YANKEV REVZIN

YANKEV REVZIN (b. 1852)

            He was a poet, born in Chavus.  He received a traditional education.  In 1880 he settled in Pereshchepyne and became a grain merchant, but he had little success.  In 1895 he lived for a short time in Warsaw.  During the civil war in Ukraine, Denikin’s soldiers led a pogrom in the town and knocked out his eye.  He fled to Poltava, where he was a night watchman, and later the Soviet authorities gave him an academic food ration as a poet.  At age forty he began writing poems.  As the recommendation of Sholem-Aleichem, Revzin had a poem published in Filadelfyer shtodt-tsaytung (Philadelphia city newspaper) in 1895.  He published a collection of poems entitled Di melodyen fon yankev revzin (The melodies of Yankev Revzin) (Warsaw: Shuldberg, 1895/1896), 118 pp.  His work also appeared in Morris Basin, 500 yor yidishe poezye (500 years of Yiddish poetry) (New York, 1922).

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Berl Cohen