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Translations of selected poems by the Yiddish writer, covering the full scope of his oeuvre.
Described by Ruth Wisse as one of "the most original and distinctive voices in Yiddish poetry," Moyshe-Leybe Halpern (1886–1932) was born in Zlochov, in present-day western Ukraine. When he was twelve, his father sent him to Vienna to study sign painting, and during his ten years there he studied German literature and wrote his first poems in German before returning to Zlochov in 1907, where he began to write in Yiddish. The following year, he immigrated to New York, where a diverse community of Yiddish writers awaited him. During his lifetime, he published two volumes of poetry—In New York (1919) and The Golden Peacock (1924). A third volume was published posthumously, in 1934. Drawing from these three volumes, poet and translator Richard Fein offers a selection of Halpern's poetry that covers the full scope of his career. Fein's translations appear alongside the original Yiddish while an introduction by Larry Rosenwald situates Halpern in his historic and literary context.
"[Halpern] was free of sentimentality and rich in irony, a virtuoso of form, politically engaged but not subservient to any ideology, the creator of half a dozen brilliant poetic personae and interlocutors, loved and known by Yiddish readers but never oversimplifying his poetry to win their praise.... His three books establish Halpern as a great poet: a Yiddish poet, a proletarian poet, an American poet, as broadly and intensely interesting a poet as Heine or Baudelaire or Frost. Yiddishists know this, of course. Some specialists and curious critics know it too—witness Harold Bloom's remark, that Halpern was a more impressive poet, in his experience as a reader, 'than any American-Jewish poet who has written in English.'" — From the introduction by Larry Rosenwald
"With the Yiddish en face, Zlochov, My Home can be used to learn the lost mother tongue, because Halpern speaks in a diction so spare yet so idiomatic, wearing many masks and having traveled very far—from the Golden Land to the electric chair—as vagabond, poor immigrant, lover, parent, balladeer, elegist and prophet, that (believe it or not) another great poet, American-born, Richard Fein by name, mastered Yiddish if for no other reason than to produce a twenty-first-century Moyshe-Leyb." — David G. Roskies, author of Yiddishlands: A Memoir
A Note
Richard Fein
Introduction
Larry Rosenwald
from In New York (1919)
A Rogue's Prayer
Gingili
Your Life
Try to Get Rid of Them
R. — B.
You, My Restlessness
A Good Dream
Memento Mori
A Strange Thought
In You —
You My Wild One, You
Isaac Leybush Peretz
My Restlessness From a Wolf
Just Because
Who Cries
The Last Poem
Who Is?
Why Don't You …?
Brother
from The Golden Peacock (1924)
The Bird
Zlochov, My Home
The Tale of the Fly
Considering the Bleakness
In the Light of the Lamp
You'll Never Catch Me Saying
From a Letter of Mine
Harshber, the Coalman
Man the Ape
The Story About the World
Abie Curley, the War Hero
The Last One
My Will
The Sorrow of the World
Sunrise
Who Will Save?
Hey, You Naked Man
I, Your God
Hey, Jew, My Brother!
At Midnight
When the Sun Goes Down
Zarkhi to Himself
Zarkhi, My Brother
It's Not So Much
The Face of the Ocean
Zarkhi, Zarkhi!
Zarkhi, Zarkhi!...
The Dead King's Lament
Zarkhi's Family
We Go Walking
I Ask My Dear Wife
from Moyshe-Leyb Halpern: Volume One (1934)
Sacco-Vanzetti
Evening
Strangeness Between Us
In the World
In Central Park
Kol Nidre
Evening
A Velvet Dress
Song of the Dead Nobleman
from Moyshe-Leyb Halpern: Volume Two (1934)
Sunset on Trees
The Hasidic Rebbe
Shalamoyzn
My Shouting
Afterword
Moyshe-Leyb Confronts Me
Notes