ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the Sholem Aleichem's epistolary novel Maryenbad from a variety of different perspectives. It explores the linguistic stylization, which Sholem Aleichem employs as a pragmatic operator in the aim of literary categorization, cannot survive translation from Yiddish, since translation, irrespective of whether it is source- or target-oriented, will inevitably result in the loss of multilinguality. The characters in Maryenbad attempt to assimilate to the world of the Western bourgeoisie in dress and language, but even in each other's eyes, they do not fully succeed in masking their perceived uncouth origins. Maryenbad differs from Sholem Aleichem's most famous experiment with epistolary fiction, Menakhem-Mendl, in that the persona of the author does not himself appear as a character in the text. The source-oriented translations of Maryenbad sacrifice intelligibility and succeed only partially in impressing upon the reader that Yiddish multilinguality was an everyday phenomenon rather than a strange, unintegrated linguistic conglomerate.
