YEKHEZKEL BLAYKHER (EZEKIEL BLEICHER)

YEKHEZKEL BLAYKHER (EZEKIEL BLEICHER) (b. 1884)

Born in Vera, Latvia, he graduated in Russia from a land-surveyor school; later, he studied mathematics in Rome.  His literary activities began in the United States with a translation of Byron’s poem Childe Harold in Zhitlovsky’s Dos naye lebn (The new life) in 1909 and in A. Reyzen’s Eyropeishe literatur (European literature) (incomplete).  While he was living in Warsaw, 1910-1911, he began to translate Goethe’s Faust for Eyropeishe literatur.  He also wrote original poetry, travel writings (from Italy and Paris), stories (a series of tales from Paris), articles about art and theater, and correspondence pieces, all primarily in Dos naye lebn, and also in Fraynd (Friend) and the London newspaper Tsayt (Time), among others.  He later was living in the United States as well as in London.  Following the March Revolution [1917], he returned to Russia, withdrew from Yiddish literary activities, and became a prominent official in the War Commissariat (from 1919, according to Daniel Charney).  He stayed in Soviet Russia and his fate remains unknown.  Among his books: Vey un unru (Pain and unrest) (London, 1916), original poems and translations from Byron, Verlaine, and others, as well as the first canto from Childe Harold, 103 pp.; Himl un erd, der mabl (Heaven and earth, the deluge), a translation of Lord Byron (Kiev, 1919), 48 pp.; Der shtumer manakh (The silent monk), ballads (Kiev, 1919), 19 pp.

Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Z. Zilbertsvayg, Teater-leksikon, vol. 1; Daniel Charney, in Davke 1 (Toronto, 1951), pp. 11, 12.