Leyzer Volf (; ; born Eliezer Mekler; 1910, in Šnipiškės, Vilnius – April 1943, in Shakhrisabz) was a Yiddish poet and writer of the Yung-Vilne movement, best remembered for his poems Black Pearls (1939), Lyric and satire (1940), and Brown Beast (1943).
Biography Volf's father was a house painter and his mother was a housewife. He was the fourth child in his family. He was sent to cheder at age four, but quickly left after being shocked by the way the rabbi treated the children, after which he was taught privately at home by a melamed. Later on he would study at a secular Jewish folk school in Vilnius and attend a youth camp for weak children; throughout this period he kept a large distance from other children and did not have many friends. Already in school he was considered to be an excellent writer and an avid reader.
Volf joined an artistic group Yung-Vilne and soon became it's defining early voice. Despite his shy, sickly childhood in the working-class Shnipeshok suburb, Volf developed a bold poetic persona through pseudonyms like "Bestye Kurazh" (Beast of Courage). His early poems combined exaggerated, mocking descriptions of Vilna's urban landscape with deep emotional resonance, creating what critics called a "sentimental grotesque" style.
Volf's work often appropriated European literary forms while addressing local concerns. His poem "Di veber" (The Weavers, 1935) adapted Heinrich Heine's protest poem from the previous century to rally readers against the German threat. His epic "Evigingo" (1936) was modeled on Longfellow's Hiawatha and published in Latin alphabet. Volf also reworked classic Yiddish literary characters like Sholem Aleichem's Tevye and Menachem Mendl to address contemporary political conflicts.
First lines of the "Evegingo":
The third issue of the Yung-Vilne journal contained several poems by Volf that were "more propaganda than poetry". Because of this, Shmerke Kaczerginski, as a de facto group leader, was arrested, but the judge decided that the journal had no criminal intent in it.
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