Citizendia
Your Ad Here

Emanuel Litvinoff
Born Bethnal Green, London, England
Residence London, United Kingdom
Nationality British
Occupation Writer
Known for Autobiography, Poetry, Plays, Human Rights
Website
http://www.emanuel-litvinoff.com

Emanuel Litvinoff (born May 5, 1915) is a British writer and human rights campaigner, and is one of the best known and highly regarded figures in post-war Anglo-Jewish literature. An autobiography, from the Greek αὐτός autos "self" βίος bios "life" and γράφειν graphein "to write" Human rights refers to the "basic Rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled Events 553 - The Second Council of Constantinople begins 1215 - Rebel Barons renounce their allegiance to King John Year 1915 ( MCMXV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year

Contents

Background

He is known for novels and short stories, and as a poet and playwright. His early years in what he frequently describes as a Jewish ghetto[1] in the East End of London made him very conscious of his Jewish identity. A ghetto is described as a "portion of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social legal or economic pressure PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ Litvinoff chronicled these early years in what is perhaps his best-known work, Journey Through a Small Planet.

T. S. Eliot confrontation

Litvinoff is also well known for being one of the first to raise publicly the implications of T. S. Eliot's negative references to Jews in a number of poems, a controversy that continues, in his famous poem To T. Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965 was a poet Dramatist, and Literary critic. S. Eliot. This protest against T. S. Eliot on the subject of anti-Semitism took place at an inaugural poetry reading for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951. Litvinoff, an admirer of Eliot, was appalled to find Eliot republishing lines he had written in the 1920s about 'money in furs' and the 'protozoic slime' of Bleistein's 'lustreless, protrusive eye' only a few years after the Holocaust, in his Selected Poems of 1948. The Holocaust (from the Greek el ''ὁλόκαυστον'' (el-Latn holókauston holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt" also known as When Litvinoff got up to announce the poem at the ICA reading, the event's host, Sir Herbert Read, declared 'Oh Good, Tom's just come in. Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC (1893&ndash1968 was an English anarchist Poet, and Critic of Literature and ' Despite feeling ‘nervous’,[2] Litvinoff decided that 'the poem was entitled to be read’ and proceeded to evoke it to the packed but silent room:

(excerpt)

'So shall I say it is not eminence chills

but the snigger from behind the covers of history,

the sly words and the cold heart

and footprints made with blood upon a continent?

Let your words

tread lightly on this earth of Europe

lest my people’s bones protest. ' [3]

In the ensuing pandemonium after the poem had been read, T. S. Eliot was heard to mutter 'It's a good poem, it's a very good poem'. [4]

Human rights campaigning

In the 1950s, on a rare Western visit to Russia with his wife Cherry Marshall and her fashion show, Litvinoff became aware of the plight of persecuted Soviet Jews, and started a world campaign against this persecution. One of his methods was editing the newsletter Jews in Eastern Europe[5] and also lobbying eminent figures of the twentieth century such as Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre and others to join the campaign. Due to Litvinoff's efforts, prominent Jewish groups in the United States became aware of the issue, and the well-being of Soviet Jews became a world-wide campaign. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the [6]

Literary works

External links

Notes

  1. ^ Jewish Book Week | The Roots of Jewish Writing
  2. ^ Museum of London - London's Voices
  3. ^ 'To T. Tribune is a Democratic socialist weekly currently a magazine though in the past more often a newspaper published in London. S. Eliot' is collected in Emanuel Litvinoff, Notes for a Survivor, Northern House, 1973.
  4. ^ Dannie Abse, A Poet in the Family, London: Hutchinson, 1974, p. 203
  5. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=riEgj4OJvhAC&pg=PA75&dq=%22emanuel+litvinoff%22+exodus&sig=GNme9aSpoI9ED8Wzuv46qrH91HE
  6. ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vvfIq0aJ_1oC&pg=PA122&dq=%22emanuel+litvinoff%22&lr=&sig=Y2d9Ku__u2LyU4oOo00YpvS25xU
© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
 Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic