Abraham Sutzkever
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Abraham Sutzkever, 1950
Abraham Sutzkever (Yiddish: אַבֿרהם סוצקעווער, romanized: Avrom Sutskever; Hebrew: אברהם סוצקבר; July 15, 1913 – January 20, 2010) was an acclaimed Yiddish poet.[1] The New York Times wrote that Sutzkever was "the greatest 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 Omsk, 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 school 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 organization, Bin ("Bee"), in whose magazine he published his first piece. There he also met his wife Freydke. In 1933, he became part of the writers’ and artists’ group Yung-Vilne, along with fellow poets Shmerke Kaczerginski, Chaim Grade, and Leyzer Volf.[4]
He married Freydke in 1939, a day before the start of World War II.[5]
In 1941, following the Nazi occupation of Vilnius, 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 treasured works behind plaster and brick walls in the ghetto.[4] His mother and newborn son were murdered by the Nazis.[4] On September 12, 1943, he and his wife escaped to the forests, and together with fellow Yiddish poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, he 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 in Moscow, whose members included Ilya Ehrenburg and Solomon Mikhoels, as well as the exiled future president of Soviet Lithuania, Justas Paleckis. They implored the Kremlin to rescue him. So an aircraft located Sutzkever and Freydke in March 1944, and flew them to Moscow, where their daughter, Rina, was born.[7]
Sutzkever testifies before the International Military Tribunal, 27 February 1946
In February 1946, he was called up as a witness at the Nuremberg trials, testifying against Franz Murer, the murderer of his mother and son. After a brief sojourn in Poland and Paris, he emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, arriving in Tel Aviv in 1947.[7]
In 1947, his family arrived in Tel Aviv. Within two years, Sutzkever founded Di goldene keyt (The Golden Chain).[7]
Sutzkever was a keen traveller, touring South American jungles and African savannahs, where the sight of elephants and the song of a Basotho chief inspired more Yiddish verse.[7]
Belatedly, in 1985 Sutzkever became the first Yiddish writer to win the prestigious Israel Prize for his literature. An English compendium appeared in 1991.[7]
Freydke died in 2003. Rina and another daughter, Mira, survive him, along with two grandchildren.[7]
Abraham Sutzkever died on January 20, 2010, in Tel Aviv at the age of 96.[8][9]
Poet: Avraham Sutskever (b. 1913)
Credits
Composer: Lazar Weiner
Length: 02:13
Genre: Art Song
Performers: Ida Rae Cahana, Mezzo-soprano; Yehudi Wyner, Piano
Date Recorded: 12/01/2001
Venue: Lefrak Concert Hall/Colden Center for the Arts (E), Flushing, New York
Engineer: Lazarus, Tom
Assistant Engineer: Martyn, Tim
Additional Credits:
Translations and Transliterations: Eliyahu Mishulovin
Preliminary preparations by Adam J. Levitin
Transliteration
unter dayne vayse shtern
shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant.
mayne verter zenen trern
viln ruen in dayn hant.
ze, es tunklt zeyer finkl
in mayn kelerdikn blik.
un ikh hob gornit keyn vinkl
zey tsu shenken dir tsurik.
un ikh vil dokh, got getrayer,
dir fartroyen mayn farmeg.
vayl es mont in mir a fayer
un in fayer—mayne teg.
nor in kelern un lekher
veynt di merderishe ru.
loyf ikh hekher, iber dekher
un ikh zukh: vu bistu, vu?
nemen yogn mikh meshune
trep un hoyfn mit gevoy.
heng ikh—a geplatste strune
un ikh zing tsu dir azoy:
unter dayne vayse shtern
shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant.
mayne verter zenen trern
viln ruen in dayn hant.
Under Your white stars
Stretch to me Your white hand.
My words are tears,
Wanting to rest in our hand.
See, they twinkle very darkly
In my cellar-beaten view;
And I have no place
How to send them back to You.
Under Your white stars
Stretch to me Your white hand.
My words are tears,
Wanting to rest in Your hand.
Yiddish by Abraham Sutzkever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Sutzkever
Beneath your white stars
Extend your white hand to me.
My words are tears
That want to rest in your hand.
Look, their light is dimmed,
And from the depths of my cellar
I have no way
To give you words that shine.
Yet I want, dear God,
To entrust what I possess to you.
The fire within me demands it,
The first within me - my days.
But in the cellars and the sewers
Murderous quiet screams. I run - higher - over rooftops
And I search: where are you, where?
Madness chases me
Stairways and courtyards full of wailing I hang -- a ruptured string
And that is how I sing to you.
Beneath your white stars Extend your white hand to me.
My words are tears. That want to rest in your hand.
Unter Dayn Vayse Shter'n
(text, Avraham Sutskever; melody, Abraham Brudno)
Yiddish:
Unter dayne vayse shtern
Shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant.
Mayne verter zaynen trern
Viln ruen in dayn hant.
Ze, es tunklt zeyer finkl
In mayn kelerdikn blik.
Un ikh hob gornit keyn vinkl
Zey tsu shenken dir tsurik.
Un ikh vil dokh, got getrayer
Dir fartroyen mayn farmeg.
Vayl es mont in mir a fayer
Un in fayer-mayne teg.
Nor in kelern un lekher
Veynt di merderishe ru.
Loyf ikh hekher, ibqer dekher
Un ikh zukh: vu bistu, vu?
Nemen yogn mikh meshune
Trep un hoyfin mit gevoy.
Heng ikh a geplaste strune
Un ikh zing tsu dir azoy:
Unter dayne vayse shtern
Shtrek tsu mir dayn vayse hant.
Mayne verter zaynen trern
Viln ruen in dayn hant.
English (literal translation)
Under Your white stars
Stretch to me Your white hand.
My words are tears,
Wanting to rest in Your hand.
See, they twinkle very darkly
In my cellar-beaten view;
And I have no place
How to send them back to You.
And I will, dear God,
Confide in you these of mine
While in me a fire grows
And on fire are my days.
But in cellars and holes
Cries the murderous quiet
I fly higher, over rooftops
And I search: Where are You? Where?
Something strange hunts me
Stairs and courtyards are on chase
I hang as a broken bow-string
And I sing to You this way:
Under Your white stars
Stretch to me Your white hand.
My words are tears,
Wanting to rest in Your hand.
English (free translation)
Who are you that in your hands is my death and is my life?
Listen, my voice breaks toward you and you are deaf to me.
See, my day ends, expires, and darkness falls.
My soul, no-one knows. Would you know it?
A silence rises to you from streets and houses.
All my life explodes in strength for my life is filled with
dead.
And only graves know quiet here in this valley of tears
Would you dare to hear? A dead city mutes lamentation.
And silently pursuing me, all my city who've been slaughtered
And your silence strangles me. How can I carry my prayer to you?
Who are you that in your hands is my death and is my life?
Listen, my voice breaks toward you and you are deaf to me.
Note: (from Mlotek and other sources) This song was written in the Vilno ghetto, words by Avraham Sutskever (1913-); music by Abraham Brudno (?-1944). It was first presented in the ghetto theater in the play " Di Yogenish in Fas" (the hunt In the barrel, a pun on Diogenes in a barrel.)
It was first sung by Zlate Katcherginsky. After the liquidation of the ghetto, Suskever joined the partisan fighters. He survived the war and lives in Israel where he edits the literary quarterly Di Goldene Keyt". The composer, Abraham Brudno, following the liquidation of the ghetto, was deported to a German concentration camp in Estonia, where he died. YW
Above at: http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiUNTRDAYN.html
to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!
Another English Translation -- the most literal I could fin, from the Yosl & Chana Mlotek Yiddish Song Collection
At the Workers Circle :
https://yiddishsongs.org/unter-dayne-vayse-shtern/
Under your white starry heaven
Offer me your pale white hand.
All my words are flowing teardrops.
I would place them in your hand.
Gone the luster from their brightness,
Seen through morbid cellar view –
And I no longer have my own space
To reflect them back to you.
My devoted God I offer
Everything that I possess.
As the fire that I suffer
Fills each fiery day I pass.
Only in the holes and cellars
With deadly rest my days I share.
I run higher – over spire
Searching where are you, oh where?
I am chased by phantom beings
Stairs and courtyards goad me too.
There I hang a broken bowstring –
And I sing once more to you:
Under your white starry heaven
Offer me your pale white hand.
All my words are flowing teardrops,
I would place them in your hand.
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