[Mendele] Mendele Vol. 19.019
Victor Bers
victor.bers at yale.edu
Sun Jan 24 14:06:17 EST 2010
Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
____________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 19.019
January 21, 2010
1) "Elisha ben Abuyah" (Vincent Homolka)
2) Elisha ben Abuyah" (Beth Kaplan)
3) khisorn (Robert King)
4) Discrepancies between Russian and Yiddish Versions of Isaac Babel's
Story "Gedali"
(Ilya Levin)
5) Discrepancies between Russian and Yiddish Versions of Isaac Babel's
Story "Gedali"
(Leonard Fox)
6) Shmaravoznik (Maurice Wolfthal)
7) shvartser (Jules Rabin)
1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 28, 2009
Subject: "Elisha ben Abuyah"
In response to Ben Birnbaum's enquiry (Mendele, Vol. 19.017) about Jacob
Gordin's play "Elisha ben Abuyah":
The book "Finding the Jewish Shakespeare. The Life and Legacy of Jacob
Gordin," by Beth Kaplan, Gordin's great-granddaughter (Syracuse University
Press, 2007), has the following to say (p. 156) about the reception of the
play's opening run:
"The opening night performance went on for nearly four hours. An
English-language review, though positive, remarks dryly, 'From a Gentile
point of view, the performance would have been better had the dialogue
been greatly condensed.' The choice role of Shlomo Hoots was another
triumph for Mogolescu. Adler, the review notes, 'was as superbly
impressive as ever.' After the third act, the actor received numerous
floral tributes and made a long speech about his problems with the actors'
union.
"But Gordin had predicted that Elisha would not be a hit, and he was
right: it was devastating flop, running less than a week. 'Put it on after
my death,' he advised Adler bitterly. 'Then it will be a success.' Again,
he was right. Following Gordin's demise, Adler mounted Elisha again.
According to one perhaps exaggerated report, it ran for a year.
"The Forward review was a caustic piece by Cahan's then friend and
colleague M. Baranov. Though Baranov admitted, with unusual warmth, that
Elisha was 'one of the most powerful roles our talented dramatist-poet has
created,' he went on to belittle the play, disagreeing with Gordin's
portrayal of early Christians and ending, 'What started out as a grandiose
tragedy ended up as a comedy. The heart ached for the play and its
author.'
"Gordin was deeply hurt by the failure of a play so linked to his soul
[...]"
Regarding a translation of the play into English: Elisha ben Abuyah does
not appear in the list of translations into English of Gordin's plays in
Kaplan's book (p. 255), but she writes that she possesses an unpublished
translation by Sarah Torchinsky.
Kaplan's book, a labor of love on which she has obviously expended much
time and effort, should nonetheless be treated with a degree of caution in
the light of what she writes in her "Note to the Reader" at the beginning
of the book: "And a disclaimer about accountability and accuracy: there
are periods of Gordin's life about which very little is known. In order to
create a vivid account I have, based on research and reading, extrapolated
my version of the truth."
Best wishes,
Vincent Homolka
2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 28, 2009
Subject: "Elisha ben Abuyah"
Mr. Birnbaum, I wonder if you have a copy of my book, "Finding the Jewish
Shakespeare: the life and legacy of Jacob Gordin." There are a number of
pages dealing with this play and its reception.
To my knowledge, there is no English translation of the play. My own
translator, Sarah Torchinsky, did a rough translation of some passages for
me so that I could quote from the book, but it is scattered and
unfinished.
Beth Kaplan
3)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 12, 2009
Subject: khisorn
A friend used the word khisorn to refer to an aspect of a mutual
acquaintance's character, referring to a lack, a deficit, or a missing
element. I believe the spelled it Chet,Samach, Raysh, Nun- Sofit.
I'd appreciate any elaboration on its meaning/usage.
Many thanks,
Robert King
4)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 28, 2009
Subject: Discrepancies between Russian and Yiddish Versions of Isaac
Babel's Story "Gedali"
I have not seen the 1926 edition of "Gedali," but in the text that has
appeared in modern editions of "Konarmiya," the first paragraph does
indeed end with these two sentences:
"O, istlevshie talmydy moego detstva! O, gustaya pechal' vospominanii!"
Ilya Levin
5)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 28, 2009
Subject: Discrepancies between Russian and Yiddish Versions of Isaac
Babel's Story "Gedali"
Norman Buder asks for solutions to two very interesting puzzles about the
early Yiddish translations of Babel's stories. I can't answer the first
query, but can offer some information about the second. Mr. Buder writes:
.... The other discrepancy is that the first paragraph in Gitl Mayzil's
translation ends with two exclamatory phrases that are absent from the
1926 version and from Peter Constantine's English translation:
"O tliyendike gemores fun mayn kindhayt! O gedikhter umet fun zikhroynes!"
Again two possible explanations seem possible: (a) Gitl Mayzil translated
phrases that were in an early Russian version but were omitted in the 1924
and 1926 publications;
(b) Gitl Mayzil introduced phrases into the story without any
justification in Babel's original.
Does anyone know which explanation is correct?
The phrases in question are:
"O, istlevshie talmudy moego detstva! O, gustaya pechal' vospominanii!"
It is not only the 1924 and 1926 publications that omitted these phrases,
but every other edition of Babel's Konarmiya published in the Soviet Union
hereafter did the same, substituting an ellipsis for them. Even the
edition published in Russia in 2005 (Isaak Babel', Konarmiya; Odesskie
rasskazy. Moscow: ACT, 2005) left them out.
The two phrases are present in an edition published in Israel in 1979
(Isaak Babel', Detstvo i drugie rasskazy. Jerusalem: Biblioteka-Aliya,
1979), which gives the original publication information in an end note:
"First printing: the newspaper Izvestiya Odesskogo gubispolkoma (1923),
under the heading 'From the book Konarmiya'; second, in the journal
Krasnaya nov', 1924, no. 4, June--July. Dated: 'Zhitomir, June 1920'." The
editor also states, with respect to the two phrases: "Missing in later
editions."
The most recent edition (as far as I know) of Babel's collected works in
Russian (Isaak Babel', Sobranie Sochinenii. 4 vols. Moscow: Vremya, 2006)
restores the missing words.
It is interesting that in Walter Morison's translation, Isaac Babel, The
Collected Stories (New York: Criterion, 1955; New York: New American
Library, 1960), the phrases are present:
"O the rotted Talmuds of my childhood! O the dense melancholy of
memories!"
They are also present in David McDuff's translation (Isaac Babel,
Collected Stories. London: Penguin, 1994):
"Oh, Talmuds of my childhood, turned to dust! Oh, dense sadness of
memories
!"
All of this obviously vindicates Gitl Mayzil's translation, and the answer
to your puzzle is:
(a) Gitl Mayzil translated phrases that were in an early Russian version
but were omitted in the 1924 and 1926 publications.
Leonard Fox
6)----------------------------------------------------
Date: January 3, 2010
Subject: "Shmaravoznik"
Can anyone shed any light on the source of either the melody or the lyrics
of the song "Shmaravoznik," (also known as "Vos bistu broyges?") recorded
by Marty Levitt? The same melody also appears in one of Dzigan and
Schumacher's sketches about two conmen in Tel Aviv prison.
Maurice Wolfthal
7)----------------------------------------------------
Date: December 29, 2009
Subject: shvartser
Regarding Paul Glasser's comment of 12/28 on the use of "shvartser":
("'Shvartser' in Yiddish is to the best of my knowledge an euphemism, not
a slur. 'Neger' is probably a recent borrowing from German.")
... my own experience, dating back 75 years, was different. As poor as we
were in the hard years of the depression, on occasional Friday afternoons
my mother would have in a sorry, alcoholic black woman, to scrub the
kitchen floor, whom she referred to as "di shvartse." We all knew the
woman's true name, Mrs. Crawford. But like the Duke in Feuchtwanger's
"Jew Suess," who for the hell of it referred to Suess, his indispensable
man, as "the Jew," my mother spoke of Mrs. Johnson, in the third person,
as "di shvartse." ("Die shvartse vet haynt kumen," etc. ) To me that
sounded, with its overtones, like "the nigger."
Jules Rabin
______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 19.019
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