Khodasevich V. From the Hebrew poets.

Khodasevich V. From the Hebrew poets.
Lifetime edition.

Petersburg-Berlin. Publishing House Of Z. I. Grzhebin. 1923, p. 76 Soft cover, size 14 x 19 cm. Good condition, flyleaf falls out.

The collection contains translations of Jewish poets who wrote in Hebrew. The use of Hebrew as the language of modern secular literature at that time was a new phenomenon and did not easily make its way into life. In a Jewish cultural environment, seeking to revive national roots and language, were mutually fighting two trends: creativity in Yiddish (colloquial language) and Hebrew (the language, reviving as a language of everyday communication and literature on the basis of the biblical lexicon, it was a while the language of armchair scientists, scholars, poets, writing for a relatively narrow audience).

The Jewish intelligentsia at the beginning of the XX century was engaged in the revival of the national language, which was actively forgotten by assimilated Jews in the pale of settlement. The collection reflected new moods and trends in the cultural environment of Jewry and became one of the first manifestations of this new fact - the revival of Jewish national consciousness and the free spirit of the people in Russian culture.

The book presents the best poems of Jewish poets translated by V. Khodasevich-H. N. Bialik, A. Frishman, S. Chernikhovsky, Ya. Fichman, Z. Shneur, A. Shimonovich, Avraham Ben Yitzhak. The choice of verses was varied and largely random, but the translator wished to leave it as "it was created by the troubled time". The translations are made from the liner notes compiled by L. B. Jaffe, with whom in 1918 V. Khodasevich published his first collection of Jewish poetry. The Latin transcription of texts was also used in translations, which allowed preserving the sound features of the originals, meter, construction of stanzas and rhymes. At the end of the book, brief notes are given for Russian readers.

V. Khodasevich took translation work very seriously and wrote: "the Work of poets who are currently writing in Hebrew has proved to be the most valuable and close to me. I have devoted the most time and effort to translating from the Hebrew." The book was an absolute success with readers who were not familiar with the originals. Russian writer R.Gul described these translations as follows:"they are musically subtle, they exude a truly biblical, sad Jewish lyricism." Another critic noted that these translations "have the ability to penetrate the secrets of the original, to which it is not only equal in poetic power: the translation is often better than the original."

Vladislav Khodasevich (1886-1939) – Russian poet, critic, literary historian, translator. His father came from a Polish noble family, deprived of the title for participation in the Polish uprising of 1833, and his maternal grandfather, the famous Jewish writer Ya.a. Brafman, converted from Judaism to Orthodoxy, but V. Khodasevich's mother was raised in a Polish family, where she received Catholic baptism. Training in the Moscow classical gymnasium gave the poet a brilliant knowledge of ancient languages. The diverse influence of Polish, Jewish, and Russian culture was reflected in his later literary experiences. During his life, V. Khodasevich published 5 collections of poems, the last of which was published in 1927. His poetry was so recognizable that, in the words of G. Adamovich, "it did not need a signature." V. Khodasevich's dry, often bitter poems earned him the nickname "the favorite poet of those who do not like poetry".

The year 1921 - the year of the defeat of the Kronstadt uprising, the death of Blok, the execution of Gumilyov, and the beginning of the NEP-became a kind of frontier for Khodasevich, as well as for many of his contemporaries. V. Khodasevich made a difficult decision to temporarily go abroad. For several years, he did not perceive himself as an emigrant. In Berlin, he edited the magazine "Conversation", founded together With M. Gorky, where many Russian-language authors were published. By 1925, V. Khodasevich gave up his intention to return to the USSR and moved to Paris. In exile, due to his seriously failing health, he almost stopped writing poetry, focusing on translations, critical articles, and memoirs. He headed the literary Department of the newspaper Vozrozhdenie, published in some other emigrant publications, and soon took the place of the leading critic of Russian literature abroad. Together with his second wife, the writer N. Berberova, he wrote reviews of Soviet literature under the pseudonym "Gulliver". The last decade he lived separately, working on a book of memoirs "Necropolis" (1939), in which he wrote about his mentor V. Bryusov, A. Bely, a close friend of his youth, the poet Muni, N. Gumilyov, F. Sologub, S. Yesenin, M. Gorky, and others. He died in Paris after an operation in 1939. He was buried at the Paris cemetery Boulogne, Bencur.