Friday, September 9, 1966
TII IODTHIIN ISIAILITI
Far* mtm
OFF the RECORD
liy Nathan Ziprin
A POET AT SEVENTY
When I first met Jacob Glat-
stein, who is currently in moun
tain seclusion while the Jewish
world is marking the event, he
was already reputed to be a
young poet with a golden Yid
dish pen and with a literary
potential for still unmade hori
zons.
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He had etched a revolution in
Yiddish poetry with an enticing
daring in form and content that
not only troubled but confused
the older writers, whose artistry
was beginning to feel the on
slaught of a new generation of
poets and of a new school of
builders.
Jacob to them seemed to be
climbing on a ladder that was
shaking precariously while the
climber himself, an impeccable
magician, was of another faith.
He knew that he had come to the
parting of the way with the poe
tic past and that if he were to
make his artistic mark he would
not only have to deviate from
old themes but to devise new in
struments of creation for the new
ones.
The Yiddish poets of his day
had been chained to a lyricism
whose charm lay in evoking dis
tant memories. But the past was
rapidly giving way to a new
milieu, a new climate, that would
make more exacting demands on
the artist.
The true artist, it is said, does
not create in response to outer
stimulus. But it is equally true
that the true artist does not func
tion in a vacuum. He may not
pause in deliberate contemplation
how to react to the climate in
which he creates, yet his very
limbs are his witnesses of change.
The style of the day when
Glatstein was a young man was
lyrical poetry centering on the
"I” and on radiant remembrances
it was hard for the Yiddish poets
to abandon in large part. True,
they were on the American soil,
but yet not part of it, and their
song was replete with old land
scape and but slightly modified
poetic nusach. In fact, to the bulk
of Yiddish writers at the time
the American climate was not
yet conducive to literary creativ-
r
r
ALL
JUL eau tifui new fashions
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'"£2
mU
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ity — this was to happen later
when many of them began to ab
sorb the aroma of the new soil.
It was in this climate that
young Glatstein, barely twenty at
the time, somewhat older Aaron
Glantz-Leiles and the late
Nahum Minkoff, issued their
now-famed declaration of poetic-
independence, establishing the
school of introspectivism, or in-
sich-ism as it is known in Yid
dish, which opened up a new
world to aspiring poets and pros-
aisists. Their language was like
a young wind, daring at times,
striking in conception of ideas
and capable of conveying all con
ceivable nuances, from love to
levity, from sacred to profane,
from depth to play fullness, from
anger to mercy, from thinking
to sensing.
Glatstein has made a niche for
himself in literary history as the
initiator of a new school in Yid
dish poetry and as the -virtual
creator of a new Yiddish tongue.
What is perhaps more important
is his incomparable talent, com
bining audacious artistic articu
lateness with exact knowledge,
wisdom with satire, depth with
beauty, wrath with reason.
Today, at seventy, Glatstein is
a unique poet and rounded out
man whose concern for Jewish
values transcends the
vineyard.
Glatstein’s place is secure in
the pages of literary history not
alone as a poet but as a brilliant
essayist, consummate critic, ex
ponent of Jewish values and
constant defender of Jewish dig
nity.
literary
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