I will give now an example of Yiddish literature. This is a poem by _ Dadmin Hofshteyn, part of a longer poem, "In vinter farnakhtn" (On Winter Evenings, 1921), one of the best-known pre-revolutionary Russian Yiddish lyrics.

. . . - _

! _ _ _ - _
... _ _ _ _ _ , _ _ _ _

, _ _ _ , _ _ _
. _ _ _ -- _ _ _

, _ _ _ _ _ , _
. _ _ _ _ _

, _ _ _ _ _ _ _
-- _ _ _ _ _ _ _
... _ _ _ , _ _ _

, _ _ _ _ _
, _ _ _ _ , _ _ , _
... _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

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. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

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Here is an English translation:

Russian fields on winter evenings!
Where can one be more lonely, where can one be more lonely....

An old horse wheezing and a sleigh creaking,
and I half-way along a snow-covered road.

Below, in the only pale corner of a twilight,
sad streaks of light dying and smoldering.

Before us stretching a desert of whiteness,
and sown in its vastness a scatter of houses.
Sunk in its snow-depths a farmhouse dreaming...

Many paths leading to a house like the others,
to a little Jewish house, but its windows larger.
Among th3 children I ma the oldest.

My little world narrow, my circumference tiny --
only once in two weeks to visit the village.

In silence longing for the fields in the distance,
for the paths and the by-paths wind-blown and snow-covered...

And concealed in the heart the sorrow of seedlings
and keep waiting, keep waiting their time fo sowing...

Russian fields on winter evenings!
Where can one be more lonely, where can one be more lonely!

Reproduction of cover of S. Toulmin's Cosmopolis.

(To Modernity)

admin@mishkan.com or
zebri@garnet.berkeley.edu

Copyright © 1996-today Ovid C. Jacob and William Brinner