Themes and Imagery in the Earlier Poetry of Abraham Sutzkever

471 Pages·2008·21.46 MB·English

iv
NOTES ON ABBREVIATIONS, TRANSCRIPTION AND SPELLING, AND CONVEN-
TIONS OF REFERENCE.
1. Abbreviations of frequently cited works.
a. Editions of Sutzkever's works.
(These are the editions which are cited in the text or in
footnotes. A complete list of Sutzkever's published works can be
found in the bibliography.)
Lider (Warsaw, 1937)
VG Vilner geto 1941-1944 (Buenos Aires, 1947)
YG Yidishe gas (New York, 1948)
PV]. Poetishe verk, vol.1, (Tel-Aviv, 1963)
PV2 Poetishe verk, vol.2, (Tel-Aviv, 1963)
YH Lider fun yam-hamoves (Tel-Aviv - New York, 1968)
FOM Firkantike oysyes un moyfsim (Tel-Aviv, 1968)
TsP Tsaytike penimer (Tel-Aviv, 1970)
Di fidlroyz (Tel-Aviv, 1974)
EN Di ershte nakht in geto (Tel-Aviv, 1979)
Ksy Fun alte un yunge ksav-yadn (Tel-Aviv, 1982)
Ts-b Tsviling-bruder (Tel-Aviv, 1986)
Note: Sutzkever has often given volumes of poetry the same
title as a cycle or group of poems which forms part of the
volume, or has called a cycle of poems by the name of one of the
poems in it. In the study, book-titles are underlined, while
poems or poem-cycles appear between quotation marks: thus the
volume Ode tsu der toyb contains the long poem 'Ode tsu der
toyb', and the cycle 'Valdiks' is part of the volume Valdiks.
For poems up to 1963, the edition used is normally the
Poetishe verk in two volumes (Tel Aviv, 1963). If there are sig-
nificant differences between the version of any poem as printed
V
in the Poetishe verk and an earlier version, attention will be
drawn to the fact.
b. Secondary literature.
Zalman Shazar, Dov Sadan, M. Gros-Tsimerman,
IaiH1
(editors), Yoyvl-bukh tsum fuftsikstn geboyrn-tog
fun Avrom Sutskever (Tel-Aviv, 1963)
Catalogue Abraham Novershtern, Tsum vern a benshivim.
[Catalogue of the exhibition to mark Sutzkever's
seventieth birthday]. (Jerusalem 1983)
Yikhes Dov Sadan, Yeshayahu Avrekh, Khave Turnyanski,
Khone Shmeruk, (editors), Yikhes fun lid/ Yikh-
uso shel shir. Lekoved Avrom Sutskever (Tel-Aviv,
1983)
2. Transcription and spelling.
The system used in the study for transcribing Yiddish into
Latin letters is that devised by the YIVO Institute for Jewish
Research in 1937, the main principles of which are set out in
Uriel Weinreich's College Yiddish, fifth edition, (New York,
1984). However, where a name, either of Yiddish or other origin,
has a familiar orthography in English, this has been used, even
in transcribed Yiddish text: for example 'Aaron Zeitlin' rather
than 'Amn Tseytlin', 'Worms' (the German city) rather than
'Vorems', 'Pere Lachaise' rather than 'Per lashez'. One exception
to this is the treatment of Sutzkever's name. The poet himself
transcribes his name in Latin letters as 'Abraham Sutzkever', and
this form is used when the name appears in English text in the
study. The name 'Abraham', however, sits oddly in a transcribed
Yiddish text; when the name appears therefore in Yiddish quota-
tion it is transcribed as 'Avrom Sutskever'. Vilnius is referred
to throughout by its historical Yiddish name Vilna.
1
INTRODUCTION.
International interest in Yiddish literature in general and
in the work of Abraham Sutzkever in particular has been growing
steadily during recent years. Increasing numbers of his works are
being published in translation: apart from numerous translations
of small groups of poems in journals, his poetry features promi-
nently in the bilingual Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse
(1987). There have been foreign-language editions of his work,
including Burnt Pearls, a selection of ghetto poems in "English,
translated by Seymour Mayne (1981), Kanfey shekhem, ('Wings of
granite', Hebrew translations of Sutzkever's 'Lider fun tog-
bukh'), edited by Dan Miron (1983), and the French collection of
prose and poetry, Oil gttent les etoiles (1988), edited by Rachel
Ertel. A German translation of Griner akvariyum is currently in
preparation, and there are two new editions in English, The
Fiddle Rose, translated by Ruth Whitman (1990) and A. Sutzkever.
Selected Poetry and Prose, translated by Barbara and Benjamin
Harshav (1991).1
Until recently Sutzkever has been seen as the last of the
great Yiddish poets. He is now beginning to be considered as an
important figure in world literature: Benjamin Harshav begins his
introduction to the new anthology with the words: 'Sutzkever is
one of the great poets of the twentieth century'. 2 It is there-
fore important that a body of critical literature be established.
So far work on Sutzkever has been limited to several studies in
Yiddish and Hebrew, and the introductory remarks in the above-
1 • Full details of all these editions appear in the bibliography.
2 . A. Sutzkever. Selected Poetry and Prose, trans. by Barbara and
Benjamin Harshav (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford, 1991), p.3.
2
mentioned anthologies. The only academic dissertation to date is
Ruth Wisse's study of Griner akvariyum. In order that Sutzkever's
work may be seen not only in the context of Yiddish literature,
but against the background of European poetry, systematic analy-
sis of development, imagery, themes, influences and affinities is
essential. This study attempts to form the basis for further work
in these areas, particularly in the field of comparative literary
studies.
* * *
The events of Abraham Sutzkever's life are closely linked to
the evolution of his poetry. He was born in 1913 in Smorgon, near
Vilna in Lithuania. Two years later, the town was the centre of
fierce fighting between the German and Russian armies, and the
Jews were ordered to leave. Sutzkever's family fled into Russia,
and Sutzkever's early years were spent in Siberia. The formative
influences of this time were the awesome natural environment -
the snow of Siberia becomes one of the fundamental images of his
poetry - and the figure of his father, who died there a few years
later. (The image of the father and his violin are also permanent
symbols in his work). After the war the family moved back to
Lithuania, to the town of Vilna, which Jews have always called
the Jerusalem of Lithuania; for centuries Vilna had been one of
the foremost centres of Jewish culture and scholarship, and in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century it was in the
forefront of socialist and Zionist activity. Sutzkever grew to
maturity therefore in a centre of contemporary secular Jewish
culture, which was also deeply conscious of its ancient religious
and scholarly tradition. In his teenage years he started writing
poetry which was strongly influenced by the Polish Romantic poets
whom he had read in the Polish-Jewish gymnasium which he
3
attended. He later spoke to Shmerke Katsherginski of his
ignorance of modern Yiddish literature at that time:
Genug tsu zogn az ven ikh hob in 1927 ongehoybn tsu shraybn
lider hob ikh nit gevust fun Peretsn, shoyn opgeredt fun di
yidishe shraybers vi Kulbak, Leyvik, Halpern.3
In the early thirties he became involved with the lively
Yiddish literary group Yung Vilne, but in contrast to the social
engagement and emphasis on modernism in this group, his early
poems were aesthetic and Romantic, and he remained on the fringes
of the group. A fellow writer describes the attitude of the Young
Vilna poets towards the young Sutzkever:
Zey hobn alts gezukht dem pshat, dem nimshl, di tendents,
dem nutsn, vos aza min lid ken brengen der zakh fun der
proletarisher revolutsye. 'Kunst leshem kunst?' Fun dem hot
men demolt in 'Yung-Vilne' veynik gehaltn.4
He found acceptance with a different group of Yiddish poets,
the Inzikhistn or Introspectivists in New York, whose ideas were
influenced by contemporary European and American poetry; they
experimented with free verse and Expressionist imagery, rejecting
any emphasis on specifically Jewish themes. Their credo,
expressed in the first number of the periodical In zikh, stressed
self-expression, freedom of form, and the legitimacy of art for
its own sake:
Als poet, als kinstler darf er bloyz zayn imshtand di
gedanken zayne aroystsugebn in der pasiker form, az es zol
derfun bashafn vern a kunstverk. Un dos iz ophengik bloyz on
eyn konditsiye: az di gedanken zoln zayn zayne eygene, az
zey zoln zayn an emeser rezultat fun der baheftung tsvishen
zayn zel un dem lebn, un az er zol zey aroysgebn in yener
form, in yene emese bilder, in yene emese farbn un tener, vi
zey vebn zikh oys, vi zey antshteyn un dringen im durkh in
dem labirint fun zayn neshome.
Nito keyn grenets tsvishn i gefil' un l gedank' baym hayntikn
mentsh un baym hayntikn dikhter.
3. Novershtern, Catalogue, p.101.
4. mikhl Astor, 'Sutskevers poetisher onheyb' in Yoyvl, pp.22-43,
(28-29).
4
Mir zenen yidishe poetn dermit, vos mir zenen yidn un
shraybn yidish[...] Men darf nit keyn bazundere 'yidishe
temen'.5
Contact with both these groups was of seminal importance for
Sutzkever's development: from the poets of Yung Vilne he gained
experience of contemporary Yiddish literature and was exposed to
ideas of social engagement which later became an integral strand
of his own poetry, while the Introspectivists, especially Aaron
Glants-Leyeles, who remained a lifelong friend, broadened his
poetic horizon to embrace modern developments in Europe and
America. 6 Sutzkever's first volume of poems, Lider, was published
in 1937, and by the time the Germans entered Vilna in 1941, he
was an established poet.
Two ghettos were set up in Vilna. A Nazi 'Task force for the
Occupied Territories' was established under Alfred Rosenberg, and
Sutzkever and other Jewish intellectuals were forced to collect
cultural and literary documents to be either destroyed or sent to
Germany to constitute a record of Jewish culture after the
planned annihilation of the Jews. Sutzkever and his colleagues
hid large quantities of material. In September 1943, when it was
clear that the ghetto was going to be liquidated, he and his wife
escaped and joined the Polish and Jewish partisans in the woods.
They remained there until March 1944, when the Jewish Anti-
Fascist Committee under Ilya Ehrenburg, who had read one of
Sutzkever's longer poems, 'Kol-Nidre', managed to have the
Sutzkevers air-lifted to Moscow.
5. J. Glatshteyn, A. Leyeles, N. Minkov, (editors), In zikh, 1
(1920), 18-19.
6. sutzkever's correspondence with Leyeles lasted until the lat-
ter's death in 1966. cf 'Briv fun A. Leyeles tsu Avrom.
Sutskever', Di goldene keyt, 127 (1989), 26-47.
5
In Moscow Sutzkever wrote his prose account of the German
occupation of Vilna, Vilner get°. After the liberation of Vilna,
he returned and salvaged from the rubble the hidden documents and
poetry which he had written and buried during the ghetto period.
It is remarkable that throughout the war years he never stopped
writing poetry. He testified at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946,
after which he and his wife and daughter travelled through Europe
and settled in Israel in 1947. After some opposition - for the
climate of opinion in Israel at that time was deeply hostile to
the Yiddish language - Sutzkever managed to establish a: Yiddish
literary and cultural journal to foster the work of Yiddish
writers all over the world. The first issue of Di goldene keyt
appeared in Tel-Aviv in 1949, and Sutzkever has edited the
journal ever since.
* * *
This biography is significant for an overview of Sutzkever's
poetry, because the development of his huge and continuing oeuvre
is closely bound up with the events of his life, and the stages
in the development of his poetic consciousness are linked with
the three places which could be called spiritual homes for him:
Siberia, Vilna, (the Jerusalem of Lithuania), and Israel (sym-
bolised by the 'new' Jerusalem which had grown out of the old,
denoting for him and Jews everywhere the continuity of the Jewish
people and the survival of their spiritual and cultural
heritage). These symbolic stations in his life and poetry are
juxtaposed and often fused in his work; the first and the last of
them, Siberia and Israel, are linked throughout by the key images
of snow and fire, which ceaselessly develop and change: the
fusion in the early Israel period of the snow/fire imagery
denotes the achievement of a certain inner harmony.
6
The internal conflicts which his poetry has struggled to
resolve are also illuminated by his biography. The Yiddish poet
Melekh Ravitsh wrote of Sutzkever:
Sutskever iz in tifstn tokh a poet estet, a poet in
sheynkeyt, durkh sheynkeyt far sheynkeyt. Er iz ober
arayngeboyrn gevorn in aza shtot, aza folk un aza tsayt, vos
hot in zayn poesiye arayngebrengt dem tseykhn fun der nat-
sionaler etik. Un volt ikh farglikhn Sutskevers poeziye tsu
a geveb fun a shtof, volt ikh gezogt az [...] di lengs-fedem
in zayne lider zaynen loyter estetik, ober [...] di breyt-
fedem, vos farvandlen zey in dem festn geveb fun zeyer nat-
sionaln un sotsialn zayn, zaynen loyter etik. Yidishe etik,
algemeyn mentshlekhe etik.7
These remarks pinpoint two very important interrelated
aspects of Sutzkever's poetic development: first, the aesthetic
core of his poetic impulse, and second, the tension between this
inherently aesthetic motivation and the wider social dimension,
which was at least partly imposed by the outward circumstances of
his life.
Another critic who has recognised the aesthetic core of
Sutzkever's poetry is Abraham Novershtern, who asserts that in
almost everything which Sutzkever has written, the innermost
theme is Sutzkever's own poetic ikh, or the nature of poetic
creativity:
S'iz bikhlal shyer ontsuvayzn oyf velkher nit iz tsentraler
shafung Sutskevers (akhuts 'Sibir'), tsi oyf a lider-tsikl
in zayns a bukh, vu ot di teme zol nit figurirn, oder oyf a
tsentral ort, oder in der forem fun a derekh-agevdiker
bamerkung.8
Such poems are called 'metapoetishe lider' by Novershtern,
and the term 'metapoetic' will be used throughout this study to
7. Melekh Ravitsh, 'Estetik un etik in Avrom Sutskevers lider',
Yidisher kemfer, 22 May 1959, p.11.
8. Abraham Novershtern, 'Der nartsis un der regn', in Yikhes, pp.
187-210, (p.188). Novershtern is not entirely correct in exclud-
ing 'Sibir' from this subject matter; chapter 3 demonstrates that
the revised version of the Siberian poem represents a significant
stage in Sutzkever's exploration of the nature of poetic con-
sciousness.
7
denote poems and images which focus on the nature of poetry
itself.
Ravitsh's image of the woven cloth implies fusion of the
aesthetic and the ethical in Sutzkever's work: undoubtedly
Ravitsh was correct in perceiving this harmonious interweaving of
both impulses by the time he was writing this article in 1959,
but this 'densely woven fabric' was only achieved after a
previous formative period characterised by fluctuation and strug-
gle for primacy between what Ravitsh has called the 'aesthetic'
element in the poet's nature, and the moral and social -exigencies
of external circumstances. In the early stages of his creativity,
the impulse was almost entirely aesthetic and solipsistic;
Sutzkever himself has said of that period:
Ikh hob mer gevolt dergreykhn beymer un shneyen eyder ment-
shn. Ikh hob oysgeklibn far mayne leyener shtern un grozn.9
The poems of Lider (1937) and Valdiks (1940), and the
poeme lo 'Sibir', whose complex history began in 1936, were a
gradually intensifying probing into the nature of the poetic ikh,
and the aesthetic impulse was preeminent. Even in the first col-
lection, however, Sutzkever touches on the social role of the
poet (for example in the poem 'Cyprian Norwid'), and in the late
thirties his poetry begins to look outward to the events develop-
ing in Europe. The ethical dilemmas intensify in the war years,
as Sutzkever, in common with most artists, struggled with his
aesthetic impulse towards beauty, and his desire to create
poetry, on the one hand, and the great existential questions on
9. A. Sutzkever, 'Togbukh-notitsn', Di goldene kevt, 42 (1962),
166.
10. In Yiddish a shorter lyric poem is called a lid, while the
term poeme denotes a longer, usually narrative poem. The latter
term will be used in this study for this type of work.
8
the other: the quest for meaning, and the possibility of justi-
fying poetry in the face of moral and physical devastation. Even
in the poetry of the ghetto years, the search for the essence of
poetry continues and deepens, and gains a new dimension by being
infused with the moral imperatives of the time.
The first great fusion of the aesthetic identity and the
ethical role of the poet is achieved in the poems of In fayer-
vogn (1952), written during Sutzkever's early period in Israel.
This harmony is achieved through the experience of Israel, which
for him embodied the important concepts of continuity and
rebirth, and a sense of being a link in the 'golden chain',
another key image in his work. At the same time, many inner prob-
lems arising from the past are still unresolved.
The volume Ode tsu der toyb was published in 1955. The
volume consists of three sections, which, taken together, can be
perceived as a significant turning point: 'Griner Akvariyum', a
series of fifteen short prose pieces, looks back and
universalises the Holocaust experience; 'Helfandn bay nakht', a
cycle of poems 'written after the poet's visit to Africa in 1950,
frees the ikh and points forward to a new aestheticism, and the
tension between these two permanent strands of the aesthetic and
the ethical are fused in the poeme 'Ode tsu der toyb', in which
the poet draws together all the themes and dilemmas of the past
years and arrives at a new assurance of his poetic role.
The decisive significance of the poeme 'Ode tsu der toyb'
has been discussed by Mordkhe Litvine in his article 'Der driter
period in Avrom Sutskevers poeziye'. 11 Litvine's theory of peri-
odicity in Sutzkever's poetry forms an important basis for this
11,
M. Litvine, 'Der driter period in Avrom Sutskever's poeziye',
in Yikhes, pp. 122-146.