Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 1 no. 19 June 10, 1991 1) I.B.Singer and "Oyf der Elter" (Dovid-Noyekh Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 15:04:02 EDT From: David Neal Miller Subject: "Oyf der elter" by Tse I share the general admiration for Golda Werman's excellent translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's first published work of fiction, "Oyf der elter." Perhaps some details of its (the Yiddish original's, that is) publication history might be of interest. The work first appeared in the _Literarishe bleter_, 2, whole no. 60 (26 June 1925), 4. It is identified as a contribution to "Undzer konkurs" [Our Contest] and is signed "tsadik-ayin" (without the hyphen). Leonard Prager suggests that the signature be read "Tse," which is certainly reasonable, though I think it equally probable that it be read "tsadik ayin"--depending whether the signature was author-supplied (i.e. a pseudonym) or journal-supplied (i.e. an identifying marker for the anonymously judged contest). It was reprinted in the _Forverts_ for 17 March 1935, sec. 3, p. 3, where it bore the annotation "Tsugeshikt fun Varshe" [Sent from Warsaw] and the signature Yitskhok Bashevis. The contest and the measure of Singer's success in that contest is a tantalizing matter, and one--as we academ- ics are wont to say--which would certainly merit fur- ther investigation. (My own research on Singer's oeuvre is exhaustive only from the time of his arrival in the States in 1935.) Singer's story--or at least the version of his story he elected to share with me in September 1980--is as follows: The _Literarishe bleter_, interbellum Poland's most respected literary journal, invited submissions to a contest for short belles-lettres. [The issue of genre and generic tagging is an interesting one, especially inasmuch as Yiddish genres do not conform with Anglo- American ones. Suffice it to say that, pace U. Weinreich, Yiddish "beletristik" does _not_ bespeak "fiction."] Submissions were identified only on the cover sheet; elsewhere they bore an identifier to which the editor, but not the judges, were privy; Singer was unclear as to whether the identifiers were suggested by the authors or were assigned by the journal. Since (a) Singer was but a proofreader of limited proofreaderly talent, employed by the _Literarishe bleter_, and (b) since his relationship with his older brother, at the time also on the journal's payroll, might somehow preclude consideration of his very un-Y.-Y.-Zinger-like piece on its own terms, Singer seized the opportunity to enter this atypically blindly refereed contest. To everyone's surprise, not the least his own, "Oyf der elter" received the journal's first prize. Note that I do not assess the veracity of Singer's report, but only the accuracy of my retelling. Khone Shmeruk apparently credits Singer's report (assuming that Singer told him much the same story as he told me- -not an entirely safe assumption, by the way) to a certain degree, and writes that "Oyf der elter" won "a prize" in the contest. Perhaps a graduate student or fraye visnshaftler would be interested in examining the _Literarishe bleter_ for references to "Undzer konkurs"? Publication guaranteed. It would, finally, be of a piece were Singer actually to have won the first prize. Consider his first novel, _Der sotn in Goray_ [Satan in Goray]. Despite Singer's later fiction-building about having been a late bloomer, this novel was published as the first in a series by the Yiddish P.E.N. Club in Warsaw [without an author's subvention!], a remarkable accomplishment for a relatively little-known writer in the cultural efflorescence that was interbellum Warsaw. Why should- n't his first short story have enjoyed a similar success? Dovid-Noyekh Miller Internet: miller.3@osu.edu Bitnet: miller.3@ohstmail