The World According to Itzik: Selected Poetry and Prose

In the years between 1929 and 1939, when Itzik Manger wrote most of the poetry and fiction that made him famous, his name among Yiddish readers was a household word. Called the Shelley of Yiddish, he was characterized as being "drunk with talent." This book--the first full-length anthology of Manger's work--displays the full range of his genius in poetry, fiction, and criticism. The book begins with an extensive historical, biographical, and literary critical introduction to Manger's work. There are then excerpts from a novel, The Book of Paradise, three short stories, autobiographical essays, critical essays, and finally, Manger's magnificent poetry--ballads, Bible poems, personal lyrics, and the Megilla Songs. These works, which have the patina of myths acquired ages ago, also offer modern psychological insight and irrepressible humor. With Manger, we make the leap into the Jewish twentieth century, as he recreates the past in all its layered expressiveness and interprets it with modernist sensibilities.

About the Author :
Leonard Wolf is a distinguished novelist and translator of Yiddish books, short stories, and poetry. He has taught courses in New York University's School of Continuing Education since his retirement from San Francisco State University. Itzik Manger (1901-1969) was a Yiddish poet, playwright, prose writer, and essayist, born Isidor Helfer in the multiethnic city of Czernowitz, Ukraine. Yiddish song and a love of literature permeated the Manger home. Sometime after being demobilized following World War I, he moved to Bucharest, where he became a leading spokesman for the Yiddish secular movement in greater Romania, wrote for the local Yiddish press, and did the lecture circuit, speaking on the ballad as well as on Spanish, Romanian, and Gypsy folklore. He lived in Poland, until forced out in 1938; in France, briefly; and then found refuge in England at the start of World War II. He died in Israel in 1969.

Review :
"Itzik Manger was one of the handful of extraordinary Yiddish poets of the 20th century. There is a quality of hallucinatory intensity in Manger, which is very difficult to duplicate." --Harold Bloom, author of Genius: A Mosaic of 100 Exemplary Creative Minds "Manger's deceptively folkish style, which mixes fantasy and autobiography, Biblical plots and a fin-de-siècle East European setting, pathos and parody, angels' wings and social protest, the lyric and dramatic, has been brilliantly rendered into English by Leonard Wolf." --Ruth R. Wisse, Harvard University "Halkin's translations and introduction are of the high quality one has come to expect from him." --Choice "The 'New Yiddish Library' series . . . promises to make a valuable contribution to library collections. . . . If Roskies' introduction is any indication of introductions to come, readers are in for something very special. Here he provides the best essay available in English on Manger. It is both scholarly and readable. The translations themselves are excellent, and the scholarly apparatus makes this a volume useful to a wide public. This reviewer cannot wait for more volumes to appear." --Choice