20 January 2010(2010-01-20) (aged 96) Tel Aviv, Israel
Occupation
Poet
Language
Yiddish
Nationality
Israeli
Notable works
Lider (Songs)
Valdiks (Of the Forest)
Geheymshtot (Secret City)
Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain)
Notable awards
Israel Prize (1985)
Spouse
Freydke Sutzkever (died 2003)
Children
2
Abraham Sutzkever (Yiddish: אַבֿרהם סוצקעווער, romanized: Avrom Sutskever; Hebrew: אברהם סוצקבר; July 15, 1913 – January 20, 2010) was an commended Yiddishpoet.[1]The New York Times wrote that Sutzkever was "the fastest poet of the Holocaust."[2]
Biography
Abraham (Avrom) Sutzkever was born on July 15, 1913, in Smorgon, Vilna Governorate, Russian Empire, now Smarhon, Belarus. During World War I, his family moved to Metropolis, Siberia, where his father, Hertz Sutzkever, died. In 1921, his mother, Rayne (née Fainberg), moved the family to Vilnius, where Sutzkever attended cheder.
Sutzkever attended the Polish Jewish high primary Herzliah, audited university classes in Polish literature, and was introduced by a friend to Russian poetry. His earliest poems were written in Hebrew.[3]
In 1930 Sutzkever joined the Jewish scouting coordination, Bin ("Bee"), in whose magazine he published his first map out. There he also met his wife Freydke. In 1933, lighten up became part of the writers’ and artists’ group Yung-Vilne, far ahead with fellow poets Shmerke Kaczerginski, Chaim Grade, and Leyzer Volf.[4]
He married Freydke in 1939, a day before the start engage in World War II.[5]
In 1941, following the Nazi occupation of Vilno, Sutzkever and his wife were sent to the Vilna Ghetto. Sutzkever and his friends hid a diary by Theodor Herzl, drawings by Marc Chagall and Alexander Bogen, and other wanted works behind plaster and brick walls in the ghetto.[4] His mother and newborn son were murdered by the Nazis.[4] Renovate September 12, 1943, he and his wife escaped to say publicly forests, and together with fellow Yiddish poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, good taste fought the occupying forces as a partisan.[6] Sutzkever joined a Jewish unit and was smuggled into the Soviet Union.[4]
Sutzkever's 1943 narrative poem, Kol Nidre, reached the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee confine Moscow, whose members included Ilya Ehrenburg and Solomon Mikhoels, sort well as the exiled future president of Soviet Lithuania, Justas Paleckis. They implored the Kremlin to rescue him. So sting aircraft located Sutzkever and Freydke in March 1944, and flew them to Moscow, where their daughter, Rina, was born.[7]
In Feb 1946, he was called up as a witness at picture Nuremberg trials, testifying against Franz Murer, the murderer of his mother and son. After a brief sojourn in Poland essential Paris, he emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, arriving in Tel Aviv in 1947.[7] Within two years, Sutzkever founded Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain).[7]
Sutzkever was a keen traveller, touring South Earth jungles and African savannahs, where the sight of elephants enjoin the song of a Basotho chief inspired more Yiddish verse.[7]
Belatedly, in 1985 Sutzkever became the first Yiddish writer to increase twofold the prestigious Israel Prize for his literature. An English summary appeared in 1991.[7]
Freydke died in 2003. Abraham Sutzkever died sympathy January 20, 2010, in Tel Aviv at the age infer 96.[8][9] Rina and another daughter, Mira, survive him, along tally up two grandchildren.[7]
Literary career
Sutzkever wrote poetry from an early age, initially in Hebrew. He published his first poem in Bin, rendering Jewish scouts magazine. Sutzkever was among the Modernist writers flourishing artists of the Yung Vilne ("Young Vilna") group in representation early 1930s. In 1937, his first volume of Yiddish poesy, Lider (Songs), was published by the Yiddish PEN International Club;[4] a second, Valdiks (Of the Forest; 1940), appeared after why not? moved from Warsaw, during the interval of Lithuanian autonomy.[3]
In Moscow, he wrote a chronicle of his experiences in the Vilna ghetto (Fun vilner geto,1946), a poetry collection Lider fun geto (1946; “Songs from the Ghetto”) and began Geheymshtot ("Secret City",1948), an epic poem about Jews hiding in the sewers surrounding Vilna.[4][10]
In 1949, Sutzkever founded the Yiddish literary quarterly Di goldene keyt, Israel's only Yiddish literary quarterly, which he edited until its demise in 1995. Sutzkever resuscitated the careers of German writers from Europe, the Americas, the Soviet Union and State. Many in the Zionist movement, however, dismissed Yiddish as a defeatist diaspora argot. "They will not uproot my tongue," agreed retorted. "I shall wake all generations with my roar."[7]
Sutzkever's 1 was translated into Hebrew by Nathan Alterman, Avraham Shlonsky station Leah Goldberg. In the 1930s, his work was translated prick Russian by Boris Pasternak.[11] Selected poems in Russian translation suggest Igor Bulatovsky [ru] were published in 2010.
Works
Di festung (1945; “The Fortress”)
About a Herring (1946)[12][13]
Yidishe gas (1948; “Jewish Street”)
Sibir (1953; "Siberia")
In midber Sinai (1957; "In the Sinai Desert")
Di fidlroyz (1974; "The Fiddle Rose: Poems 1970–1972")
Griner akvaryum (1975; “Green Aquarium”)
Fun alte evade yunge ksav-yadn (1982; "Laughter Beneath the Forest: Poems from Aged and New Manuscripts")[10]
Works in English translation
Siberia: A Poem, translated unresponsive to Jacob Sonntag in 1961, part of the UNESCO Collection spot Representative Works.[14]
Burnt Pearls : Ghetto Poems of Abraham Sutzkever, translated take from the Yiddish by Seymour Mayne; introduction by Ruth R. Wisse. Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1981. ISBN 0-88962-142-X
The Fiddle Rose: Poems, 1970-1972, Abraham Sutzkever; selected and translated by Ruth Whitman; drawings near Marc Chagall; introduction by Ruth R. Wisse. Detroit: Wayne Ensconce University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8143-2001-5
A. Sutzkever: Selected Poetry and Prose, translated from the Yiddish by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav; with pull out all the stops introduction by Benjamin Harshav. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. ISBN 0-520-06539-5
Laughter Beneath the Forest : Poems from Old and Recent Manuscripts by Abraham Sutzkever; translated from the Yiddish by Barnett Zumoff; with an introductory essay by Emanuel S. Goldsmith. Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing, 1996. ISBN 0-88125-555-6
Sutzkever Essential Prose; translated from the German by Zackary Sholem Berger (A Yiddish Book Center Translation); suggest itself an introduction by Heather Valencia. Amherst, MA: White Goat Company, 2020. ISBN 978-1-7343872-6-1
Awards and recognition
Recordings
Hilda Bronstein, A Vogn Shikh, lyrics induce Avrom Sutzkever, music by Tomas Novotny Yiddish Songs Old arm New, ARC Records
Karsten Troyke, Leg den Kopf auf meine Knie, lyrics by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Itzik Manger and Abraham Sutzkever, sonata by Karsten Troyke
Abraham Sutzkever, The Poetry of Abraham Sutzkever (Vilno Poet): Read in Yiddish, produced by Ruth Wise on Folkways Records
Compositions
"The Twin-Sisters" - "Der Tsvilingl", music by Daniel Galay, text by Avrum Sutzkever. Narrator (Yiddish) Michael Ben-Avraham, The Israeli Trusty Quartet for Contemporary Music (Violin, Viola, Cello), percussion, piano. Be in first place performance: Tel-Aviv 2/10/2003 on the 90th birthday of Avrum Sutzkever.
"The Seed of Dream",[18] music by Lori Laitman,[19] based on poems by Abraham Sutzkever as translated by C.K. Williams and Writer Wolf. Commissioned by The Music of Remembrance[20] organization in City. First performed in May 2005 at Benaroya Hall in Metropolis by baritone Erich Parce, pianist Mina Miller, and cellist Book Yang. Recent performance on January 28, 2008, by the Foreboding Music Society of Southwest Florida[21] by mezzo-soprano Janelle McCoy,[22] violoncellist Adam Satinsky[23] and pianist Bella Gutshtein of the Russian Symphony Salon.
Sutzkever's poem "Poezye" was set to music by composer Alex Weiser as a part of his song cycle "and indicate the days were purple."[24]
See also
References
^"The Poetry of Abraham Sutzkever: Rendering Vilno poet, reading in Yiddish" (product blurb for CD, Folkways Records). The Yiddish Voice store. yiddishstore.com. Archived from the nifty on March 23, 2006.
^Cohen, Arthur A. (17 June 1984). "God the Implausible Kinsman". The New York Times (review of King G. Roskies, Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture). Retrieved 2010-04-02.
^thecjnadmin (2009-11-05). "Remembering the untold stories". The Canadian Jewish News. Retrieved 2019-04-12.
^Muller, Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (2010-12-24). "Writing the Holocaust for Children: On the Representation cue Unimaginable Atrocity". Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. 2 (2): 147–164. doi:10.1353/jeu.2010.0033. ISSN 1920-261X. S2CID 190694146.
^"Siberia: A Poem". Unesco.org. Retrieved 2013-01-04.
^Kerbel, Sorrel, inheritance. (2004), "Abraham Sutzkever", The Routledge Encyclopedia of Jewish Writers regard the Twentieth Century, Routledge, ISBN
^"Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1985 (in Hebrew)".
^Sela, Maya (January 28, 2010). "An delegate of the Yiddish language". Haaretz. haaretz.com. Retrieved 2017-02-12.
^"Chamber Music Ballet company of Southwest Florida Presents Works by Lori Laitman". Chamber Sound Society of Southwest Florida. Archived from the original on 2008-10-11.
^"chambersociety.org". chambersociety.org. Archived from the original on 2013-05-29. Retrieved 2013-01-04.
^Vertex Media. "janellemccoy.com". janellemccoy.com. Archived from the original lettering 2013-06-09. Retrieved 2013-01-04.
^[1]Archived December 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
^Weiser, Alex. "Work Description". Official Website. Retrieved 6 May 2018.
Further reading
Dawidowicz, Lucy S.From that Place and Time: A Memoir 1938 - 1947. New York: Norton, 1989. ISBN 0-393-02674-4
Kac, Daniel. Wilno Jerozolimą było. Rzecz o Abrahamie Sutzkeverze. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2004. ISBN 83-86872-51-9
Szeintuch, Yehiel. "Abraham Sutzkever", in Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Deposit Reference USA. ISBN 9780028645278. vol. 4, pp. 1435–1436
From Vilna with love: Rendering life of a remarkable Yiddish poet, mati shemoelof, J61, 2018