Vitsyebsk, Belarus (Pages 391-446)

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[Page 391]

Myself
Autobiography

by Marc Chagall

Translator's note:
What first attracted me to the project of translating the Vitebsk Yizkor Book, Vitebsk Amol, was the fact that it contained an essay by one of my favorite artists, Marc Chagall, who was born in Vitebsk and who used aspects of the city in many of his paintings. But when I actually began to translate the chapter, I immediately felt that I was reading something familiar, and I soon realized that I was reading a Yiddish version of his autobiography, My Life.
Chagall wrote this autobiography in Russian in 1921-1922, though the book was not published until 1932, when it appeared in French as Ma Vie, translated by his wife Bella. Since then, it has appeared in numerous languages. The chapter in Vitebsk Amol is a Yiddish translation.
Because it seemed superfluous to translate a work that already exists in a fine translation, readers are referred to that translation. It is available in printed form as My Life from the Da Capo Press (a republication of the edition published in New York in 1960). It was also republished by the publisher Peter Owen in 2003 and it is available online at https://archive.org/details/mylife0000chag/page/n5/mode/2up.
There are, admittedly, some differences between the Yiddish and English texts, but they are so minor as to be negligible. But for anyone who reads Vitebsk Amol, it would be rewarding to go back to Chagall's paintings of Vitebsk. Seeing those paintings in the context of all these chapters by Chagall's Vitebsk contemporaries makes them perhaps more comprehensible and certainly more poignant.

Theodore Steinberg

Pictures appearing in the Vitebsk Yizkor Book

[Page 392]

Marc Chagall paints a picture of his wife (1932-1933)

[Page 404]

Marc Chagall, The Flying Jew over Vitebsk
[commonly known as Over Vitebsk]

[Page 406]

Marc Chagall, Praying Jew

[Page 443]

Marc Chagal, Cemetery Gate

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