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182 LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA, MÂKSLA
In 1930 they declared their existence and their approach to culture in the journal
Mir aleyn, a collection of poetry, short stories, literary criticism, and essays on art
and criticism. A key article was an essay on the meaning of “mir aleyn” as it suited
their situation both politically and artistically. The journal was meant to be the first of
a series, but it was the only one published. Yet the journal was received to high critical
acclaim. Critics wrote that this group “hears Lithuania” 1 ; and that the journal was
“full of longing to throw off the bonds...that Lithuania is sunk in” 2 . In other words,
the writing reflected both the difficulties of the political and social transition, and the
vision that there would be a freer, better time on the other side of the struggle. They
saw the generations–long history of Jewish life in Lithuania in a long and rich procession
that led to the present. While it was not necessarily clear where the path would
lead from here, the interest was in pressing on.
Yiddish newspapers in Kovne were an important outlet for new literature. Two of
the senior members of the Mir aleyn group worked at two of the main daily newspapers:
Rubin Rubinshteyn was editor of the “Idishe shtime” and Mendl Sudarski was editor of
the “Folksblat”. Both these editors were also writers who sought out and were eager to
publish interesting writing even by unknown talents. It was through their efforts that some
very young writers gained good reputations, and became more widely published.
A number of these promising young writers belonged to Mir aleyn: Yankev
Gotlib, Neyekh Itsik Gotlib, Eliezer Heyman, Yisroel Kaplan, and Khaym and Mayer
Yelin. All were born in Lithuania. Most died in the Holocaust in their early 30s, never
to develop their mature talents. Although Heyman and Khaym Yelin both wrote during
their incarceration in the Nazi ghetto in Kovne, very little or none of that work
could be salvaged.
Among the latest examples of the free work of these writers exists in the 1938
collection, Bleter3 , or Leaves. The book’s introduction states that “the leaves gathered
here are conceived as continual growth from the tree of the young Yiddish
literature”; that the collection itself is “a further milestone on the course of Jewish
artistic creativity”; that it is “a gathering–point of the Yiddish literature so deeply
rooted in Lithuania”.
The collection consists of short stories and poetry. There are three women poets
who write with astonishing clarity about the personal and the political.There are two
stories4 about odd, damaged characters and the damage they can inflict on the communities
that they ostensibly depend on. There are beautiful painterly poems about
the long way Jews took and the precious baggage they carried to arrive in Lithuania
and the present. But these do not fit the topic under examination, and will have to
await their own opportunity, which hopefully will come before another 60 years have
passed since their publication.
Yankev Gotlib 5 was the most–published writer to contribute to Bleter, having four
books of poetry in print by 1938. Gotlib’s first poem was printed in the “Idishe
shtime” in 1925—when he was 14 or 15 years old. He was published in numerous
other newpapers and journals in Lithuania, in Warsaw, in Riga and in New York. His
books, all published in Kaunas, are the 1931 Gold un blut or Gold and Blood, which
Gotlib identifies as the glorious and comforting colors of the Lithuanian sunset. The
poems are both loving and despairing, as he describes his home in a sad beauty, and