Description
I bring to the attention of the Russian-speaking reader a translation of a Jewish fairy tale, the original of which was written in Aramaic. The history of this translation is as follows. Once, at one of the seminars on the literature of the East, the conversation turned to an oriental tale. Connoisseurs of Indian, Persian and Arabic literature joined the conversation, expressed interesting opinions about the peculiarities of the tale as a poetic genre, mentioned the names of literary monuments, names of authors, dates, geographical names. Being a specialist in the field of Hebrew literature, I did not have the opportunity to participate in the discussion, and I complained that the Hebrew tradition did not know any analogues of an oriental fairy tale. Sitting next to me, Vladimir Lvovich Katz, now deceased, an educated philologist, whose erudition was enough to conduct any professional conversation in the field of oriental literature, in response smiled at my complaints.
