PALTIEL TSIBULSKI (PAWEŁ CYBULSKI)

PALTIEL TSIBULSKI (PAWEŁ CYBULSKI) (December 18, 1903-September 1, 1967)

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland.  He studied in religious elementary school and yeshiva.  Secular knowledge he acquired through self-study.  He later became a laborer.  He spent the years of WWII in the Soviet Union, returning to Poland from there in 1946.  Until 1949 he lived in Wroclaw where he was active in Jewish life, while at the same time continuing his education.  He attended Wroclaw and Warsaw Universities as an external student.  He worked in the Ministry of Education and later in the Ministry of Universities, in which he held responsible positions.  He debuted in print with poems in Folksshtime (People’s voice) in Warsaw, and he later regularly published poetry in Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings), Folksshtime, and Fraye-yugnt (Free youth) in Warsaw; and Oyfgang (Arise) in Lower Silesia; as well as in the Polish supplement to Folksshtime.  He also contributed work to: Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture), Morgn-frayhayt (Morning freedom), and Zamlungen (Anthologies) in New York; Naye prese (New press) and Parizer tsaytshrift (Parisian periodical), among others, in Paris; and Fray-yisroel (Free Israel) in Tel Aviv; among others.  A number of his poems were translated into Hebrew in Al hamishmar (On guard) in Tel Aviv and into German in a 1966 anthology (pp. 149-52).  In book form: Hemshekh (Continuation), poetry (Warsaw: Yidish-bukh, 1964), 93 pp.; Dermonung (Remembrance), poetry (Warsaw: Yidish-bukh, 1967), 111 pp.  He died in Warsaw.

“Although the imagist method has already long been divorced from poetic fashion,” noted Yankev Glatshteyn, “this book of ninety-odd pages made an impression on me of freshness, perhaps because behind the short, concentrated poems there is a genuine poet with his own feelings and with fine language.  Hemshekh is an out-of-date renovation, if one can say such a thing, a refresher which, if one reads one short poem after another, one reacts with invigoration, principally because one senses the seriousness of the poet, his poetic intelligence, the controlled verse, the original figurativeness.  Tsibulski renews even the method, succeeds in the concentrated and almost congealed imagist poem, to blow Jewish warmth into it by means of his Jewish subject matter.”

Sources: Yankev Glatshteyn, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (October 4, 1964); Glatshteyn, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (April 26, 1968); M. V. Bernshteyn, in Fraye arbeter shtime (New York) (December 15, 1964); A. Bik, in Morgn-frayhayt (New York) (March 6, 1966); Sholem Shtern, in Morgn-frayhayt (August 21, 1966).

Khayim Leyb Fuks