A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Editions in Yiddish and Hebrew A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Editions in Yiddish and Hebrew Compiled by: Yair Dagan January, 2014 1 A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Editions in Yiddish and Hebrew Contents Preface .............................................................................. 3 1. General ..................................................................................................... 3 2. A (very) Little History ................................................................................ 3 3. Some Translation Issues .......................................................................... 5 a. The Hebrew Vocabulary ...................................................... 5 b. The Titles ............................................................................ 6 c. Jewish Issues ...................................................................... 6 4. Some notes on the bibliographies editing ................................................. 8 A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Yiddish Editions .............. 11 1. Works Published Individually .................................................................. 11 2. Works Published in Yiddish Periodicals .................................................. 21 3. Anecdotal Entries ................................................................................... 31 a. "Jezebel" ........................................................................... 31 b. "Un savant célèbre" ........................................................... 34 A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Hebrew Editions ............. 36 Index of Wilde's Translated Works .................................. 75 Index of Wilde's Translators ............................................ 76 Sources and Bibliography ............................................... 77 Main Catalogues ......................................................................................... 77 Books and Articles ...................................................................................... 78 Reference Sites .......................................................................................... 78 Notes ............................................................................... 80 2 A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Editions in Yiddish and Hebrew Preface 1. General This paper includes two bibliographies of Oscar Wilde's translations and editions. The first one lists the Yiddish translations of his works, and the second is comprised of Wilde's translations into Hebrew. The bibliographies span more than a century: The first Yiddish translation is from 1905 (The Soul of Man under Socialism) and the first Hebrew one is from 1906 (2 poems from Poems in Prose). All the translations from the early 20th century were done by well-known Jewish writers and scholars, who were prominent figures in the Jewish cultural scene. For the most important of them, in my private opinion, of course, I added some biographical notes and remarks. 2. A (very) Little History Towards the end of the 19th century, there was a split among the Jewish cultural leadership on which of Yiddish or Hebrew should be the "official" Jewish language. While the Zionist movement cultivated the revival of the Hebrew language, many authors preferred Yiddish. The Bund (The General Jewish Labor Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia) for instance, a secular Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire, founded in Poland in 1897 and active through 1920, promoted the use of Yiddish as a Jewish national language, and to some extent opposed the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew. For example Yosef Haim Brenner, one of the most prominent literary figure in Palestine in his day, who published the first Wilde's translations in Hebrew, joined The Bund before becoming a Zionist. It should be noted, though, that there was a large group of scholars and artists who wrote in both languages, but eventually transferred to Hebrew (Such as Falk Heilpern, who translated Wilde's works both to Hebrew and Yiddish). The Yiddish language, being far more common among the Jewish people, was a better suited vehicle to promote culture and literature to the Jewish people, both adults and children. Up the Second World War, Yiddish was the common "national Jewish language" in Eastern Europe. In Warsaw, for example, there were 11 Yiddish newspapers with a 3 A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Editions in Yiddish and Hebrew daily circulation of 180,000 copies. The common assumption is that 80% of the Jewish world population prior to the Second World War spoke Yiddish. The vast Jewish immigration to the United States towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century caused Yiddish to flourish, especially in New- York, resulting in Yiddish theatres, publishers, periodicals, etc.1 But the second Jewish generation of these immigrants distanced itself from the Yiddish language, both because the willingness to be part of the American society, and because the anti- Semitic ambiance in the USA in the eve of the Second World War. In addition, in the context of Wilde's works, this generation could read, of course, the original versions and did not need any Yiddish translations of them. There are four main reasons for the decline and almost death of the Yiddish language. By far, the most important is the Jewish Holocaust, which exterminated millions of Jews, eliminating, in fact, the vast majority of Yiddish speakers in Europe. The three other reasons are the communist regime, the assimilation process of the American Jews and the Zionists and founders of the state of Israel, who regarded Yiddish as a symbol of exile and diaspora. And indeed, the latest European translation of Wilde into Yiddish I found is from 1938 (The Devoted Friend, Warsaw: Kinderfraynd, 1938). Besides that, I encountered some in American periodicals like a republishing of Karlin's translation of De Profundis from 1939 and only two short poems-translations in periodicals who came out after World War Two (The latest in the USA is a translation of The Artist from 1956 by Yehezkel Bronshtein2). Though the secular Yiddish culture in Europe was extinct, and the Jews in the USA distanced themselves from it, the Jewish communities in South-America, and mainly Argentine kept on the cultivation of the Yiddish language, teaching it in schools and publishing Yiddish periodicals and books. In 1961, Isaac Isaacson published in Buenos Aires an anthology of world- literature translated to Yiddish, in which he included five of Oscar Wilde's stories (see entry 24 below). Many of Wilde's works were published in various Yiddish periodicals (both in Europe and America), some of them children's journals and some were literature magazines. I 4 A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Editions in Yiddish and Hebrew separated the Yiddish bibliography into individual editions and publications in periodicals. Now contrary to Yiddish, which is a secular language whose origins date back to 1300, from around 200 CE till the end of the 19th century, Hebrew was regarded only as the language of Jewish liturgy and rabbinic literature. The Hebrew revitalization as a spoken and literary language started in the late 19th century, intimately linked to the Zionist movement and the founding of the modern state of Israel. The revival of the Hebrew language had to take place in two areas: written-literary Hebrew and spoken Hebrew. Literary Hebrew, which was mostly revived in Europe included writing in areas such as scientific books (for which the vocabulary of scientific and technical terms was greatly increased) and Hebrew language newspapers and magazines. In addition, poets and writers such as David Frishman (who translated Wilde's De Profundis) and Shaul Tschernichovsky began avidly translating European works into Hebrew such as Molière, Goethe, Shakespeare, Homer, Byron, Lermontov, and Aeschylus. At the same time, writers also began to write works of short fiction and novels in Hebrew, using the language to express psychological realism and interiority for the first time. Judging from the quantity of Wilde's translation into Hebrew and Yiddish, it looks like in the first three decades of the twentieth century, Wilde's works appealed to some of the most prominent literary figures such as Yosef Haim Brenner, David Frishman, Y. H. Tavyov (or Tabiyov) and many more. Salome, for instance, was translated to Hebrew in 1907, twice to Yiddish in 1909 and again in 1921. In addition, many of the editions included extensive introductions dealing with both Wilde's tragic life and his anarchistic and "socialistic" tendencies. The translated editions span across Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, London, New York and more. 3. Some Translation Issues a. The Hebrew Vocabulary Since the Hebrew language has been revived, it is permanently evolving and new words are added constantly by The Academy of the Hebrew Language. This evolvement was far more drastic in beginning of the 20th century, since Hebrew, based on the old Jewish liturgy texts, was missing a great number of words since its' 5 A Bibliography of Oscar Wilde Editions in Yiddish and Hebrew stagnation. Even today, according to The Academy of the Hebrew Language, the Hebrew language contains 75,000 to 80,000 words (both original and adopted, e.g. "Telephone"), while a low estimate of the total English words is somewhere around a quarter of a million distinct English words3. This gap presented a problem, especially for the early 20th century translators. And Indeed, when browsing through Tavyov 's translation