THE two works considered here, both of which reflect Polish interest in Isaac Bashevis Singer, are of sharply contrasting value. Singer: Pejzaże pamięci (A Landscape of Memory) by Agata Tuszyńska reads very well. It is a book that eludes easy categorization because, despite appearances, it is not a standard monograph about a writer.

The most important of the many grounds for criticism of the work is probably that the author does not know the Yiddish language in which Isaac Bashevis Singer composed. It is difficult to conceive of an honest monograph about any writer without knowledge of his language of composition, and since only a part of Singer's oeuvre has been translated into English (and from English into other languages), Tuszyńska was thus unable to investigate some of his most significant writings.

As far as I understand Tuszyńska's rather unclear purpose, her goal was to reconstruct the Jewish ‘landscape’ of Poland that no longer exists, on the basis of the works of Singer. This idea is undoubtedly reasonable, and Singer himself aspired in his works to resurrect the murdered Jews of Poland—witness the following from the introduction to the immensely important cycle of stories entitled Mentshn oyf mayn veg (People on my Road):

On the occasion of the murder, Jews had various fantasies like revenging themselves upon the Germans, or saving the Jews. My fantasy was to find a means of resurrecting the murdered. In my fantasy I had an elixir that breathed life into the dead.

Unfortunately, the resurrection of the dead does not lie within the limits of human possibility. But I wanted at least by literary means to resurrect the murdered; to present to Jewish readers pictures of specific men and women with all their features, with the characteristics of individuals. That is, strictly speaking, the aim of everything I write.

I do not know if a serious attempt has been made to evaluate Singer's writings as an attempt to resurrect a murdered world. Tuszyńska's book is certainly not such an attempt.

The cycle People on my Road consists of 232 separate stories which were published in the Yiddish newspaper Forverts from January 1958 to October 1960.