Moshe Kulbak (1896–1940)
Auteur de The Zelmenyaners: A Family Saga
A propos de l'auteur
Crédit image: Майсей (Мойшэ) Кульбак, яўрэйскі пісьменнік, драматург, перакладчык. By Unknown author - facebook.com/majsejkulbak, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62402544
Œuvres de Moshe Kulbak
גוט איז דער מענטש : געקליבענע לידער און פאעמעס / 1 exemplaire
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Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Koelbak, Mosje
- Nom légal
- Kulbak, Moyshe
- Date de naissance
- 1896
- Date de décès
- 1940
- Sexe
- male
Membres
Critiques
Prix et récompenses
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Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 13
- Aussi par
- 6
- Membres
- 86
- Popularité
- #213,013
- Évaluation
- 3.5
- Critiques
- 2
- ISBN
- 18
- Langues
- 7
- Favoris
- 1
The tale centers around the older generation's desires to retain their old ways, including the vestiges of their Jewish beliefs and practices, in the face of the growing incursions of Soviet society and economic collectivisation. As the younger generation grows to maturity, they less interested in the old ways and more interested in being good Bolsheviks. Even the older Zelmenyaners are pushed to end their independent lives as tradesmen (tailors, tanners, carpenters) and go to work in the factories, like good Soviet workers.
The story is in fable-like, farcical narrative. Rumor, scandal and gossip, feud and loyalty, busybodies and misanthropes swarm and swirl about the courtyard. Knowledge of the outside world is minimal, sometimes comically so, for most of the Zelmenyaners, although the outside world has been though town within recent memory, in the form of the German Army, who stormed through during World War One. One of the brothers, in fact, has been made a widower during an artillery barrage. Two of the men, one from each adult generation fought in the Russian Army during that war, with the younger going on to fight with the Reds in the Russian Revolution.
Our affection for this crowd is cemented early on, and though the story is played for comedy, the pathos is evident throughout as the family fights a losing battle to retain their way of life, their heritage and their family identity in the face of societal forces from without and betrayal from within.
I found this book moving for many reasons. For one thing, it describes the place my grandparents came from, the place where they would have lived, and most likely would have died within a decade of the action of this novel, had they not left for America in the early 20th century. Furthermore, Kulbak was also a poet, and his descriptions, especially his uses of natural settings to set mood, are often wonderful. The winter snow and freezing cold becomes almost a character, a member of the family. But here is a description of the end of one summer:
"The first thin, slanting autumn rains began to fall. Beneath them the silent summer, its myriad colors squelched and soiled, was snuffed out in the gardens. Disconsolate beet leaves with hard, purplish veins lay cast between the vegetable beds. Dirty yellows, oranges, and browns were trodden silently underfoot. On days like that you didn't need an antenna to hear distant cries."
Oh, to be able to read this in the original Yiddish. Adding poignancy to the reading was this note on the book's back cover:
Moyshe Kulbak (1896-1937) was a leading Yiddish modernist poet, novelist and dramatist. He was arrested in 1937, during the wave of Stalinist repression that hit the Minsk Yiddish writers and cultural activists with particular vehemence. After a perfunctory show trial, Kulbak was shot at the age of forty-one."… (plus d'informations)