SOURCE: "Passivity and Narration: The Spell of Bashevis Singer," translated by Uriel Miron, in Judaism, Vol. 41, No. 1, Winter, 1992, pp. 6-17.

In the following essay, Miron contends that Singer's fiction is not typical of contemporary Yiddish literature, citing the fatalistic passivity and underlying nihilism in his work as the major point of divergence. According to Miron, Singer's characters portray a "human existence that runs from birth without will to a death without choice."

Isaac Bashevis Singer, last of the great Yiddish story-tellers, passed away at a ripe old age, crowned with international success and renown. His death seems to carry a note of half-reconciled farewell to a rich and vital literary tradition that won neither the appreciation nor the longevity that it deserved.

The beginnings of this tradition appeared about a hundred and thirty years ago in the form of the juvenile works in Yiddish of Mendele Moykher-Sforim and...