Atlantidish

Descrizione

Yiddishland is our Atlantis, and Itzik Manger was its greatest troubadour. This album saw light on the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death. The heroine of the album is Manger’s favorite creature, an enchanted bird called the Golden Peacock – di Goldene Pave. In Yiddish “Pave” is feminine; in an ancient folk song, a young woman mourns her unhappy marriage and compares herself to a golden peacock, who lost her golden feather in a foreign land. In East European Jewish poetics, this image became a symbol of dreaming of happiness and beauty, and in Manger’s poems the Golden Peacock in flight is the embodiment of poetic inspiration.

Thus Phoenix, the pagan firebird, became a symbol of Yiddish poetry.

ln Hebrew Phoenix is called “Hol”. The midrash interprets a verse from the Book of Job as referring to the Phoenix :”A bird called Hol, and no death was decreed upon it, as it did not taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge” …

Let us hope that this will also be the fate of Yiddish poetry …

Extraits:

01 – The Golden Peacok

02 – Lovely Linden

03 – The Tailor-Apprentice is singing

04 – A letter from Velvl Zbarzher to Malkele the Beautiful

05 – From the Village Nearby

06 – The Golden Peacok has flown our way…

07 – Sea Songs