Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) was one of the most prolific, controversial, and best-loved chroniclers of Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, where he was born. His pen name, Bashevis, is taken from his mother's Hebrew name (Bathsheba). He moved to the US (New York, of course) in 1935 and became a citizen in 1943, but continued until the end of his life to write in Yiddish, and all his work was translated into English, often by prominent writers. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, and his works are available in a staggering variety of editions, sound recordings, and filmic treatments (for example, Barbra Streisand's Yentl was based on his story "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" -- Singer apparently did not like it).
The Collected Stories is a thick and rich collection -- we won't read the entire book for class, though I encourage you to read it all at some point. Please read as far as "Henne Fire."
Singer both reflects everyday Jewish life in Poland in the early 20th century (depicted in greater detail in the largely autobiographical Stories from My Father's Court) but also adds a dose of fantasy and heterodox folk elements. Some critics have argued that Singer's choice to continue writing in Yiddish rather than Hebrew, say, allowed him to maintain a focus on religion and tradition that could not have been achieved in Hebrew-language literature published in Israel. Others have objected to Singer's work on many grounds, especially his stories' erotic elements and the negative elements of the individuals or communities he depicts.
In his Nobel Prize banquet speech, Singer said that people often asked him why he continued to write in a dying language - his English was quite good, and he often aided his translators into English. He said, "I like to write ghost stories and nothing fits a ghost better than a dying language. The deader the language the more alive is the ghost. Ghosts love Yiddish and as far as I know, they all speak it." (See more from that speech at the link down below.)
1. How do short stories differ in their aggregate impact from a novel, even an episodic one such as Bridge on the Drina?
2. How do the two works we have read so far differ or coincide in their (re-)creation of a traditional society and their nostalgia for the past?
3. Since Singer continued to write until the 1980s, many years after the Holocaust, it's not surprising that the stories contain many references to events that took place after the times they describe. How do those references, even if they only remind you of what you know already, impact the reader's experience of the stories?
4. Where, if at all, do you sense differences between the position and attitude of the stories' narrators and that of the author? What role do you as reader play in the ironic moments of the stories?
5. Do any of the things Singer depicts susprise you, from the point of view of what we now know (or think we know) about the history of Eastern Europe and its Jewish communities? Does any less than flattering portrayal of the Jewish community make you feel uncomfortable, and how might Singer's contemporaries have reacted to this element of his work? Conversely, how do Poles or other gentiles fare in these stories?
6. Pay attention to elements of folklore or of other literary traditions in the stories.
7. What do you feel you need to know to understand elements of the stories? (Whether you know those things or not.)
A cursory search of Tripod some years ago turned up 82 listings for I. B. Singer S-- so this reader thinks it best that you search for some yourself. You may also be interested in comparing Singer's tales about Jewish life in Poland to his later works set in the United States.
You might enjoy comparing Singer's writing to S. Ansky's The Dybbuk, to the stories of Sholem Aleichem, or to Isaac Babel's
wonderful and upsetting "Odessa Stories" -- You Must Know Everything (PG3476 .B2 Y8) and Benya Krik, the Gangster, and Other
Stories (PG3476 .B2 B46 1969) are available in Tripod.
Bruno Shulz (1896-1942) was born in Drohobycz (now in Ukraine, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and died there too. He wrote two
books of stories in Polish that are available in English: The Cinnamon Shops, translation 1963, and Sanatorium Under the
Hourglass, translation 1978. The latter is in McCabe -- PG7158.S294 S313x -- and both have been made into movies.
Cynthia Ozick's novella mentions two important earlier authors who wrote all or mostly in Yiddish: the very famous Sholem Aleichem (pen name of
Solomon Rabinovich (1859-1916), born in what is now Ukraine and buried in a cemetery in Queens, New York. He wrote the stories about Tevye
the Milkman that are the basis of the play and the film Fiddler on the Roof. There are lots of editions of his work in Tripod.
Envy also mentions Peretz Markish (1895-1952), a poet, prose writer, playwright and essayist who was killed in the post-WWII
Stalinist repression of Yiddish-language wrioters in the USSR. There are interesting works by and about him in Tripod too.
Magdalena Zaborowska's wonderful book How We Found America: Reading Gender through East European Immigrant Narratives, offers
readings of several female Polish and Polish Jewish immigrants to the US, any of which would likewise make a very interesting comparison
to Singer.
Return to the web page for East European Prose in Translation.
Return to Sibelan Forrester's home page.