Word: yiddishism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Isaac Bashevis Singer, author of Satan in Goray, The Magician of Lublin, and several collections of short stories, is the foremost living writer in Yiddish. His recent book, A Day of Pleasure, won the National Book Award in children's literature. "Children still belive in God, the family, angels devils witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff," he said as he accepted the award. The following interview took place about three weeks ago when Singer came to speak at Harvard...
...which glared incongruously like colorful Rorshach inkblots from the walls of the Faculty Club dining room. Singer seemed at home in the sober stateliness of the wood-pancled room with its immense chandclier. He might have been an old alumnus returning to recapture an earlier cra, but his marvelous Yiddish accent spoke of a childhood spent elsewhere. Delicately rolled r' s and full-bodied gultural consonants played hide-and-seck among the alien diphthougs of American English. Singer spoke slowly and clearly, sometimes hesitating over a word, rejecting it, and choosing another...
Once established in the United States, Singer worked as a free-lancer for The Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish newspaper in New York. "To be a freelancer working for only one newspaper is a very bitter business," he said. "Every month there was the problem of paying my rent, which was about twenty dollars. But somehow I managed. I don't owe a penny rent," he finished proudly...
...first, Singer felt lost in the United States. He did not know a word of English and only learned to speak it fluently while helping to translate his book, Satan in Goray into English. American Yiddish inflections and vocabulary confused him. "Then life itself confused me," he said. "I saw many things for which I had no name. In Warsaw there was a name for everything, But here, you know, life is so rich." He looked wistful for a moment, perhaps at the thought of the passage of time. His face cleared, and he told another ancedote...
Singer would not consider moving to Israel, among other reasons, because Hebrew is spoken there. He has made up his mind to write in Yiddish as long as he lives. "Maybe in the next world I will begin to write in Hebrew," he said...