Resource kit

Yankev Glatshteyn's "Good Night, World"

Resource Kit by Anita Norich

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Yankev Glatshteyn (also known as Jacob Glatstein or Jacob Gladstone) (1896–1971) was one of the most famous poets of American Yiddish literature, and this poem became the most often translated, anthologized, and analyzed of his many works of poetry and prose. Glatshteyn came to New York from Lublin, Poland, in 1914 at the age of 18. Within four years he was studying law at New York University, but he was drawn to journalism and poetry, which became his life’s work. In 1934, Glatshteyn went back to Lublin to see his dying mother. He witnessed first-hand the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany and Poland after Hitler’s rise to power. “Good Night, World,” (“A gute nakht, velt”) is a compelling response to that trip and to contemporaneous world events.

 

Cover image: The Jewish Quarter of Lublin, Poland, 1938.

Teachers' guide

Reading and Background

  • For a biography and bibliography of Yankev Glatshteyn, see the Yiddish leksikon. 
  • Yankev Glatshteyn's 1934 visit back to his birthplace, Lublin, Poland, inspired "Good Night, World.” See the YIVO encyclopedia for a detailed article on the Jewish history of Lublin from 1795 to the present. Janet Hadda’s Yankev Glatshteyn (Twayne, 1980) contains a biography of the poet as well as literary analyses of his work. 
  • Here is an excerpt of an interview with Glatshteyn concerning Yiddish poetry after the Holocaust (in Yiddish with English subtitles). 
  • The 1938 Projekt will familiarize students with Jewish history in 1938. The website offers students a news item or archival document from every day of the year as well as a side-by-side timeline of major historical events. 
  • An analysis of the poem appears in chapter two of Anita Norich’s Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Culture during the Holocaust (Stanford University Press, 2007, 42–73). 
  • For a comparison and analysis of 12 varying translations of the poem see Anita Norich, Writing in Tongues: Translating Yiddish in the Twentieth Century (Washington University Press, 2013), Appendix A: 113–128 (for 12 translations), and 66–96 (for the analysis).