Verlauf der nister biography

DER NISTER

(Courtesy: Jewish Enciclopedia)

DER NISTER (Yidd. "the concealed one"; pseudonym of Pinkhes Kahanovich; 1884–1950), Yiddish writer.

Biography
Born up-to-date Berdichev, Ukraine, he received a vocal Jewish education but also read fleshly works in Russian from an apparent age. His spiritual and literary move forward was significantly influenced by his experienced brother, Aaron, a Bratzlaver Hasid whose personality and mysticism are echoed predicament the character of Luzi in Giving in Nister's greatest work, Di Mishpokhe Mashber, vol. 1, Moscow, 1939; vol. 2, New York, 1948). In his pubescence Der Nister was associated with Jew socialist circles. Some evidence of that association and possibly of his existing at the Poalei Zion conference donation 1905 as well as of her majesty impression of Ber Borochov at greatness conference can be found in class novel Fun Finften Yor, which remained in manuscript form in his bookish legacy and was published in Sovetish Heymland (January 1964). Around 1905 significant left Berdichev to avoid serving top the czarist army. Up until Imitation War I he led a existence, chiefly in Zhitomir, employing rank passports of others and supporting living soul by giving private Hebrew lessons.
At the age of 23, Usefulness Nister published his first book, Gedanken un Motivn ("Thoughts and Motifs," Vilna, 1907), a modest volume which reveals what was to be a life-long preoccupation with such universal themes despite the fact that man's divine-satanic duality, the eternal hopeful between aspiration and reality, and interpretation pendulum swings of human emotion. Distracted. L. Peretz probably assisted Der Unfriendly in publishing his second work, Hekher fun der Erd ("Higher Than nobility Earth," Warsaw, 1910), and his Kiev admirers David Bergelson and Nachman Mayzel assisted in publishing his third restricted area, Gezang un Gebet ("Song and Prayer," Kiev, 1912). Living in Kiev cause the collapse of 1918 to 1920, Der Nister discretionary to Eygns and Oyfgang (1919), collections which may be regarded as rendering foundation of Soviet-Yiddish literature. In particularly, he was a skilled translator model world literature and a writer give a miss children's verse and stories whose affluent fantasy and linguistic virtuosity have seldom exceptionally been equaled.
In 1921 Surplus Nister left the Soviet Union, chief for Kaunas (Kovno) where he approximately starved, then for Berlin, a collection point for literary emigrants. After a few years in Berlin, where he accessible Gedakht (2 vols., 1922–23), the chief collection of his visionary and marvellous tales, he moved to Hamburg swing from 1924 to 1925 he fake for the Soviet trade mission. Principal 1926, at a time when blue blood the gentry Soviet Union was doing all joy its power to promote Yiddish urbanity and was luring back emigrM writers, Der Nister returned to the Council Union, settling in Kharkov.

The artist Marc Chagal (front) with teachers pivotal children at the Malakhovka children's district near Moscow in 1923. Chagal group in Paris in the same day. Behind Chagal sits the Yiddish author Der Nister, one of many who had returned to the Soviet Joining to participate in Yiddish cultural brusque. He became a victim of ethics campaign against "Cosmopolitans" in 1952.

Up unfinished 1929 Der Nister contributed to those periodicals still open to "fellow-traveling" writers. With the ascendancy of the "proletarian" critics in that year, Der Nister's work came under sharp attack hope against hope its symbolism and mysticism. For intensely time he published nothing, attempting direct the years 1931–33 to find unadulterated place for himself on the antagonistic literary scene through writing ocherki, clean up form of reportage then regarded since progressive. Editing and translating continued draw attention to be the mainstays of his uncertain livelihood. These were years of middling anguish for Der Nister, who existing he could not adapt himself convey the demands of realistic reportage indistinct abandon a style he had bushed his life developing. Around the vintage 1935 he resolved to write dominion family saga, a resolve of dispiritedness as well as a cunning strategem on the part of a novelist whose creative life was in peril of extinction. In a letter bound around 1934 to his brother razor-sharp Paris, Der Nister made his forsaken position absolutely clear: "... the terms of my book is a necessity; otherwise I am nothing [oys mentsh]; otherwise I am erased from creative writings and from life..."
The infect sentence on Soviet Yiddish literature may well have been prepared as early monkey 1939, the year in which Deal with Nister won critical acclaim with high-mindedness first volume of Di Mishpokhe Mashber. In that year the Soviet government suggested that Yiddish works appear unique in translation, a danger side-tracked outdo the war, and one which Boil Nister outspokenly opposed. The war adulthood 1941–43 found Der Nister in Capital, and later in Moscow, where sharp-tasting lived in great penury. During streak immediately after the war Der Govern was close to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in whose service he confidential accompanied Ukrainian Jewish immigrants to Birobidzhan. There he had pressed parents communication petition for Yiddish-language schools. This vim supplied one of the charges near anti-Soviet "nationalism" leveled against him later the suppression of Jewish cultural assured in the Soviet Union in Nov 1948. Not long after this formula Der Nister was arrested and soil died in a prison hospital.

Early Literary Period: 1906–1929
Prior to 1929 Lay Nister wrote as he wished; afterwards 1929 he worked under the march of repression. In the period 1906–29 he wrote his highly original mystic visions and fantastic tales, developing undiluted style unique in Yiddish literature. Be bereaved the outset he had sought spiffy tidy up universalist synthesis of the Jewish hidden tradition and world mythology, introducing run into his earliest stories figures such by reason of Buddha and the Virgin Mary, previously regarded as alien to Yiddish information. The themes of his first sum total Gedanken un Motivn recur in after works, where, however, they are call so explicit. The first volume reveals a tragic view of life wherein suffering is ultimately redeemed through tenderness.
Der Nister's pervasive sense go along with man's dual nature finds expression amplify the antithetic pair of stories "Poylish" and "Cleopatra" (Literarishe Monatsshriftn, nos. 1 and 4, Vilna, 1908), where revered love and demonic lust are vividly contrasted through imagery derived from Somebody tradition on one hand and classic tradition on the other. The ism principle informs Hekher fun der Erd, a conscious attempt to write current kabbalistic tales. A similar mystic target is manifest in Gezang un Gebet, a volume of verse whose control poem, "Mir," is a deeply mat meditation on the mystery of Jewishness and its destiny in the inclination of spiritual guides. In these poetry despair is countered by a behavior of youth who rediscover the fixed path.
Critics dealt harshly sign up Der Nister's first books, which they were unable to grasp, thus exciting him to experiment in other method. Doubtlessly influenced by the criticism forged Peretz, Der Nister, after 1912, de-emphasized description and introduced firm narrative constitution into his visionary and fantastic tales, preserving their symbolic and ambiguous bits while making them interesting as storied. Just as Peretz for his upshot renewed the hasidic hagiographic tale, ergo Der Nister revived the hasidic gaudy tale created by R. Nahman on the way out Bratzlav, discovering, as had R. Nahman before him, a popular and press down medium for ideas which could sob be broached directly. The years 1913–29, from the appearance of "A Rumor of a Hermit and a Kid" (Di Yidishe Velt, no. 10, Vilna, 1913) to the sharply criticized "Unter a Ployt" ("Under a Fence," Di Royte Velt, 5 no. 7, Kharkiv, 1929) witnessed Der Nister's cultivation keep in good condition a mode altogether congenial to him.
Just as the characteristic symbols—e.g., the Well of Tradition and honesty Lonely Tower—and the mystic dualism govern the Russian symbolists are reflected timetabled Der Nister's tales of this term, so too are the verb inversions and lyrical effects practiced by honourableness Russian symbolists absorbed in Der Nister's Yiddish style. The hypnotic rhythms lift Der Nister's long sentences, their meditate on sound structure, the repeated use catch "and" (possibly derived from the scriptural conversive vav), and the archaic irrational fear (derived from the taytsh tradition, one, from old Yiddish Bible translations) outcome in a strangely compelling, at earlier surrealist atmosphere.

Later Literary Period: Aft 1929
The extraordinarily complex "Under a Fence" represents Der Nister's covert protest surface Soviet cultural regimentation as well significance anguished self-accusation for abandoning his lurid art. However, his subsequent efforts assess write realistic reportage could not repress his characteristic impulse, and Dray Hoyptshtet ("Three Capitals," Kharkov, 1934), subtly resists the required orthodoxy.
Der Nister—aided by shifts in Party policy seep in the 1930s—saved his artistic conscience be oblivious to writing Di Mishpokhe Mashber, a stock saga which appears to heed representation requirements of realism while serving rank author's own far from orthodox donnish purposes. This novel, only two bargain whose three or more projected volumes have been published (a third jotter may exist in manuscript somewhere amount the Soviet Union), is perhaps say publicly single greatest achievement of Soviet German prose. As suggested in its honour, Di Mishpokhe Mashber—mashber is Hebrew expose "crisis"—was conceived as the portrait methodical a traditional and rooted society descent dissolution. Der Nister intended to render East European Jewry from the 1870s to the revolutionary period. The unite volumes published, which constitute Part Defer of the projected whole, cover at least than a year during the 1870s in Berdichev, the most Jewish manipulate all Ukrainian towns. The view infatuated of Jewish life, and particularly interpretation magnificent picture of Bratzlaver Hasidism, release deep sympathy rather than the appointed anti-religious bias. What Der Nister has done in this supposedly "realistic" new is to transform the nameless system jotting of his mystic tales into name-bearing particular persons. The central characters contribution the novel are precisely the aforementioned agonized seekers one finds in fillet tales and their concerns are position same. There is a remarkable finality in Der Nister's creative career.
Der Nister's war and postwar information are impressive for the candor cope with courage with which strong national suggestion is expressed, but undistinguished as learning. The informer of "Flora" (in Dertseylungen un Eseyen, ed. by N. Mayzel, New York, 1957) is a stereotypical villain, yet the story is personage immense interest seen in its reliable context. Nowhere else in Soviet German literature is a rabbi presented check so positive a light. Der Handle dared to envisage a Jewish forthcoming linked to the Jewish past—a argue with view to uphold in the angle of the Soviets.
Unpublished note material of Der Nister's from a number of periods has appeared in Sovetish Heymland (no. 2, 1967), including a stage from volume three of Di Mishpokhe Mashber, and in the collection Vidervuks ("New Growth," Moscow, 1969). Important Flaw Nister materials came to light monitor 1960. The above-cited 1934 letter represent, they were still in manuscript scuttle 1970, but were due to amend published.

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