מענדעלע

Khashiver mendelyaners,

Ikh hob argitz geleint az der ukraynishe universitet hot far etlekhene yor tzrik aroisgegebn a plite fin dem an'ski samlung of yiddishe liyde. an'ski, als "folkhistoriker", iz arimgeforn mit a rolke fonograf in hot ofgenimen a sakh klezmer muzik fin shteitlekh. Di rolkes zenen nukh di revolutsye "fargesn" givorn in dem san petersbur musei, in nukh dem fal fin komunizm, zenen zei givorn gishikt nukh kiev. Ikh hob geshribn tzi di bibliotek fin di universitet far a halb yur in hob nisht gekrign kein entfer. Efsher hot a mendelyaner gehert di plite?

Michael "Mechel" Zlotowski, fin k"k pariz

Dear Mendelyaners

I read somewhere that the University of Ukraine released some years ago a cd with recordings of the An'Ski collection of Yiddish songs. An'Ski, as an ethnographer, travelled through several shtetlekh equipped with a roll-phonograph and recorded lots of klezmer music. After the Revolution, the rolls were "forgotten" in the St Petersburg Museum. Following the fall of Communism, the rolls were transferred to Kiev. I wrote half a year ago to the librarian of the University of Ukraine, and got no answer at all. Did a Mendelyaner ever hear the record?

Michael "Mechel" Zlotowski, Paris, France

I quoted the Rosenfeld translation in full from what was supposed to be an authentic Rosenfeld source (the Rosenfeld Reader?) in Mendele some years ago. It should be sitting in your archives. (I can no longer find my copy.) You could look it up.

Neyekh (Norman) Zide

Almost seventy years after it was written, "Der shir hashirim fun Mendl Pumshtok" continues to generate lively interest. It was discussed in Mendele in 1994 (3.285:6, 3.288:3; 3.290:3; 3.292:5; 3.292:6; 3.294:1; 3.294:4) and recently (10.052; 10.053; 10.056) and is frequently mentioned in the literature. Ruth Wisse beleives that this parody signifies a critical point at which "American Jewish letters gave notice of its independence from Anglo American modernism" (The Modern Jewish Canon, p. 289). However, it seems that there is no consensus on who has written the piece. It has been attributed to Isaac Rosenfeld and Saul Bellow, either separately or in various combinations. According to different sources, the author is...

...Isaac Rosenfeld

"he [Rosenfeld] did a translation of Eliot's _Prufrock_" (Saul Bellow, Foreword to "Isaac Rosenfeld, An Age of Enormity", The World Publishing Company, 1962; also reprinted in "Preserving the Hunger: An Isaac Rosenfeld Reader", Wayne State University Press, 1988)

"Visiting Isaac, I would beg him to do his Yiddish version of Prufrock" (Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope, HBJ, 1982).

...Isaac Rosenfeld with the help of Saul Bellow

"Isaac Rosenfeld, with the help of Saul Bellow, composed a Yiddish parody of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (Ruth Wisse, The Modern Jewish Canon, The Free Press, 2000)

...Isaac Rosenfeld and Saul Bellow

"Isaac and Saul produced Yiddish-language spoofs of masterpieces of English literature, including, most famously, their playful, sardonic translation of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (Steven Zipperstein, The First Loves of Isaac Rosenfeld, Jewish Social Studies, v.5, no.1/2, 1999)

...Saul Bellow with the help of Isaac Rosenfeld

"a spoof of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", written in Yiddish by Bellow and his Chicago sidekick Isaac Rosenfeld" (Al Ellenberg, Bulletins of His Own Condition, The Jerusalem Report, April 5, 2001)

...Saul Bellow

"As a youth, Bellow composed and performed a standup spoof of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Yiddish" (Christopher Hitchens, The Great American Augie, Wilson Quarterly, v.25, Winter 2001)

"Bellow's translation into Yiddish of T.S.Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (Debbie Forman, Literary Community Toasts Noted Author Saul Bellow, Cape Cod Times, July 25, 1998)

It may be difficult to allot the credits precisely in cases like this, but some clarification would be very helpful.

The current thread in Mendele was started by Ezra Mendelsohn (10.052) who inquired about the text of the parody. Al Madansky posted text (10.053) that was published in a volume, edited by Mendelsohn, so I assume that he knew that one and was looking for something different. A slightly different version was reprinted in Mendele by Shleyme Axelrod, z"l in response to Neyekh Zide question:

Mendele Vol. 3.288 Date: Tue Mar 15 13:30:12 1994 From: <PTYAXEL@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> Subject: Rosenfeld's Prufrock

Neakh Zide asks about Isaac Rosenfeld's parody of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". The following is the version given by Gene Bluestein in an article entitled "Prufrock-Shmufrock" in the journal *Yiddish*, published by Queens University Press, 1987, Vol. 7, No. 1. I have made a few minor changes to conform to the YIVO transcription scheme.

Nu-zhe, kum-zhe, ikh un du Ven der ovnt shteyt unter dem himl Vi a leymener goylem af tishebov. Lomir geyn gikh, durkh geselekh vos dreyen zikh Vi di bord bay dem rov. Oyf der vant Fun dem koshern restoran Hengt a shmutsiker betgevant Un vantsn tantsn karahod. Es geyt a geroykh fun gefilte fish un nase zokn. Oy, Bashe, freg nit keyn kashe, a dayge dir! Lomir oyfefenen di tir. In tsimer vu di vayber zenen Redt men fun Karl Marx un Lenin.

Ikh ver alt, ikh ver alt Un der pupik vert mir kalt. Zol ikh oyskemen di hor, Meg ikh oyfesn a flom? Ikh vel onton vayse hoyzn Un shpatsirn bay dem yom. Ikh vel hern di yam-meydn zingen Khad Gadyo. Ikh vel zey entfern, Borekh-abo.

It's forced in places of course, but the renditions of the "In the room..." and the "I grow old ..." sentences alone make the piece worth preserving.

Shleyme Axelrod

Iosif Vaisman

Shalom,

Does anyone know if this giant poem of Itzhak Katzanelson was translated into English and ever published?

Thank you,

Ada Holtzman

[Moderator's note: "Dos lid fun oysgehargetn yidishn folk" by Yitshok Katsenelson (1886-1944) was translated into several languages. Many of the listed editions are bilingual. First Yiddish edition was published by Ikuf in New York in 1944.

The song of the murdered Jewish people Transl. into English by Noah H. Rosenbloom and Y.Tobin [Tel Aviv] : Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, 1980

ha-Shir 'al ha-'am ha-Yehudi she-neherag Transl. into Hebrew by M. Z. Volfovski [Tel Aviv] : ha-Kibuts ha-me'uhad, 1964

Il canto del popolo ebreo massacrato, Transl. into Italian by Fausta Beltrami-Segre and Miriam Novitch Torino : Amici di Lohamei Haghettaoth, 1966 Milano : Centro di Documentazione ebraica cotemporanea, 1977

Il canto del popolo ebraico massacrato Transl. into Italian by Daniel Vogelmann and Sigrid Sohn Firenze : Giuntina, 1995

Pesn' ob ubiennom evreiskom narode Transl. into Russian by Efrem Baukh Tel-Aviv : Dom bortsov getto, 1992

Skazanie ob istreblennom evreiskom narode Transl. into Russian by Efim Etkind Moskva : Iazyki russkoi kultury, 2000

Piesn o zamordowanym zydowskim narodzie Transl. into Polish by Jerzy Ficowski Warszawa : Czytelnik, 1986

Le chant du peuple juif massacre Transl. into French by Miriam Novitch and Suzanne Der Tel Aviv : Ghetto Fighters House, 1983

Lied vom letzten Juden Transl. into German by Hermann Adler Zurich : Oprecht, 1951 Berlin : Hentrich, 1992

Grosser Gesang vom ausgerotteten juedischen Volk Transl. into German by Wolf Biermann Koln : Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1994 Munchen : Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996

El canto del pueblo judio asesinado Transl. into Spanish by Eliahu Toker Buenos Aires: Ediciones Arte y Papel, 1993

Iosif Vaisman]

Hardly a day goes by that I don^? have an urgent need to look something

up in a Yiddish etymological dictionary. The problem is that I don't own one nor have I ever been able to locate one. I'd therefore be supremely grateful for information on where to obtain such a useful reference work. My latest puzzlement is with the origin of the Yiddish word for "scrambled eggs" which Weinreich lists as _prezhenitse_. That word sounds so "Russian" to me that I was sure I would find it in my Russian-English dictionary. But all I could find there for "scrambled eggs" was the hyphenated word _yaychnitsa-boltuna_ [my transliteration]. I found no Russian entry for _prezhenitse_. I would therefore be grateful for anyone who can give me an etymological gloss on that word.

Al Grand

Tayere Mendelyaner,

I wish to add my congratulations to the many who will send in congratulations as we look forward to your bar mitsve.

Most of all, we must not forget the role Dave Sherman played in getting it off the ground. You rightfully acknowledged his early work, and his gracious manner in relinquishing the helm to Noyekh--and the great role Iosif undertook.

With people like these, Yiddish has a bright future.

mit frayndshaft,

Philip "Fishl" Kutner

In searching about the yiddish poet Rejsel Sichlinski (that's the spelling I got from an old lady) I found your home page. I would be very grateful if somebody knew something about the author Sichlinski.

And having found your site, I would like to subscribe, as I'm very impressed of the huge lot of knowledge. So please tell me how to subscribe (if you accept me to do so: I'm a librarian of Vienna University Library and have published catalogues about Manes Sperber, Joseph Roth and Karl Kraus).

Sincerely

Victoria Lunzer-Talos

[Moderator's note: Biobibliography and selected translations of Reyzl Zychlinsky's poems can be found at http://www.ibiblio.org/yiddish/Book/Zychlinsky -i.v.]

Tayere khaveyrim,

a fraynd hot mir gezogt, az Joe Darion (vos iz geven der libretist fun _Man of La Mancha_) hot ibergezetst di megile-lider fun fun Itzik Mangern, veys ober nit vu men ken gefinen di dozike iberzetsung - tsi emitser ken mir helfn, zi tsu gefinen un tsu bakumen a kopye fun ir?

Dear Mendelyaner,

A friend told me that Joe Darion (the librettist of _Man of La Mancha_) translated Itzik Manger's megile-lider, but doesn't know where to find the translation - can anyone help me to locate it and get hold of a copy?

Best, un al dos guts, Larry Rosenwald

With reference to Hershl Hartman's comment [11.002] on the relegating of the Freiheit to the status of a non-newspaper, the ironic part is that, despite its role as a Communist publication, the Yiddish in the Freiheit was better, less corrupted by English and more readable than that in any of the other three dailies. I used to read it for that reason alone, since I was on the very opposite end of the political spectrum and my natural home was the Morgen Jornal.

Mechl Asheri