Four Plays, by S. An-sky. Bilingual edition, translated by Fernando Peñalosa While The Dybbuk is the best known and most beloved of An-sky's works, he wrote a number of other plays of interest and value in the early 20th Century that have been virtually forgotten. Four of them, Day and Night, Father and Son, In a Conspiratorial Apartment, and The Grandfather, were included in his Collected Works, and are presented here for the modern reader with Yiddish and English on facing pages. Only Father and Son has been translated into English before, and it was of a different version. These texts feature modern Yiddish spelling and very readable typography and format, as do the translations. Day and Night is a Hasidic tragedy, reminiscent of The Dybbuk in a number of ways, but more violent in its depiction of the struggle between good and evil. The play goes back and forth between reality and fantasy and the reader is not always sure of what is happening. But the action moves along very fast; it's a real page turner. The other three plays deal with the lives of revolutionaries in the tumultuous period preceding the 1905 Russian Revolution. They are not plays about demonstrations, marches, and strikes, but rather depicts how the revolutionaries' activities impact the lives of their families as they struggle against the intrusion of the Tsarist authorities. They are labelled "comedies" by the author, but in the dictionary meaning of light, often satirical pieces that may have a happy ending. They are not at all funny, although there are some humorous episodes. viii, 327 pp., introduction, notes.
About the Author: Fernando Penalosa, born in 1925 in Berkeley, California, is Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, California State University, Long Beach. He has carried out research in California, Hawaii, Mexico, Guatemala, Israel, and Macedonia, and has written and published books in a number of fields. He established Yax Te' Press and the Yax Te' Foundation for the publication of books by and about the contemporary Maya of Guatemala, and Quaking Aspen Books for books about the natural and cultural history of Yosemite National Park and the Island of Kauai. His present imprint, Tsiterboym Books deals with Yiddish theatre. Tsiterboym, of course, is what the Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) is called in Yiddish. He is the author of The Dybbuk: Text, Subtext, and Context (2012) and the translator of Parodies of An-sky's "The Dybbuk." (2012). A convert to Judaism in 1965, he is self-taught in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Jewish studies. He has published translations from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Akatek Mayan, and from and to Spanish. A more remote connection to Judaism is documented in the frequent appearance of the surname Penalosa in the archives of the Spanish Inquisition. His family is descended from a Converso who came to Mexico with Hernan Cortes and the other Spanish invaders in 1520.