Itzik Manger

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Itzik Manger
איציק מאַנגער
Czernowitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary
Died21 February 1969(1969-02-21) (aged 67)
Gedera, Israel
Burial placeNahalat Yitzhak Cemetery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Occupations
  • Poet
  • writer
  • playwright
SpouseGhenya Nadir
PartnerRokhl Auerbakh
Signature

Itzik Manger (30 May 1901,

Bucovina, Manger lived in Romania, Poland, France, England, the US (New York), Canada (Montreal) and finally Israel
.

Early life

Manger was born to a Jewish family in

portmanteau of the Yiddish words literatura and Toyreh). As a teenager, Manger attended the Kaiserlich-Königliches III. Staatsgymnasium in Czernowitz, where he studied German literature until he was expelled for pranks and bad behaviour.[2] He exchanged this traditional education for the backstage atmosphere of the Yiddish theatre
.

Young poet

In 1921, Manger began publishing his early poems and ballads in several new literary journals founded in the aftermath of World War I. Soon afterwards, he settled in Bucharest and wrote for the local Yiddish newspapers while giving occasional lectures on Spanish, Romanian, and Romani folklore.[3]

In 1927, Manger came to

Isaac Bashevis, Israel Rabon, and Joseph Papiernikov.[5]

Literary success

Under the ruins of Poland

a golden head lies
both the head and the destruction

are very true.

— Itzik Manger, Under the Ruins of Poland

Between 1929 and 1938, Manger took the Warsaw literary world by storm. He gave frequent readings of his own poetry at the Writers' Club, was interviewed by all the major Warsaw Yiddish papers, published articles in the prestigious journal

Velvl Zbarzher
Writes Letters to Malkele the Beautiful, 1937; and Twilight in the Mirror, 1937).

Working with Biblical themes

Manger's Itzik's Midrash and Songs of the Megillah deserve special mention, as they represent his first attempts to re-write old, familiar material through a modernist lens. In Itzik's Midrash, Manger presents a modern commentary on the classic Bible stories by anachronistically placing his characters in contemporary

Hagar and Ishmael
are given a voice.

In Songs of the Megillah, Manger uses a similar technique to politicise and de-sacralise the Biblical text read aloud on Purim. Once again, Manger's introduction classifies the book as "a kind of mischief-making on the model of Purim players in every age."

Ahashverosh to win back Esther's affections. Combined with his 1937 play Hotzmakh's Shpiel, these three revival texts secured Manger his international reputation as "the master recloaker of the oldest and the newest literary traditions."[8]

Leaving Poland

Manger never acquired Polish citizenship and was forced to leave the country in the light of legal difficulties, having been stripped of his Romanian citizenship and becoming

Marseilles, Tunis, Liverpool, and finally London, where he became a British citizen and remained unhappily for the next eleven years.[9] In 1951 he arrived in the United States, where he met his future wife, Ghenya Nadir, the widow of writer Moyshe Nadir. The two lived in the Sea Gate neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Manger made a visit to Israel in 1958, and then a series of short visits there every few years in 1961, 1963, and 1965. An ailing Manger returned to Israel in 1966, where he remained in a sanatorium in Gedera
until his death.

Acclaim in Israel and elsewhere

Manger achieved significant success in Israeli literary and theatrical circles when, in 1965, Dov Seltzer directed a highly popular production of Manger's Songs of the Megillah. The musical was a great success, setting a new record in Israeli theatre with its more than 400 performances. Prominent members of Israeli society, including politicians Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Teddy Kollek, made highly publicised appearances at the performances. When he died in 1969, Manger was mourned as an Israeli national poet.

Romanian Jewish playwright Israil Bercovici adapted a collection of Manger's poems into a two-act stage piece, Mangheriada, which premiered 6 April 1968 at the Romanian State Jewish Theater in Bucharest.[10]

Manger's poem "Oyfn veg shteyt a boym" ("On the Road Stands a Tree") has been set to music and has entered the repertoire of Yiddish song, for example as a 1951 hit for Leo Fuld.

Hertz Grosbard recited many of his works in so called "word concerts".

Itzik Manger Prize

Main article: Itzik Manger Prize

Shortly before his death, the Itzik Manger Prize for outstanding Yiddish writing was established. The inaugural prize was given to Manger himself at a banquet on 31 October 1968. The banquet was attended by Golda Meir, then the

prime minister of Israel, and by Zalman Shazar, then president.[11]
Subsequently, the prize was awarded annually until about 2000.

Books

  • romanisation
    ) and CD ("Itzik Manger reading Itzik Manger", recordings from 1966).

References

  1. Yiddish Theatre", printed as fact, and widely believed, Manger writes that he was born in Berlin
    in 1900 and did not learn Yiddish until the age of fourteen. A. A. Roback, The Story of Yiddish Literature (New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1940), 329.
  2. ^ David Roskies and Leonard Wolf, Introduction to Itzik Manger, The World According to Itzik: Selected Poetry and Prose. Translated and edited by Leonard Wolf (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), xiii.
  3. ^ Manger, The World According to Itzik, xix
  4. ^ Itzik Manger, Shriftn in proze (Tel Aviv: Farlag Y.L. Peretz, 1980), 445.
  5. ^ Manger, The World According to Itzik, xx. It was around this time that Manger changed his name from the formal sounding Yitzkhok to the childlike diminutive Itzik, thus actualizing his self-transformation from poet to folk bard.
  6. ^ Manger, The World According to Itzik, 3.
  7. ^ Manger, The World According to Itzik, 30.
  8. ^ David G. Roskies, The Last of the Purim Players: Itzik Manger. Prooftexts 13 (1993), 232.
  9. ^ Manger, The World According to Itzik, xxi.
  10. ^ Bercovici, Israil, O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România ("One hundred years of Jewish theatre in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă [ro]. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998)
  11. ISBN 9781480440777
    . Anthology of Manger's writing.

External links
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