Enemies, A Love Story
(Isaac Bashevis Singer)
In this wonderful novel , where East European Jews try to find a place in the New World (New York) Singer illustrates how it is possible, and perfectly acceptable to loosen the reigns of tradition, to maintain a mere echo of what was once a total way of life and to concentrate one's efforts in the pursuit of ideals rooted in materialism. Thus, we enounter a rabbi without a congregation, without the patience to study or write, who employs Herman to ghost write his contributions to Anglo-Jewish periodicals. In the great metropolis, Judaism becomes a commodity.
The paradox of daily life shows Masha, the daughter of a rich and scholarly Warsaw property owner who now works in a cafeteria, accepting cheques, counting money, selling gum and cigarettes. Masha and Herman's lovemaking, a night-long ritual involving stories from the past embellished with intervals for cigarettes, chocolate and coca-cola, becomes a modern equivalent of the ancients who would relate the miracle of the exodus from Egypt until morning.
The holocaust, which has seen the Jewish world turned upside down, is seen as an integral part of urban life. Freedom, like the city itself, is a mere illusion. The Bronx seems transient and temporary, a crumbling edifice which mirrors the psychological isolation of the main characters.
The novel works on two levels. It bears witness to the psychological traumas and isolation of East European immigrant jews and it also expresses a despondency with modern life that has been shared by all the inhabitants of the modern world, to a greater or lesser degree.
Enemies makes a valuable contribution to the literature of alienation because we all, with varying degrees of trauma, share in the experience of modernity.
Singer wrote most of his novels in Yiddish, a language which is thankfully seeing a revival.
Resumos Relacionados
- A Guest For The Night
- Altneuland - The Old New Land
- Tevye's Daughters
- The Old Country
- Betrothed
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