vol. 1, no. 025) to complete a three-part publication program. _Klug vi Shloyme hameylekh_ is dedicated to the memory of the outstanding Yiddish educator Shoyl Ferdman, whose knowledge of the Yiddish language was exemplary. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 October 1999 From: Golda Gross Subject: A Letter in Response to Joseph Sherman's Review in TMR vol. 3, 15-16. The publication on Rosheshone of the continued picking to pieces of his reputation would no doubt have tickled Isaac Bashevis Singer's fancy. He would have appreciated the irony of evaluating the "corpus" of his writings by being summoned back to life as a Dybbuk. Joseph Sherman's two-part essay appearing in _The Mendele Review_ on recent books about Singer is yet another onslaught in a relentless campaign to conjure up and drive out the notorious bogeyman of Yiddish literature. From a survey of five books, Mr. Sherman draws a portrait of Singer as a lowdown, mean-spirited, baldfaced liar who had no compunction about misrepresenting himself. He lied to his family, his friends, his editors and translators and publishers, the Nobel Prize committee, and to Dick Cavett. If this were not enough, Mr. Sherman himself attacks the author's memoirs as whiny and banal (except in the service of psychoanalysis, see below); mocks and impugns his knowledge of modern literature and the English language; and cavalierly dismisses the only Nobel laureate in Yiddish as washed up by 1970. So radically has he fallen into disrepute, that whole academic conferences are convened with the sole purpose of determining: Who is the REAL Isaac Bashevis Singer? Trotting out the usual suspects, these conferences feature endless harangues about the Yiddish Bashevis/Isaac Singer conundrum, trying to negotiate a slippery slope between art and life. Clearly questions about the definition of the Singer canon are legitimate, that is, whether to accept the Yiddish or which English versions as standard text. It is when these questions degenerate into spiteful gossip, innuendo, and personal insult that we must take offense. There are good and bad translations, inspired and uninspired, and Singer seems to have followed recommended guidelines by striving for a strong idiomatic English instead of word-for-word transcription. But to malign him for being so ignorant of the English language that he appropriated the work of others--in effect, coming close to plagiarism, with all its sleazy, sordid associations--is simply outrageous. And so is the barrage of quotes, amounting to no less than character assassination, that Mr.Sherman gathers in his review. Most troubling is his skipping over four of the five books, sometimes with just a word--Zamir (Singer's son) is "primitive," Agata Tuszynska "bewildered" (for many readers, these were the most moving renditions)--in order to adulate and gush over a "full scale scholarly biography" by Janet Hadda. Using psychoanalysis, Ms. Hadda's book claims to take us to the heart and soul of the real Isaac Bashevis Singer, who harbors hatred for his mother, father, sister (particularly) and brother, thus accounting for his mistrust and cruelty toward women and just about everyone else. A slim volume, it is packed with long paraphrases of Singer's memoirs (albeit ridiculed by Mr. Sherman for being pitiful and tedious when standing alone), which become grist for the mill of theories about conflict, hostility, dysfunctional family,and so forth, as do the memoirs of Israel Joshua and Hinde Esther. Much of the rest is hearsay, with shaky creditability and little effort to uncover new information, by this I mean FACTS, about a Polish-Jewish refugee who came to America right before the Holocaust, a prominent writer whose lifetime spanned the twentieth century. Instead, we get the Dybbuk, who haunts Ms. Hadda's project unmercifully, just as he appears to haunt similar endeavors by a baffling brigade of professional Singer bashers. Why would anyone undertake to study an individual he/she so obviously disdains? Where sneering and contempt and derision jump off the pages of too many recent appraisals of Singer, a point Mr. Sherman amply demonstrates, how can we help but be influenced by the negative publicity? Mention Singer nowadays to the general reader, Jewish or not, and the response is frequently, "Oh yes, he was a crazy one, wasn't he?" Or, "He was a penny-pinching fraud." "He hated women." "He was a clown." Perhaps Mr. Sherman's passing reference to Boswell's _Life of Samuel Johnson_ may shed some light on the problem. As a matter of fact, the _Life of Johnson_ is not celebrated as "the greatest literary biography ever written." For Johnson scholars, it is something of an anathema -- patronizing, ingratiating, self-promoting -- in short, making up a version of Johnson to suit Boswell's craving for superiority. We know this from painstaking archival research, comparing others' accounts of the man, even Boswell's own journals, which do not jibe with the accounts in the _Life_. But mostly, we know Boswell's Johnson was almost pure fabrication because we can READ Johnson, and see for ourselves that he was not the bigoted, pompous Mr. Oddball his foremost hanger-on describes. But until people actually began to dip into Johnson himself, his reputation suffered miserably. The moral of this tale is READ SINGER. If not in Yiddish, then in English, and we need to call for more translations, and variant ones at that. Dozens of stories and novels once serialized in the _Forward_ remain untranslated, not to mention a wealth of journalistic pieces from his regular contributing columns. As for biography, we desperately need a serious guide to Singer's life and works, based on hard evidence from his papers, manuscripts, correspondence, interviews, in addition to balanced and substantiated accounts by others. What, for example, was Singer writing in the _Forward_ during the War and its aftermath? What was he thinking? What was he doing? What are the facts of his attitude toward significant events of the twentieth century? Toward the creation of Israel? Toward Communist Poland? What was his opinion of American culture? The sexual revolution? New directions in science and medicine? In art and literature? Scattered here and there and inaccessible to most readers, this information needs to be gathered into a responsible, comprehensive whole. For me, as for countless others, Singer is a beloved author to be discovered anew at every reading, as doubtless he will be for future generations. It does us no good to have him sliced up, dishonored, and demonized. These glib and tactless personal attacks have got to stop. There is too much positive work to be done. Golda Gross 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 October 1999 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Yoysef Guri's Lexicon of Yiddish Folk-Similes Yoysef Guri. _Klug vi Shloyme hameylekh; 500 yidishe folksfarglaykhn fartaytsht oyf hebreish, english un rusish_. hebreisher universitet in yerusholaim, opteyl far rusishe limudem, 1999 [English title page: Yosef Guri. _500 Yiddish Similes and Their Equivalents in English, Hebrew and Russian_. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dept. of Russian and Slavic Studies, 1999 (ISBN 965-90250-0-9), 164 + xxvii pp.] [Distributed by the Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, P.O. Box 39099, Jerusalem 91390, Israel, Fax 972-2-5633370] As early as 1920, Sh. Bastomski listed folk similes in his _Bayn kval_ (Vilna, 1920, pp. 77-86). Over half a century ago Yudl Mark published a remarkable collection of over 2800 folk similes in _Yidishe sprakh_. In the school years 1925/26 (or 1926/27?) and 1935/36, groups of 13-15 year olds from Vilkomir and Kovne schools respectively (Vilkomirer Yidisher Real-Gimnazye and Kovner Yidisher Komerts-Gimnazye) collected folk similes in their communities as part of their study of figures of speech in Yiddish. In "A zamlung folksfarglaykhn" ('A Collection of Similes') [_Yidishe sprakh_ 5::4-6 (1945), 97-140], Mark edited this collection, arranging the similes alphabetically in three groups -- according to whether the headword is 1} adjective or participle (e.g. "eydl vi a kneydl", 2) verb ("arbetn vi an oks"), and 3) substantive ("reyd vi perl"). Since Vilkomir and Kovne are only seventy kilometers distance from one another the folk similes collected in these communities reflect a specific region. Psakhye Frimer's list of several hundred additions to Mark's work ("Miluim tsu der zamlung folksfarglaykhn," _Yidishe shprakh_ 6:1-2 (1945) are all gathered from Podolye. Mendl Mark's additions ("Dergantsungen tsu der zamlung folksfarglaykhn," _Yidishe shprakh_ 6:3-6 [1946], pp. 133-138) are not marked as regional. It can be assumed that all or most of the above lists are incorporated in Nokhem Stutshkov's _Der oytser fun der yidisher shprakh_ (New York, 1950), whose organization is by semantic groups (e.g. animals, fatigue, revenge). _Yidishe shprakh_ and Stutshkov, unfortunately, are known only to a minority of Yiddish students; Yoysef Guri's lexicon of folk similes makes readily accessible a substantial sampling of the riches encased in these sources. Guri has given the reader of English, Hebrew and Russian, as well as of Yiddish, a clear and concise explanation of what a folk simile is (it is a fixed expression), how it differs from the literary simile, what its structural features are. Guri largely adopts Yudl Mark's methodology, except for the improved practice of giving all items in a single alphabetical list. Guri contributes a new feature by providing a reverse list -- not headwords but the comparative portions starting with _vi_. This list is indexed to the main list of similes. Thus "vi a beheyme" will point to both "hobn seykhl" (p. 63) and "narish" (p. 92). Another useful feature of Guri's lexicon is the phonetic spelling (in the Yiddish alphabet) of words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin. Perhaps in a majority of instances the distinction between folk simile and literary simile is clear, but it is often impossible to place an item squarely in one category. "Vays vi shney" (p. 71) is after all a biblical expression, no less literary than popular. The most recent American collection of similes bundles both types together (see Elysee Sommer, ed. dir; Mike Sommer, ed. _A Collection of More Than 16,000 Comparison Phrases from Ancient Times to the Present Compiled from Books, Folklore, Magazines, Newspapers, Plays, Politics, Stage, Screen and Television Arranged Under More Than 500 Thematic Categories_, First Edition, Detroit, MI: Gale Research Co., 1988.) Guri tries to provide simile equivalents in English, Hebrew and Russian and where he can find none he simply translates. It is in this area that many readers will wish to offer substitute expressions. The English equivalents/translations often suggest an elderly British hand. The English for "oysgeputst vi a khosn-bokher" is 'dressed up to meet the Queen: in his best bib and tucker' (p. 31). Few Americans have ever heard the British idiom "best bib and tucker," much less understood it. No less quaint to a North American ear is "curse someone up hill and down dale" for the Yiddish "oyszidlen emetsn vi a hunt" (p. 32). In the rendition "I would not trust him as far as I could kick him" (Yiddish: "gleybn emetsn vi a hunt"), my ear expects "throw" rather than "kick." "Zogn epes vi a vaser" is a folk simile; there is nothing folklike in 'speak like a rippling stream' (p. 72). "frum vi a rov" is not ironic, whereas the supposed equivalent 'pious as the Pope" generally is -- partly because of the alliteration (p. 108). By and large the English equivalences/translations are not especially apposite. Russian-speaking friends tell me the equivalences in Russian are generally successful. The Hebrew is satisfactorily idiomatic but there is much paraphrase where one would have liked equivalence -- as difficult to find as this may be. "frum vi der groyer koter" is rendered 'epikoros gamur; porek ol' (p. 108), accurate enough but all the color is missing. Not a British hand but the proverbial "der bokher der zetser" may be blamed for such constructions as "kosher vi a khazer-fisl" 'kosher as a pork sausages [sic]' (p. 82), "trukn vi a beyn" 'hide like a rhinocerous [sic]' (p. 79), "tsukhapn zikh vi tsu heyse lokshn" 'take to something/someone like to hote [sic] cakes' (p. 111), "rirn zikh vi a ber" 'clamsy [sic] like a baby elephant' (p. 131). Proofreading here can be improved. In his Preface, Guri surveys briefly the principal semantic fields of Yiddish folk similes, noting those which reflect Jewish folkways ("fet vi a heldzl in tsholnt"), Bible ("farfaln vi Yoysef"), Judaism ("tayer vi di toyre"), shtetl life ("faynt hobn vi a misnaged a khosid"). In his admittedly subjective choice of a corpus he aimed to include the most familiar items, a reasonable approach -- particularly when one has beginning students of Yiddish in mind. Some readers, however, might have preferred more of those folk similes which are dense with ethnicity, opaque and today often requiring glosses. Among the numerous ways of expressing the idea of incompleteness in Yiddish we have such folk similes as "vi a yidene on a tsenerene" 'like a Jewish woman without a copy of the _Tsenerene_': one needs to know about this famous Yiddish text and who read it. In Podolye they said "gring vi bay a litvak a droshe" 'as easy as for a Litvak to deliver a sermon': one needs to understand the connection between Litvaks and preaching. Here we can be helped by an expression which few today will recognize: "tsunoyfshtupn zikh vi tsu hern dem kelemer maged" 'squeezing oneself in to hear the Kelmer [often spoken 'kelemer'] preacher (Stutshkov, p. 30). With the help of Berl Kagan we can illuminate the simile: "R' Moyshe-Yitskhok Darshn iz geven do [in Kelm -- L.P.] nor dray yor, ober geven barimt vi 'Kelmer Maged', vos flegt dunern iber yidishe shtetlekh mit zayne fayerdike droshes kegn haskole, kegn nit-frume un tkifim in shtot. Geven an oysergeveynlekher darshn un gehat groyse feyikaytn tsu shildern zayne reyd mit kinstlerishe bilder un fantastishe stsenes. Far zayne sharfe reyd kegn groysn gvir un takef in shtot Meshulem Liberman, iz er -- loyt der hishtadles fun gvir baym porets fun shtot Grazhevski -- glaykh aroysgetribn gevorn fun Kelm." ('Reb Moses-Isaac Preacher was here [in Kelm] only three years, yet he was famous as the Kelmer Maged who took Jewish towns by storm with his fiery sermons against the haskala, the non-orthodox and the town's power cliques. He was an extraordinary preacher who skilfully enriched his speech with artistic images and fantastic scenes. Because of his sharp words against Meshulem Liberman, the most powerful person in town, he was thrown out of Kelm -- Liberman having petitioned the local baron Grazhevski to bring this about.') Berl Kagan goes on to relate the following anecdote about our fiery but not very diplomatic preacher: "In der alter shul fun Kroke flegt men nit lozn darshenen fremde magidim, ober dem Kelmer maged hot men eyn mol gegebn reshus tsu zogn a droshe. Di shul iz geven gepakt. Men iz geshtanen oyf di kep. Der Kelmer hot ober meramez geven oykh oyf di porondkes fun krakover kool. Hobn di gvirim zikh gefilt getrofn un geheysn dem shames davnen mayrev un der Kelmer maged iz geblibn in mitn droshe." (In the old synagogue of Cracow, outside preachers were not allowed, but on one occasion the Kelmer Maged was permitted to preach. The synagogue was packed. People stood on top of one another. But the Kelmer Maged alluded to irregularities in the Cracow Congregation. The rich were offended and instructed the sexton to start the Evening Prayer, leaving the Kelmer preacher in the middle of his sermon.} [Berl Kagan, _Yidishe shtet, shtetlekh un dorfishe yishuvim in lite_, New York, 1990, pp. 492-3] Yoysef Guri's attractively printed and wittily illustrated lexicon of Yiddish folk similes assures us that not only Litvak super-preachers (hardly remembered today) were inventive in their speech, but the Yiddish-speaking community as a whole. 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 4 October 1999 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Books and Reprints Received Books and Reprints Received Bat, Shmuel. _Oyf eybik; oysgeveylte shriftn 1970-1996_. Los-anzheles: Shmuel-Bat bukh komitet, 1996. iv + 274 zz' (yidish), 187 zz' (english). [English t.p.: Batt, Samuel. _For Eternity; Selected Writings 1970-1996_. Los Angeles, CA: Samuel Batt Book-Committee, 1996, 187 pp. (English) + 274 pp. (Yiddish)] [24 stories and essays in Yiddish, 12 stories in English translation] Belkin, Ahuva. _Beyn shtey arim; hamakhaze haivri "Simkhat purim"_. Lod: Makhon Haberman lemekhkarey sifrut [POB 383, Lod 71103; tel. 972-8-9234008; fax 97208-9249466], ii + 158 + faksimilya (13) amudim. [ISBN 965-351-019-3] [English: Ahuva Belkin. _Between Two Cities; the Hebrew Play "Simchat Purim"_, 1997, ii + 158 + 13 pp.] (This anonymous short Hebrew play published in Amsterdam in 1650 was translated into Yiddish in 1715 and should be known to students of Yiddish literature. The two cities of the title are Amsterdam and Gluckstadt.) [Author's address: 14 Nahum Gutman St., Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv, 69343, Israel] Risse, Siegfried. "Das Psalmenbuch des Mosche Stendal; Ein Zeugnis juedisch-deutscher Psalmenfroemmigkeit aus dem 16. Jahrhundert," _Theologie und Glaube_ 89 (1999) 23-40. [Kurzinhalt: Im Jahr 1586 gab Roesel Fischel ein Psalmenbuch in jiddischer Sprache heraus, uebersetzt von Rabbi Mosche Stendal. Es ist eine Nachdichtung aller 150 Psalmen in Strophenform. Sprache und poetische Form werden kurz besprochen. Ausfuehrlicher untersucht wird, wie Stendal durch Einfuegung wichtiger Schluesselwoerter als auch durch drei laengere midraschartige Erzaehlungern seine theologischen Schwerpunkte setzt. Daran laesst sich in wichtigen Punkten erkennen, wie Stendal die Psalmen deutet un zu beten empfiehlt.] [Summary: In the year 1586 Roesel Fischel published the Book of Psalms translated into Yiddish by Rabbi Moshe Stendal. Language and form of this poetic translation are briefly explained. A more detailed examination deals with the way Stendal interprets the psalms by inserting certain theological keywords and in three places by inserting longer midrashic tales. Through this interpretation one can perceive some important aspects of Jewish understanding and reciting [of] the psalms in the 16th century.] [Author's address: Hobirkheide 14, D45149, Essen, Germany]. Tsalim, Meir. _Yidishland; sikhot al yidish, folklor, glaykhvertlekh un bedikhot_. Tel-Aviv: Y.-L. Perets, 1999, 223 zz' [ISBN 965-7012-21-X [three popular essays in both Hebrew and Yiddish by Dr. Meir Tsalim] (1908-); "Roza at the Doctor" in Hebrew and Yiddish; random list of "yidishe glaykhvertlekh" with no commentary (pp. 185-223)] [Author's address: Y.L. Baruch 14, Hertzlia, Israel; tel. 972-9-9501776 or c/o Uri Liel, P.O. B. 1845, Mevaseret Tsion, Israel] ______________________________________________________ End of _The Mendele Review_ 03.017 Leonard Prager, editor Subscribers to _Mendele_ (see below) automatically receive _The Mendele Review_. Send "to subscribe" or change-of-status messages to: listproc@lists.yale.edu a. For a temporary stop: set mendele mail postpone b. 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