24 - Poetics and Politics of Translation

Summary

The need for translation in Western culture is commonly traced to the familiar Tower of Babel story, which is to say that it is traced to the human desire to understand and interpret the hubris implied in that desire. Yiddish on the American literary scene became increasingly prominent when Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 and emerged as one of the most important writers of American and Jewish American literature. The juncture between Yiddish and American English-language writers and writing was established a generation before Sholem Asch's novels, stories, and plays became part of the American literary canon. Its point of origin may be traced to 1898, when Leo Wiener published Songs from the Ghetto, the first book of translations of Yiddish poetry into English. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg were the most prolific anthologizers, producing six volumes over more than two decades spanning genres, countries, and dates of origin.