How Isaac Bashevis Singer’s translator edits without editing
David Stromberg, the Yiddishist behind a new collection of the Nobel Prize winner’s essays for the Forward, talks about the challenges of bringing his work to a modern audience.
By: Irene Katz Connelly
In his collection of Singer’s translated essays, Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkeit: The War Years, 1939-1945, Stromberg presents selections from Singer’s Forverts oeuvre alongside commentary on his development as a writer, as well as the shifts in his perspective that occurred as he gradually became aware of the Holocaust unfolding in Europe.
I spoke with Stromberg about Singer’s approach to writing about Europe for an audience of American Jews, his shifting perspective on Israel and the unique challenges of editing a multilingual writer who often did his own translations.