Creator Bio

Izi Charik

1898–1937

Izi Charik was one the foremost Soviet Yiddish poets of his generation, noted for his ardent, if sometimes ambivalent, revolutionary zeal and ability to create dynamic verse in a wide variety of poetic styles. Rising to prominence at an early age, Charik edited many Soviet Yiddish literary journals in Moscow and Minsk, produced several widely read collections of poetry, and rapidly climbed the ranks in the Communist Party leadership in the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. By the late 1930s, many of Charik’s works were integrated into the Yiddish-language schools in Belorussia, and the writer had achieved a kind of celebrity status among certain sections of the republic’s Yiddish-speaking youth. At the same time, in 1937, Charik fell victim to the region’s particularly brutal Stalinist purges.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

Primary Source

Shtetl

Restricted
Text
A visitor came to the shtetl, A stranger, with unrest in his step . . . No-one recognized his unrest. No-one asked him: “Stranger, are you weary?” Across the blue sky the evening drew its curtain…

Primary Source

Bread

Restricted
Text
My steps are set down stiffly on tired, empty paths. This morning a little town of Jews called me “Anti-Semite!” All of them in wrinkles and in rags out there pointing at me: “Him! That guy! We…

Primary Source

Pass On, You Lonely Grandfathers . . .

Restricted
Text
Pass on, pass on, you lonely grandfathers, With frightened beards covered with snow, In the last sorrow, in the final grief You’re still here, the final witnesses. Pass on, pass on, you lonely…

Primary Source

Poem

Restricted
Text
Who cares if eternity won’t know me, if no one ever watches my footsteps— but now, right now, when hearts are burning, I come with fists in my song. Of course I’d like to sing myself away, to cry…

Primary Source

Stalinstan

Restricted
Text
   Stalinstan,    Stalinstan, Who is present and on hand    From the Party,    From the Union? Who was on his way Somewhere else today, When a chain of men caught him And then brought him To…