Word: deviling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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GIMPEL THE FOOL, by Isaac Bashevis Singer (205 pp.; Noonday; $3.50) is a collection of twelve tales about Polish Jews who are important to nobody except themselves, God and the devil. In these pages Satan and all his imps lope through the swamps and forests of Galicia. tempting a vain girl with an enchanted mirror, destroying a placid marriage, debauching the entire village of Frampol with dancing, vodka and banknotes. God comes slowly after, not to punish Satan for his mischief, but to apply his lash to the backs of sinful Jews...
...treasures this distinction. Yet the only real difference is that he is a little older intellectually. In order to feel really different he must forget what he was like but a year before. When a classmate discovers that the truth is not always in the Bible, or that the devil did not invent Communism, the Exonian's feelings are akin to those of an older brother explaining that babies do not come from storks...
...long banned Sphinx, now owned by Mrs. Alfred G. Kay of Palm Beach, Fla., was visibly stronger in flesh tones than mystery (see cut). Recalled Sir Gerald: "I put a devil of a lot of hard work into that picture. It took me four years, on and off, to paint. The model who posed for it would not have been everyone's cup of tea. She had a stocky figure, long-limbed and healthy looking, but no grace or elegance. It was an arduous pose, and she behaved like an archangel though she ached like the devil afterwards...
...Souls (opposite), a side panel on an altar of a small church in the Ribes Valley, was painted (by an unknown artist) with all the suspense of a morality play acted out upon a stage. The good saint is seen in the act of weighing souls with the Devil, before a splendid red background decorated with gold stars. Michael has caught the Devil cheating by tipping the scales, and sadly points a shaming finger. Yet to be discovered is the lesser devil compounding the crime by tugging on the weight devil's tail. In an age of crusades...
...because man's ultimate responsibility is to God alone, and in that responsibility no man can deliver his own brother, there is a sacred realm of privacy ... a realm of his own essential rights and liberties (including, in the Providence of God, liberty 'to go to the devil')." Into this liberty, wrote Dr. Fisher, the law must not intrude: "Only God's love has an inherent right to entry there...