Yankev Glatshteyn's "Good Night, World"

Yankev Glatshteyn’s poem, "Good Night, World," was written in Yiddish in 1938, just before the start of World War II. Kadya Molodovsky (sometimes written Kadia Molodowsky), a Yiddish writer and one of Yankev Glatshteyn’s peers, wrote “El khanun” (“God of Mercy”) in 1944 just before the end of the war, when the full horror of the khurbn (Holocaust) and World War II was known.

Suggested Activity: Have students listen first to Yankev Glatshteyn reading “A gute nakht, velt,” recorded in 1955. If students can read Yiddish (or the Hebrew alphabet), they can follow along in the text. Students should pay attention to Glatshteyn’s tone of voice, volume, pacing, and repetition. Ask: What do you hear? What emotions do you hear present in the reading? Now have students read the poem in English. What do you think Glatshteyn is saying about the world to which he is saying good night?

Now have students listen to Kadya Molodovsky’s recording of “El khanun” (“God of Mercy,”) recorded in 1969. Again, students should listen carefully to Molodovsky’s tone, volume, pacing, and repetition. Ask: What do you hear? What emotions do you hear present in the reading? What similarities do you hear in the two recordings? What differences?  

Have students read the poem in English. What do you think Molodovsky is saying about the “chosen people?” 

Although students may have no background in Yiddish, it’s important to have them encounter the text as a primary source. Even without an understanding of the words, students can glean information from other aural cues.

Yankev Glatshteyn is considered to be a modernist writer. There are multiple definitions of literary modernism.

Suggested Activity: Have students read the following three definitions of modernism. Ask them: What do the definitions agree upon? Where do they disagree? What parts of these definitions do you find reflected in Glatshteyn’s poem?

Many different translators have translated Yankev Glatshteyn’s poem, “Good Night, World.” Every translation reflects the choices of the translator and is informed by the cultural moment in which it is published.

Suggested Activities: Have students read each of the different translations of the last line of the poem out loud. What differences do you notice in word choice and meaning? What similarities do you notice? How is your understanding of the poem affected by these similarities and differences? 

One of the translators, Spiegel, chose to add an extra line that doesn’t appear in the Yiddish. How does this extra line affect your understanding of the poem?

Joseph Leftwich, the first translator of "Good Night, World," made a number of choices that make his translation different from both the Yiddish source text and from other translations.

Suggested Activities: Have students begin by looking at the title Leftwich gave his translation. Why might he have chosen this title for the work, even though it is not a direct translation of Glatshteyn's title? What does this title signal to the reader? Then have students read through Leftwich’s translation and the Harshavs' translation (in resource 1 of this kit). What differences do they notice in word choice and syntax? What does each translation offer?

Leftwich chose to leave out the lines in which Glatshteyn calls our attention to Germans, Poles, and Amalekites. (According to the Hebrew bible, the Amalekites were early enemies of the Jews.) Why do you think he left out these lines? How do the Harshavs name these enemies? What is the effect of that naming?

Glatshteyn was a proponent of Inzikhism (Introspectivism) and, together with Aaron Glanz-Leyeles and N. B. Minkoff, he founded the journal In zikh (In the self) in 1920. “Good Night, World” appeared on the front page of that journal in April 1938. As its name implies, Inzikhism maintained that the poet’s subject was “the wide world as it is reflected in the poet.” The focus for the Introspectivists was on the self, their own psyche, and the associations evoked within them. They insisted that they were not bound by rhyme or regular meter.

When “Good Night, World” was published, some Yiddish critics wrote that Glatshteyn had turned away from the principles of Inzikh and literary modernism and adopted a more nationalist tone and theme, urging a return to the bounds of tradition because of the European threat to the Jewish people. Indeed, the poem may be considered one of the earliest responses to the looming destruction, written before the ghettos and concentration camps could have been imagined. It could be seen as heralding the end of the Enlightenment’s promise that Jews would be accepted as equal citizens of the countries in which they lived. Although the poem seems to reject the wide world and embrace the more circumscribed Jewish world, it also suggests that such a rejection is impossible for the modern person and the modernist poet. Glatshteyn had both a secular and religious education, but he did not come from a ghetto or “the humpbacked Jewish life” to which the poem points. He had left the world of kerosene, crooked alleys, Talmudic study, and rabbinic law that are invoked in this poem.

Suggested Activity: Read the excerpts from “The Introspectivist Manifesto” (1919). What do you think it means to say that “the human psyche” is an awesome labyrinth? To what extent does Glatshteyn’s poem give expression to that labyrinth? What connections do you see between Glatshteyn’s poem and the “age of the big metropolis?” 

Another activity you can do with students: Yiddish writers were famous for writing literary manifestos. They were influenced by world literatures and, in particular, by historical events. Write your own manifesto for the present times. What do you think literature should do and how should it do it? How important do you think literature is in a time of crisis? Why? 

n.b. There is a another activity concerning Introspectivism in Barbara Mann’s Teach Great Jewish Books resource kit on Anna Margolin’s poem “Ikh bin geven a mol a yingling.”

Ruth Whitman, Marie Syrkin, and Etta Blum each published two versions of the translated poem.

Suggested Activities: Split the class into three groups and assign each group one of the translators. Have students read both of the translations by their translator out loud, paying close attention to differences between the two. Consider the significance of the changes they made. What, if any, difference do these changes make to your understanding of the poem? Why might the translator have made these choices when revisiting their translation? Why might a translator choose to translate a poem twice? Have each group report their findings back to the whole class.