BIALIK or BYALIK, HAYYIM NACHMAN (1873— '934), the greatest Hebrew poet of modern times, was born in 1873, at Radi, in the province of Volhynia, Southern Russia. His father was an innkeeper, but a scholar. When the boy was 6, the family removed to Zhitomir, and a year later the father died, leav ing the widow and family in great poverty. Young Bialik subse quently lived with his grandfather, and although fond of frolic and indisposed to study, was a quick pupil at the Cheder (Hebrew school). The love of nature, which he gained in the woods in his early days, and the poverty and gloom of the Cheder life, are reflected in his poems. He wished to go to the University of Berlin, but this was impossible, and he became a student at the noted Yeshibah (Rabbinical seminary) of Volozhin. When he grew up he left for Odessa where he came under the notice of "Achad Ha-am," the nom-de-plume ("One of the People") of Asher Ginzberg, the Hebrew philosopher and literateur, to whose publication, "HaShiloach," he contributed Hebrew poems which quickly attracted attention. His "In the City of Slaughter," a poem prompted by the Kishineff pogrom of Easter 1903, not only gained him renown but stirred the emotion of the Jews, inspired them to self-defence, and gave impulse to the Zionist and nation alist movement. Bialik was now recognized as a force in the revival of Hebrew ; with his friend Ravnitzki, he started a suc cessful printing and publishing business in Odessa and produced Hebrew literature, new and old, which considerably influenced the Hebrew renascence. During the World War Bialik virtually ceased to write, for poets, he said, were not needed and the Jews should learn to face the stern realities of life ; he wrote little thereafter. Escaping impoverished from Russia to Berlin in 1921 he revived the publishing firm, "Dvir," with which Dr. Shmarya Levin, the Zionist orator, has also been since associated. A few years later it was transferred to Tel-Aviv, the Jewish suburb of Jaffa, where it produces original works in Hebrew, revisions of mediaeval rabbinical literature, and educational books. In 1926 Bialik visited England and America.
An English edition of some of his poems was edited by L. V. Snow man and published with an introduction by Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1924.