_The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 05.013 29 October 2001 1) In this issue (ed.) 2) The Implications of a New Bergelson Translation (Lawrence A. Rosenwald) 3) Journals Received (ed.) a. _Lebns-fragn_ 593-4 (Sept-Oct 2001); b. _Toplpunkt_ 3 (2001) 1)--------------------------------------------------- Date: 29 October 2001 From: Leonard Prager Subject: This issue of _TMR_. "The transferral of the foreign from other languages into our own allows us to explore and formulate emotions and concepts that otherwise we would not have experienced. And the act of translation continuously stretches the linguistic boundaries of one's own language. In that sense, translation functions as a revitalizing force of language." So write the editors of a well known collection of essays on theories of translation.(1) In his provocative review of Joseph Sherman's exemplary translation of Dovid Bergelson's _Opgang_ ['Descent'],(2) Lawrence Rosenwald contrasts two very different translation strategies. He compares the "wizardry" of John Hollander's English version of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern's poem "gey ikh azoy" with Joseph Sherman's more sober array of talents employed in translating Bergelson's prose classic into English. Hollander is a "magician," whereas Sherman -- because of the nature of the text he is Englishing -- is simply a disciplined master craftsman. Rosenwald illustrates these antithetical roles by citing specific passages from the translators' work. Some readers may differ with the reviewer's judgement as regards these particulars. Thus Hollander's vague "one of the Just" for Halpern's "a lamed-vovnik" may be challenged. Even wizards must sometimes be prosaic: the more literal 'one of the saintly Thirty-Six' would be an improvement -- if it could be fit into the intricate word patterns of the poem. Likewise, one might regard Sherman's 'an unknown village' as less apt than Golda Werman's 'strange' in capturing the _fremd_ segment of Bergelson's adjectival "fremdshtetldike." The sweep of Sherman's lucid prose is amply evident and it has its own "wizardry." It is hard to maintain that there is a single correct strategy for translating any text. Since we cannot hope to establish exact equivalents in translation, multiple translations are welcome -- both those that give free rein to and those that rein in the imagination. Veteran readers of _The Mendele Review_ may recall Lawrence Rosenwald's incisive critique of a translation of Bergelson stories in the first issue (Vol. 01.001 [April 13, 1997]. That review and the present one are part of an ongoing discussion of translation in this journal. Rosenwald tells us that most of our translations from Yiddish are not to be taken seriously -- no light charge. Nor is Joseph Sherman an unfamiliar contributor to these pages. His "What's the Corpus? Bashevis / Singer and the Search for His Work -- A Review of Five Recent Books" in _TMR_ 03.015 [10 Sept. 1999] touched directly on the question of Yiddish literature in translation. (See, too, his essay on South African Yiddish and Hebrew writing in _TMR_ 03.012 [31 July 1999]). --------------------------------------------------- 1. Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, eds. _Theories of Translation; An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida_, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p.9. 2. Reprinted from _Prooftexts; a Journal of Jewish Literary History_ [21:2 (Spring 2001), 237-247] by kind permission of its editors. Individuals licensed to do so may access the original review in PDF form on the _Prooftests_ internet site [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ptx]. _Prooftexts_, edited by Alan Mintz and David G. Roskies, has entered its third decade and continues to be an indispensable resource for students of Yiddish and Hebrew literature. For subscription information write to: Journals Manager / Indiana University Press / 601 North Morton Street / Bloomington,IN 47404 USA / Phone: 812-855-9449 /Fax: 12-855-8507 / E-mail: journals@indiana.edu. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 29 October 2001 From: Lawrence A. Rosenwald Subject: The Implications of a New Bergelson Translation The Implications of a New Bergelson Translation by Lawrence A. Rosenwald Joseph Sherman, ed., and trans. _David Bergelson, Descent/Opgang_. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1999. li +240 pp. (translation); xliv + 235 pp. (text). Joseph Sherman's translation of David Bergelson's _Opgang_ is a remarkable achievement. If we took it seriously enough to figure out its implications, it might affect both our ideas about translating Yiddish literature and our sense of Yiddish literary history. First, though, we need to describe precisely what Professor Sherman has accomplished. We often think of translation as requiring rare gifts. We see that in the text in the source language, form is indissoluble from meaning; how, then, can the original meaning be re-created in a different form? We believe that the text in the source language works in ways unlike the ways of texts in the target language; how, then, can the original meaning be re-created in a different language? The translator's task is finding practical answers to these questions. And when the translator succeeds, we wonder and admire. Consider the beginning of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern's "Gey ikh azoy" as translated by John Hollander: gey ikh azoy un trakht fun broyt tref ikh on fun heler hoyt a lamed-vovnik; kukt er mikh on un fregt mikh, tsi vil ikh a hun tsi a hon. trakht ikh: di hun git dem mentshn an ey, der hon ober vekt fun shlof mit a krey. I walk along, absorbed in thoughts of bread, When, from out of the blue, just up ahead, One of the Just gives me a stare, and then Asks if I wish a rooster, or a hen. Let's see: the hen lays eggs for Mankind's sake, The rooster's crowing startles him awake.(1) Numerous changes of form and meaning have been made, e.g., a five-beat line has been substituted for a four-beat one; "git dem mentshn an ey" ('gives man an egg') becomes the loftier and more teleological "lays eggs for Mankind's sake"; "trakht ikh" ('I think') becomes the more communal "Let's see," and the repetition of "trakht" in the original has nothing to correspond to it in the translation. But somehow, dazzlingly, Halpern's exact but unfussy and colloquial rhymes are matched by Hollander's; the story and argument are intact; and the tone, too, is there, plainspoken and ironic and philosophically rich. And we think, what a magician Hollander is! That is not what is happening in Sherman's translation, because that kind of wizardry is not what Bergelson's evocative prose requires. What it requires is rather what Franz Rosenzweig called "the muse of precision"(2): a meticulous attention to the meanings of particular words; a willingness to believe that Bergelson put in everything that mattered, left out everything that didn't, and arranged everything in the best order possible; a fine ear for an idiomatic and supple English sentence, and at the same time a willingness to stretch English idiom to its limits and beyond. Or, more briefly: fidelity, diligence, humility, literacy, nerve. Here is the haunting beginning of Bergelson's story, in Yiddish and in Sherman's translation: "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 greblye, vos in eyn ek shtot, un zeyer treysldike klaperay hot opgehilkht biz der hiltserner greblye, vos in tsveytn ek. Dort, in ot dem tsveytn niderikn ek, hot a vaserl shtil gemurmlt arum a shteyn; a goye hot gevashn gret, an eplboym iz geshtanen un geblit, un gornisht -- 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." ['Late in the afternoon Meylekh was buried in the small-town cemetery of Rakitne. Everyone accompanied the young man's funeral up the hill, and for the space of a few hours the town, nestled between tilled green mountains, was as quiet as though no one lived there any longer. Then a common peasant wagon drawn by galloping horses rushed downhill, flashing its way swiftly between the two rows of poplars where the road leading off to Berizhinets began; its wheels sped rapidly over the wooden dike at one end of the town, and their churning clatter reverberated against the wooden dike at the other. In the low-lying corner at that end, a rivulet murmured around a stone, a peasant woman washed laundry, an apple tree rose and bloomed, and nothing more -- no one cared that with the festival of Shvues approaching, the skies had been overcast for days on end. Suddenly bridle bells could be heard tinkling. The news spread quickly through the town that Meylekh's sister, the druggist from an unknown village, had arrived from the railway station. Those at the graveside were informed of this, Meylekh's sister was escorted up there, and the burial was delayed. Everyone saw her then for the first time, this sister of Meylekh who came from an unknown village. She stood between the young cherry trees next to the open grave and wept. And to everyone there, both her face and her voice were equally unfamiliar.'](3) Sherman is making some changes, of course. Some of them one might quarrel with or want explained. 'Peasant' is almost inevitable as a translation of _goye_ and _goyishe_, but a note might be useful in helping the reader understand how and why 'peasant' is what 'gentile' comes to mean. (In general, though, the notes to the translation are exemplary, both in their precision and in their fullness.) The apple tree that 'rose and bloomed' is maybe a bit too Rilkean for "iz geshtanen un geblit" ('stood and bloomed'), and 'reverberated' too Latinate for "opgehilkht biz" ('sounded [i.e., could be heard] as far as'). The rest -- that is, the vast majority -- are both justified and adroit, e.g., 'accompanied' for "avekgegangen...mit" and 'nestled' for "vi in a nest". So are all the changes of ordering, e.g., the shifted placement of the information regarding how long the town is so eerily quiet (in the translation, the information comes right after the first independent clause, whereas in the original it's delayed until after the image of the town nestled between the mountains). Such changes are the minimum necessary -- and the minimum necessary is precisely what we want! - to make literate English prose. Most of the striking moments in the passage, though, result not from Sherman's skill in making changes but from his willingness not to make them in the first place. The isolated, epitaph-like first paragraph; the cinematic focus on the movement of the peasant wagon; the beautiful image of the peasant woman by the stream and the apple tree, and then the abrupt, disconcerting truncation of that image with "and nothing more" ("un gornisht"); the incantatory naming and renaming of Meylekh's sister and her foreignness -- "the druggist from an unknown village," "this sister of Meylekh who came from an unknown village," "her face and her voice were equally unfamiliar" -- all these are right there in Bergelson's Yiddish text, and bringing them into English simply means trusting and retaining Bergelson's artistry. One might think that Sherman's virtues are so obviously virtues, so obviously necessary to the translator's task, that no argument needs to be made for them. This is, however, not the case. Consider Golda Werman's recent translation of the same passage: "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."(4) Sherman's virtues are absent here, and the Muse of Precision has been spurned. Particular words are blurred; everything is idiomatic and familiar, nothing is challengingly strange; sentences and paragraphs are added, subtracted, reordered; Bergelson's art of ordering and shaping has been disregarded. And yet Werman's translation was published with a foreword by Aharon Appelfeld, proclaiming that "[Werman] presents us with a highly readable text that is sensitive and vital, not a halting translation but a creative work in its own right."(5) It is, that is, necessary to make a case for Sherman's virtues; they are rare, they are essential, they are productive, but they are neither common nor commonly demanded. I can best develop this argument further by setting it in an autobiographical context. Three years ago, I published an assessment of Werman's translation of Bergelson's novella in _The Mendele Review_.(6) The assessment was negative; it cited Werman's translation of the passage quoted above, enumerated its additions and subtractions and alterations, and argued that such changes were unwarranted and harmful. I stand by that judgment. At the time, though, I knew less than I know now about the history of English translation of Yiddish literature, and so was unable to see the tradition to which Werman's translation belonged. And clearly, there is such a tradition. Many of the earlier translations of Sholem-Aleykhem, for example, exhibit the same and similar traits, as do many earlier translations of Yiddish writers generally. They do not tell us clearly where the original Yiddish texts can be found, what book or magazine they're being taken from, what their original titles were. They shorten and lengthen and reorder at will -- though we can't always see this because, as noted, we can't always find the story they've thus altered in the first place! Werman's reordering of Bergelson is no more drastic than, say, Henry Goodman's truncation of the beginning of Moshe Nadir's "I -- As Echo" or Shlomo Katz's rewriting of the beginning of Sholem Aleykhem's "Dos porfolk."(7) We might call this a tradition of popularization. The works in question are not for the most part published by university presses. They are for the most part free of footnotes and of bibliographical apparatus; the introductions are unthreatening, optimistic, even exhortatory -- as when, say, Henry Goodman writes, "This social idealism has made for the unity, the continuity, in spirit and feeling, of Yiddish literature from its beginning down to our own day. . . . Outward differences exist, of course, owing to locale and environmental circumstance. Underneath those differences, however, there is an unswerving loyalty to the belief that man has the duty and power to build the good life on earth."(8) And, appropriately enough, the translational changes made, whether skillfully or awkwardly, are made in the service of an imagined common reader, whom the translator proposes to protect from boredom and confusion. Aliza Shevrin's comment on translating Sholem-Aleykhem's _In shturem_ is typical in this regard: "And then there was the problem of Yudel Katanti[sic], the character whose speech to his Yiddish- and Russian-speaking fellow characters is strewn with Biblical Hebrew malapropisms. Even translated, these expressions would simply confuse readers unfamiliar with Biblical Hebrew, and I have taken the liberty of deleting some of them."(9) It would be interesting to figure out how this tradition arose, and why it lasted. Surely it had something to do with American and English book markets. And surely also it had to do with Jewish translators wanting to suggest to Gentile readers that Jewish writers were manageable, i.e., more like Gentile writers than different from them. Right now, though, this tradition of popularization needs to be supplanted by a tradition of scholarly precision. I say this with some sadness. Making a case for scholarly translation means acknowledging how far we stand from the literature we are translating. The philological notes, the learned introduction, the making of a scholarly edition on which the translation can be based, even the reverence for the text itself and all its peculiarities -- all of this suggests how wide the gap is between us and the original work. But the gap is there. Moreover, the gap is widening; as Seth Wolitz has pointed out, this present generation of Yiddishists may be the last generation that can bridge that gap even by scholarly means.(10) More importantly, though: in the case of writers like Bergelson, the tradition of scholarly precision gives us stronger works of literature. Hillel Halkin's translation of _Tevye the Dairyman_ is more exact than that of Julius and Frances Butwin, but also richer and more alive. Sherman's translation is more exact than Werman's, but also gives us a better story -- more complex, more resistant, more haunting. What's wrong with the tradition of popularization isn't that it wants to aid the reader -- after all, all translation does that. What's wrong is rather that the reader being envisaged is so unliterary. A reader of Henry Roth and Cynthia Ozick is not going to balk at Tevye the Dairyman's dazzlingly reconfigured talmudic maxims. And a reading public that has bought, read, and admired Everett Fox's Torah translation will be prepared to read exact and challenging translations of great Yiddish literary prose. So much for the translation and its consequences. What, though, about the consequences of having Bergelson's great novella more widely available for our sense of Yiddish literature? Critics generally praise Bergelson warmly, and often proclaim him the most important Yiddish writer after the three klasiker: Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Y.-L. Perets, and Sholem-Aleykhem.(11) But that praise has been oddly unfruitful. Certainly, few readers who aren't specialists in Yiddish know of Bergelson's work. More surprising, perhaps, is that relatively few readers who are specialists in Yiddish have produced the sort of study of that work that would make it more prominent. (In Sherman's scrupulous bibliography, the most recent specialized publication focusing on Bergelson's art is Avraham Novershtern's _Di goldene keyt_ essay of 1977.) No work I know does for Bergelson what Dan Miron's _A Traveler Disguised_ does for Mendele and Sholem- Aleykhem, or what Janet Hadda's biography does for Isaac Bashevis Singer, or what David Roskies's _A Bridge of Longing_ does for all those writers and a wide range of other Yiddish storytellers besides. In this context of high praise and scanty attention, one effect of Sherman's translation of _Opgang_ may be to push Bergelson closer to the literary center -- may be, that is, to pose the question, what would happen to our sense of Yiddish literature if Bergelson's work was what it started with? Impossible to say, of course; but two brief speculations may be useful. First: right now, we often value in Yiddish prose what seems most oral: Sholem-Aleykhem's folksy monologues and Singer's demonic ones, and generally the whole storytelling tradition depicted in Roskies's book. Bergelson is a long way from that mode. He has none of the ease, the orality, the storytelling intensity of these writers. Dan Miron paraphrases a pertinent scene in Bergelson's semi-autobiographical _Bam dnyeper_, in which the writer Penek, a sort of Bergelson alter ego, ponders what it will be like to write in Yiddish: "The Hebrew language itself speaks freely through him. As far as Yiddish is concerned, Penek dejectedly realizes, such intimacy is not to be hoped for. He may, indeed, learn how to use Yiddish words, but he will never enjoy the felicitous feelings of 'being used by them'. He will have to learn to manipulate them, to write Yiddish 'with difficulty.'"(12) Bergelson's Yiddish is indeed written "with difficulty." Making Bergelson central to Yiddish literature would mean making such Yiddish as normative as Sholem Aleichem's. Second: Franz Rosenzweig once said, "Judaism is not my subject, it's my way of thinking." And we feel that when we read his work, even when he is writing about translations of Greek tragedy or recordings of Buxtehude sonatas. Bergelson is just the opposite. His characters are Yiddish-speaking Jews, his subject matter classically Jewish: the empty life of a decaying shtetl, the temptations and threats of assimilationism and radical politics, the murky, fitful romantic relations between men and women. His mode of writing is not classically Jewish. Sherman suggests that Bergelson was influenced by Flaubert (xxviii). The biographical evidence is scanty, but the affinity is irresistibly evident; Bergelson's prose is surely a lot more like Flaubert's than it is like, say, Singer's. Here is Singer, at the beginning of "Der shpigl": "There's a certain kind of net that's as old as Methuselah, as soft as a cobweb, full of holes -- but as for catching and holding, why, it hasn't lost its strength for that, down to this very day."(13) And here is Flaubert, at the beginning of _The Temptation of St. Antoine_: "It is in the region around Thebes, high on a mountain, on a flat area shaped like a half moon, surrounded by large stones." "The Hermit's hut is at the back. It is made of mud and reeds, with a flat roof, and no door. Inside can be seen a pitcher with a loaf of brown bread; in the middle, on a wooden stele, a large book; on the ground, here and there, twists of reedwork, two or three mats, a basket, a knife."(14) Which sort of prose does Bergelson's prose more resemble? Which comparison would tell us more about his way of working? Contrasting Flaubert with Singer here is too schematic, of course. No doubt Bergelson was influenced by Russian writers, too -- I for one keep seeing Bergelson's stories as if they were Chekhov plays -- and there are, of course, Yiddish writers who more nearly resemble Bergelson than do Singer or Sholem Aleykhem. It remains the case, though, that reading Bergelson invites us to see Yiddish literature not as closed in on itself but as enmeshed in its comparative contexts. It's hard to know what such a change in perspective would lead to, but clearly it would be a change of great consequence. We don't often think of translations as exercising much influence; this is part of what Lawrence Venuti calls the translator's invisibility. But our habitual thought here is flawed, and the translator's invisibility something we should do away with. Whatever consequences a consideration of Bergelson's novella will bring about will in part be due to Professor Sherman's exemplary translation, as will any changes that may result from taking his work as normative for the translation of Yiddish literary prose. *** Endnotes 1. _The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse_, ed. Irving Howe, Ruth R. Wisse, and Khone Shmeruk (New York: Penguin, 1987), 194-95. 2. Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, _Scripture and Translation_, trans. Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 179. 3. David Bergelson, _Descent/Opgang_, ed. and trans. Joseph Sherman (New York: Modern Language Association, 1999), 3-4 (English) and 3-4 (Yiddish). 4. _The Stories of David Bergelson: Yiddish Short Fiction from Russia_, trans. and with an introduction by Golda Werman, foreword by Aharon Appelfeld (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 25. 5. Ibid., x (and back cover of book). 6. _The Mendele Review_ (an archived electronic journal), vol. 01.001 (April 13, 1997). 7. _The New Country: Stories from the Yiddish About Life in America_, ed. and trans. and with an introduction by Henry Goodman (New York: YKUF, 1961); _A Treasury of Yiddish Stories_, ed. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg (New York: Viking Press, 1954). 8. _The New Country_, 23. 9. Sholem-Aleykhem, _In the Storm_, trans. Aliza Shevrin (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1984), 15. 10. Personal communication, April 1999. 11. See, among others, Appelfeld, ix; Dan Miron, _A Traveler Disguised_ (New York: Schocken, 1973), 21; Charles Madison, _Yiddish Literature: Its Scope and Major Writers_ (New York: Schocken, 1971), 447. 12. Miron, 22. 13. Isaac Bashevis Singer, _Der shpigl un andere dertseylungen_, ed. Khone Shmeruk (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1979), 1 (my translation). 14. Gustave Flaubert, _La Tentation de saint Antoine_ (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1967), 31 (my translation). *** 3)--------------------------------------------------- Date: 29 October 2001 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Journals Received a. _Lebns-fragn; sotsyalistishe khoydesh-shrift far politik, gezelshaft un kultur_ numer 593-594 (september-oktober 2001), redaktirt fun Yitskhok Luden. b. _Toplpunkt; fertlyor-shrift far literatur, kunst un gezelshaftlekhe frages_ numer 3 (zumer 2001), redaktor: Yankev Beser; mitredaktor: Yisroel Rudnitski. Subscribers to _Lebns-fragn_ were privileged to receive _Toplpunkt_ 3 as a premium. The veteran socialist journal, in addition to its political commentary features short critical essays. I found especially interesting a vivid report of Sholem Asch's triumphal visit to Rovne. The third issue of _Toplpunkt_ continues to be graphically engaging, with color and black-and-white reproductions of the paintings of Yoysef Zaritski (1891-1985) radiating through the entire issue -- front and back covers included. In this issue one can read about Manger's Tshernovits milieu (part of a longer work by the poet and critic, Aleksander Shpiglblat), and about the sole utopian novel in Yiddish by the largely forgotten Kalmen Zingman (in an essay by Anat Aderet). Fiction by Yosl Birshteyn and Boris Sandler and original and translated verse add depth to this issue. "Notes on Contributors" is a useful feature; the absence of a "Table of Contents" is not a good idea. ______________________________________________ End of _The Mendele Review_ 05.013 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. To resume delivery: set mendele mail ack c. To subscribe: sub mendele first_name last_name d. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub mendele ****Getting back issues**** _The Mendele Review_ archives can be reached at: http://www2.trincoll.edu/~mendele/tmrarc.htm