Mani Leib

Mani abdomen ( born December 20, 1883 in Nizhyn, Ukraine, † October 4, 1953 in New York; Yiddish מאַני לייב, real name Mani body Brahinsky ) was a jiddischsprachiger poet of modernity. He belonged to the group of poets Di Yunge, an avant-garde group of Yiddish poets and writers in New York in the first half of the 20th century.

Life and work

Mani body was born in 1883 in Ukraine and engaged already as a young man in revolutionary circles against the Tsarist regime. He emigrated after he was imprisoned for his socialist activities in 1905 in the United States. By profession he was a shoemaker and boat builder and worked, even when he had already become a well-known poet in New York shoe factories. Because of the poor working conditions there, he contracted tuberculosis.

Mani body, who took his pseudonym without surname when he started writing, started his poetic career with the translation of Russian and Ukrainian poetry for the Yiddish daily Forward. His own writing was influenced by the ideals of the Russian Symbolists, which he translated. Like its Russian and Eastern European models Mani wrote poems and short prose body for children, including his classic Yingl Tsingl Khvat, which was illustrated by the Russian avant-garde masterpiece El Lissitzky. In his most productive year in 1918, he published 11 collections of his poems. In 1925, he was with Zishe Landau and co-editor of the anthology Reuben Iceland island, the main anthology of literary group Di Yunge. After his death his poems, songs and ballads were published in several collective editions.

Mani body occurred in modern Yiddish poetry for a new, formal complexity. In the substantial absence of social issues, he wrote poems with a high formal standards that are imbued with the belief in the ability of art to compensate for human suffering. His " Klangpoeme " gave the Yiddish language renewed attention by the artful use of alliteration and assonance.

Mani abdomen poems have been taken early in the curriculum Yiddish schools, which was one reason of his great reputation. In addition, he was known beyond the borders of the Yiddish readership beyond. Many of his poems were translated into English and other languages ​​.