Isaac B. Singer

One of the greatest pleasures of language is reading fiction. Just yesterday, I was reminded again of just how important great writing is to me. I read a short -- very short, in fact -- story by Isaac B. Singer called "The Seance". Besides the delight of the story itself, which concerned the devious efforts of a widow to romantically entrap an impoverished professor, I marvelled at the sheer exuberance, the confidence, of Singer's writing. He was a genius, of course, but of a special type. He was the storyteller. He knew, instinctively, that he had the special gift of telling stories well, and that the public cannot resist this. Above all, he had the voice of the great storyteller. Whether it's Hemingway. Poe, Henry James, Conrad -- any of the great ones -- the writer's voice always seems to command the reader: "Stay! Until the moment the good Lord takes you away, you belong to me!"

What is most fascinating about Singer is that he wrote in Yiddish, a dying language at that time (not any more). But since he was fluent in English, he supervised the translations closely. Critics who know both languages have noted that the English translations are not literal, but slanted to the taste of his American readers. It almost becomes a retelling of the story.

I'd like to hear from people who have read Singer in Yiddish. Are the English translations very different?