All My Young Years: Poetry from Weimar Germany by A. N. Stencl

An impressive bilingual (Yiddish and English) A.N. Stencl [Avrom-Nokhem Shtentsl] volume has now appeared, appropriately dedicated to the memory of Majer Bogdanski (1912-2005), a sterling personality who continued the Stencl tradition in London's East End after the poet's death in 1983.

Heather Valencia in her introduction gives us the best portrait of Shtentsl that has appeared anywhere. The poems selected are from Shtentsl's early – and arguably best work – very ably translated by Haike Beruriah Wiegand and Stephen Watts. While several major Yiddish writers were for longer or shorter periods domiciled in Britain, the central figure in Anglo-Yiddish literature remains Shtentsl, who deserves more volumes as thoughtfully designed as this one.

Avrom Stencl (1897-1983) was a prolific Yiddish poet, scholar, socialist and founder-editor of the literary journal Loshn un Lebn (Language and Life).

All My Young Years: Yiddish Poetry from Weimar Germany is the first English translation of two of Stencl's pre-war collections And You are God and Fishing Village.

It is a bilingual publication, but there are echoes of other languages and cultures here, too. Stencl was writing in Yiddish, as a Polish Jew - an Ostjude - living in Berlin.

The early poems are clearly influenced by German expressionism, the later by European romanticism. The result is a powerful clash between the modern and the traditional, the religious and the secular, the urban and the rural, a valuable glimpse into that extraordinary cultural melting pot of Weimar Germany.

Andy Croft

Like Guemar, Stencl is hardly a household name, but this is still an important book, celebrating a lost culture, a lost time when Berlin was the centre of Yiddish culture, as well as a lost poet.

Born in Poland, Stencl arrived in Berlin in 1921 where he became part of a group of Yiddish artists and writers centred on the Romanische Cafe and soon gained a considerable reputation, admired by Thomas Mann and Arnold Zweig, amongst others.

In 1936 he fled Berlin for London's Whitechapel, where he died in 19832, editing the Yiddish literary journal Loshn und Lebn (Language and Life) until the end.

All My Young Years concentrates on the expressionist and pastoral poetry he wrote in Berlin, with an excellent biographical essay from Heather Valencia, translators' notes and memoirs of the poet collected from those who knew him.... Then came Hitler with his storm and hatred...

Five Leaves are to be congratulated on a compelling volume.

Jo Balmer

We are very familiar with the culture of Weimar Berlin, less so with its Yiddish component. In the post-first world war period, Hebrew and Yiddish writers were attracted to Berlin as a magnet, partly because of famine and insecurity in Eastern Europe, partly because of the rise of communism which made life very difficult for Jewish writers, especially the Hebrew ones who were actively persecuted.... The German interest in the Ostjuden - the immigrants from eastern Europe - was an ambivalent one. They were reviled as speakers of a debased form of German and as lacking the grace of Western civilisation, but also romanticised as mystical, oriental and primitive.... Here is a series of lively and fresh translations and the contributors to this book are to be commended in their efforts to rescue this significant Yiddish poet from unjustified neglet.

Barry Davis