Glatshteyn was a proponent of Inzikhism (Introspectivism) and, together with Aaron Glanz-Leyeles and N. B. Minkoff, he founded the journal In zikh (In the self) in 1920. “Good Night, World” appeared on the front page of that journal in April 1938. As its name implies, Inzikhism maintained that the poet’s subject was “the wide world as it is reflected in the poet.” The focus for the Introspectivists was on the self, their own psyche, and the associations evoked within them. They insisted that they were not bound by rhyme or regular meter.

When “Good Night, World” was published, some Yiddish critics wrote that Glatshteyn had turned away from the principles of Inzikh and literary modernism and adopted a more nationalist tone and theme, urging a return to the bounds of tradition because of the European threat to the Jewish people. Indeed, the poem may be considered one of the earliest responses to the looming destruction, written before the ghettos and concentration camps could have been imagined. It could be seen as heralding the end of the Enlightenment’s promise that Jews would be accepted as equal citizens of the countries in which they lived. Although the poem seems to reject the wide world and embrace the more circumscribed Jewish world, it also suggests that such a rejection is impossible for the modern person and the modernist poet. Glatshteyn had both a secular and religious education, but he did not come from a ghetto or “the humpbacked Jewish life” to which the poem points. He had left the world of kerosene, crooked alleys, Talmudic study, and rabbinic law that are invoked in this poem.

Suggested Activity: Read the excerpts from “The Introspectivist Manifesto” (1919). What do you think it means to say that “the human psyche” is an awesome labyrinth? To what extent does Glatshteyn’s poem give expression to that labyrinth? What connections do you see between Glatshteyn’s poem and the “age of the big metropolis?” 

Another activity you can do with students: Yiddish writers were famous for writing literary manifestos. They were influenced by world literatures and, in particular, by historical events. Write your own manifesto for the present times. What do you think literature should do and how should it do it? How important do you think literature is in a time of crisis? Why? 

n.b. There is a another activity concerning Introspectivism in Barbara Mann’s Teach Great Jewish Books resource kit on Anna Margolin’s poem “Ikh bin geven a mol a yingling.”