Translation as Transformation: How Isaac Bashevis Singer reinvented himself as an American author

• In Event: Translingual Imaginations: Yiddish Writers and Monolingualism of the Other

Abstract

Isaac Bashevis Singer was largely unknown outside of the Yiddish-speaking world when his epic novel, THE FAMILY MOSKAT (DIE FAMILYE MUSHKAT), was released by Alfred A. Knopf in English translation in 1950. Almost 30 years later, Bashevis would become the only Yiddish author ever to win the Nobel Prize in literature. By the time of his death in 1991, Singer’s oeuvre included nearly fifty published works in English translation, among them ten short story collections, more than a dozen novels, fourteen children’s books, five volumes of memoir and three anthologies of selected writings. But while Bashevis won the hearts of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, he was regarded with suspicion and worse by the Yiddish establishment, which accused him of pandering to an American readership and betraying the Yiddish language through his translations and less than savory portrayals of Jewish life in the SHTETL. In this presentation I examine the construction of Bashevis as an English language writer, focusing on the reception of Singer's first few works to be released in English translation. Drawing on contemporaneous reviews in the (American) English and Yiddish press of THE FAMILY MOSKAT, SATAN IN GORAY and GIMPEL THE FOOL, I trace Singer’s transformation from a struggling immigrant writer working in a “dying” language, to a Nobel Laureate with an international following and argue that very qualities that brought Singer international acclaim--his translatability, his critical if not downright negative portrayal of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, his preoccupation with sex--are what made the Yiddishists shun Bashevis and his work.

Author

• Shoshana Olidort, Stanford University