Moshe Michal Kitai
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Born on 13 April 1886 in
Riga, Lettland [Latvia]. Due to the hardships with the "life
rights," his parents were poor, and since the age of
seven he was raised in Zager, wherein his mother
traveled over to with the children. At the age of
fifteen he returned to Riga to his father, early on was
a member of a Hebrew association, then in the "Bund," and
thereafter in S.'S. In the summer of 1907 he was arrested,
moved to Copenhagen, Germany and Switzerland, and again
returned home.
His sister's child, the
writer Mark Razumni writes:
"From childhood on he experienced the taste of
bitter distress, of heavy effort. As a youth, he had
already associated his fate with the labor movement, has
been in prison several times (from my very early
childhood, I remember when, once in on the first day of
May, Michl was brought home a miserable and barely
alive). Later he fluttered around a lot, across
Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, working for a clockmaker,
for a boot stitcher, often times also doing difficult,
physical work and then coming back to Riga a mider,
life saver and a single bag: a bunch of songs, written
during his wanderings."
In 1910 he debuted with a
song in "Di yidishe shtime," under the direction of
Belle Mkhshvut, and since then began his writing, most
of the time associated with daily newspapers, living in
Vilna, Berdichev, Moscow, Odessa, Kiev, Lettland
[Latvia], and Warsaw, where he traveled with Nachman
Mayzel to America, taking over the editing of the "Literarishe
bleter." |
When the
Second World War broke out, K., took whatever
was left, returned to Riga, expecting the city
to be occupied by the Soviet Union. But in 1941
Riga fell to Hitler, and K. was barely able to
flee. Earlier he was in Tashkent, then in
Samarkand, where he passed away in the beginning
of 1942.
K. was hugely in
love with the Yiddish theatre and wrote a lot
about it. A small portion of his articles about
writers and artists he published in his book, "Undzer
shrayber un kinstler" (Warsaw, 1938, 234 pp.).
Mark Razumni
characterizes him this way:
"Michal Kitai went
out as modest and quiet as modest and quiet he
lived. His entire life he passed with quiet
steps, all the while feeling guilty about
something, in this silence, like living people
standing in the shadows, in his entire
small-brained, low-key figure, he had a great
greed for life and embraced a love for people.
The mission of his life he realized in
instilling heartiness, tenderness, gentleness in
human relationships. And very often when the
bright light shone, a lovely word from our
Michal made people forget their bad moods, their
little empires, their wrinkles on their
foreheads flared, and suspicious adults
transformed into carefree children.
And then when people
became like children, Kitai felt especially good
with them, because children always were his
greatest love, his strongest bond. With children
he played as if he was child, stiff as a child,
suffocated like a child (?) ... In the
simplicity and immutability with which he felt
and received the child, the tender, painful and
sheer personality of the person in life and in
people, until the last breath remained in Michal
Kitai."'
Melekh Ravitch
characterized him so:
"If a Yiddish writer
can have the soul of a 'Bontche the Silent,'
then he has divine grace within him, and he
possesses the resurrected soul of 'Bontche the
Silent.' ... Everyone loves him, but in their
love of Kitai, never demanded anything from
anyone, and that is why everyone was so loved by
him. ... There is not a single Yiddish writer
who will not speak gossip and will not be an
object of gossip from others ... Moshe-Michal
Kitai was the exception, who confirmed the rule
... and he wasn't such a mean person. Initially
he had taken part in political life, and quite
boldly displayed his left sympathies, and
infrequent in his criticism of broken or
compromised left creations. Secondly, he was
very lacking in his literary taste. Although he
wrote in all areas, he had no pretensions. At
the very least, he had pretensions with his
fiction work, his youth, the poems and his
subsequent fiction sins, the stories. Thirdly,
he was very careful about the literary and
journalistic ethics. No words were written that
were against his conviction, or against his
taste.
Underdeveloped, weak
with a slightly bruised nose, with glasses, and
quietly and quickly and with a mixture of seven
Yiddish accents, all the time a little German,
because he was from Riga. Without a family -- if
I am not mistaken -- he wasn't connected. I
never saw him anywhere in a family circle ... He
used to always seek company from other homes ...
Everything Moshe-Michal
could do was in the realm of journalistic work.
...Kitai was loved in Riga and Riga in those
years lived carefree. ... A few years later I
had already met him in Warsaw. ... Because of
the absence of Nakhman Mayzel, Kitai had Bontche
silently edited the 'Literarisher bleter,' and
after years Kitai's brother came to me in New
York. Kitai asked people to save him. He is in
Sweden. From there he moved to the Soviet Union,
in the country of his sympathies, and now he
already graces himself with the truthful 'Bontche
the Silent' in heaven."
In August 1942 K.
passed away in Kuybyshev.
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Zalman Reisen
-- "Lexicon of Yiddish Literature," Vilna,
1929, Vol. 3, pp. 628-630.
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Melekh
Ravitch -- "Mayn leksion," Montreal, 1947,
pp. 145-47.
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Mark Razumni
-- In andenk fun michal kitai, "Yidishe
shriftn," Warsaw, N' 7-8, 1962.
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