Theme: Wrestling with faith
Do: Ponder the intricate relationship between a man, his God, his forefathers and his many, many, many many women
Don't: Expect these many many many many women to be more than plot devices
Spoilers: Delicately avoiding them
I begin reading "The Magician of Lublin" on my 8.56 am train to London Cannon Street.
It would be horrifically easy to assassinate me. I leave home at 8.38 am every morning, catch the aforementioned train to be at my desk at 9.23 am and there I stay until 12.30 am - my self-appointed lunchtime - when I will take whatever tome I'm currently engrossed in and retreat to the safety of the 9th floor breakout area where no one can come looking for me to do another 'urgent' press release. 1 pm sharp, back on the floor and I leave bang on 5.35 am, just in time to make my 5.49 pm train back to...
Well anyway, you'd certainly to know on what precise door handles and at what precise times to smear Novichok...
The point is that I was getting some strange looks from across the way. The reason for this might be the naked lady with very prominent titties on the front of my Penguin Modern Classic. That classy bit is covered by her left bosom. Behind her is depicted, we can only assume, the Magician of Lublin.
Yasha Mazur, our eponymous lead character, is variously a scoundrel, a bounder, a cad and a rogue. His trade is sorcery, smoke and mirrors. He is equally at home mysticising and hypnotising the gentry as he is shuffling out card tricks in a thieves den in Piask. The action is set mainly in the shtetls of 1870's Warsaw and if I had to pin down the central question it might be;
Where can you go to be free of yourself?
Bashevis Singer was born in Warsaw, Poland - then part of the great Russian Empire. In his dedications he wrote to those, "who spared no effort to make this translation as true to the Yiddish original as a translation can be." He wrote purely in Yiddish all his life and accepted the Nobel Prize in 1978. Despite emigrating to the United States, he remained within a very close knit Jewish community until his death in Florida in 1991.
Escape and identity must have been on every mind on the continent of Europe at that time and it shines through in Singer's writing. When who you were, and who you felt you were, and who others thought you were was a question of life and death. Alongside the normal literary questions of we ourselves, the ghastly specters of Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen loom in the mind reading this book. It may have every appearance of a light-hearted tale of a trickster roaming the countryside with a girl in every city, but simmering beneath is the plight of what it meant to be Jewish whilst Singer was writing. Every mention of 'casual' antisemitism grates - by casual, I mean to say that Singer mentions it almost in passing. It forms a backdrop to everyday life. Institutionalised injustice. It is there at the corner of your eye, just glimpsed, and merits mentioning before diving into other questions of indentity.
So why should you read it? First of all - it will transport you to another world in another time. Singer is a very sensory writer - he will go to great lengths to describe the foods and drinks. I could almost taste the crumble of the butter cookies and the sharp, astringent sting of neat vodka. Singer magics up cigar smoke and fusty bed-sheets and the reel of a drunken accordionist spinning out a Polish mazurka. He describes the texture of the cloth blindfolding Yasha's eyes for a party trick. The scrape and scratch of his skeleton key ministering to a yielding lock.
Secondly, and most importantly, it will give you a glimpse into another faith and creed. I will be the first to admit, I grew up in Northern Ireland, which (while, quite simply, home to some of the most marvelous people on the planet) has all the diversity of a packet of Fox's custard creams. It wasn't until I arrived at university that I spoke to someone who wasn't a white Irish Catholic.
But for that reason, I understand the insularity of Singer's world, despite resting firmly amoungst the goyim . In researching this post, I learned of Singer's reluctance to emerge from the safety of his own community. Do I not do the same when I surround myself with Irish friends? Did my community not do the same when cruelty and conflict broke out at home? We hide ourselves where we are familiar.
The lovely thing about this is that Singer set his books onto the world, like ships onto the sea. They come to us from his safe harbour - which during his lifetime, wasn't so safe. It gives us an insight into a world many of us might otherwise know very little about, that of the Jewish community and faith. From the intricacies of prayer shawls and phylacteries to proverbs and turns of phrase we've never heard before. I wondered at the differences Yasha notes between himself and "Lithuanian Jews." Could there really be such a chasm between them? But then I remember my own background and know that both communities might be white Christians on a small island in the Irish Sea, but the differences go parish-wide and bone-deep.
There was a reason I highlighted Singer's gratitude to his translators. It is that words are supremely important and more is 'lost in translation' than the meaning of this or that particular noun or verb. Nuance can be lost, and nuance we must always strive to find.
And now - a negative - and there is a little bit of me that understands the times in which Singer was writing and the attitudes which may have changed since then.
I found it hard to read about his women.
These women - Esther, the ever-faithful wife - Magda - the lovely young assistant - Zeftel - the abandoned wife of a talentless thief - Emilia - the cultivated widow of a university professor - they are all as one, madly in love with Yasha and desperate to be with him.
Mmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmm.
Singer lingers overlong on their physical attributes, which suits his sensory style but discomforts me. He focuses not only on their present bodies, but in older women laments the passing of their youth and in young girls (pre-puberty) projects what delights might be budding. There are a few telling lines in the book:
"It would be worth surrendering my last pair of drawers to be a man."
I chose that line, not for the obvious assertion by Singer that of course it would be better to be a man! <sic> I chose it because I am astounded by his complete inability to get inside a woman's head. This is a man who spoke to me in those pages about the impermanence of life, the possibility of a Creator, the flaws and perfections of human character and the great struggle that goes on inside each one of us when we look at the stars.
All of this, and when it comes to women, he's just completely fucking obsessed with their knickers.
Think about it ladies. And of course men too, because we're all people.
If you had a great desire, one great wish and you thought about everything it might be worth surrendering to attain it, what would you choose? Would you choose your dignity? Your independence? Your wit? Your very soul?
In Singer's world, if you're a woman, you choose your goddamn pants. There's a fellow that's never known the pain of snapped knicker elastic.
Of course we could explain the disrespect away by pointing to the consistent irreverence within the book. The milieu is meant to be picaresque i.e. he's a scoundrel in a city of scoundrels, don't take it so seriously, mate!
But it's the throwaway lines that hurt you. I read:
"Magda, like all women, wanted to have children."
Hold onto your horses there Singer - that is just an untruth!
I bring these up, not to dissuade you from reading Magician of Lublin, but in the tacit understanding that reviews on 'ere give you a personal flavour and it greatly saddened me personally to come to understand that this man who had written so compellingly would perhaps not wish to engage with lively conversation with me at a dinner table. Because I am a woman. I can't swear to it, I've never known him and never will, but it was the impression I received.
Besides, my complete lack of Yiddish might have been more of a stumbling block to good table conversation about his novel...
Identity and escape, and so we come around again. Where is Yasha at the end of the book and does he manage to make his escape?
Something quite horrific and jarring and enough to make me start happens three quarters of the way through the book. Something which pinballs Yasha right down the path of repentance, a path he has been idly zig-zagging along in previous chapters. Shall I run away to Italy with Emilia? Shall I haunt the bars with Zeftel? Shall I run home to my Esther? His restless spirit chafes at his perceived bonds, like oxen in too tight a plowshare.
Not so after The Incident. I won't spoil it for you - I want you to pull up short and reread in disbelief as well. But I will reveal that Yasha the Magician ends up back at home, bricked into a stone hut, where he intends to spend the rest of his days seeking redemption through prayer and abstinence.
I loved it. I loved it because my reaction was - you see, you can't run from yourself.
All of our Magician's problems are those of his own making. His reasoning is that to be captive and captured will be a great boon - he can avoid temptation for the rest of his life.
We all carry the seeds of our triumph and downfall within us. I am certainly not suggesting we all crack out the bricks and mortar - but the moment Yasha stopped running he became Yasha the Penitent. The faithful flocked to him for miles around, seeking his counsel and wisdom. He was considered to have achieved enlightenment.
Identity, innit. Do you make it yourself, is it something other people give you, or is it a mix of the two?
A Young Author's Inspiration
I found the most marvelous quote from Isaac Bashevis Singer:
"I think it is a great tragedy that modern writers have become so interested in messages that they forget that there are stories which are wonderful without a message, that the message isn't everything."
Well said, sir. I think for a while there in writing my next book I was in danger of forgetting I was telling a story. Sometimes when you are surrounded by social media soundbites, when we sacrifice nuance for brevity, everything has to become a strong stance or a firm opinion. Sometimes, we're only looking for a good story.
And now, the action in taverns and taprooms has given me quite a thirst. I might seek out some of this wódka and try and (magician-like) coax a little inspiration out of thin air.
Devlin xo
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