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 Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. 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