NO STAR TOO BEAUTIFUL
(Jan
/ Feb 2006)
NO STAR TOO BEAUTIFUL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF YIDDISH STORIES FROM 1382 TO THE PRESENT. Edited and translated by Joachim Neugroschel. W.W. Norton, 2002. 710 pp.
For the generation that came to literary maturity in the 1950s and 60s, the classic anthology of Yiddish literature in English translation is Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg's A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, 1953, with a second, expanded edition in 1989. There had been collections of Yiddish stories preceding theirs-books by Maurice Samuel, Frances and Julius Butwin, Joseph Leftwich and others-but Howe and Greenberg were the fathers of a new consciousness of the literary value of works in Yiddish. Their anthology marked a cultural turning point, coming at the same time as the translations of Isaac Bashevis Singer. In their anthology they offered an introductory essay on the development of the literature in its historical context and a wide-ranging selection of Yiddish writers-the three classic writers (Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz), Avrom Reisen, L. Shapiro, the Singer brothers (Isaac Bashevis and Israel Joshua Singer), Isaiah Spiegel, Chaim Grade, Moshe Kulbak, Dovid Bergelson. The stories were translated by many hands, among them Isaac Rosenfeld, A.M. Klein and Saul Bellow, who did remarkably successful, spirited translations of Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and IBS. Bellow translated just two stories, both brilliantly done-"Eternal Life" by Sholem Aleichem and "Gimpel the Fool" by Singer, the latter so effectively that it set the tone for later translations of Singer by others.
A Treasury of Yiddish Stories was followed by a plenitude of anthologies of Yiddish literature in translation, some wide-ranging, some focused on particular bodies of work such as Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers and Beautiful as the Moon, Radiant as the Stars: Jewish Women in Yiddish Stories (the latter consisting of stories by both women and men, but all dealing with Jewish women)1, and Beatrice Weinreich's delightful and instructive book of Yiddish folktales. There have also been new general anthologies in Yiddish, notably Mendl Sholem Goldsmit's Di yidishe literatur in amerike .
Among the best known of the new anthologists is Joachim
Neugroschel. Along with the impressive work he has done as a translator
of modern German literature, he has edited and translated a large, diverse
selection of Yiddish writers in a number of collections: Great Tales of
Jewish Fantasy and the Occult; The Shtetl: A Creative Anthology of Jewish
Life in Eastern Europe; The Dybbuk and the Yiddish Imagination: A Haunted
Reader; Shadows of Berlin: The Berlin Stories of Dovid Bergelson, and
the work reviewed here, No Star Too Beautiful. His collection of Jewish
occult writing in Yiddish includes a generous selection of symbolist tales
by Der Nister, Nakhman of Bratslav's stories, and a uniquely Canadian
contribution, "The Golem" by Yudl Rosenberg, Mordechai Richler's
zeyde on his mother's side. The Shtetl offers large selections from classic
sources and great writers-Israel Aksenfeld, one of the maskilim 2 who
founded modern Yiddish literature; Mendele; Dovid Bergelson, and Moyshe
Kulbak.
No Star Too Beautiful extends the range covered by the previous anthologies
and adds considerably to the number of modern authors covered. Neugroschel's
aim here is not to present writers in depth, but to include them among
the many, the range of Yiddish writers over centuries. His goal is "to
show the overwhelming variety of Yiddish fiction".
Neugroschel offers a short, informative introduction to
the book, a preface to the main sections and a brief comment on each writer.
But it is principally the book's contents that are instructive. Neugroschel
begins at the very start of Yiddish literature with a version of the biblical
story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife dated 1382, and he proceeds through
Renaissance works derived from medieval sources-fables from The Cow Book
or Book of Fables (in Yiddish Dos ku-bukh oder Seyfer-mesholim)., chapters
from the romance of Bovo of Altona3, the tale of the Jewish Pope from
the classic Mayse Book, a blend of story and homily from the women's taytsh
khumesh, the Tsene-Rene-to the complex duel of Hasidism and anti-Hasidism
in the 19th century-the Dubno maggid's parables and the tales of the Baal
Shem Tov on the one hand, and Linetsky's and Ayzik-Meyer Dik's satiric
work on the other.
More than half of the 700-plus pages are devoted to the modern period,
from the late 19th century to the present. There are a number of main
themes to this part of the book: the dislocation caused by World War I,
the experience of the postwar pogroms, the immigrant experience of New
York. Neugroschel includes work by less frequently anthologized writers-
Chava Rosenfarb, Yehuda Elberg, Fradel Shtok, Abraham Karpinovitch. In
this profusion of writing, there are some outstanding stories rendered
in distinct individual voices.
But before going on to the contents, the stories chosen by Neugroschel
the editor, I should mention Neugroschel the translator's use of language
as it affects the stories.
At times he uses jarring modern colloquialisms in translating
an old text, or simply a last-century story, raising several questions,
some for translators, some for readers. The perennial problem for translators
of earlier texts is whether a modern idiom, or going further, a contemporary
idiom should be used to translate a classic. Is it appropriate for the
translation of a premodern text to sound like this: step on it, I'll beat
them to a pulp, he gave them the finger, they bit the dust; or for the
translation of a 19th or early 20th century text to use idioms like: practically
had kittens, didn't have the foggiest notion, we'd be up the creek. The
reader sees this problem from the other side and wonders whether the translator
is trying to goose our attention by studding the tale with present-day
colloquialism, some of it indecorous.
And there is always the problem of dialogue, which is full of idiom and
slang to begin with, little of which can be rendered directly, and has
to be paraphrased or rendered through an equivalent expression, if there
is one. But dialogue is full of emotion, brimful of cultural values, and
often the values of one culture simply don't translate into the other.
As I see it, this cultural distance is the greatest challenge for the
literary translator.
Sometimes, yes, Neugroschel chooses the jarring idiom or
word, without enhancing the power of the tale, intruding modern sensibility
inappropriately into the original writing. But many other times he hits
the right note and maintains it with great respect for the original text.
And so turning to some of the outstanding stories in this collection:
Mendele's "Shem and Japhet on a train." The opening
of the story is a brilliant set-piece. The energy, fun and confusion of
the scene are conveyed through the sardonic, half-admiring, half-caustic
voice of the narrator. The protagonists are really simply the Jews of
that time and place, typified by individual figures; the story saying
in a kind of hopeful irony-when the goyim experience exile too, they'll
have to come to us to take lessons in survival.
An-sky's "The Starveling." After the formalities alternating
with forced slanginess in some of the early selections, Neugroschel breaks
free and writes with a fetching ease and oral fluency that lifts ands
floats the story. The reader is carried along, swept into the story-a
situation more than a story, but detailed with social and political background-issues
and convincing physical detail as the narrator goes through the experience
of starving, not just being hungry.
Sholem Aleichem's "Seventy-Five Thousand" is structured like the fairy tale of people stuck in a line in an attempt to get hold of a treasure. It is inevitably repetitious, a shaggy dog story that makes you squirm as you laugh. The author's voice is occasionally rendered with updated slang and formal diction. Both jar. But the frazzled total recall, chanting repetition and colloquial refrain of the narrator-the identifying style of Sholem Aleichem's monologues-is rendered with suppleness and vitality.
Fradel Shtok's "The Archbishop" is a lovely story of a young girl's longing for something not quite defined until the end. It is a story told by indirection. The description of an archbishop's visit to the shtetl becomes the telling of a turning-point in the girl's acceptance of her Jewish identity. The sheer beauty and sweetness of the story come through easily in Neugroschel's translation.
Bergelson's "The Deaf Man." This is one of Western literature's great stories of old age. Bergelson dignifies the suffering of an old man- the gradual narrowing down of his life, the closing in of forces that are casual, ordinary and ruthless. The story is written within the literary manner of "Naturalism", depicting the loss of choice, the victimization, the helplessness of the protagonist, but here granting him great pathetic dignity.
Der Nister's "Beheaded." This is not a story,
but a tale, an imagining in a magical, theatrical fantasy of the clash
of huge despair and cosmic hope. It is difficult, but fascinating, and
is composed really of tales within tales, small beginnings that build
up to more and more significance, and as you follow this build-up, you
see the process of Der Nister creating the tale.
No Star Too Beautiful is a comprehensive and instructive collection, happily
provided with a number of brilliant stories by modern Yiddish writers.
1 See our June 1995 and March/April 2005 issues for reviews of these books
- eds.
2 Adherents of the 18th- and 19th-century Jewish Enlightenment in Europe.
- eds.
3 The Bove Bukh of revived fame, the subject of a very funny passage in
Michael Wex's new book Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in
All of its Moods. - SL.