SHLOYME MARTINOVSKI

SHLOYME MARTINOVSKI (1881-June 1927)

            He was born in Courland, and he later lived in Latvia.  He was the son of an itinerant school teacher.  At age twelve he was turned over to a saddler, and he later worked in Riga.  At age twenty for the first time, he began to read books, served in the military, and sought to take control over his life; he sold newspapers on the street.  He published several poems in Sokolov’s Telegraf (Telegraph), Der veg (The path), and Roman-tsaytung (Fiction newspaper), as well as elsewhere.  In 1909 he brought out a small collection of poetry, entitled Elegyen (Elegies) (Vilna, 30 pp.).  In 1913 he brought another booklet of poems, Demerung (Twilight), and in 1921 his last poetry collection, Yiesh (Despair) (Libave [Liepāja]: Universal-biblyotek, 39 pp.).  These were pessimistic poems, as well as translations from Russian.  He died in Riga.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2, with a bibliography; Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (July 8, 1927); M. Gerts, 25 yor yidishe prese in letland (25 years of the Yiddish press in Latvia) (Riga, 1933), pp., 39-48; A. Tsaytlin, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (January 27, 1961).

Yankev Kahan