Stories of Isaac B. Singer

The Supernatural and Irrational
Elements in them

The stories and novels of Isaac B. Singer have long been admired by those familiar with the work of Jewish-American writers; but his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978 contributed greatly to the popularity of his work. Singer’s short stories have been justly praised for the deftness with which he creates with a few strokes. They are also remarkable for the way they preserve the old Yiddish turns of speech and specificity of ground. One of the features of his stories which has interested me is his recurrent use of the supernatural in his stories, and the seriousness which Singer accords this element. Another notable feature of his stories is the way many of his characters, especially men, yield to the irrational at the crucial moment. Singer’s own statements make it clear that this was how he meant it. Many of these stories are set in Poland under Russian rule, particularly the shtetl(the village almost wholly inhabited by Jews), while others are set in contemporary America. There is thus a considerable variety of ground – rural and urban, European and American.

Singer’s own attitude to the demons and dybbuks appearing in his stories is somewhat untypical of the average modern writer. He said, “I truly believe that there are forces and spirits in this world, about which we know very little, which influence our lives.....I find it very easy to believe in reincarnation, possession by devils, and other such things”. His upbringing in an orthodox Jewish family and his rabbinical training might lead us to expect such an attitude on his part. But he also came under the influence of the Enlightenment and ultimately became a secular writer, like his elder brother Israel Joshua Singer. He is not an orthodox Jew, but considers himself as being within the Jewish tradition. Ben Siegel avers that he is a master of the Judaic tradition. Despite his secular approach to the world, he asserts his belief in supernatural beings, though he discounts the claims of most who claim to be in touch with these occult beings.

The irrational side of man’s nature plays an important role in several of Singer’s stories. His characters, like most modern Jews, are generally rational in their conduct, but yield to unreason at the crucial juncture. The rational and the irrational are both elements of the human psyche, but the rational is largely the product of civilization, while the more primitive, basic urges of human nature go by the name of “unreason” today. The irrational is the older and the stronger of the two, and plays a major role in many of these stories.

“Gimpel the Fool,” one of the best of Singer’s stories, shows the futility of reason as a pattern for living in this world dominated by evil and demonic forces. Dubbed “fool” by the ignorant and boisterous villagers, Gimpel finds the appeal to reason futile. All the villagers play pranks on him, until he gives up the attempt to prove that he is not a fool, and adopts a stance of passive belief. He pretends to believe that his whorish wife is faithful, and that her child, born barely four months after their wedding, is his own. We notice a certain “foolish” compassion which makes him reluctant to hurt others’ feelings even when they are in the wrong, and hence pretend to believe them. One night he surprises her in bed with a young apprentice, but her clamorous protestations that he had seen nobody make him doubt the evidence of his own eyes. The disparity between truth as he knows it, and what he is asked to believe, strains his reason, and he yields to unreason. But soon Gimpel transcends reason and unreason, and becomes a “holy” fool, recognized as such by the villagers, especially after the death of his wife. His transcendence of reason is reflected in his rejecting the promptings of the Devil. As he is baking a batch of loaves, the devil prompts him to befoul them with his urine as a revenge against the villagers; Gimpel yields, but immediately repents and throws away the loaves. But such reassertion of reason and goodness in the face of such provocation is rare, and is the mark only of a saint.

The power of the irrational, urging man to rebel against social and moral inhibitions is seen in the story “The Genlleman from Cracow.” The poverty-stricken but morally righteous Jews of Frampol are taken unawares by the arrival in their midst of the rich, generous “Gentleman from Cracow.” His offer of helping them to marry off their daughters make them throw caution to the winds, and even ridicule the cautionary words of Rabbi Ozer. The worst features of these Jews reveal themselves in the ball given by the “gentleman”; they shake off all moral restraint and the community is utterly ruined. It is saved only by the goodness of the Rabbi, who takes on himself the responsibility for their transgressions. The story dramatizes vividly the duality in Singer’s vision of human nature; man’s longing for the sacred, and his proclivity to the profane. The conscious desires of the Jews of Frampol are unexceptionable; but, taken unawares, they lose their moral bearings and yield to the urge of the irrational. It is relevant to note here that the situation in this story is broadly similar to that in Mark Twain’s “The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg.” Both convey the same message: that virtue and righteousness are worth nothing unless they are tested in the fire of temptation, and emerge successful.

Nathan Jozefover, the rich, contented Jew in “The Unseen” is another victim of the urge of the irrational. In a moment of irrationality, he deserts his comfortable home and his wife Roize Temrel, and runs away with his scheming servant-maid Shifre Zirel. He repents when the maid disappears with his belongings at the first opportunity, and returns home; but Roize has married again and he cannot rejoin her. His domestic life and peace of mind are ruined. He lives the rest of his life unseen, and dies an invisible man. Singer does not condemn such characters or preach against immorality and infidelity. His concern seems to be to show how man is prone to yield to unreason in moments of stress, or even without such cause.

“The Seance” is another story which illustrates how even people skeptical of the supernatural yield to its promptings under the pressure of isolation and suppressed feelings. Dr. Kalisher, an old man living alone in New York, is drawn to Mrs. Kopitzky’s seance parlour in order to get in touch with the spirit of his mistress Nella. He is haunted by a sense of guilt at having left his mistress Nella behind in Germany and escaped to America from Hitler’s Germany. His loneliness and sense of guilt make him vulnerable to the appeal of the occult. He goes to the seance half-skeptical, half-believing, in the hope of getting, in touch with the spirit of Nella. But what happens at the seance is perhaps indicative of Singers’s view of occultists. Dr. Kalisher accidentally runs into the woman hired to impersonate Nella, and in the consequent emotional disturbance wets his pants since he has bladder trouble. Singer himself believes in spirits, but says that most of those who claim communication with the dead are charlatans. However, there is no condemnation of Mrs. Kopitsky either; Singer sympathizes with her in her loneliness and her need to be in touch with people.

“The Lecture” and “The Briefcase” project contemporary Jew’s in the grip of the irrational. The narrator of “The Lecture” a Polish Jew living in America, is thrown into a totally unexpected situation. The train taking him to Montreal, where he is to lecture, is caught in a blizzard, and he feels lonely, in the grip of vague apprehensions His years in America melt away like snow, and he is in the Poland of the bad old days: “The American dream gradually dissolves and harsh Polish reality returns”. Irrational fears grip him; he has a sense of being the plaything of demons. This state of apprehension continues even after he reaches Montreal, where he finds himself in a mess, because of the delayed arrival of the train. Things reach a climax when he finds himself alone with the corpse of a former woman-admirer of his stories. Though quite elderly himself, he is absurdly afraid of being left alone with the corpse, fearing that the spirit of the dead woman is out to take vengeance on him. But this fit passes, and there is a dawning on him of his human obligations. Sanity has returned after a fit of “madness”

A similar situation overtakes the speaker-hero of “The Briefcase.” The narrator, a New York intellectual, loses his briefcase while going to a distant town where he is to give a lecture. Without it he is nothing, for in it are his clothes, his lecture notes, his money–in short, everything that confers an identity on him. The sudden awareness of his predicament induces him to review his life so far, and perceive the disorderliness of his personal life in contrast to the orderliness of his lectures. His love life is a mess, and he has practically forgotten his Jewish God. In New York, he had constantly been nagged by the insane suspicions of his mistress Reizl, and he now remembers his infide­lities to her. In remorse, he vows to be faithful to both his God and his mistress. But his predicament brooks no delay, and he calls both his former mistress Rosalie and his present mistress, asking them to wire him money. He feels that he is the plaything of demons, and that they are out to ruin him. The tableau ending of the story shows he is right. Shortly after this, the sponsors of the lecture find his briefcase and restore it to him; and as he is resting after a successful lecture in his hotel room, both his mistresses appear, with the money he had asked for. Overwhelmed by the turn events had taken, he thinks:

I should have welcomed the turn of events but felt
sad instead. Demons had been playing with me.
I knew it wouldn’t be their last game either.

We see here that the irrational in man lurks just under the surface, and jumps out at the first opportunity. This is the demonic energy that controls people’s actions when the normal frame of things is disturbed.

Commenting on the role of the demonic in his stories, Singer said that he employs it because he believes in demons, and secondly because demons provide for him “a kind of spiritual stenography.” He added: “Demons symbolize the world for me and by that I mean human beings and human behaviour.” The demons stand for the mysterious forces that seize control of man’s mind and render him a hapless agent of forces which he does not understand.

The demons mentioned in the above story are metaphorical. But in stories like “The Lantuch” and “A Crown of Feathers” the supernatural is an integral part of the action. This seems quite natural, since the shtetlpeople of these stories believed in these spirits. Singer seems more at ease in thus enlarging the scope of the supernatural in the shtetlstories since demons and dybbuks were quite real to these people. The reader is gripped by the intensity of the author’s imagination, and his skepticism is suspended. This would not have been possible if the same stories had been set against an urban ground, in Warsaw for instance.

The supernatural plays a tangible role in “The Lantuch.” Three women living together in a village, in almost wilful isolation, are suspected of dealing with the Evil one, especially because of the absence of a man in the family. The suspicion of witchcraft receives apparent confirmation when a villager happened to notice a gnome-like being shovelling snow in front of their house. Moments afterwards, the house is reduced to ashes. This short story recreates for us in vivid detail the countless Polish shtetlsSinger must have known as a boy.

“A Crown of Feathers” is another remarkable story where the supernatural plays a very significant part. Here the young Woman Aksha, is tormented by the voices of her grandfather and grandmother whispering contrary advice at every important moment in her life. She refuses to sign the marriage contract at the last moment at the whisper of her grandmother’s voice, thus shaming the bridegroom. She had been brought up by her grand parents and loves both of them. She cannot disobey the wish of either of them, and this plays havoc with her life. She converts herself to Christianity and later reconverts herself to Judaism at the prompting of these spirits. As a consequence her life is one of ­intense suffering inflicted mostly by herself. She tries to expiate her errors by her maniacal suffering, depriving herself and her husband of any joy. When finally she is about to die, she hears the voice of her grandfather calling to her and comforting her. During the time of her confusion as to what to believe, she is convinced that “It was not God holding domination but Satan.” When she asks for a sign to confirm that she hears her grandmother’s authentic voice, she is told to look under the pillow and find a crown of feathers with a cross at the top. But soon after, she hears her grandfather’s voice, which also directs her to look under the pillow. This time she finds a crown of feathers, but with the initials of God’s name on it.

The spirits are real enough for Aksha. Singer himself has declared his faith in them. But he does not consider them as dark forces or instruments of the devil. They “represent that belief in another world which Singer grew up with, but which no longer necessarily represents God’s world.” They can be taken as symbolic representations of the dark or submerged and in­scrutable portions of human nature in which unreason dominates. And Singer does not condemn or reprove his Jews for yielding to them or acting on their prompting. The use of this element of the rural Poland of his childhood in Singer’s work lends concrete­ness to his portrayal of the shtetl. In Singer’s work, “the supernatural is not simply another world, another reality, but primarily an extension of the problematic morality of this world”.

Singer’s use of the supernatural and the irrational allows him to dramatize certain darker aspects of the human character with a compression that is otherwise impossible. His pervasive concern with the element of the irrational in the life of modern man has made his stories, even those set in the shtetl, of absorbing and vital interest to the modern reader.