From the Jewish Provinces: Selected Stories

140 Pages·2022·3.267 MB·English

by  Fradl Shtok, Allison Schachter, Jordan D. Finkin

FROM THE
JEW ISH
PROV I NCES

F RO M T H E
J E W I S H
P ROV I N C E S
SELECTED STORIES
FR ADL SHTOK
TRANSLATED FROM THE YIDDISH BY
JORDAN D. FINKIN AND ALLISON SCHACHTER
northwestern university press
evanston, illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2022 by Northwestern University. Published 2022 by Northwestern
University Press. All rights reserved.
“The Fur Salesman” was first published in Yiddish in the Forward on November 19, 1942;
all other stories are selected from Fradl Shtok’s 1919 Gezamelte Ertsehlungen (Collected
stories).
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Stock, Fradel, 1890– 1990, author. | Finkin, Jordan D., 1976– translator. |
Schachter, Allison, 1974– translator.
Title: From the Jewish provinces : selected stories / Fradl Shtok ; translated from the
Yiddish by Jordan D. Finkin and Allison Schachter.
Description: Evanston : Northwestern University Press, 2021. | Translated from
Yiddish into English.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021031323 | ISBN 9780810144392 (paperback) | ISBN
9780810144408 (cloth) | ISBN 9780810144415 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Stock, Fradel, 1890– 1990— Translations into English. | Women—
Austria— Fiction. | Women— New York (State)— New York— Fiction. | LCGFT:
Short stories.
Classification: LCC PJ5129.S78 F7613 2021 | DDC 839.133— dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031323
To Chana Kronfeld
That
is poetry. Touch it so lightly
that you don’t leave a fingerprint.
— Abraham Sutzkever
(translated by Chana Bloch)

contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Sources xxvii
Translators’ Note xxxi
European Stories
The First Train 3
The Daredevil 8
In the Village 12
By the Mill 15
A Glass 19
The Veil 23
Hinde Gitel’s Daughter- in- Law 27
The Archbishop 31
Friedrich Schiller 38
Another Bride 42
Viburnum 46
Almonds 50
The Pear Tree 54
Shorn Hair 58
Wine 61
White Furs 65
Cholera 69
A Spa 73
American Stories
A Cut 79
The First Patient 82
A Dance 86
A Speech 91
Sisters 95
The Final Story
A Fur Salesman 101
acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Yiddish Book Center for the Translation Fellowship
that allowed us to workshop several of these stories alongside talented
translators and mentors, including Sebastian Schulman, Katherine Sil-
ver, and Karen Emmerich. Our deep gratitude goes to Dick Cluster for his
many close reads and exceptionally helpful suggestions. We would also
like to thank Nancy Reisman, Wendy Zierler, and Ben Tran for their astute
comments.
We would like to acknowledge the Forward, where the story “A Fur Mer-
chant” first appeared in Yiddish (November 19, 1942), and Your Impossible
Voice, no. 19 (2019) and Pakn Treger (Summer 2020), where our transla-
tions of “A Cut” and “The First Patient” were first published, respectively.
ix