ARN MARK

ARN MARK (October 6, 1904-December 11, 1938)

            The brother of Berl Mark, he was born in Lomzhe, Russian Poland.  He came from a family of distinguished scholars.  His education began in a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school), where he studied Hebrew, Tanakh, and a bit of Talmud.  At age ten he moved on to a yeshiva in Bialystok, where his parents had settled, and at the same time he prepared for entrance into high school.  A year later he returned to Lomzhe, entered a Polish high school, and after graduating in 1922 he studied Slavic languages and literatures at Warsaw University.  He was active in the Jewish labor movement.  He worked as a teacher, 1924-1925, in a high school in Bialystok, and from 1927-1928 he became a teacher of Yiddish and literature in the Vilna senior high school.  While still in high school, he contributed work to various youth writings.  In 1921 he was the copublisher of several issues of the newspaper Der hamer (The hammer) in Lomzhe.  In 1923 he placed poems in the anthology Tayfun (Typhoon).  In 1924 he began to contribute to Unzer lebn (Our life) in Bialystok, in which he published articles on literature and writers (among them: Max Brod, H. Leivick, H. Royzenblat, Z. Segalovitsh, A. Ernburg, and Y. Tuvim, among others), as well as stories and poetry.  From time to time he wrote articles on literary topics also for Vilner tog (Vilna day) and for Warsaw’s Folks-tsaytung (People’s newspaper), and many articles for Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw and other publications.  He also wrote for Zay gezunt (Be well) and Folks-gezunt (People’s health).  He wrote essays and treatments on: Y. Opatoshu, A. Raboy, Falk Halpern, Kalmen Lis, Yankev Shternberg, Arn Tsaytlin, Ber Horovits, and Elkhonen Vogler, among others.  He translated into Yiddish: the ten-volume Jean-Christophe (as Zhan-kristof) by Romain Rolland (Warsaw, 1927); Di froy fun draysik yor (The woman age thirty [original: La fame de trente ans]) by Honoré de Balzac; Di farshtoysene (Les Misérables) by Victor Hugo; Di misteryen (The mysteries [original: Misterier]) and Shtot zegelfas (Segelfoss city [original: Segelfoss by]) by Knut Hamsun; poems by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Krasinski, among others; and Bronks ekspres (Bronx express) [?] by Osip Dymov; among others.  He also published A fulshtendik poylish-yidish verterbukh (A complete Polish-Yiddish dictionary) (Warsaw: Aḥisefer, 1920), 1908 cols; and he adapted a series of works by Mendele, Sholem-Aleykhem, Perets, and Leivick for school youth.  He worked intensively with the art magazine Di vokh (The week) and with the scholarly journal Etyudn (Studies) of which he was also co-editor.  He left in manuscript treatments of: H. Leivick, M. L. Halpern, Kadia Molodowsky, A. Lutski, Itzik Manger, M. Kulbak, Izzy Kharik, and others; writings on Perets as a playwright and Perets as the “Don Juan of ideas”; on Shakespeare’s Othello; “Fun kabtsansk biz kapulye” (From Kabtsansk to Kapulye), a longer work on Mendele; “Biz der tog vet oyfgeyn” (Until the day dawns), a work about Mani Leib; “Af naye relsn” (On new rails), considerations of the role of the writer, a series of ten chapters; and more.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Vilner tog (December 12, 1938); Sh. Zaromb, in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (December 16, 1938); L. Turbovitsh, in Foroys (Warsaw) (January 6, 1939); A. Morevski, in Vilner tog (January 15, 1939); E. Y. Goldshmidt, in Di tsayt (Vilna) (January 16, 1939); Dos naye lebn (Bialystok) 111 (380) (1948); Shmerke katsherginski ondenk-bukh (Shmerke Katsherginski remembrance volume) (Buenos Aires, 1956); Meylekh Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 2 (Montreal, 1945); Lomzhe anthology (New York, 1957).

Mortkhe Yofe