Isaac Rosenberg

Abstract

Rosenberg was born in Bristol on 25 November 1890. His parents were emigrants from Russia, and like many others who settled in England in this period, they fled from eastern Europe to avoid either the brutalities of the Czar or else the persecution of the peasants, whose prejudices expressed themselves through the residual biases of Christianity. When he was seven, his family were persuaded to move to the East End of London, where, they were told, they would earn more. They became poorer and Rosenberg’s health, which had never been good, deteriorated to the point at which he developed a lung condition. These two factors—his Jewishness and his poverty—will form the basis of my examination of his work. It should be added that, although he knew no Hebrew, he did (according to his sister) speak Yiddish—the lingua franca of European Jewry, and it might be this which Kenneth Allott unconsciously refers to in his remark that Rosenberg’s poems ‘… are spoilt for me by his appetite for the extravagant and his rebarbative poetic diction’ (later modified to: ‘unpleasing poetic diction’). The preference Allott shows for a more mellifluous diction contrasts with Rosenberg’s language, with its bunches of harsh, obtruding consonants (Yiddish is German slightly Hebraicized and written in Hebrew characters).

The Lambeth Guardians yesterday decided that, in order that the Poor Law School children might have an opportunity of appreciating the position of national affairs, the usual practice of allowing each child an egg for breakfast on Christmas morning be suspended this year. The Chairman of the Board remarked that it was better to let the children go without eggs than to give them shop eggs.

The Times, 12 November 1914¹