GINZBURG, SIMON

GINZBURG, SIMON (1890–1944), poet and critic. Ginzburg was born in the village of Lipniki, Volhynia, where he received a traditional education. He published his first poem in Ha-Shillo'aḥ in 1910. In 1912 he settled in the U.S., studied at Columbia University, and obtained a doctorate from Dropsie College in 1923. He immigrated to Palestine in 1933, but returned to America shortly before World War ii as the emissary of the Hebrew Writers' Association. He was one of the editors of Ha-Toren (1913–15) and Lu'aḥ Aḥi'ever in 1918, and a contributor to numerous Hebrew publications. Both in content and language, Ginzburg was greatly influenced by Bialik to whom he dedicated his book of poems Shirim u-Fo'emot ("Songs and Poems," 1931). Essentially a romantic poet, the American rural landscape attracted him, but he was repelled by the noise of New York. In Ahavat Hoshe'a ("Love of Hosea," 1935), he reveals dramatic ability; the twilight of the Northern Kingdom and the regeneration of the Jews on the eve of disaster are used to suggest a significant lesson for contemporary Jewry. In addition to a biography in English of Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto (1931), Ginzburg published three of his plays, with critical notes, including Ma'aseh Shimshon from a manuscript in the New York Public Library, his poetry, Sefer ha-Shirim ("Book of Poems," 1944–45), and an edition of his letters, under the title R. Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto u-Venei Doro ("R. Moshe Ḥayyim Luzzatto and His Contemporaries," 1936). These works, and his critical essays on the poet, are a major contribution to Luzzatto scholarship. His other critical essays were collected in Be-Massekhet ha-Sifrut ("In the Web of Literature," 1945). He translated Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner into Hebrew, as well as D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and poems by Tennyson, Hood, Byron, and Poe.

His younger brother pesah (1894–1947), also born in the village of Lipniki, studied in Odessa, and lived for a time in the United States (1913–18), England, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries before settling in Palestine in 1922. He published several newspapers, which were, however, short-lived; edited various magazines; and was a night editor of Haaretz for about 20 years. Pesaḥ's poems, short stories, and articles appeared in the Hebrew press, a number of them also as separate booklets, including Regina Ashkenazi (1919) and Sippur Ereẓ Yisraeli (1945). He translated extensively, mainly Scandinavian and English literary works.

bibliography:

A. Epstein, Soferim Ivriyyim ba-Amerikah, 1 (1952), 92–103; Waxman, Literature, 4 (1960²), 1067–69.

[Eisig Silberschlag]