mentalblog.com comments:
This is an amazing comment! I don't buy it, but it might be a better group of sentences than either Singer or Grade ever wrote.
:)
oy-vey, sounds like Ms. Bitterness spake. Isn't it sad, perhaps the only two great Yiddish writers who come out alive of a vanished world and hate each other bitterly
kt, Chaim Grade was larger than life writer, by far more significant than IBS. Yet the nobel went the other way for reasons described by Inna Grade.
The bitterness felt towards IBS is hardly just a case of sour grapes on the part of Mrs Grade, who resents the fact that her husband, Chaim Grade, who stands head and shoulders above IBS as a writer, did not get a Nobel.
IBS was a salacious panderer who stopped at nothing to gain popularity with the know-nothing American Jewish (and not only American or Jewish) crowd, people with neither the commitment nor temperment to seriously explore their own heritage, literary or otherwise. The chintzy and licentious vision of the traditional Jewish life conveniently supplied by IBS was at once gratifying to them and salable to friendly non-Jews whose approval they sought. Thus, when the time came to honor the Yiddish literature that was fast passing from the stage, IBS was the best-known and opportune candidate who could serve as a proxy for the entire tradition. In the eyes of the world, this epigone came to epitomize the entire East European Jewish heritage. This sentiment was not shared by those who knew better. I personally witnessed a number of aficionados of Yiddish literature express shock and disbelief when the Nobel prize was awarded to IBS.
Without a doubt, not all literature is destined or needs to serve "higher" ideals or purposes; this canon has died with the the "isms" of the twentieth century. Here, however, is a writer who presumed to speak higher truths and pretended to have something to say to the Jewish people and the world - a fact without which there certainly would be no Nobel for IBS. It is precisely in that role that he is denounced as a slanderer and fraud. This Nobel is no honor for Jewish literature or people.
Mrs. Grade is most probably not Jewish. Grade married her in Moscow during the war when she was about 14 years old. No one has done more to prevent the writings of her late husband from either being published or being published in book form (those that were serialized in the Yiddish daily press in the 1950's-1970's)
She kept Grade's death secret long enough to prevent an honorable funeral and has spent time and money re-translating material that Curt Leviant has already translated.
I her introduction to one of her translations she conemms those who see grade as only a jewish writer, rather she portrays Reb Chaim as a universal writer with a universal message.
There is more to this story , but Mrs. Grade should be embarresed to even utter a word about the state of Yiddish literature.
Once and for all Mrs. Grade should be exposed for what she really is. And more importantly for the role she has palyed in destroying the historical legacy of her great husband.
I would write about this , but in the process Chaim Grade will come across as not much better than the person she paints Singer as being...
Rememebr Grade fled Vilna leaving his wife and young baby there, Mrs. Grade 1 was a nurse, zionist and daughter of the famous Polish-Lithuanian Klepisz rabbinical a bas Horav.
Without knowing of her (Mrs. Grade the first)fate her husband took up with a teenage girl in Moscow during the war... and supposedly married her too. Well I guess writers (and especially Yiddish writer's )get a special heter for such things.
Now that teenager is passing judgement on the personna of other Yidish writers and preventing her husbands works from seeing the light of day.
Mrs. Grade's father was supposedly a surgeon doctor -officer in the army of ... Admiral Deniken during the Russian Civil War. Anyone who knows anything about that conflict knows that the esteemed admiral was a nasty anti semite responsible for the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian Jews and the upheaval of whole communities.This wa true of all the so called White Armies and Ukranian nationalists fighting the Red Army. I have yet to hear of a Jew serving in the armies of Admiral Deniken , yet as an officer. But when her father died , that was the description of him published in the Jewish Week , an officer in the White army of admiral Deniken yemach shmo.
Mrs. Grade as afra s I know also had no knowledhge of Yiddish till alte in her husband's life.
I do not know Mrs Grade from a hole in the wall, and Mr Grade's character is also besides the point in this context. As a writer, however, he was no doubt in a higher league than IBS.
For all I know whatever Shneur says may be true - but irrelevant. It does not in any way absolve or diminish the pernicious and base nature of IBS's legacy.
Also, Shneur, I would not rush to assume Mrs Grade's non-Jewish origins on the basis of her father's service in Gen. Denikin armies. While it is true that his armies were responsible for more pogroms than other White armies, it is generally recognized that this was against his policies and was a result of a lack of control over various parts of his diverse army, particularly the Cossacks. Also, as you state, Mrs Grade's father was a medical officer, which would have placed him in an environment different from that of combat units. Her maiden name appears to be Hecker, which would be highly unusual for an ethnic Russian.
Dear D.P.
I read you comments with great interest, as I am sure many other fans of this great blog do. I am just wondering where else do you write, where else do you publish?, for of course, you are a great writer.
You words and sentences, stringed together, just come out tumbling out of your pen, like a fountain from a tall geyser. May H' enable you to continue until 120.
Talking to my grandchildren,s friends, I come to realize that quite a number of them are somehow familiar with IBS,but very, very few heard of C.G., especially in the Chassidick community. In the Litivishe circles more are familiar with C.G., maybe because he was one of them.
What, do you think is the reason? do you have an uptake on that. I have a little theory, as to why this is so, but I will keep to myself, for the time being, at least.
Have a very wonderful Shabbos, and may H' bentch us all.
Uforatzto
While Darya has unilaterally passed judgemen that Grade is the better writer ( I wonder if she has read either of these authors in the original Yiddish), most Yiddish literary critics as well as literary critics in general are not in the business of saying that one writer is better than another. Few critics would say that Phillip Roth is a better writer than Bellow or Malamud or Mailer.
They are all regarded as fine writers. Each may have his own appeal and strong points.Many Orthodox jews like Grade even though his religious and theological views were more at odds with orthodoxy than Singer's(see the short novel by Singer called Der BAAL Teshuvah).
That is also the case in Yiddish literature . Men like Chaim Grade, I.B. Singer, IJ Singer, Sholom Asch, Joseph Opatoshau, Der Nister and others were all fine writers. It is not the role of a critic to say who was the best or better than the other.
As far as the consort's non jewish origins, may I add that I worked as assistant librarian at the YIVO Institute (1974-1976) under the late Vilna native ,Chief librarian Miss Dinah Abramowicz Aleho Hashalom a personal friend of Grade (she introduced me to G rade at the opening of Nachum Alpert's exhibit)) and it was Dina who first revealed to me the strange background of the consort. In addition the first translator of Grade. Curt Leviant wrote a thinly disguised short story in MIDSTREAM magazine about 10 years ago which shed , shall we say light on her background and personality.
My point in all of this is that Mrs. Grade has done much to prevent her husband;s literary legacy from being published either in Yiddish or English. In addition she has done nothing to include Grade's many friends in this legacy (she has not proposed the creation of a Grade archives or a reprint of a new edition of Grade's already published works)and frankly because of her Grade is basically a forgotten figure in the Jewish world , known to a few of us who have a strong interest in Yiddish literature or in Vilna.
Essentially Grade predicted this in a poem he published in GOLDENE KEYT prior to his death."MIr vet men nit maspid Zayn..." he lamented that no one would be maspid him in the Vilna shulhuif and that there would be no one aroud to recognize him for what he was. To his wife he was Grade (she claimed this name stemmed from the French word grenadier from Bonoparte's armies) was a universal figure who could just as well ahhave written a novel set in Colonial or Puritan new England.
Indeed there was no one to maspid reb Chaim in the Vilna shul. Alas, Alas!
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