Self-Portrait

Aaron Zeitlin

1929

When the cool, colorful, gentile Sundays come,
both sit—Valenti, the watchman from my courtyard
and his pock-marked, redmouthed, piggish old lady
back-to-back on a wooden bench.
Both of them gaze away a whole Sunday afternoon
and don’t get bored. They are realists.
And they do what? They stare silently, and relax.
They look at dogs, at a kid…
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Creator Bio

Aaron Zeitlin

1898–1973
A poet, writer, playwright, essayist, and editor Aaron Zeitlin (Arn Tseytlin) was the eldest son of Hillel Zeitlin and the brother of Elkhonen Zeitlin (1902–1942). Born in Homel (then Russian Gomel, now in Belarus), Zeitlin lived in Warsaw between 1907 and 1938. Beginning to write lyrical poetry as a child, Zeitlin was most prolific in interwar Warsaw. He participated in the debate over the role of Yiddish literature, attacking the politicization of Yiddish literature and developing an aesthetic of combining historical events with existential and mystical themes. He was the chair of the Yiddish PEN club from 1930 to 1934, and founded, with the help of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the literary monthly Globus. Zeitlin happened to be in New York at the outbreak of World War II. He was powerless to save the family he had left behind. He continued to write and teach in New York City. His postwar writing was preoccupied with the Holocaust and parapsychology.

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