Victor Lirov

About Stars - Four Cycles of Jewish Poetry in Russian: Exodus, to My Son, to Friends and Family, First Games (Soviet Russia, Lithuania, Israel) - 1946-2007 Victor Lirov Russian edition

Victor Lirov was born in 1927 in Moscow, Russia. He is a bibliographer by profession, a doctor of philology by education, and a poet by calling. This little book has four cycles of his poetry in Russian. Lirov began writing "Exodus," its first cycle, in 1958 in Vilnius, Lithuania, as he began to discover his Jewish identity at a time when the Soviet empire was relentless and seemed invincible in its efforts to finally solve "the Jewish problem." Those who bore witness to the arrests, deportations, and murders of Jewish leaders in the Soviet Union during the 1950s understand the enormous personal risk involved in writing Jewish nationalist verses in the spirit of Lirov's "Exodus." Yet these few, brave Zionist voices eventually prevailed and over the years created a powerful tide that culminated in the one million-strong Exodus to Israel. Two other cycles include Lirov's writings to his son, family, and friends, spanning the years he lived in Lithuania and his subsequent emigration to Israel and absorption into Israeli culture. The fourth cycle presents for the first time Lirov's poems composed in 1946 in Moscow.