Tsiterboym Books announces the publication of a bilingual edition (Yiddish-
English) of four plays by S. An-sky, creator of the iconic The Dybbuk, crown
jewel of the Jewish theatre.
While The Dybbuk is the best known and most beloved of An-sky’s works,
he wrote a number of other plays of interest and value in the early 20th
Century that have been virtually forgotten. Four of them, Day and Night, Father
and Son, In a Conspiratorial Apartment, and The Grandfather, were included in
his Collected Works, and are presented here for the modern reader with Yiddish
and English on facing pages. Only Father and Son has been translated into
English before, and it was from a different version.
Day and Night is a Hasidic tragedy, reminiscent of The Dybbuk in a
number of ways, but more violent in its depiction of the struggle between good
and evil. The play goes back and forth between reality and fantasy and the
reader is not always sure of what is happening. But the action moves along very
fast; it’s a real page turner.
The other three plays deal with the lives of revolutionaries in the
tumultuous period preceding the 1905 Russian Revolution. They are not plays
about demonstrations, marches, and strikes, but rather depicts how the
revolutionaries’ activities impact the lives of their families as they struggle
against the intrusion of the Tsarist authorities. They are labelled “comedies”
by the author, but in the dictionary meaning of light, often satirical pieces
that may have a happy ending. They are not at all funny, although they have a
few humorous episodes.
The Yiddish text observes the YIVO orthography. The format of the book
makes for easy reading and is ideal for students of Yiddish.
Translated by Fernando Peñalosa, translator of Parodies of An-sky’s
“The Dybbuk” (2012) and author of The Dybbuk: Text, Subtext, and Context
(2012).
viii, 326 pp., introduction, notes. $19.95. Available from Amazon.com.
Submitted by Fernando Peñalosa.__
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
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