H. Leivick

H. Leivick around 1940

H. Leivick ( Yiddish ה. לייוויק) is the pseudonym of Leivick Halpern (born December 25, 1888 in Igumen in the Russian Empire , † December 23, 1962 in New York ), a Yiddish-speaking poet of modern times . He belonged to the Di Yunge group of poets . He chose his pseudonym to avoid confusion with Moyshe-Leyb Halpern , who was also a member of the Di Yunge group .

The most famous work by H. Leivick is Der Golem, a dramatic poem in eight scenes from 1921.

biography

Childhood and Adolescence in Tsarist Russia

H. Leivick was born in December 1888 in Igumen (today Tscherwen), a small town in Belarus , as the oldest of nine children. The father, a " Kohen and a raging man", came from a Minsk rabbi family. He worked as a low-level teacher of Jewish education: he taught maids to write letters in Yiddish.

From the age of five, H. Leivick received a traditional Jewish education in the cheder . At the age of ten he was sent to the Yeshiveh in the next larger city, where he spent several years studying the Talmud from early in the morning until late at night, where Yeshiveh slept, and where he was invited to eat in various private Jewish households. He was often hungry and sick and suffered from ulcers on his legs, which he attributed to hunger, as he later vividly described in his drama poem "The chains of the Messiah". However, studying in the Yeshiva also gave him a good level of secular education, as the Rosh the Yeshiva, an enlightened man, had Hebrew grammar taught alongside traditional Talmudic studies and encouraged reading secular books in Hebrew and in Hebrew translation.

During the Russian Revolution of 1905 , H. Leivick attended illegal gatherings and joined the Bund , an underground Jewish social democratic party. The federal government promoted Yiddish as the national language of the masses, against the "clerical language" Hebrew. Leivick, although Kohen, stopped going to the synagogue and switched from Hebrew to Yiddish in his poems.

Witim, place of exile of H. Leivick

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In 1906, Leivick was arrested by the Tsarist police. He refused to accept the services of a famous Russian defense attorney and stated at his trial: "I will not defend myself. I have done everything I have done with full awareness. I am a member of the Jewish revolutionary party, the Bund and I will do everything in my power to overthrow the tsarist autocracy and its bloody henchmen. "

He was sentenced to four years of forced labor and a lifelong banishment in Siberia. During his imprisonment in Minsk he wrote his first dramatic poem: "The chains of the Messiah". In March 1912, after serving his term in prison, he began the deportation trip to Siberia, a march from prison to prison that lasted four months. Finally he got aboard a prison ship, after weeks of voyage up the river Lena , to the place of his exile, the village of Witim .

With the help of an organization of revolutionaries living in American exile, which sent the young poet money, H. Leivick escaped from the Siberian exile. He traveled in a horse-drawn sleigh for a few months to the next train station and finally, after escaping to Germany via European Russia, sailed to America in the summer of 1913.

Exile in America

In America, H. Leivick first lived in Philadelphia, where he worked in a textile company and published his first poems in a Yiddish daily newspaper. A little later he moved to New York, where he joined the Di Yunge group of poets , an avant-garde association of young Yiddish-speaking authors who published their work in joint anthologies .

Like the other members of the Di Yunge group , H. Leivick published his poems and dramatic poems in the communist daily Frayhayt and the monthly Der Hamer in the 1920s . He visited the Soviet Union and his Belarusian homeland, and a book of his poems was published in Moscow, but received criticism for the "pessimism" it contained. In 1929, when the communists saw the pogroms against the Jews in Palestine as an expression of the Arab revolution, Leivick, like other Jewish authors, broke with the communist press. In statements of that time, H. Leivick expressed the deep concern of Jewish intellectuals for the preservation of ethical values ​​in the face of the deified revolution.

Like other writers of his generation, H. Leivick was active as an editor and journalist. From 1932 to 1934 he was co-editor of the magazine Yiddisch . Between 1936 and 1952 he edited together with Joseph Opatoshu eight large anthologies, the Zamlbikher , compilations of the best Yiddish writers of the time. From 1936 until his death he was a regular author of poems and articles in the Yiddish-language New York daily Der Tog .

In 1936 Leivick represented the Yiddish PEN Club at the international PEN congress in Buenos Aires. In his address he said: "The main problem of our literature in the twentieth century is: How to find a synthesis between the national and the universal? ... Jews and the world - this is the central drama of our life and our literature". In 1937, H. Leivick took part in the World Congress for Yiddish Culture in Paris, where he was one of the founders of the YKUF (Yiddisher Kultur Farband), an influential association of writers and cultural workers from all over the world based on the Popular Front model. In 1939, after the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Leyvik broke ties with the left and left the YKUF. In 1958 Leivick received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew Union College and in 1961 a Medal of Honor from the National Jewish Welfare Board . He died in 1962.

Literary work

Ignaty Nivinsky: Amulut (costume design for The Golem at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater) (1925)

H. Leivick became one of the most prominent poets in the world of Yiddish literature in exile in America. Sublimated suffering, messianic zeal, a mystical sound, a naive humanism, neo-romantic musicality and harmonious lines, shaped by Russian symbolism , characterize his poems. He transformed his father's humiliations and harshness into the apotheosis of a father figure. He translated his childhood ailments, combined with the agony of his prison years, into the language of traditional Jewish mythology. Job , Isaac's bond , the golem of Prague , the messiah in chains - these are the objects of his visions, especially in his dramatic poetry. For his readers, the stations of his biography became part of a symbolic person of suffering. In his verses there are echoes of Dostoevsky, they speak of messianic longing, frustrated revolutionary dreams and sensitive individual sensibilities in a world full of hardship. Exile and revolution, the experience of an entire generation revolting against the oppression and narrowness of Orthodox Judaism, found their lyrical equivalent in the poet's neo-romantic language in "Goles un Geule" (Galuth and Geulah), exile and redemption.

Between 1917 and 1920 Leivick wrote four apocalyptic , visionary poems that reflected the terrible waves of pogroms in Eastern Europe. One of them, "The Wolf", was rediscovered during the Shoah as a symbolic premonition.

H. Leivick's poetic drama The Golem , published in 1921 at a time of revolution and messianic expectation, had a tremendous impact on Yiddish literature. The Lexicon of New Yiddish Literature states: "The objects that people read and reread, discussed and wrote about: Liberation and redemption of the Jewish world, the role of matter and the role of the spirit in the process of redemption, the Jewish Messiah and the Christian Redeemer, the Maharal and the golem of Prague, the masses and the individual, creator and creation, realism and symbolism - all of this came from Leivick's golem in the 1920s ".

For the last four years of his life, Leyvik was paralyzed and unable to speak. During this time his house became a pilgrimage site for numerous writers and friends. The Lexicon of New Yiddish Literature describes: "His appearance, his behavior towards his visitors, the way he hugged them and kissed his friends, was reminiscent of the sufferings of Job, the agony of Isaac's sacrifice, reminded of the starzen Sosima in Dostoyevsky's brothers Karamazov".

Works and editions

Cover of the complete edition from 1940

(The transcription follows the transcription in American library catalogs to make the books easier to find)

Volumes of poetry

• Eyelids. Island, New York 1919.
• In keynems land. Farlag Kultur Lige, Warsaw 1923.
• Eyelids. Fraynt, New York 1932.
• Lider fun Gan eydn, 1932–1936. Poems. Tseshinski, Chicago 1937.
• A blat oyf an eplboym. Kiyem, Buenos Aires 1955.

Dramas and Dramatic Poems

• The goylem. A dramatic poeme in real pictures. New York: Farlag Amerike, 1921.
• Shmates. Drame in the act. Vilnius: B. Kletskin, 1928.
• Shap. Drame in the act. Vilnius: B. Kletskin, 1928.
• Klibene Verk. Keytn: drame in dray actn. Hirsh Lekert: dramatic poems in zeks pictures. 2 volumes, Vilnius: B. Kletskin, 1931.
• Di geule komedye. The goylem cholemt. Dramatic poems in eleven pictures. Chicago: Farlag LM Shtayn, 1934.
• Abelar and Heluis. Dramatic poems in dray stsenes. Warsaw (?): Literary Bletter, 1936.
• Mehar'm fun Rutenberg. Dramatic poems in zibn pictures. New York: H. Leyvik Yubiley Fond, 1945.
• Nit-printed drames. Buenos Aires: Alveltlekher Yidisher Culture Congress, 1973.

Fonts

• With the sheyres ha-pleyteh. [New York?]: H. Leyvik yubiley-fund, durkhn Tsiko-farlag, 1947.

Collected Works

• Klibene Verk. Ale sell fun H. Leyvick. 5 volumes. Vilnius: B. Kletskin, 1925.
• Ale sell fun H. Leyvik. 2 volumes. New York: H. Leyvik yubiley-komitet, 1940/1942.
• Oysgeklibene shriftn. Buenos Aires: Yosef Lifshits-fond fun der literatur-gezelshaft baym Yivo, 1963.

Anthologies

• Reuben Eisland, Halper Leivick, Mani-Leib and others: Der Inzel. Literary Zamelbikher. First book. New York: Island, 1918. (SSDYL 0-657-05669-3)
• Joseph Opotashu, H. Leivick: Zamlbikher. 8 volumes. New York, 1936.

H. Leyvick in the Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library's "1000 Essential Yiddish Books"

• Ale sell fun H. Leyvik. Jubiley oysg. 2 volumes: 1st volume: Lider un poemes 1914–1940, (SSDYL 0-657-00162-7). 2nd vol .: Dramatishe poemes 1914-1940, (SSDYL 0-657-00163-5), New York, H. Leyvik Jubilej-Komitet, 1940.
• Di chasene in Fernvald. Dramatishe poeme in elf stsenes New York, Tsiko-Farlag, 1949, (SSDYL 0-657-00160-0).
• In di teg fun Iyov. Dramatic poems in sibn pictures. 210, p. 23 cm. New York, Tsiko-Farlag, 1953. (SSDYL 0-657-00193-7).
• With the scheyres ha-pleyteh New York, H. Leyvik Jubilej-fund, Tsiko-Farlag, 1947. (SSDYL 0-657-00048-5).
• Nit-printed drames Buenos Aires, Alweltlekher Yiddish Culture Congress, 1973, (SSDYL 0-657-08250-3).
• Oyf Tsar katorge Tel-Aviv. Farlag YL Perets. 1959.

Web links

Commons : H. Leivick  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Article on H. Leivick at www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org (used as source), accessed November 22, 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 417.
2. ↑ Aaron Kramer (Ed.), Saul Lishinsky (Illustr.): The Last Lullaby: Poetry from the Holocaust. Syracuse Univ. Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8156-0579-X .
3. ↑ Vitim on Google Maps
4. ↑ Leksikon fun der nayer Yidisher literature. 8 volumes. Alveltliker Yidishn Culture Congress, New York 1956–1981. Quoted from [1] (see web links)
5. ↑ 1000 Essential Yiddish Books ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 666 kB) accessed on November 23, 2010.