Moische Kulbak

Anatoly Nalivaev: Moshe Kulbak (posthumously 1984)

Moische Kulbak ( Yiddish משה קולבאַק, also Moyshe Kulbak, born 1896 in Smorgon near Vilna , Russian Empire ; died 1937 ) was a Belarusian - Lithuanian writer in the Yiddish language who had initially started with Hebrew poetry. He was one of the great talents of Yiddish poetry of his time. Many of his thoughtful and pictorial poems, in which he expresses the upheavals of the revolution in free-flowing rhythms, became popular battle songs of the Jewish revolutionary youth.

Life

In his childhood he learned Yiddish, Russian and Hebrew and was a teacher of Hebrew in private schools and at the Jewish teachers' college.

After a stay in Berlin (from 1920) Kulbak first returned to Poland (1923, to Vilnius, at that time a center of Yiddish culture), but then for ideological reasons moved to the Soviet Union (1927 Minsk ), where he joined the Minsk group in 1928 and was forced to replace his more neo-romantic style with socialist realism.

From 1936 the Minsk group was dissolved and Kulbak was arrested. He died in 1937 in a GULAG Siberian labor camp.

Works (selection)

Yiddish title in transcription

• Schirim, 1920 ("songs", in Yiddish language, in it "Lamed Wow" = 36), the most famous of these poems, which describes one of the 36 unknown righteous people in the Jewish legend, namely in the figure of the chimney sweep Schmuel Itze; the Yiddish title Lider, Berlin 1922)
• Naje lider, Warsaw 1922
• Jankew Frank, 1923 (drama)
• Moschiech ben Efroim, 1924 (expressionist novel)
  • The Messiah from the tribe of Ephraim. A Jewish legend. Translated by Andrej Jendrusch. Wagenbach, Berlin 1998
• Montik, 1926 (lyrical-philosophical novel)
  • Monday. A little novel . Translated by Sophie Lichtenstein. Editionfotoapeta, Berlin 2017
• Selmenianer (two-part novel: 1931, 1935; which tells in a funny way about the difficulties a Jewish family had to adapt to the communist society)
  • The Selmenians. Translated by Niki Graça and Esther Alexander-Ihme. Epilogue to the life and work of Susanne Klingenstein . The Other Library , Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-8477-0396-9
• Disner Childe Harold, 1933 (influenced by Heinrich Heine's winter fairy tale , satire on the alleged decadence of the German bourgeoisie, going back to his stay in Germany)
  • Childe Harold from Disna. Poems about Berlin . Translated by Sophie Lichtenstein. Editionfotoapeta, Berlin 2017
• Mirror glass on stone . Poetry anthology. Translated by Otto F. Best. Ed. By Anarej Jendrusch. Edition Maldoror, Berlin 1992

Radio plays

• The Messiah from the Efraim tribe (WDR 1997, director: Leonhard Koppelmann )

literature

• Book World , 1928 VI.
• Salman Reisen : Lekßikon fun der Yidischer literature un press. Vilnius 1926–1930.
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Vol. VII, Tipografia ARTA, Chernivtsi 1936.
• Günter Stemberger : History of Jewish Literature. 1977.
• Rachel Seelig: A yiddish bard in Berlin . In: Verena Dohrn , Gertrud Pickhan (eds.): Transit and Transformation: Eastern European Jewish Migrants in Berlin 1918–1939 . Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010 ISBN 978-3-8353-0797-1 , pp. 293-304
• Stefanie Weiler: Anything but small. Sophie Lichtenstein translates an almost forgotten piece of world literature with Moyshe Kulbak's “Monday - A Little Novel” . In: literaturkritik.de, August 31, 2017

Web links

• Literature by and about Moische Kulbak in the catalog of the German National Library
• Boris Sandler: Moyshe Kulbak - poet, novelist, playwright and teacher . Section Tog Tog bay of 20 March 2016 The Forward (in Yiddish).
• Photo (from left to right, 1928): Salman Reisen, Max Eryk, Josef Opatoschu, Moische Kulbak
• Stefana Sabin: Search for the new - and die from it