Isaac Bashevis Singer

This volume includes a collection of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s early work, including 27 short stories, 7 sketches of early fiction, and a range of critical essays, childhood memoirs, and interviews. Singer’s early literary career in Warsaw (1925-1935) was crucially important in laying the building blocks for his great achievements in Jewish and world literature as a storyteller of Polish Jewry. During this period, Singer worked as a journalist, writer and translator in the main Yiddish center in Eastern Europe. However, much of this work remains unavailable in English-language translation. This volume makes part of Singer’s early fiction and non-fiction available for scholarship, teaching, and a general readership for the first time.

This volume includes a collection of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s early work, including 27 short stories, 7 sketches of early fiction, and a range of critical essays, childhood memoirs, and interviews. Singer’s early literary career in Warsaw (1925-1935) was crucially important in laying the building blocks for his great achievements in Jewish and world literature as a storyteller of Polish Jewry. During this period, Singer worked as a journalist, writer and translator in the main Yiddish center in Eastern Europe. However, much of this work remains unavailable in English-language translation. This volume makes part of Singer’s early fiction and non-fiction available for scholarship, teaching, and a general readership for the first time.

Una antolog a de cuarenta y siete relatos seleccionados por el autor, el gran representante de la literatura yiddish, que incluye sus cuentos m s c lebres. «Me resulta dif cil decir por qu eleg los cuarenta y siete cuentos de esta colecci n, seleccionados entre m s de un centenar. Como le ocurrir a a un padre del Oriente contemplando su har n llenos de mujeres y ni os, los quiero a todos , comentaba Singer cuando dio a la imprenta este volumen. Raz n no le faltaba porque su universo literario es muy peculiar, casi privado, pero se convierte en universal en cuanto topamos con los deseos y las dudas infinitamente humanas de sus personajes. Desde la primera p gina, un abanico de tiempos y lugares se abre para el lector: veremos a hombres cansados que han conocido a Kafka y a Stefan Zweig deambular por los bares de Varsovia, pidiendo dinero prestado y dando consejos, a ancianos asomados a un balc n en Miami que de pronto despiertan a un nuevo amor, y a mujeres con las palabras atragantadas de tanto querer olvidar. Conoceremos las tierras de Polonia y sus campesinos, para luego caminar por las calles de Nueva York, y sin embargo, despu s de tanto viaje, lo que se va a quedar es el talento de Singer para contar ese destilado de melancol a y orgullo que nuestros propios exilios imponen porque, bien mirado, todos alg n d a tuvimos que irnos de la vida que era nuestra. «Todos jugamos al ajedrez con el destino como contrincante... Sabemos que no podemos ganar, pero algo nos impulsa a presentar batalla. -I.B. Singer En este volumen se recogen cuarenta y siete cuentos de la producci n del autor, elegidos por el propio Singer entre m s de un centenar de textos. El volumen re ne los relatos publicados en la cl sica recopilaci n Gimpel, el tonto de 1957, y los t tulos publicados hasta 1881.

From the Nobel Prize–winning writer, a new collection of literary and personal essaysOld Truths and New Clichés collects nineteen essays—most of them previously unpublished in English—by Isaac Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic vision throughout an astonishing and prolific literary career spanning more than six decades. Expanding on themes reflected in his best-known work—including the literary arts, Yiddish and Jewish life, and mysticism and philosophy—the book illuminates in new ways the rich intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and biographical background of Singer’s singular achievement as the first Yiddish-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Like a modern Montaigne, Singer studied human nature and created a body of work that contributed to a deeper understanding of the human spirit. Much of his philosophical thought was funneled into his stories. Yet these essays, which Singer himself translated into English or oversaw the translation of, present his ideas in a new way, as universal reflections on the role of the artist in modern society. The unpublished essays featured here include “Old Truths and New Clichés,” “The Kabbalah and Modern Times,” and “A Trip to the Circus.”Old Truths and New Clichés brims with stunning archival finds that will make a significant impact on how readers understand Singer and his work. Singer’s critical essays have long been overlooked because he has been thought of almost exclusively as a storyteller. This book offers an important correction to the record by further establishing Singer as a formidable intellectual.

Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who grew up in a strictly Orthodox Hasidic household in Poland, presents a version of the legend surrounding the 18th century founder of Hasidism known as the Baal Shem Tov. As Singer writes in his author's note, "This short book does not pretend to be a biography of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov by any means. So little is known about his life that no life story is possible. This work is nothing more than the writer's impressions or fantasies of Rabbi Israel's way of thinking, his emotions, his spiritual achievements and disappointments."

A gorgeously produced, bilingual edition of Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer's canonical story—one of the most influential of the 20th century—about a hapless yet charmingly resilient baker named Gimpl, who resists taking revenge on the town that makes him the butt of every joke. Singer's original Yiddish appears alongside his own partial translation, now completed and edited by writer and scholar David Stromberg, and the 1953 translation by fellow Nobel laureate Saul Bellow. With illustrations by Liana Finck and an afterword by David Stromberg.Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Gimpl tam” was published on March 30, 1945, in the obscure Yiddish-language journal Idisher kempfer, about a month before the Nazi surrender. A story of bullying and the potential for revenge, it tells the deathbed confession of an orphaned baker who is targeted by his own community for ridicule and practical jokes. Gimpl has come to be seen as a symbol of the Jewish people in the diaspora, and, by synecdoche, minorities in general. Should they be passive in the face of aggression? Or should they defend themselves? What role must the individual of that minority play when the pack behaves badly?When Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg opted to include “Gimpl tam” in their Treasury of Yiddish Tales, Howe asked Saul Bellow to help with the translation. It was finished in a single sitting and published in 1953 in The Partisan Review as “Gimpel the Fool”—the version that has since been canonized as one of the fundamental stories of the twentieth century. Yet, unlike every other major work of Singer’s published in his lifetime, the author had no involvement in the English translation. In 2006, Joseph Landis, editor of Yiddish, published a draft play script titled “Simple Gimpl,” made by Singer directly from the Yiddish original—the closest extant rendition of the story in the author’s own translation. Literary scholar David Stromberg has completed Singer’s translation, allowing readers to see another dimension of the original. This definitive edition, a treat for literature lovers, features Singer’s story in Yiddish along with the two English versions. Having them together shows Gimpl as anything but a fool—but rather someone accepting the complexity of his life and faith.

Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Mirror was written for the Yale Repertory Theater production in 1972-1973. Set in a shtetl in Poland, the play is based on Singer's 1955 story of the same name, originally narrated by the demon. It deals with sexual fantasies born of denial, neglect, and repression, delving into the netherworld to discover that demons are not very different from human beings. The play incorporates one of Singer's esoteric characters, the Jew of Babylon, a miracle worker and exorcist who is swept up into the dark that he battles each day. From the New York Times: "The Mirror . . . is an, erotic and moral fable dramatizing, among other things, the dangers of fulfilling daydreams. . . .The work is full of bizarre absurdities, magic potions, exorcisms and incantations but the author-with his tongue in cheek-never loses sight of humanity. This is Singer in a playful mood.

Isaac Bashevis Singers klassiska roman "Sonim, di geshikhte fun a libe" (svensk titel: "Fiender, en berättelse om kärlek") kommer nu för första gången på originalspråk i bokformat! Boken skrevs först som en följetong i tidningen "Forverts" och har inför bokutgåvan omarbetats till standardjiddisch av Mario Moishele Alfonso.I "Sonim" - en ode till Förintelseöverlevarnas komplexa tillvaro efter kriget - berättar Bashevis Singer historien om Herman Broder, en man förlorad i sin egen obeslutsamhet och oärlighet. Innan han knappt har förstått det själv har Herman tre fruar: Yadwiga, den polska pigan som gömde honom undan nazisterna, Masha, hans vackra och neurotiska äkta kärlek, och Tamara, hans första fru som mirakulöst återvänt från de döda. Utmaningen det innebär att navigera de här relationerna i kombination med den mångbottnade upplevelsen av det judiska New York efter andra världskriget, lämnar Herman med en känsla av en ständigt annalkande undergång.

Likely written in the 1950s, Sodom is an original play by the Polish-born Jewish-American laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The play, based on the biblical tale of Lot and the destruction of Sodom, treats themes to which Singer returned over throughout his career-corruption and repentance. It also exhibits Singer's ability to move between comedy, political satire, and spiritual sentiment, all within a play that is loyal to its biblical sources. Portraying with such canonical characters as Lot and Abraham, the play shifts from comedic dialogue, to critiques of totalitarianism, to expressions of awe and faith, capturing the fear and trembling of the those who believe they have seen the great powers of the Abrahamic God. The play is both a biblical comedy and a spiritual affirmation of the human need for the Divine. 24 characters, doubling and tripling permitted