Swinging Between

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), a Jewish American writer, 1978 Nobel Prize winner for literature By means of a dying language - Yiddish, Singer represents a vanished Jewish world vividly from the seventeenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. He records how the Jews ponder over the issues concerning religion, ethics and life in the given historical period.Universally regarded as one of the greatest Jewish American writers, Singer gains popular attention throughout the world for his sensitive Jewishness. The common ground of Singer's works is evident in the historical sense that permeates through Singer's works of literature. Firstly, when it comes to the setting, he has an obvious inclination to set the Polish shtetl, namely Jewish village community as the fictional background in view of its isolation, fascination and reminiscence. The remote setting can not only arouse deep feelings about the poverty, superstition and degradation in the old days, but also can bring certain profound meditation on the past history to illuminate the future way for the Jewish inheritors. Secondly, the characters that frequent Singer's creation are the archetypes of the fantastic world more than that of the mundane one. These rabbis, charlatans, whores, sorehead intellectuals, simpletons, rationalists, fatalists and atheists are obsessed, marginal, mysterious and even unworldly. All these attributes not only play decisive roles in the richness and verisimilitude of the panoramic Polish-Jewish street life, but also cater for the readers'nostalgia for the fading Judaic tradition and culture as well as their aspirations for novelty and excitement.With the aid of the remoteness embodied in the setting and characters, Singer exemplifies and emphasizes his Jewish national complex fruitfully which has much bearing on his creative thought, artistic style and the implication of his works. The Jews have experienced the bitter living conditions since they are deprived of the homeland for complicated political, religious and historical reasons in the past four centuries. History provides strong evidence to demonstrate the Jews' overwhelming senses of uncertainty stemming from the Jewish homeless and rootless past. It is accountable for their transformative processes from weakening, changing to reestablishing the Jewish identities. After immigrating into America, most Jews such as Singer are too deeply involved in the awkward self-identity to withdraw-both being a Jewish and an American, whereas neither being a thorough Jewish nor a true American. The puzzles carved on their faces express the severe conflicts between two heterogeneous cultures and the accompanying senses of margin, loneliness and exclusion. Traditional values have totally broken into pieces while the new one has not yet come up. How to survive and even to maintain the individuality constitutes the everlasting perplexity that haunts Jews. The particular national and personal experiences make the Jews extremely crave for acceptance and recognition. Only the fulfillment of this emotion could be an appropriate principle to guide them to acquire the sense of belongingness, reestablish the value of existence, and dissolve the sense of loss to a certain extent.Conforming to this necessity, Singer writes his every piece in Yiddish, a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, to remind the secular world of his Jewish identity frequently and safeguard the Judaic tradition in his own way. In addition, he has been consistently absorbed in contemplating the psychological outlets for the Jewish exiles and the "spiritual orphans" who suffer from the mental scourges continuously. Accordingly, plenty of Jewish writers title Singer as "Spiritual Father" to express their affirmation and appreciation to his never-ending efforts to examine, interrogate and excoriate the souls of human beings ruthlessly. His novels of various material and themes unanimously record the tentative exploration, comparison and verification among kinds of doctrines and ideas as well as the frustration, grievance and distress after the failure of his experiments. Although Singer never finds out or points out a definite outlet for his Jewish protagonists, the inclination to cling tenaciously to the Jewish moral value is even stereotyped in his fiction, which is filled with penitents who, seduced temporarily by worldly lures and aspirations, return to the faith of their fathers, which demonstrates not only the recurrent theme from exile to redemption in Singer's novels but also his sentiment attachment to the Judaic tradition.Chapter 1 begins by giving a general idea about I. B. Singer, including biography, achievement in literature and comments.Chapter 2 undertakes a comprehensive and detailed discussion on the duality in Singer's literary works. It consists of five parts. In"Duality in plot", archetype mode from exile to redemption and the process of transition from one polar to another are shown to be the themes in most stories, which will be clarified in four subparts--starting, developing, ending and a conclusion."Duality in vision"sets forth a novel viewpoint: Truth lies in its antithesis. This viewpoint could be traced back to a great philosopher in the seventeenth century—Spinoza, who undoubtedly exerts a considerable influence on Singer and his work. Then we will check duality in vision on human and explore its meaning.When it comes to"the duality in image", two renowned images are elucidated: Yasha in"The Magician from Lublin", though generally considered a Don Juan, actually is a hero with an extraordinary mind and talent; Gimpel the Fool, Singer's masterpiece which delineates a wise fool with extolled virtue.While amorphous and transformative meaning of text often resists grasp, in order to achieve a precision and an integration of all the seemingly contradictions in text, Singer employs a genre, namely, grotesque, in his writing which inducts us to a demonic dimension. With explicit definition and an analysis of it, we'll extract implication from the genre of grotesque and appreciate this master of literature for his ingenuity in narrative art.The last section of chapter two focuses on languages employed in creation—one is Yiddish, which bears all the essence of Jewish culture but is dying out; the other is English, which wins Singer repute all over the world by its wide readership. The reason why Singer persists in writing in Yiddish and actively participating in the translation work is to be inquired and acquired.Investigation into five respects of duality in Singer's work provokes an urge for the underlying causes-- Singer's complex of anxiety and torment for his nation in Chapter 3. All literature is ideological reflection of the writer, who exists spatial-temporally, under a specific text of religion, society, nation, personal experience and other factors of complexity, upon a full understanding of which, almost everything could be explained or justified. The reasoning process connects text to the outside world which gave birth to the text. Again, duality and swinging state appears in every facet—Should belief or disbelief be held in God? Which is better to keep identity of Jew, tradition or modernization? Will Jewish enlightenment bring hope to the nation as well as to the peace of soul? So on and so forth. These vital questions concerning Jewish future, together with his riddling experience interact with each other, germinate, form and develop the complex of suffering disturbance for the Jewry, which is incarnated in Singer's works, molding his"distinguishness".In the last part, a conclusion is drawn and the point is made. The phenomena of"Duality and Swinging between"in text stem from the larger history-cultural context and just as a philosopher, A. Bartlett Giamatti put it"Truth is perhaps . . . a dynamic compound of opposites, savage contraries for a moment conjoined", Singer's works invite us to meditate on the state of human beings as a whole: we may derive from Singer a new insight and penetrating judgment on Jews as well as universal human conditions; also we are conveyed with new modes of thinking and therefore producing novel ideas towards the outside world in which we live and the inside world which we should keep it in harmony.To summarize, Singer, a brave and faithful warrior, explores and seeks answer for his nation. Impelled by his complex of suffering disturbance for the Jewry, he tries every possible way and almost always ends in failure. Never giving up, singer continues his attempts one way after another which is often poles apart. Each time he fails, he would harvest some new chance and draw strength and courage towards the triumph which provides motivity for his never-ending trials. Therefore, every answer revealed in Singer's text swings between dualities, which mirrors Singer's faith and determination to redeem his nation in tribulations.