Malka Locker (1887–1990; Hebrew: מלכה לוקר; Yiddish: מלכּה לאָקער) was a Ukrainian-born Israeli poet, writing primarily in Yiddish.
Malka Locker | |
|---|---|
 Malka Locker in the 1950s. | |
| Born | 1887 Kuty, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 1990 Jerusalem |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Language | Yiddish |
Biography edit
Malka Locker was born in 1887 in Kuty, known in Yiddish as Kitev, a town in what was then the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, now Ukraine.[1][2][3] She came from a long line of rabbis, and education was important to her family, with Malka receiving a secular education as well as a Yiddish one.[3] She went on to learn German, French, and English, as well as Polish, Ukrainian, and Hebrew.[3]
In 1910, she married the Zionist activist Berl Locker, who was her cousin.[1][4] The couple traveled the world together, spending a decade living in London from 1938 to 1948.[1][2] They permanently settled in Israel in 1948, having first spent time in then-Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s.[5][6]
Locker is best known for her work as a poet, but she did not begin writing poetry until she was 42 years old.[1][4] She began writing on the suggestion of a friend, who had identified a "poetic quality" in her correspondence.[1] As she began to publish poems in the 1930s, her work received some notice from Yiddish critics.[1]
She published at least six books of poetry, beginning with Velt un mentsh ("World and Man") in 1931.[1][7] Subsequent collections included Du ("You") in 1932; Shtet ("Cities"), about London, in 1942; and The World Is Without a Protector: 1940–1945 in 1947.[1][2][3][7] While she wrote primarily in Yiddish, she also published one book of poems in German, and her writing was also translated into Hebrew and French.[1][8]
Locker also produced various works of literary criticism, with a focus on French romantic and symbolic poetry, including a 1965 book on Arthur Rimbaud, a 1970 biography of Charles Baudelaire, and a 1976 biography of Paul Verlaine.[1][3][7][9][10][11] She was also a composer, notably writing the choral works "Luekh trts"v" and "Luekh trts'kh" in 1938, and would sing in Yiddish locally and internationally.[2]
References edit
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Turner, Ri. ""Does It Mean I Long for You?"". Yiddish Book Center. Retrieved 2021-08-26.
- ^ a b c d Brown, Katie; Lisky, I. A.; Kaizer, A. M. (2021-11-09). London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story, 1930–1950: Selected Works of Katie Brown, A. M. Kaizer, and I. A. Lisky. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-4849-9.
- ^ a b c d e Locker, Malka; Mazow, Julia (1993). "The World Is without a Protector / ךצטיח אַ ןאָ זיא טלצװ יד". Bridges. 3 (2): 80–81. ISSN 1046-8358. JSTOR 40357592.
- ^ a b Landman, Isaac; Cohen, Simon (1942). The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia ...: An Authoritative and Popular Presentation of Jews and Judaism Since the Earliest Times. Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Incorporated.
- ^ Schneiderman, Harry; Carmin, Itzhak J. (1955). Who's who in World Jewry. Pitman Publishing Corporation.
- ^ "Palestine Greets Toscanini at Haifa". The New York Times. 1938-04-10 – via Proquest.
- ^ a b c "Locker, Malka 1887-1990". WorldCat.
- ^ Hellerstein, Kathryn (2014-07-23). A Question of Tradition: Women Poets in Yiddish, 1586-1987. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-9397-1.
- ^ "The Leonard Bernstein Collection, circa 16th century-2001, bulk 1940-1990". Indiana University.
- ^ "Mendele: Yiddish literature and language". Columbia University. 1997-08-18.
- ^ Bandy, W. T. (1973). "Baudelaire Today". L'Esprit Créateur. 13 (2): 95–99. ISSN 0014-0767. JSTOR 26279782.