Manger’s Eynzam/Lonesome (The Chernovitz Version)
Recorded and sung by Beyle Schachter-Gottesman, 1970s.
Commentary by Itzik Gottesman
February 21, 2019 marked fifty years since the passing of the Yiddish poet Itzik Manger. He was born in Chernovitz (then Austria-Hungry) in 1901 and died in Gedera, Israel in 1969.
To honor this date, I found a recording of Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman (my mother) singing Manger’s song Eynzam (Keyner veyst nisht vos ikh vil) with a different melody than is most commonly sung. Unfortunately, she is interrupted before the end of the song, and does not complete it.
My mother told me that when she sang the song once at a gathering in New York, Yetta Bickel, wife of the critic Shloyme Bickel, said to her “that is the melody of the song that Itzik Manger himself had sung in Romania.”
Attached are scans of the words with the more commonly heard melody as found in the Mir trogn a gezang song collection compiled by Eleanor (Chana) Gordon Mlotek, NY 1972, pages 162-163. This includes transliteration and lyrics in Yiddish.
I have not yet found another recording of this Chernovitz version.
From Mlotek, Mir trogn a gezang, 1972:
Yiddish Song of the Week 