Celia Dropkin

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 • was a poet, painter, and prose writer whose
Celia (Tsilye) work expanded the psychological and erotic
horizons of Yiddish arts. She earned acclaim
Dropkin (1887– for her formally exquisite and hotly-embodied
poetic voice, and her work remains startlingly
1956) contemporary, inspiring musicians and
translators to this day.

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• Dropkin inhabited avant-garde
spheres in both the United States
and Europe and published in
Yiddish journals across the
political and literary spectrum,
including Di tsukunft (The
Future), Inzikh (In the
Self), Forverts (The Forward),
and Di naye velt (The New World)

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Kenneth Levinson,
novelist and
grandson of
Yiddish writer
Celia Dropkin

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  Majn hent /My
Hands
•My hands, two little bits
•of my body I'm never
•ashamed to show. With fingers
•— the branches of coral,
• fingers—two nests
• of white serpents,
•fingers—the thoughts
•of a nymphomaniac.

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Biblipgraphy:
The Acrobat: Selected Poems of Celia Dropkin. Translated from Yiddish
by Faith Jones, Jennifer Kronovet, and Samuel Solomon. Foreword by
Edward Hirsch. N.p.: Tebot Bach, 2014.

• Erotic Yiddish Poetry:

https://ingeveb.org/pedagogy/teaching-guide-to-erotic-yiddish-poetr
y

• Torres, Anna Elena. “Celia Dropkin’s Adam.” Teach Great Jewish Books
Resource Kit. March 2018.  
http://teachgreatjewishbooks.org/resource-kits/celia-dropkins-adam
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Dropkin: To His Wife
To you belongs his wealth,
to you belongs his world.
My luck is bad:
to me belongs his heart.

To you belongs his night,

to you belongs his day.
To me, his love
has brought only laments.

But should he die, then stars

will twinkle to me with tears
and the moon will console me:
you are the widow.

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Fradl Shtok

• Fradl Shtok (also Fradel Schtock,

1888 – 1930s/1952?) was a
Jewish-American Yiddish-
language poet and writer, who
immigrated to the United States
from Galicia, Austria-Hungary, at
the age of 18 or 19. She is known
as one of the first Yiddish poets
to use the sonnet form…

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Goldsmith, Emmanuel S.. Yiddish Literature in America 1870-2000: Volume 2 . Xlibris US.

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 Loaded ships
Ships are standing at the docks,
They make beautiful cloth
preparing to leave
on long voyages. from that silky wool
and then sell it
“That one’s going to China,” to rich people.
someone tells me.
What business do people have But I wasn’t born
in China?
to rich people,
No one can say
so I won’t go
“They make bowls and plates where it’s going.
of beautiful porcelain.” to that distant place. Then why be so happy,
Hardly a good reason my foolish heart?
to go to China. Where, pray tell, goes the
last one,
I’m not asking
“Persia,” says another. the one that’s over there? where that ship is going,
Oh, that land is far away! There’s no name but I’d like to go with it
Lambs in that distant land if they’ll take me.
of any land upon it.
have wool like the finest silk.
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Analysysin of the short stories:
A Dancer The Veil
• Being a daughter • A dream of a girl
• Being a mother • Importance of wedding
• Chances for dreams to be • Importance of music
realised
1. From whose perspective the stories are told?
2. Public space: music outside, dancing – how this stories contribute to the
history of appropriation of this spaces by women?
3. Dreams: Are those stories about dreaming an inapproapriate dream? (vail
as a metaphor/ music as a symptom)
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Anna Paclova and Isadora Duncan?

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A Dancer

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