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Afterword Twenty-Five Years and a Century Afterward
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• 206 Afterword Twenty-Five Years and a Century Afterward K e n F r i e d e n This year must be a Reuben Iceland landmark of some kind, as 1912 was the heyday of the poetic movement Di Yunge (The young), which he helped to found. If it is not a centennial, then at least for me it marks a quarter centennial, because I vividly remember reading his memoir Fun unzer friling (From Our Springtime) twenty-five years ago, while giving lectures and writing about American Yiddish poetry. Although I came to prefer the poetry of Jacob Glatshteyn, Y. L. Teller, and the group called the Inzikhistn (the Introspectivist Poets)—who were successors and rivals to the authors who formed Di Yunge—Iceland’s book made a deep impression on me. In retrospect, I realize that From Our Springtime is one of the most successful literary memoirs of a movement I have ever encountered. This reaction is unexpected now, in light of the astonishing discrepancy between the significance of the New York Yiddish authors and the relative oblivion into which most of their names have fallen. How many among American literati today know the luminous verses of Mani Leyb, Moyshe Leyb Halpern, Zishe Landau, Reuben Iceland, or Anna Margolin ? We can only hope that the outstanding book you are reading, in a fine English translation by Gerald Marcus, will help to remedy this neglect. Reuben Iceland’s volume adds the needed insight and perspective , giving us a graphic picture of the Yiddish literary scene in New York in the early twentieth century. Afterword | 207 A small measure of recognition came to the New York Yiddish poets in 1969, when Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg included them in a groundbreaking anthology.1 To that collection they brought the talent of some remarkable translators, including John Hollander and Cynthia Ozick, who themselves achieved renown for their poetry and prose. But not until 1986 did a group of New York Yiddish poets (Leyeles, Glatshteyn, Halpern, Teller, Heifetz-Tussman, and Vaynshteyn) receive extensive representation in Benjamin and Barbara Harshav’s landmark bilingual anthology.2 Since the mid-1980s, scattered other volumes have brought attention to individual authors, especially the women writers who had previously been neglected, such as Rachel Korn, Malka Heifetz-Tussman, Rokhl Fishman, and Kadya Molodowsky.3 Among the many authors discussed in depth by Iceland, Anna Margolin (Roza Lebensboym)—with whom he lived for decades—produced some of the most memorable, enduring Yiddish poetry.4 Iceland provides the fullest account of her 1. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry (New York: Schocken, 1969). 2. Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, American Yiddish Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 1986), with translations by the Harshavs and by Kathryn Hellerstein, Brian McHale, and Anita Norich. 3. See, for example: Paper Roses (Papirene royzn): Selected Poems of Rachel Korn, trans. Seymour Levitan (Toronto: Aya Press, 1985); With Teeth in the Earth: Selected Poems of Malka Heifetz Tussman, trans. and ed. Marcia Falk (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992); I Want to Fall Like This: Selected Poems of Rukhl Fishman, trans. Seymour Levitan (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994); Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky, trans. and ed., Kathryn Hellerstein (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999). In prose, see the groundbreaking Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers, ed. Frieda Forman et al., introduction by Irena Klepfisz (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1994), and the impressive volume by Kadya Molodowsky, A House with Seven Windows: Short Stories, trans. Leah Schoolnik (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006). Thanks go to Kathryn Hellerstein for her help in compiling this list. We can look forward to her forthcoming anthology Women Yiddish Poets, to be published by Stanford University Press. 4. For a concise overview of her biography in English, see Faith Jones, “Anna Margolin (Rosa Lebensbaum [Roza Lebensboym]),” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 333, Writers in Yiddish, ed. Joseph Sherman, (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007), 163–73. This volume also [3.16.83.150] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:22 GMT) 208 | From Our Springtime fascinating life; an English translation of her impressive poems is now available in book form.5 For readers who lack prior exposure to the Yiddish literary tradition, it is worth noting that modern Yiddish writing began only a few decades before Iceland and his friends appeared on the New York scene. Most scholars trace the origins back to the early novels of S. Y. Abramovitsh (Mendele...