Celia Dropkin
Encyclopedia
Celia Dropkin was a Yiddish poet. (In Yiddish her name was Tsipe, probably short for Zipporah, and later Tsilye Drapkin). She was born in Bobruysk, Belarus
to an assimilated Russian-Jewish family. Her father, a forester
, died of tuberculosis
when Dropkin was young. Dropkin, with her mother and sister, were taken in by wealthy relatives. Dropkin exhibited intellectual abilities at a young age. She attended Russian-language school and gymnasium
(high school), after which she taught briefly in Warsaw
. In 1907 she went to Kiev
to continue her studies, and there came under the influence of Hebrew
writer Uri Nissan Gnessin
. Under his tutelage she wrote poetry in Russian
. She returned to Bobruysk in 1908, and shortly thereafter met and married Shmaye Dropkin, a Bund activist from Gomel, Belarus
. Because of his political activities, he fled to America
in 1910, leaving Dropkin and their son to follow two years later.
Dropkin became active in Yiddish cultural
circles in New York
, translating many of her Russian
poems into Yiddish
for publication in Yiddish literary journals beginning in 1917. For many years she was a regular contributor to a wide variety of journals; she also wrote stories and a serialized novel to earn money, but was more interested in poetry. Her poems are generally considered superior to her stories. Both her poems and her stories reflect her biography but are not identical to it. She wrote many poems of nature and several evoking places she visited or lived. A large number of poems relate to her children (she had six, of whom five survived) or children in general, one of which was set to music as a lullaby by Abraham Ellstein
. However, she is best known for her poems related to passion, sexuality and depression. Her poems express longing, guilt, fury, even violence, and include frank explorations of sado-masochism. Her imagery includes Christian
and classical
references to a much greater extent than traditional Jewish ones. Like a number of other Yiddish women writers, she uses few words of Hebrew
or Aramaic
origin, for reasons that appear to involve a specific rejection of a literary idiom replete with Biblical
and Talmud
ic references, a common device among male Yiddish and Hebrew writers of the age.
While often associated with the In Zikh (Introspectivist) movement, her work does not adhere closely to that group’s ethic. She did, in common with the Inzikhistn, employ free verse much of the time; and like them she believed any subject matter was appropriate for Yiddish poetry, not only specifically Jewish ones. Her deeply personal poems, however, tended to embarrass the male elite, including major critics such as B. Rivkin and Sh. Niger. Her social world overlapped with members of many literary movements. She was a close friend of Zishe Landau, one of the founders of the slightly earlier, rival group, Di Yunge. She also was friendly with Anna Margolin
, who like Dropkin refused to adhere to a single poetic model.
During The Depression the family moved frequently in search of work. They lived for several years in Virginia
and later in Massachusetts
, before returning permanently to New York in the late 1930s. She collected her poems in a book, In Heysn Vint (In the Hot Wind) in 1935. In 1943 her husband died unexpectedly; after this event her output slowed considerably. The last poem published in her lifetime was the 1953 "Fun Ergets Ruft a Fayfl" (From Somewhere a Whistle Calls), an ode to her long-dead friend Zishe Landau, which appeared in Di Tsukunft. After that she took up painting and may have completely stopped writing poetry. She was considered a gifted natural artist and her paintings won amateur competitions. She spent significant time during these years in Florida
and the Catskills
.
Dropkin died of cancer in 1956, and was buried in the Arbeter Ring section of Mt. Lebanon Cemetery in Queens, New York. Her children published an expanded edition of In Heysn Vint in 1959, which includes previously uncollected poems and a selection of her stories. There remain poems among her personal papers and in literary journals that have never been collected or translated, but she was not prolific. The 150 poems in the second edition of In Heysn Vint comprise the vast majority of her output.
Dropkin’s best-known poem is certainly "Tsirkus Dame" (Circus Lady), which portrays the deep ambivalence of both the acrobat and her audience in matters of life and death. This poem has been translated in English at least nine times. English translations of her work can be found in anthologies of Yiddish poetry and in literary journals. Several of her poems have been set to music by The Klezmatics
, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band
, and Charming Hostess
. A book of translations into French was published in Paris in 1994 as Dans le Vent Chaud, and contains about half her total work. Very few of her poems have appeared in other languages.
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
to an assimilated Russian-Jewish family. Her father, a forester
Forestry
Forestry is the interdisciplinary profession embracing the science, art, and craft of creating, managing, using, and conserving forests and associated resources in a sustainable manner to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human benefit. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands...
, died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
when Dropkin was young. Dropkin, with her mother and sister, were taken in by wealthy relatives. Dropkin exhibited intellectual abilities at a young age. She attended Russian-language school and gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
(high school), after which she taught briefly in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
. In 1907 she went to Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
to continue her studies, and there came under the influence of Hebrew
Hebrew literature
Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews...
writer Uri Nissan Gnessin
Uri Nissan Gnessin
Uri Nissan Gnessin was a Russian Jewish writer, generally considered a pioneer in modern Hebrew literature.-Early life:He was born in Starodub, where his father was a rabbi...
. Under his tutelage she wrote poetry in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. She returned to Bobruysk in 1908, and shortly thereafter met and married Shmaye Dropkin, a Bund activist from Gomel, Belarus
Homyel
Gomel ; also Homiel, Homel is the administrative center of Gomel Voblast and the second-largest city in Belarus. It has a population of 482,652...
. Because of his political activities, he fled to America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1910, leaving Dropkin and their son to follow two years later.
Dropkin became active in Yiddish cultural
Yiddish literature
Yiddish literature encompasses all belles lettres written in Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus for centuries in Eastern Europe, is evident in its literature.It is generally described...
circles in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, translating many of her Russian
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
poems into Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
for publication in Yiddish literary journals beginning in 1917. For many years she was a regular contributor to a wide variety of journals; she also wrote stories and a serialized novel to earn money, but was more interested in poetry. Her poems are generally considered superior to her stories. Both her poems and her stories reflect her biography but are not identical to it. She wrote many poems of nature and several evoking places she visited or lived. A large number of poems relate to her children (she had six, of whom five survived) or children in general, one of which was set to music as a lullaby by Abraham Ellstein
Abraham Ellstein
Abraham "Abe" Ellstein was an American composer for Yiddish entertainments. Along with Shalom Secunda, Joseph Rumshinsky, and Alexander Olshanetsky, Ellstein was one of the "big four" composers of his era in New York City's Second Avenue Yiddish theatre scene...
. However, she is best known for her poems related to passion, sexuality and depression. Her poems express longing, guilt, fury, even violence, and include frank explorations of sado-masochism. Her imagery includes Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
and classical
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
references to a much greater extent than traditional Jewish ones. Like a number of other Yiddish women writers, she uses few words of Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
or Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
origin, for reasons that appear to involve a specific rejection of a literary idiom replete with Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
ic references, a common device among male Yiddish and Hebrew writers of the age.
While often associated with the In Zikh (Introspectivist) movement, her work does not adhere closely to that group’s ethic. She did, in common with the Inzikhistn, employ free verse much of the time; and like them she believed any subject matter was appropriate for Yiddish poetry, not only specifically Jewish ones. Her deeply personal poems, however, tended to embarrass the male elite, including major critics such as B. Rivkin and Sh. Niger. Her social world overlapped with members of many literary movements. She was a close friend of Zishe Landau, one of the founders of the slightly earlier, rival group, Di Yunge. She also was friendly with Anna Margolin
Anna Margolin
Anna Margolin is the pen name of Rosa Harning Lebensboym a twentieth century Jewish Russian-American, Yiddish language poet....
, who like Dropkin refused to adhere to a single poetic model.
During The Depression the family moved frequently in search of work. They lived for several years in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and later in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, before returning permanently to New York in the late 1930s. She collected her poems in a book, In Heysn Vint (In the Hot Wind) in 1935. In 1943 her husband died unexpectedly; after this event her output slowed considerably. The last poem published in her lifetime was the 1953 "Fun Ergets Ruft a Fayfl" (From Somewhere a Whistle Calls), an ode to her long-dead friend Zishe Landau, which appeared in Di Tsukunft. After that she took up painting and may have completely stopped writing poetry. She was considered a gifted natural artist and her paintings won amateur competitions. She spent significant time during these years in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and the Catskills
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...
.
Dropkin died of cancer in 1956, and was buried in the Arbeter Ring section of Mt. Lebanon Cemetery in Queens, New York. Her children published an expanded edition of In Heysn Vint in 1959, which includes previously uncollected poems and a selection of her stories. There remain poems among her personal papers and in literary journals that have never been collected or translated, but she was not prolific. The 150 poems in the second edition of In Heysn Vint comprise the vast majority of her output.
Dropkin’s best-known poem is certainly "Tsirkus Dame" (Circus Lady), which portrays the deep ambivalence of both the acrobat and her audience in matters of life and death. This poem has been translated in English at least nine times. English translations of her work can be found in anthologies of Yiddish poetry and in literary journals. Several of her poems have been set to music by The Klezmatics
The Klezmatics
The Klezmatics are a Grammy Award-winning American klezmer music group based in New York City, who have achieved fame singing in several languages, most notably mixing older Yiddish tunes with other types of more contemporary music of differing origins...
, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band
Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band
The Flying Bulgars is a Canadian folk music band, who play original music rooted in the folk and celebration music of Jews originating in Eastern Europe. The band's music adds elements of rock, jazz and salsa....
, and Charming Hostess
Charming Hostess
Charming Hostess is a band that grew out of the Oakland avant-rock scene in the mid-1990s.-Current work:Today, the music primarily springs from three women with an emphasis in the body—voices and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. The work grows from diaspora...
. A book of translations into French was published in Paris in 1994 as Dans le Vent Chaud, and contains about half her total work. Very few of her poems have appeared in other languages.