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Chaim Grade’s “Kazakhstan Desert”
A journey through Kazakhstan in Yiddish poetry.
Published
This is a translation. The original is Русский. Language review: not performed by a native speaker.
In September 1941, Chaim Grade wrote the Yiddish work “Kazakhstaner midber” (“Kazakhstan Desert”) in Tashkent. Before that, he had travelled through Orenburg and the Kazakhstani steppes. By October, Grade was in Ashgabat.
Researchers Susanne Klingenstein and Yehudah DovBer Zirkind reconstructed this route from the author’s notebooks and the handwritten contents of a book with 83 poems. Documents from the YIVO archive made it possible to establish the month and place in which he worked on the piece. The Kazakhstani title relates to the road he travelled, while the work itself was written in Tashkent.