Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture

On Yiddish Poetry and Translation of Yiddish Poetry

On Yiddish Poetry and Translation of Yiddish Poetry Kathryn Hellerstein Let me start by saying that I learned Yiddish at Stanford University, before there was a Jewish Studies program there, believe it or not, but that is another story.1 I have two quick comments to make just about things that have been said before I get into what I want to say. First, I want to touch on some of the comments that the other panelists have made about secular Jewish poetry by mentioning that there exists a very rich and variegated secular poetry in Hebrew in Israel right now. I think that Israeli secular poetry should be part of the conversation. My second comment is that there are as many shades and variegations of being a religious Jew as there are of being a secular Jew. We should not assume that there is an absolute dichotomy between these two terms. Third, I’d like to ask a question which some of you started answering in your presentations: Is there a secular Jewish poetry that is not a response to a subversion of or a rejection of Jewish tradition, however you might want to define that term? In my presentation, I will focus on modernist Yiddish poetry and the translation of Yiddish poetry. Beginning in 1907, a number of Jewish poets from Eastern Europe who immigrated to the United States (and many of whom settled in New York City) wrote and published avant-garde, modernist poetry in Yiddish. Rebelling against an earlier, convention-ridden verse expressing the political ideologies of the nascent Jewish Labor movement,the poets of DiYunge (theYoung Ones) published journals and anthologies of poetry exemplifying their new aestheticism and expressing the power they saw in a poetic voice that spoke for the individual rather than for the collective. In 1919, a second modernist movement arose in New York, when three poets who called themselves Di Inzikhistn (the Introspectivists) published an anthology of poetry that included a manifesto outlining the group’s precepts of high modernism. 72 Hellerstein The works of the Yunge poets (Mani Leyb, Reuven Iceland, Zishe Landau, Joseph Rolnick) (all born between 1879 and 1889; all dead by 1955) embodied principles of musicality and romantic understatement, conveying mood or eroticism through quotidian detail. They experimented with prosody and form by importing and developing such conventional forms as the sonnet, rather than by fracturing the poetic line. What made their poetry appear radical was their subject, approach, and language, playing upon idiomatic Yiddish diction for unexpected melodious effect, excising rhetorical grandiosity or Germanic poeticisms (daytshmerizms), and relying on direct, sparse, concrete imagery. One great poet briefly associated with theYunge was Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886–1932), whose acerbic, ironic poems were characterized by their constant undercutting of poetic convention and readers’ expectations,2 as in his poem, A Tfile Fun A Lump (A Rogue’s Prayer): Nem mayn talent, un gib im op An altn hund, tsi a balebos, Vos vil abisl koved oykh, Di libe shkheynem tsum fardros. O, helf mir, helf mir, got  Take my talent, hand or toss It to an old dog or a boss Who also wants a little honor To pique the envy of his neighbor. Oh, help me, help me, God. Oh, help me, God, When in the middle of bright day A roughneck tries to block my way, Let my fist land on his chin With the clang of bells resounding. Oh, help me, help me, God. Oh, help me, God, Should my good friends discover, Gritting their teeth, indeed uncover With what and how I make my living; Let me ever keep on loafing, Oh, help me, help me, God On Yiddish Poetry and Translation 73 Oh, help me, God, As burning and harsh As fresh horseradish in a dish Shall the pious hypocrite find pain When he invades my small domain. Oh, help me, help me, God. Oh, help me, God, Let my speech be disgusting As a dead cat rotting in garbage, Let every place where I set foot Grow nothing and stay desolate. Oh, help me, help me, God. Oh, help me, God, Let, as a whore’s wild dance In moral eyes, my impudence Slap the cheeks of men with wives. May they curse me roundly all their lives! Oh, help me, help me, God. Oh, help me, God, Let me be the sickle blade And let me be the stone that strayed To break the blade. I shall spit On You, on...