Modern Poetry in Translation

Itzik Manger

Poet

Website: Itzik Manger

Itzik Manger (1901-1969) was born in Czernowitz when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later to become Romania. He was one of the most gifted and popular Yiddish poets of the twentieth century who also wrote prose, literary essays and drama. He spent a decade in Warsaw from 1928 and then moved to France from where he tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Palestine during the Second World War. From France he arrived in England in 1940 where he spent another decade before moving to the United States in 1951. His last years were spent in Israel.

Manger's verse is deceptively simple, often written in a folk style. His appeal was enormous: both in literary circles and among the mass of Yiddish speakers with whom he so closely identified.

- Biographical information courtesy of Helen Beer