From a distant relation / Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky ; edited and translated from the Yiddish by James Adam Redfield ; with a foreword by Avner Holtzman.
Yidishe ks̀ovim fun a ṿayṭn ḳorev. Selections. English
Notes:
Selections from Berdichevsky's Yidishe ks̀ovim fun a ṿayṭn ḳorev (originally published in six volumes in Berlin in 1924), presented here in English translation. Berdichevsky originally published these stories under the pseudonym Mikhah Yosef Bin-Gorion. Includes bibliographical references.
Contents:
Note on the text -- Foreword / Avner Holtzman -- Introduction / James Adam Redfield -- Hasidic tales -- Visitors -- From the heart -- Sketches -- Conversations -- Matchmakers -- New men -- Mothers and sons -- Right at home -- Fathers and sons -- How we live now -- Husbands and wives -- Modern times -- Changing trains -- After the fire -- A world with a world.
Summary:
"A lively collection of little-known short stories, monologues, and folktales by a major figure in modern Jewish literature and thought, translated from Yiddish. In his short life (1865-1921), Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky was a versatile and influential man of letters: an innovative Hebrew prose stylist; a collector of Jewish folklore; a scholar of ancient Jewish and Christian history. He was at once a peer of Friedrich Nietzsche, the Brothers Grimm, and a diverse circle of Jewish writers in the Russian Empire and German-speaking countries. As a Yiddish writer, however, he remains unknown to general readers. Written in 1902-1906, but not published in full until the 1920s, his stories were dismissed by prominent critics and viewed as out of step with the literary taste of his own time. Yet these vivid portraits of a small Jewish town (shtetl) in the southern Russian Empire can speak powerfully to new audiences today. With enchanting humor, social satire, and verbal dexterity, From a Distant Relation captures the world of the shtetl in a sharp realist prose style. Themes of repressed desire, poverty, relations with non-Jews, and historic upheavals echo in a cast of memorable characters. Many of the stories and monologues feature strong female protagonists, while others shed light on misogyny in the culture of the shtetl. At the border between fiction and reportage, with a gritty underbelly and a deceptive naïveté, Berdichevsky's stories explore dynamics of wealth, power, and gender in an intimate setting that resonates profoundly with contemporary Jewish life."-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.