The Shadows of Berlin: Dovid Bergelson's Berlin Stories – Historical Fiction for Book Clubs & Literature Enthusiasts
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Product Description
Shadows of Berlin is, in part, a bleak chronicle of life in Europe growing ever more hostile at the edge of World War II, part mythic parable. Bergelson’s stories—passionate, honest, dark and often hilarious—hint at the possibility of redemption even as they suggest a horror just around the corner."David Bergelson’s Berlin stories reveal a moment of incredible possibility in Jewish culture—a time when some of the greatest Yiddish writers of the day saw the German capital as a beacon for progressive, modernist creative artists. In the course of one brief sentence, Bergelson masterfully descends from the teeming Berliner streets into the depths of his characters’ souls. His prose sparkles with stylistic virtuosity, savage humor, and creates a seamless fusion of Western and Eastern European modernisms." – Robert Adler Peckerar, Director of Education, National Yiddish Book Center"Despair peoples Bergelson's Berlin. His stories describe a metropolis in the aftermath of World War I. These are stories of Jewish refugees lurking in shadows, who seek healing and redemption from the awful massacres of the Jewish communities of the Ukraine. Isolated, alienated, prey to sexual predators, and victimized by scams, these refugees plot revenge against the pogromists with whom they jostle elbows in seedy rooming houses and packed trolleys. Bergelson's characters are figures who have lost their centers, ghosts inhabiting boarding houses, seeking but failing to find meaning in their lives amid petty encounters they imagine as world-shaking events. Against the grey world of his realistic description, the narrators of his stories suggest through their wit other human possibilities closed off to his characters." —Murray Baumgarten, Director of Jewish Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz"Bergelson's genius has been a well-kept secret for far too long. But now the secret is out. These stories are dazzling and devastating, their power slowly overtaking you as you become aware, in page after page of carefully crafted and shockingly honest prose, of the astounding presence of irrational evil. Expect to be stunned." —Dara Horn, author of In the ImageDovid Bergelson (1884-1952) is considered to be one of the best Soviet Yiddish writers of the twentieth century. He was executed in 1952 as part of Stalin’s purge of Soviet Yiddish culture.Joachim Neugroschel is the winner of three PEN Translation Awards and the French-American Translation Prize. His translations include works by Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann.
Customer Reviews
The Irish idiom "idir dha thine" approximates the English "of two minds" but literally means "between two fires." This is exactly the stance from which Dovid Bergelson's little collection of short stories emerges. Set in Berlin in the aftermath of WWI, the Eastern pogroms lie in the recent past, the horrors of the Shoah and Stalin's purge loom on the horizon. Bergelson experienced the former and perished in the latter.From a shtetl in Ukraine to Weimar Berlin: perhaps it is no surprise that all these stories are marked by a certain binary quality. It may be a Job-like above-and-below theodicy: is the dispersion of the Jews the penalty for one pious old man's dismissal of a cold wife? It may be the bitterly ironic pairing of a Ukrainian pogromist with the jealous dog who murdered an infant foundling. It may be the perceived duplicity of the three sisters who run an unusual boarding house. It may be the questions of reality and appearance, act and motivation, raised by a freakshow fast undertaken in a restaurant. It may be the mirrorlike reaction of two sisters to the same handsome man. But always,there is a clear juxtaposition of two possibilities, two realities, two forces. Is this the last gasp of shtetl faith in the godless city? The culture shock of a refugee?The stories are stronger in character than in setting or plot. There is no real feel for Berlin here, as there is, for example, in Doeblin's contemporary Berlin Alexanderplatz. Central European literature before WWII is often so claustrophobic and redolent of steamy kitchens and overfurnished parlors but there is little in these stories to touch or taste or smell. We are likewise far from I.B.Singer's mystical world, or Sholem Alechem's gently satiric vision.The translation by Joachim Neugroschel is fluent and does not impose a "tone" much less an "accent" on the work. References to specifically Jewish culture are, in fact, few. Indeed, the narratives were so straightforward that I wished I had access to the original, just to hear what Bergelson's own voice and rhythm might have been--Galitzianer or Germanized?I confess that I often choose books with an eye to time-travel or tourism and Weimar Germany is one of my favorite destinations. This expectation Bergelson failed to meet for me, but the characterizations and juxtapositions of these short stories are fine psychological studies in the best modern European tradition.
