Confrontation 92/93
Winter 2006
Menke Katz, Menke. The Complete Yiddish Poems of Menke Katz. Translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, Edited by Dovid Katz and Harry Smith. Brooklyn: The Smith, 2005.
Reviewed by Martin Tucker
A work of several years’ dedication, this translation of the complete Yiddish
poems of Menke Katz is a significant achievement in Yiddish studies. Menke is
one of contemporary Yiddish literature’s giants; his work, Burning Village,
recreating shtetl life in the Lithuania in which he was born, remains a classic.
Menke also wrote in English; two of these books caused controversy and partisanship.
Accused of many kinds of deviation by both his Yiddish and his English critics,
Menke continued in his joyous way to write poems that reflect mystic belief
in the power of awesome naturalness. His later work was mostly written in English,
but according to the warm memoir by Harry Smith that opens this mammoth volume
(779 pages), Menke's grandmother appeared in a dream three months before he
died and pleaded with him to write again in Yiddish. Myth or not, Menke's last
poem was composed in Yiddish.
Menke was an inveterate seeker of the essence of nature in all things; he is
characteristically both mystic and romantic. Growing up in a shtetl life stamped
his imagination forever with the envelope of poverty and prejudice, yet Menke
– perhaps because of his yearning soul – rarely succumbed to despair.
He is a journeyman who did not love the company of misery in his midst but also
did not allow it to change his habit of exuberance. Little was enough for him
till more came along.
Menke’s son, Dovid Katz, contributed a lengthy introduction to this volume,
exploring the major aspects of his father’s life from his involvement in
politics to the Kabbalah, from embroilment in sociopolitical causes to sexual
escapades of some notoriety. Dovid Katz also writes knowingly of the literary
Yiddish scene in New York in the past century and of its intermittent capture
by political forces (largely of the Left), and of Yiddishkeit's decline after
World War II. The introduction is invaluable as a guide to the father’s
poetry.
Menke is more likely to be remembered as a Yiddish poet than an English one, though his works in English are represented in anthologies in this country. He published nine books in each language. In a letter to Harry Smith, he wrote:
“I hope I will be seen exclusively as a Yiddish poet. That is how even readers in English see my poetry. They call me the Yiddish poet. But no poet should suddenly switch from his mother tongue to a second language. For this reason, there is a danger that I will be forgotten in both languages.”
This volume should do much to keep Menke from oblivion.