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Feb. 9th, 2018 12:10 pmSeveral years ago, I read the first volume of Joann Sfar's French comic Klezmer, a Western-influenced wild ride about ANGRY JEWISH MUSICIANS in TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY POLAND, and fell completely in love.
Then I spent the next few years pining, because no other volumes were ever translated into English, and there was SO MUCH MORE KLEZMER and all of it tragically inaccessible to me with my definitely-not-sufficiently-fluent knowledge of French.
...and then last year on my birthday![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti did approximately the most romantic thing anyone will ever do for me and gave me a translation of the ENTIRE SECOND VOLUME. This is some next-level gift-giving and I will never even come close to catching up, but I'm swear I'm not writing this post just to brag, but also because I want to talk some more about Klezmer and why I love it and why you should read the first volume and then politely request ep_birdsall's translation for volume 2 and then go lobby publishers to translate volumes 3-5.
In the first volume Klezmer, the band of musicians each suffer their personal tragedies or make their personal escapes, and then gradually meet up. The second volume of Klezmer takes place all in one night, a giant Jewish house party: everyone sings, dances, gets drunk, tells stories.
Here's a thing that happens in Klezmer, volume 2: Tshokola, the Romani guitar player and storyteller whose family was murdered by Cossacks, tells a story to his Jewish audience in which a Romani rescues a bunch of Jews from murderous Cossacks by inviting the Cossacks to instead kill the KING of the Jews. When the Cossacks are like "YEAH LET'S DO IT!", the Romani hero pulls out a giant wooden statue of Jesus who completely trounces all the Cossacks. ("At boxing," Tshokola explains, "nobody beats Christ! Not just because he's the strongest but because he has perfect English technique!")
His Jewish audience thinks this is hilarious, and so do I, but the household's Cossack butler is offended, because, you know, not ALL Cossacks; he wants Tshokola to tell him a story in which a Cossack is the hero. Eventually, Tshokola accedes to this request. In the story Tshokola tells, a Cossack hero named Raki saves a village from a wolf, because the wolf feels bad about killing people, and the Cossack never does -- so the wolf and the Cossack travel together, and the Cossack kills people, and the wolf eats them. By the end of the story, the situation's reversed. Raki's family has been killed by his own companions; all Raki has left is his vow not to kill anymore, which he keeps. The wolf has no such qualms, and gets his revenge for him.
The Cossack listening to the story is so moved that he can't stop crying. "You can call me Raki," he tells Tshokola, who answers, "you look like the Cossack and the wolf at once."
The world of Klezmer is uncompromisingly our world, as Jewish people have known it to be throughout history -- cruel, violent, frequently incomprehensible -- but stories mean something and music means something and it's always worth it to take time to dance. UGH it's so good, why aren't all the volumes available in English for my personal convenience immediately!
Then I spent the next few years pining, because no other volumes were ever translated into English, and there was SO MUCH MORE KLEZMER and all of it tragically inaccessible to me with my definitely-not-sufficiently-fluent knowledge of French.
...and then last year on my birthday
genarti did approximately the most romantic thing anyone will ever do for me and gave me a translation of the ENTIRE SECOND VOLUME. This is some next-level gift-giving and I will never even come close to catching up, but I'm swear I'm not writing this post just to brag, but also because I want to talk some more about Klezmer and why I love it and why you should read the first volume and then politely request ep_birdsall's translation for volume 2 and then go lobby publishers to translate volumes 3-5. In the first volume Klezmer, the band of musicians each suffer their personal tragedies or make their personal escapes, and then gradually meet up. The second volume of Klezmer takes place all in one night, a giant Jewish house party: everyone sings, dances, gets drunk, tells stories.
Here's a thing that happens in Klezmer, volume 2: Tshokola, the Romani guitar player and storyteller whose family was murdered by Cossacks, tells a story to his Jewish audience in which a Romani rescues a bunch of Jews from murderous Cossacks by inviting the Cossacks to instead kill the KING of the Jews. When the Cossacks are like "YEAH LET'S DO IT!", the Romani hero pulls out a giant wooden statue of Jesus who completely trounces all the Cossacks. ("At boxing," Tshokola explains, "nobody beats Christ! Not just because he's the strongest but because he has perfect English technique!")
His Jewish audience thinks this is hilarious, and so do I, but the household's Cossack butler is offended, because, you know, not ALL Cossacks; he wants Tshokola to tell him a story in which a Cossack is the hero. Eventually, Tshokola accedes to this request. In the story Tshokola tells, a Cossack hero named Raki saves a village from a wolf, because the wolf feels bad about killing people, and the Cossack never does -- so the wolf and the Cossack travel together, and the Cossack kills people, and the wolf eats them. By the end of the story, the situation's reversed. Raki's family has been killed by his own companions; all Raki has left is his vow not to kill anymore, which he keeps. The wolf has no such qualms, and gets his revenge for him.
The Cossack listening to the story is so moved that he can't stop crying. "You can call me Raki," he tells Tshokola, who answers, "you look like the Cossack and the wolf at once."
The world of Klezmer is uncompromisingly our world, as Jewish people have known it to be throughout history -- cruel, violent, frequently incomprehensible -- but stories mean something and music means something and it's always worth it to take time to dance. UGH it's so good, why aren't all the volumes available in English for my personal convenience immediately!
