Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

1

This fragment, which was given the tongue-twisting Hebrew name of Vekhalaklakoys, after the verse in Psalms 35:6, Yehi darkom khoyshekh vekhalaklakoys, “Let their path be dark and slippery,” was written in 1914, the same year as “Lekh-Lekho,” but not published until two years later. Though it seems to have been begun as a genuine sequel to “Lekh-Lekho,” that is, as a ninth episode of Tevye, it is less than a third of the average length of the other stories, repeats much of the material in Chapter 8 without adding anything essentially new, and has a rather tired quality that contrasts with the sparkle of the rest of the book. Still, one cannot call it unfinished; on the contrary, it contains precisely the “finale” that Chapter 8 lacks. In the absence of explanatory biographical material, of which there appears to be none, one can only speculate what this fragment represents. My own guess is as follows: while Sholem Aleichem indeed intended to write a full-length sequel to “Lekh-Lekho” and began it immediately after finishing the latter, he soon, whether because of failing health or because he realized that the book had reached its natural conclusion and had nowhere else to go, gave it up — though not before hastening to write a proper end for it, his main concern being that Tevye should have one. Unhappy with the results, however, he refrained from publishing this, possibly hoping to revise and expand it; yet ultimately, seeing this was not to be, he consented to its publication in the days before his death. Subsequently, in all the Yiddish editions of Tevye printed after Sholem Aleichem’s death, the Vekhalaklakoys fragment has appeared as its last chapter.

As the translator of Tevye, I was in a dilemma. On the one hand, Vekhalaklakoys was published by Sholem Aleichem himself in his lifetime, and without it Tevye has no real end; yet on the other hand, apart from its last page, not only does it add nothing to the remainder of the work, it qualitatively detracts from it. What was one to do? In the end I decided to follow the example of Frances Butwin’s 1948 English translation of Tevye and to omit most of the fragment some six pages of Yiddish text in all, retaining only the final coda, which I spliced on to the end of “Lekh-Lekho,” adding several lines of my own to make the transition smoother. Though taking such a liberty in translating a classic of world literature may seem presumptuous to some readers, I would like to think that Sholem Aleichem might have welcomed it. Besides always being open to criticism of his work, frequently revising it as a result, he encouraged his Russian and Hebrew translators, whom he personally helped and advised, to be extremely free in their renditions. Anyone comparing his Yiddish with the Hebrew translations by his son-in-law Y. D. Berkovits, for example, and especially with Berkovits’ translation of Tevye, in which Sholem Aleichem was an active collaborator, will be struck by the enormous differences between them. (Berkovits himself omitted the Vekhalaklahoys fragment entirely in his complete Hebrew edition of the novel, which he ended with “Lekh-Lekho,” but this was apparently his own decision, made after Sholem Aleichem’s death.) There will no doubt come a time for variorum editions of Tevye in which the full text of Vekhalaklakoys can appear alongside whatever ending the translator cares to give the book.

Apart from this fragment, I have departed (as did Berkovits) from the standard Yiddish text of Tevye in one other place. When the first episode of the book, “Tevye Strikes It Rich,” was published in 1894, it was accompanied by a brief preface, purporting to be a letter written by Tevye to Sholem Aleichem, the literary purpose of which was to introduce Tevye to the reader. Though this preface was later republished as part of the novel as a whole, it was clearly written for “Tevye Strikes It Rich” alone, makes no reference to any of the stories that come after it, and cannot possibly be construed as applying to them. I have therefore omitted it.

2

Tevye’s Hebrew is transliterated here, as it is throughout, according to the Ashkenazic pronunciation of Eastern Europe, which is quite different from the way Hebrew is pronounced in Israel and by most Jews today.