Leksikon fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur

לעקסיקאָן פֿון דער נײַער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור

He was a poet, born in Babruysk, Byelorussia. His father, burdened with children (Henekh the youngest), worked in a forestry office. After graduating from a seven-year school, he left Babruysk with his older brother and traveled to Birobidzhan and worked there on a collective farm; he wrote poems at the time dedicated to Birobidzhan.

After a tragic accident in which his brother was killed, he returned to Byelorussia and graduated in Minsk from a local workers’ department (Arbfak), and he later studied in the literature department of the Minsk Pedagogical Institute.

In 1934 his first collection of poetry, Start, Lider (Take-Off, Poems), was published in Minsk. The next year he brought out a poem for children entitled Undzer Dzhim (Our Jim), in which he celebrated the life of a fellow from Africa. The theme of the poem was such that in every era it would be translated into Russian, Byelorussian, and other languages.

Especially warmly received was Shvedik’s book Lider (Poetry), which appeared in 1939. After graduating from the Institute, he worked for a lengthy period of time on the editorial board of the newspaper Pyoner Belarusy (Byelorussian Pioneer), later becoming a contributor to the institute of language and literature at the Academy of Sciences.

After the liquidation of Yiddish schools in the Soviet Union, he became a teacher of Russian language and literature. When the war came to Minsk, he was evacuated with his wife Betye and other writers to Uzbekistan. He volunteered in the spring of 1942 to fight on the front. One month prior to his death at the front in Smolensk, he sent a packet of poems to his wife in Namagan, Uzbekistan.

He debuted in print in 1929 with poems in Minsk’s Oktyabr (October). He wrote poems as well for: Shtern (Star) in Minsk, Farmest (Competition), and other Soviet Yiddish serial publications. His poems also appeared in: Birebidzhan (Birobidzhan) (Moscow, 1936); Di Bafrayte Brider (The Liberated Brothers) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1939); Sovetishe Vaysrusland (Soviet Byelorussia) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1935); Tsum Zig (Toward Victory) (Moscow: Emes, 1944); and Af Naye vegn (Along New Pathways) (New York: Yidisher Kultur Farband, 1944).

His works include:

Start, Lider (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1934), 148 pp.;

Undzer Dzhim (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1935), 50 pp.;

Lider (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1939), 103 pp.

He translated

Leo Tolstoy’s Filipok (Filipok) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1938), 16 pp., and

Sevastopoler Dertseylungen, 1855-1856 (Sevastopol Stories, 1855-1856 [original: Sevastopolʹskiye Razskazy]) (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1938), 129 pp.

A volume of his poems and translations into Byelorussian was published in 1962, entitled Lirika (Lyric Poetry).

“Before the war,” noted Yisroel Serebriani, “Shvedik’s poems excelled in their robust, youthful fantasies and dreams, childlike playfulness, and light rhythms…. [His] lyrical-philosophical poems of the sea were a subsequent bold step…. [In his wartime poetry,] one senses the maturity of an independent, original poet, who thinks, feels, believes, and sees in a wholly new way.”

Khayim Maltinski