Mixing business and creativity: Mani Leib's poem "Ikh Bin."
As a lifelong musician, I have known many people struggling with the choice between living their art - and, perhaps, starving, or growing bitter that their work went unrewarded monetarily - and making a living. So this poem really struck me.
I know there are a lot of people struggling with this problem and I thought you all might enjoy his perspective: "I'm thankful that I'm not a cobbler who writes, I'm a poet who makes shoes."
Who was Mani Leyb?
A man of his time, an artist and an artisan, struggling with tuberculosis, poverty, and his muse...
Mani Leyb (or Leib) was a poet and shoemaker. He was born Mani Leyb Brahinsky in 1883 in Nizhyn, a tiny Jewish town not far from Kiev in the Ukraine. His family was poor and there were eight children. His father sold furs, hides, and animals at the regional fairs, and Mani always remembered the fascinating stories he overheard as a child between his father and the other horse and cow traders, the stories and speech of ordinary people.His mother, the family's primary bread-winner, sold hens, geese and eggs in the town market. In "A mayse vegn zikh" (A Story About Myself), he wrote that she was a fount of spontaneous rhymes, poems, and epigrams.
At the age of 11 Leyb left school to be apprenticed to a bootmaker. He almost immediately was writing poems. Leyb was a social activist and, involved in strikes and revolutionary activities, he was arrested twice while still in his teens.
He emigrated to the United States at the age of 22 and settled in New York in 1906. He decided to stop using his last name and published his poems in the Yiddish newspapers like the Forverts.
He crafted his poems in the style of folksongs, with the ring of ordinary people's speech and led a group of new poets called "Di Yunge" (the Young Ones).
He worked throughout his life as a shoe and boot-maker and worked in the factories even after contracting tuberculosis, a very common disease among Jews crowded into poor neighborhoods.
He stopped writing for five years, then, while living in a sanatorium for two years, he began writing again, and it was then that he composed the poem "Ikh Bin."
He was much beloved and when he fell on hard times late in his life, his friends and devoted fans bought him a house! He never lost his belief in "the ability of poetry to transform the mundane into the divine." He died of lung cancer in 1953.
Picture is the cover of his book Yingl tsingl khvat, 1918.
Mani Leyb's own handwritten bookplate
"I Am..." (Ikh Bin...)
My very plain translation of Mani Leib's famous poem.
I am...I am Mani Leyb, well known far and wide,
From Brownsville to Yehupetz, it's so far;
With all the shoemakers - I'm a good shoemaker,
With all the poets - a good poet.
A boy by the workbench, by the heavy cobbler's last;
At night, by moonlight, sometimes, just sometimes,
A poem, like a prayer, came from above into my heart
And the awl dropped out of my hand.
That's how the gracious muse first came
And kissed the lips of a cobbler's boy
And I took up that sweet shudder
That gives words to the mute tongue.
And my tongue became a clear fountain
And my poems resounded, as if from some other place, not here,
And my narrow world was opened
And my bread, and effort, became sweet.
The shoemaker boys, the loyal apprentices,
They gaped when I sang with gusto,
My poems pleased their bitter hearts,
But they didn't know what I was singing to.
And, irritated by the gloom in empty lives,
They spat all over me with mockery,
And they gave me a nickname, forever:
Rhymin' Simon rag-boy, Rhymin' Simon poet.
So it's good-bye, my dear brothers,
I'm not going to go to the workbench with you any more,
With the muse in my heart, with songs in my breast,
I'm going to the poets, to be a poet.
And when I came to the poets,
A little bird just out of the egg,
They took me in with great honor,
And I became one of them.
Oh poets, singers like birds on the wing!
Inspired, and pale, full of poetry,
We sang with a new beauty
Like the homeless beggars at a fair.
And we sang and the world rang
We overwhelmed hearts from one hick town to another,
Our lungs torn, devoured by hunger;
More than one of us left this world behind.
And God, who feeds even the worm,
He doesn't have much mercy on the poet,
So I went back, barefoot and poor,
To the workbench, to eat my bread in sweat.
And I thank you, Muse, for your great gifts,
Although in your granaries there isn't any bread.
And by the cobbler's last, but with clean devotion,
I'll serve you until my last hour.
And my name shall be known far and wide,
In Brownsville, in Yehupetz, and further - in the hick towns,
And I'm thankful that I'm not a cobbler who writes,
I'm a poet who makes shoes.
Where is Yehupetz?
It's come to be a synonym for "podunk" but it was actually standing in for Kiev
When Leyb says "from Brownsville to Yehupets," he is invoking the distance he had traveled from his home in Eastern Europe to New York City.
Yehupets was Sholom Aleichem's invocation of Kiev, a city, but people have conflated it with Kasrilevke, the mythical village he made nostalgically famous by Sholom Aleichem as an exemplar of long-vanished Jewish rural life and culture. That culture, and way of life, was utterly destroyed when Jews fled westward as a response to the tsarist pogroms and, most finally, World War II and the holocaust.
When "Fiddler on the Roof" was created, it was decided to change the name of Tevye's town from Kasrilevke to Anatevka because it sounded better in English and would be more melifluent in songs.
Mani Leib was from a tiny shtetl called Nizhyn.
My transliteration of the Yiddish of "Ikh Bin..."
Give it a try - roll it around on your tongue.
Ikh bin Mani Leyb, vayt un breyt a bavuster,
Fun Bronzvil biz Yehupetz - het;
Mit ale shuster - a guter shuster,
Mit ale poetn - a guter poet.
A yingl baym verkshtel, bay der shverer kapile,
In nekht fun levones - a mol, a mol,
Iz tsu mayn hartsn arunter a lid vi a t'file,
Un fun der hant iz gefaln di ol.
Dos iz gnedik di ershte muze gekumen
Un gekusht di lipn baym shuster-yung
Un ikh hob yenem zisn shoyder farnumen,
Vos git dos vort tsu der shtumer tsung.
Un mayn tsung iz gevorn tsu a kval a klorn,
Un mayn lid hot oyfgehilkht vi fun nit hi,
Un mayn enge velt iz mir ofn gevorn,
Un zis iz gevorn mayn broyt un mi.
Di shuster-yinglekh, di getraye gezeln,
Zey hobn gegaft, vi ikh zing mit gust.
Zeyer biter harts iz mayn lid gefeln,
Nor tsu vos ikh zing hobn zey nit gevust.
Un gereytst fun umet in mizamen lebn
Hobn zey mit khoyzek mikh oysgeshpet,
Un af eybik a tsunomen mir gegebn:
Gram-shtam latutnik, gram-shtam poet.
Iz zayt mir gezunt, mayne tayere brider,
Baym verkshtel mit aykh - geyt mir nit ayn.
In hartsn di muze, in buzem lider -
Ikh gey tsu poetn a poet tsu zayn.
Un az ikh bin tsu di poetn gekumen -
A foygl a kleyns un okorsht fun ey -
Hobn zey mit groys koved mikh oyfgenumen,
Un ikh bin gevorn eyner fun zey.
Okh, poetn, zinger vi di feygl fraye! -
Bagaystert un bleykh un mit undzer lid,
Mir hobn gezungen fun sheynkeytn naye,
Vi di betler hefker af a yarid.
Un mir hobn gezungen un di velt farklungen,
Di hertser batsvungen fun hek tsu hek,
Gerisn di lungen un dem hunger geshlungen,
As nit eyner fun undz iz fun der velt avek.
Un Got, vos er shpayzt afile dem vorem,
Iz zayn gnod tsum poet geven nit groys.
Bin ikh mir tsurik avek borves un orem,
Tsum verkshtel esn mayn broyt in shveys.
Un a dank dir, muze, far dayn groyser matone,
Khotsh in dayne shpaykhlers iz keyn broyt nito.
Un bay der kapile nor mit reyner kavone
Zol ikh dir dinen biz mayn letster sho.
Un mayn nomen zol zayn vayt un breyt bavuster,
In Bronzvil - Yehupets un vayter, hek -
Un a dank vos Ikh bin nit keyn poet a shuster,
Vos ikh bin a shuster a poet.
Vunder iber vunder: lider, baladn, mays'elakh
The book cover of Leyb's "Wonders and more wonders: poems, ballads, little stories"
A little bit about Rubye Monet, my early morning teacher at the Medem
Going from one transplanted culture to another, I found the Yiddish Cultural Center on Passage Amelot, in a barely marked alleyway across from a large Renault car dealership.
It was there that I met a woman named Ruby Monet, a Yiddish teacher at the Center. Another transplanted New Yorker, from the Bronx, Ms. Monet had moved to Paris in the 1960s. Although she grew up speaking Yiddish with her grandparents, she had not spoken it in years, until she found out about the center in 1989 and decided to see how much Yiddish she could remember. She remembered enough to become a teacher and has been there ever since.
"When I taught English, students had to learn it, but with Yiddish, what do you need it for but pure pleasure. It's a pleasure to teach," she said. The center contains the largest Yiddish library in Europe, which Ms. Monet called "one of the great unknown treasures in Europe" and a Yiddish language school with about 200 students. It also holds seminars, klezmer concerts and other events celebrating Yiddishkeit, and has a small café.
If you would like to know more about Mani Leib, or about Yiddish...
- Mani Leib's poetry downloadable free!
- The National Yiddish Book Center, with a grant from Steven Spielberg, has digitized maybe its entire collection and it is available to read online or download, as free pdf files. I have given you here the url to download the large collection of Mani Leyb's poetry which includes "Ikh Bin..."
- Mani Leib (Yiddish Book Center)
- Some information about Leyb.
- Mani Leib
- MANI LEIBMANI LEIB (pseudonym of Mani Leib Brahinsky, Yiddish poet. Born in Nizhyn (Chernigov district, Ukraine), Mani Leib arrived in the U.S. in 1905 after having participated in the Russian revolutionary movement. He immediately began publishing poems in New York...
- Sheva Zucker's Yiddish textbooks and recordings
- Sheva Zucker's Yiddish textbooks and recordingsDr. Sheva Zucker is currently the Executive Director of the League for Yiddish and the editor of its magazine Afn Shvel.She is the author of the textbooks Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature & Culture, Vols. I & II, and the e
- The Medem Bibliotheque zumerkurs
- About the program where I studied this summer. You'll see me in the picture, down towards the bottom right-hand corner.
- About Mani Leyb from Jules Chametzky's "Jewish American literature"
- An interesting write-up which includes a free, rhymed translation of the same poem.
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What do you think?
Was I nuts to put this up? Does anybody care?
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Reply
- BevsPaper BevsPaper Nov 1, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
- Interesting poem by Mani Leyb.
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Reply
- a_willow a_willow Aug 8, 2009 @ 3:34 am
- This was interesting poem to read. Well done.
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Reply
- LizMac60 LizMac60 Aug 7, 2009 @ 5:18 am
- Not nuts at all. I enjoyed it. Poets are the same the world over. I enjoyed hearing him talk about his muse and how the poems came to him. I talk about them dropping ready made in my lap. Thanks for posting this. 5* and favourited
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Reply
- naturegirl7 naturegirl7 Aug 6, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
- You most certainly were not nuts. I think every starving "artist" and some of us who eat well, but aren't able to devote much time to their art, will relate to this poem and this lens. I enjoyed it very much.
Yiddish poetry on Amazon
The Poetry of Abraham Sutzkever (Vilno Poet): Read in Yiddish
Amazon Price: $8.99 (as of 12/04/2009) 
A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry
Amazon Price: (as of 12/04/2009)
Our Town is Burning: Cries from the Holocaust
Amazon Price: (as of 12/04/2009)
American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology
Amazon Price: $27.76 (as of 12/04/2009)
Sing, Stranger: A Century of American Yiddish Poetry-A Historical Anthology
Amazon Price: $80.00 (as of 12/04/2009)
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This lens is part of Chapel Hill Fiddler's Jewish Lenses CollectionBest Jewish Books • Best Jewish Lenses • Mystery band from the Ukraine • Chai Lifeline helps sick Jewish kids • Hamsa: beautiful good-luck charm from Israel • TJC Hanukah Songbook • When does Chanukah begin in 2009? • How do you spell Hanukkah? • Jewish choral music songbook • I love Yiddish music! • The Jewish Storyteller • Jewish Wedding Music • Mani Leib, famous Yiddish poet-shoemaker • Purim Puppets of Michel Nedjar • A Sephardic song about eggplants • Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart • I love Yiddish!
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