Ten Years Without Avrom Sutzkever

Conversation Admission: $15 YIVO members & students: $10 Watch the video Read the evening’s program

Remembered as “the greatest poet of the Holocaust,” a Partisan fighter, and a book smuggler, Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever’s legacy as a poet for poetry’s sake deserves more attention.

Sutzkever was a member of Eastern Europe’s last literary circle Yung-Vilne, and also a kindred spirit of New York’s In Zikh movement of introspective Yiddish poets. Rejecting politics in poetry, Sutzkever transcended the stylistic boundaries of his peers and drew inspiration from outside of the Yiddish world including from Russian and Polish Romantic and symbolist poets. Sutzkever’s poetry is known for its Neo-romantic interest in nature and wonder, and for his virtuosic, inventive use of the Yiddish language. Having left behind an oeuvre which includes more than two dozen books of poetry, fiction, and a memoir on his experience in the Vilna Ghetto, Sutzkever is also remembered for his work for almost 50 years as founder and editor of Tel Aviv’s premiere Yiddish Magazine, Di goldene keyt.

Join YIVO for an evening critically engaging with Sutzkever’s poetic legacy including recitations of his poetry, and discussion with literary scholar Ruth Wisse, translator Barbara Harshav, and poet Irena Klepfisz.