Shtetl Codes: Fantasy in the Fiction of Asch, Schulz, and I. B. Singer

Summary

THE east European shtetl has entered the world's literature as a symbolic space associated with a specific culture and with specific ideas, traditions, customs, characteristic heroes, and topography. It has assumed the status of a myth rooted in writers’ experiences and memories. As David Roskies notes, ‘The shtetl … is arguably the greatest single invention of Yiddish literature. What the Western is to American popular culture, the shtetl novella is to the Jewish imagination.’ As an archetypal literary image, the shtetl theme often encompasses the sphere of fantasy and fairy tale, reshaping the historical image of this place and its people in accordance with the writer's main artistic aims. This is precisely the case in the works of Sholem Asch, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Bruno Schulz: the element of the fantastic assumes a great variety of forms and fulfils diverse functions.

The role of fantasy and fairy tale in literature is at least twofold: it can serve to paraphrase reality, revealing those parts of it that are hidden beyond the reach of reason; alternatively, it can fulfil the magical function of modifying the real world and enriching it with the qualities the author seeks. Whatever the case may be, fantastic elements modifying the image of the shtetl and its community remove the shtetl motif from a mere sociological or historical context and redirect the reader's attention to the themes and ideas it symbolizes.

For Asch and Schulz, the magical function of the fantastic in the shtetl image is the most important, though it has different sources and is demonstrated in different ways. Singer, on the other hand, uses fairy tale and fantasy to highlight certain truths about man's nature and to supplement the realistic sphere of existence presented in his works. The heroes and background of the shtetl merely place those ideas in a specific ethnic context and lend credence to the stories in accordance with Singer's dictum, ‘The more a writer is rooted in his environment, the more he is understood by all people.’ The explicit implementation of fantasy in the artistic works of each of the three writers provokes some questions: What messages are conveyed by means of fantasy in each case?