MIMI
PINZON (PINZÓN) (April 25, 1910-December 1975)
The pen name of Adela
Vaynshteyn-Shlyapotshnik, she was born in Belaya Tserkov (Bila Tserkva), Kiev
district, Ukraine. As a four-year-old
child in 1914, she moved with her parents to Argentina. She studied with a private tutor and in
evening courses; one of her teachers was the poet Moyshe Pintshevski. Subsequent education she acquired in Spanish-language
institutions of higher learning. Although
she grew up in Argentina, like every authentic writer, she preserved and cared
for her first childhood impressions of the old, beloved country, that
traditional Jewish home in Bila Tserkva whose Yiddish name was “Shvarts-tume”
(Black impurity).[1] In Buenos Aires, the Argentine Paris, her
family settled into one of the hugely overcrowded conventillos, a courtyard with numerous neighbors, where the city’s
poor lived. “Shvarts-tume” and the conventillos formed in her a writer’s figure
for this young woman from Bila Tserkva.
She later put this down in writing in her book Der hoyf on fenster (The courtyard without windows). The main protagonist Etl—socially and environmentally—is
a blood relation of Sholem Aleichem’s Motl, the cantor Peysi’s son, and of
Dovid Bergelson’s Penek. Even the sound
Motl-Etl (and one might also add in this instance Adela’s own name) ring back
and forth between them both ethnic children’s figures. Pinzon was the first in Yiddish literature to
introduce the character of a Jewish girl at the center of a broad artistic
canvas. Using the name Mimi Pinzon, she
published in the newspaper Di prese
(The press) a fictional reportage piece concerning salesgirls in the Buenos
Aires fashion shops. The sharp social
illumination of her theme, her vigorous descriptions in Yiddish, and her
pseudonym Mimi Pinzon (“Mimi Pinson” being the name of the French protagonist and
title character in Alfred de Musset’s novel of a Parisian seamstress who is
seduced) aroused a sensation in Yiddish writing circles. Her second story—more artistic than the first—“Di
legende fun baranka-belgrano” (The legend of Baranca Belgrano), was held up in
the editorial board for over a year. The
editor could not believe that a sixteen-year-old girl, raised in
Spanish-speaking Buenos Aires, would be able to write such an artistic work in
idiomatic Yiddish. She was “interrogated”
and after several conversations they were persuaded that she was the actual
author. In her subsequent creative
years, she turned her attention to essay writing, but she also wrote fictional
work. Being an essayist, it would
appear, was the continuation of her reading.
For many years she worked as a teacher in the Zhitlovsky School and in
the dramatic studio of the theater “IFT” (Idisher folks teater [Yiddish
people’s theater]); she was in charge of the Perets Middle School and gave
public lectures on literary topics. She
contributed to many Yiddish and Spanish periodicals, such as: Di prese, Folks-shtime (Voice of the people), Haynt (Today), Der veg
(The way), Ikuf (IKUF [= Jewish
Cultural Association]), Oyfsnay
(Afresh), Nayvelt (New world), Nay-lebn (New life), Kinder tribune (Children’s tribune), Unzer fraynt (Our friend), In gang (In progress), and Di yidishe froy (The Jewish woman); in
Spanish, Judaica (Judaica) and Renovación (Renovation). She had charge of regular columns—such as “Fun
do un dort” (From here and there) and “Di nol fun zak” (The awl in the bag). She co-edited the journals Ikuf and Di yidishe froy and the newspapers Tribune, Undzer lebn (Our
life), and Renovación. In book form: Der hoyf on fenster (Buenos Aires, 1965), 317 pp. She translated into Spanish works by Der
Nister, Grosman, Marshak, and others; Dovid Bergelson’s Baym dnyeper (By the Dnieper); and Yoysef Rabinovitsh’s three volumes
of stories. Into Yiddish she translated
works by Jorge Luis Borges, Alfonsina Storni, and Horacio Quiroga, among others. Other pseudonyms she used include: Ad-Sum and
Yidl Kotoynti. She died in Miami Beach,
Florida.
Sources:
V. Bresler, Antologye fun der yidisher literatur in argentine (Anthology of Jewish literature in
Argentina) (Buenos Aires, 1944), p. 561; Pinye Kats, Geklibene shriftn (Selected writings) (Buenos Aires, 1947), pp.
103-5; Kats, foreword to Mimi Pinzon’s book, Der hoyf on fenster (Buenos Aires, 1965), pp. 7-10.
Yankev Birnboym
[1] Translator’s note.
“Bila Tserkva” literally means “white church”; in Yiddish the idea of a
pristine or pure church is anathema, hence the euphemism “Shvarts-tume” or “black
impurity” (or stain). (JAF)
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