This Week I am Reading ... Mrs Elena Knight

Mrs Elena Knight is our Spanish teacher at Elmfield, as well as being the Class 10 guardian. Elena shares her review of Collected Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer below.

I love reading short stories.

Unlike novels, where I have to get well into the book to find out if I like it or not, if a short story doesn’t grab me from the beginning, I don’t have to finish it, I can jump to another one instead and not necessarily in order (lazy. but a rebel at heart 😉). 

I read somewhere that short stories are the ultimate writer’s skill test as the author must achieve a good plot and intriguing characters in very few words and leave you wanting more. Ernest Hemmingway won a bet by writing a short story of only six words: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn”.  That has stayed with me.

Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1978 “for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life."

Seeing Singer’s ‘Collected Stories’ at the Elmfield Christmas Fayre book stalls triggered memories.  I had heard this name sometime in the 80s while studying English language and literature at University but was not able to read anything by him as access to newly published books in foreign languages was difficult in my, then communist, country.

I have no idea why I didn’t think of this writer again for so long; maybe it was meant to be that way as having read the first few short stories in this collection made me aware that I wouldn’t have enjoyed them nearly as much at the time. Later in life, circumstances brought me in close contact with a Jewish family in London. It was a journey of adventure and discovery which took me to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and resulted in lifelong friendships and endless curiosity and fascination with Jewish culture and traditions.

Singer grew up in the poor Jewish quarters of Warsaw, Poland.  His father was a Hasidic rabbi. His mother also came from a family of rabbis. At an early age he read Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy alongside the Talmud (the Jewish law book) and the esoteric mysticism of the Kabbalah teachings (it is recommended that one should only study Kabbalah after turning 40).

His short stories are his best body of work They depict the life of East European Jews in Pre-World War II Poland – a world of poverty, persecution, piety and superstitions, a very Jewish but also a very human world.

I find Singer’s short stories captivating and enjoyable. They are mystical fairy tales for grownups - each one is unique and haunting. They cover an extraordinary range of human experiences and emotions – ruthlessness and poignancy, coarseness and beauty, pleasure, suffering, doubt, obsession, confusion, violence, love and self-sacrifice.  

Singer always wrote in Yiddish. In his Nobel Banquet speech, he said: “I like to write ghost stories, and nothing fits a ghost better than a dying language. The deader the language the more alive is the ghost. Ghosts love Yiddish and as far as I know, they all speak it.” In the same speech he also explained that he liked to write for children because “when a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority.” 

He edited the English translations of his work himself and referred to them as his “second originals”. Even in translation his mastery of language is breath-taking. I can only dream what it would be like to read his work in Yiddish.

Singer chose not to write about the most tragic event of twentieth century Jewish history – the Holocaust. But his art has immortalised the incredible richness of Jewish tradition and folklore.