“Sutzkever”

New research and translation of Avrom Sutzkever’s work leads to a multilingual, multinational convening of Yiddishists in Copenhagen, Denmark and in Lund, Sweden.

January 19th, 2020. A small gallery in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district is crowded and abuzz to honor the tenth anniversary of the death of Avrom Sutzkever with poetry, music, and visual art.

Abraham Sutzkever’s poetry is often read within the confines of “Holocaust literature”. This essays reads a selection of Sutzkever’s poetry against the Holocaust, against the apocalypse, and against the horizons of meaning that the label of “Holocaust literature” might impose.

Halff offers a specific and detailed critique of the translation, while also acknowledging that in this book, filled with Sutzkever’s metaphors, imagery, and motifs, “wonders await.”

Mel Konner’s compelling translation of Helfandn bay Nakht (1950) takes the reader through Sutzkever’s Nesiye iber Afrika, evoking stories of wise African kings, masked hunters, shape-shifting prey, lovers divided by crocodile rivers, and the creation of man beginning with elephant tusks.

A new, dynamic translation of Abraham Sutzkever’s poem about the burial and regeneration of “the Jewish word.”

New translations of six poems from Sutzkever’s 1960 collection Oasis.