Locker, Malke

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LOCKER, MALKE

LOCKER, MALKE (1887–1990), Yiddish poet and essayist. Born in Kuty, Galicia, into a well-to-do family, her education included, besides Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish, several European languages. She married the Labor Zionist leader Berl *Locker, and because of her husband's activities lived in various countries. She was most attracted by romantic and symbolist poetry. She published lyrics in the Yiddish press from 1929 as well as in book form: Velt un Mentsh ("World and Person," 1931), Du ("You," 1932), Shtet ("Cities," 1942), Di Velt is on a Hiter ("The World is Without Guardian," 1947), and Yerushalayim (1967), as well as translations from Rainer Maria Rilke's works (1981), and biographies of Arthur Rimbaud (1950), Charles Baudelaire (1970), and Paul Verlaine (1976) which were translated into Hebrew and French, as was her book of Yiddish essays on German, English, and French romantic writers, Romantiker (1958).

bibliography:

lnyl, 4 (1961), 463; M. Ravitch, Mayn Leksikon, 3 (1958), 219–20; C. Vigée, in: M. Locker, Les Romantiques (1964), 7–14 (introd.). add. bibliography: Y. Gotfarshteyn, in: Di Goldene Keyt, 34 (1959), 198–203.

[Sol Liptzin]