Kharik, Izi

Kharik, Izi 

(also Isaak Davydovich Kharik). Born in the shtetl of Zembin, in Byelorussia, in 1898; died 1937. Soviet Jewish poet. Member of the CPSU from 1930.

Kharik volunteered for the Red Army in 1919. Between 1921 and 1923 he studied at the V. Ia. Briusov Higher Literary Institute. He made his literary debut in 1920. Kharik published his first collection of poetry, Trembling (1922), under the pen name A. Z. Zembin.

In his lyric cycles and in his best narrative poems—for example, “The Mud of Minsk” (1925), “Body and Soul” (1928), “Bread” (1930), and “Round Weeks” (1932)—Kharik dealt powerfully with the themes of the Civil War, the cultural revolution, and the restructuring of everyday life in the Jewish shtetl. Kharik’s poetry is rich in the motifs of Yiddish and Byelorussian folksongs.

WORKS

Mit laib un lebn. Moscow, 1970.
In Russian translation:
Stikhi i poemy. [Introductory article by A. Vergelis.] Moscow, 1958.
In Byelorussian translation:
Vybranye tvory. [Foreword by G. Berezkin.] Minsk, 1958.

REFERENCE

Raskin, A. “Izi Kharik.” Sovetish heimland, 1966, no. 10.