YIRMYE HESHELES (JEREMIAH HESCHELES)

YIRMYE HESHELES (JEREMIAH HESCHELES) (February 27, 1910-October 16, 2010)

            He was born in Glinyani (Glinyany), Galicia.  He studied in religious elementary school, public school, and in 1930 he graduated from a Jewish high school in Lemberg.  In the 1930s he studied medicine in the Universities of Prague and Pisa.  In late 1938 he emigrated to the United States.  He debuted in print in 1936 in Lemberger togblat (Lemberg daily newspaper) with fragments of a novel, Yosl dembners tsugang (Yosl Dembner’s approach).  He was a regular contributor to Tog-morgn zhurnal (Day morning journal) in New York, writing articles, poems, books, theater, and art reviews, as well as his novel Gitale di tsiganke (Gitale the Gypsy, 1950-1951) and the long story Velvl paragraf (Velvl paragraph).  He also published in Tsukunft (Future), Getseltn (Tents), Aba Gordin’s Shriftn (Writings), Di feder (The pen), Nyu yorker vokhnblat (New York weekly newspaper)—all in New York; and Goldene keyt (Golden chain) in Tel Aviv; among others.  He co-edited Vayter (Further) in New York (1952-January 1958).  In book form: Sonetn fun toye-voye (Sonnets of chaos) (New York: Eygnveg, 1957), 192 pp.; Lider (Poems) (New York: Eygnveg, 1963), 188 pp.  In his sonnets, noted Shloyme Bikl, “the figure of a strange poet is hidden somewhere, and it would appear a fully formed poet with all manner of moods and reflections, which are expressed in poems of love and satire, in songs with a popular harmony and in idyllic paintings,…[but] the poet Hesheles demonstrates his poetic strengths…in poems full of thoughtful lyrics….  Hesheles second book Lider is immeasurably warmer, intensively lyrical,…prosodic, and spacious.”

Sources: Shloyme Bikl, Shrayber fun mayn dor (Writers of my generation), vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1965), pp. 117-27; A. Pat, Likht un shotn (Light and shadow) (New York, 1967), pp. 61-68; Yankev Glatshteyn, In der velt mit yidish (In the world with Yiddish) (New York, 1972), pp. 129-24.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 225.