H. Leyvik wrote "Be Sad, People" for his Jewish brethren undergoing horrific persecution and devastation during the 1917 Russian Revolution. A revolutionist himself, having lived through and suffered the hardships of the Russian Revolution of 1905 before escaping to America in 1913, Leyvik knew exactly how to identify with his people—verbally, perceptually, viscerally and spiritually. He reached across continents with his words, to offer hope, through the power of his poetic vision—asking them not to erase his look from their faces.
“Leyvik...the Yiddish poet par excellence, so universal in his Jewishness, so Jewish in his universality. For the simple reason that there was no other Leyvik. He was a poet in the fullest meaning of the word. There was no borderline where his art stopped and his life began, and vice versa.” – Chava Rosenfarb, from a 1970 lecture on Leyvik’s dramas, in English.
Leyvik was revered and venerated across the Yiddish-speaking world as few other Yiddish poets were, especially by workers and those on the left. He published widely in verse, prose, and drama. His writing is often marked by suffering and recalls his difficult childhood, his early years as an anti-Tsarist radical, years of hard labor and imprisonment, and his escape from Siberia. The last four years of his life rang with similar poetic tragedy as he lay paralyzed and unable to speak until his death in 1962.
