People want light in the dark. The Swedish-Protestant Santa Lucia falls in December, its candles pierce the hopeless darkness of the winter north, and the choruses of white-robed children are comforting. Hanukkah, with its menorah and lights, is also December and is especially important for its light in countries where Ashkenazi Jews are cold, dark and snowy, where the Pale Settlement is, where the Holocaust came later. And where did this particular civilization ever originate from today’s Israel, as described by Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose 120th anniversary has passed quite recently (although here is the first mystery of his biography: he mixed the traces himself and revealed that he was born in 1902 or 1904) . He received the Nobel Prize for the description of this civilization, which was already essentially submerged in the heavy waters of time.
More than any other holiday, Hanukkah was at the center of his prose, especially the stories for children who always gave hope. In fact, this is a holiday of miracles – the menorah that burns for eight days, and in fact, what can people still hope for if it is not a miracle? And therefore, these children’s stories were not much different from stories for adults, seemingly simple, but filled with layers of meaning and emotion, like scones with Hanukkah sufganiyot jam.
In the photos – a stern old gentleman dressed in a strict dress, with a slightly wary look in his blue eyes. Black suit, white shirt, dark tie. Definitely the hat. In the summer – a summer suit and a summer hat. It’s hard to imagine that it was this stern gentleman who hides shyness behind irony, saturating his books with all manner of folklore evil spirits and miracles, human clamor and tragedies – and here even demons have problems at work and in their personal lives. . And shortly before his death, “What is the most important thing in life?” What exactly was the answer to his question? He replied in a creaking voice: “Girls.” And although it was a joke, there were a lot of autobiographical ones in it, and many of the heroes of his books – emancipated Jewish men – might have agreed with him, but it didn’t do them any good. And this strict old gentleman with a tie always joked with his lively, strongly grazing English: his meetings with readers – some documentary reports can be found on the Internet – were accompanied by Homer’s laughter from the audience, as if Mikhail Zhvanetsky was standing. scene.
A question Singer is often asked: why did he write in Yiddish – the language of Eastern European Jews who were dying and even nearly dead during his lifetime? He wrote in the genre of newspaper serials, publishing the beginning, the continuation, and the ending, from issue to issue, in the New York newspaper Forverts, published in Yiddish. The Holocaust, the assimilation of the Jews, the formation of the people of the State of Israel gradually narrowed the speakers and listeners of this language. What happened all over the world, including the USSR, whose sign I still remember, on Kirov Street, now Myasnitskaya, where the Soviet Gameland magazine quietly disappeared – in the building after the Perlov Gingerbread House; the editor-in-chief was Valentin Kataev’s son-in-law, Aron Vergelis.
Singer is mainly translated from English into Russian, translations from Yiddish are not much different from English, since Isaac Bashevis wrote simply and basically short (Singer ironically stated that the novel should not be longer than War and Peace). If we compare the translations of The Magician from Lublin and The Lublin Thug, the Shtukar translated from Yiddish is more marked by the brilliant stylist, writer and translator Asar Eppel.
Naturally, Singer knew Polish, but still not his mother tongue, but English, which he acquired. The author laughed at this: Works in a dying language are a good topic for future generations to defend their doctorates. And also: “First of all, I like to write novels about spirits. And souls are most suited to a dying language. Second, I believe in the resurrection. I am sure the Messiah will come soon and one day millions of Yiddish speakers will rise from their graves. The first question they will ask will be: Is there anything new to read in our language?
The 1978 Nobel Prize awarded to Singer caused some consternation in the diverse Jewish world. Isaac Bashevis was not popular at all in Israel; Singer’s son (once deserted with his wife), journalist and writer Israel Zamir, began translating Singer into Hebrew. And even then, my father somehow threw a sentence at him – they say, why are you translating me, I would better write my own. Yiddish literature itself contained many classics. And the Singer… His work was essentially localized: or folklore tales about Helm, Devil, and idiots from the stupid city of Gimpel, almost a resemblance to Ivanushka the Stupid; or the problems of urban Polish Jews before the Holocaust (“I lived in a country pressed by two warring powers and was associated with a language and culture unknown to anyone except a small circle of Yiddish and radicals”); or the misfortunes of American Jews fleeing the Holocaust, living in New York, and having many problems with Polish and Jewish women and/or families. Moreover, the author himself did not survive the Shoah, which represented a subculture of New York Jews who went to America before the war and was rather similar to the subculture of the Warsaw Jewish intelligentsia of the 1920s-1930s (“They drink coffee, smoke, different newspaper” and reading magazines, retelling jokes”). And for this – the Nobel? Is the prize a Nobel? Oui, ma belle, – Singer answered this question, the future Jewish Nobel laureate, who also preferred New York and was also a great joker. In the words of Joseph Brodsky, he could answer.
Of course, outstanding writers showed the most diverse Jewish world in all its manifestations from various angles. Finally, the same American Jews were presented to the public by Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Saul Bellow, who received the Nobel two years before Singer. The Soviet Union had enough of his truly outstanding pens, from Babel and Grossman to Gorenstein and Galich. To understand the depth and reasons for the drama of assimilation, you can read Eduard Bagritsky’s 1930 poem “Origin”: / … Well, tell me, how will he believe in this power / my Jewish disbelief?
Translated into English, Singer showed the world that there were no “Jewish unbelief” or pretentious Jews with a complex relationship to faith. Every tragedy has a comic book, and Singer, of course, wrote tragedies. Singer’s books often have a sad ending, but like a Hanukkah candle, there is always a spark of hope in them. The hero of the novel “Enemies”. A love story entangled in the intricacies of her own life disappears in the final – so she can’t be found in the end. And yes, they are all dead. But the good news is: A baby is born who has someone to care for. And there is someone to bury the dead.
Only the main character of “Enemies” is a typical Singer hero in typical Singer circumstances. Here is the first paragraph of the book: “Hermann Bruder turned and opened one eye. In his drowsiness, he could not understand where he was – in America, in Zhivkovo or in a German camp. Or he dreamed that he was hiding in the barn in Lipsk. This is representative of a very special group of people. And yet – typical, like any living creature, of course, not ideal at all. Like Aaron Greidinger, also known as Tsutsik, the protagonist and narrator of the novel “Shosha”, an assimilated Warsaw intellectual, same as Isaac himself and his older brother – writer Israel-Yeshua Singer, once much more famous than the youth (and their sister Esther is also a would write!). The only perfect ideal being in Singer’s prose is Shosha, the naive and, as they say, retarded girl from a neighbor’s family. Whether it exists in reality or whether it was invented by the author. These ideally perfect creatures have no place on earth. They are betrayed, they die. But ideal people like Tsutsik cannot make sacrifices for the sake of saving Shoshi, whom he could not save. And this sacrifice is not at all like the sacrifices mentioned by Tsutsik’s friend Betty Slonim: “People sacrificed their lives for Stalin, Petliura, Makhno. For any thug. Millions of idiots will lay their empty heads for Hitler. Sometimes people just seem to be doing what they’re looking for someone to sacrifice their life for.
Maybe Shosha did not exist, but at times Singer brought him back to life, including autobiographical prose, where it is completely impossible to understand where fictional and true stories are.
But at least in the Singer world there are real characters: Isaac himself had a rabbi’s son, mother, father, older brother, sister, younger brother. And they lived in Warsaw at 10 Krokhmalnaya Street. Singer insisted that the author must have an address. In his case, it was Krochmalnaya Street, not his apartments in New York and Miami, and not other Polish addresses. Every universal humanity worthy of a Nobel Prize has an address and an imperfect biography. In fact, that’s exactly what Isaac Bashevis revealed in a conversation with his son about the fact of awarding him the highest author award – and again he mocked and joked. “The Swedes are anti-Semitic! – he said to his bewildered son, – why do you think they gave me the Nobel Prize?! What can they learn from my books?! They liked that Jewish thieves, prostitutes and swindlers were operating in them, that is, the Jews in them looked the same as all other nations and even worse.
These were portraits of their characters. It seems that the Jews are the most ordinary people. And, according to Lev Anninsky, Singer portraits are “concrete to the point of daggerotype.”
But Hanukkah Singer is still almost ideal characters and definitely a happy ending. “The power of light”. That’s what the unpretentious Isaac Bashevis called the story, which tells that young David and Rivka, hiding in the basement amidst the ruins of the destroyed Warsaw ghetto, accidentally find candles and matches and lit Hanukkah fires and “lights”. The candle brought peace to their souls.” And they were saved. Little boy David from the short, very childish story “The Devil’s Tricks” saved his parents from the devil, tucked his tail in a door and set it on fire with a Hanukkah candle: “Here you are! Remember it’s a holiday and those who aren’t dirty have nothing to do about it.
Peace reigns in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s universe. Potato pancakes – latkes – cooked at home. Children play hankuly ball – dreidel. And on the menorah, candles are lit, breaking the darkness and warming from the cold. “Fear not, Shoshele: I will make you live forever.” And he did not lie, leaving it in his books forever.