Holocaust literature not trapped in sentimentality

By Ratan Bhattacharjee

One may cogently argue that the state of Israel was established on the ashes of the Holocaust, which figures as a prominent theme in the works of Israeli poets. If so, the fact that contemporary Israeli poetry is dedicated to the topic of Holocaust celebrates the victory of humankind over Nazi atrocities. We have seen this in the poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg, Dan Pagis and Abba Kovner.
It is also the central theme of the fictional work of Naomi Frankel and Aharon Appelfeld and in the fiction of children of Holocaust survivors like David Grossman, David Schitz and Nava Semel.
In the late 1970s and increasingly in the 1980s, second generation poets emerged as a literary generation in their own right. Because of its prominence, critics are often reluctant to differentiate between biological second generation and other poets writing on this subject.
Poets like Rivka Miriam, Oded Peled and Tania Hadar re-imagine the Holocaust as a collective and personal event and use it as a background and occasion for articulating their interpretation of the moral status of the state of Israel at the present time. It is possible that second generation poets began to attract critical attention as a result of the greater receptivity to expression of vulnerability and insecurity following the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the Lebanon War of 1982.
Both wars exposed the ambiguity of military victory and the price it exacted in political and emotional terms. Most intriguing is the fusion of personal and political visions in poetry creating both particularistic and universalistic representations of the Holocaust as a historical event and an ongoing reality.
This book by Yair Mazor is the first in English to address contemporary Israeli Poetry of the Holocaust. The unique character of the book consists in its capacity to approach simultaneously the fervent feelings and scalding emotional scars associated with the Holocaust and the aesthetic ‘infrastructure’ that is inlaid and operates in the very depth of the poems under consideration.
In this respect, the book functions at two simultaneous levels. It views the emotional strata engaged with the Holocaust while analysing its literary mechanism from an artistic perspective. The book also turns to the congruence between the very collective nature of contemporary Israeli poetry and the capacity to cope with the Holocaust while enlisting literary means. Hence contemporary Israeli poetry tends to display a poetic might while being also emotionally oriented.
Memory of the holocaust should never be dimmed by the passing years not by the fact that the last survivors are saying farewell to all earthly things. There are numerous ways to commemorate the Holocaust. This book introduces a very effective way to do so. One may wonder about combining the Holocaust with art. That doubt, however, is proven wrong by this book. Accordingly, it deftly illustrates how an artistic text can deliver the most scorching emotions of the Holocaust.
This aesthetic dexterity does not cloud the Holocaust but rather introduces it in the most artistically challenging fashion.
The fact that the Holocaust poetry discussed in this book is also Israeli poetry makes that book even more important and relevant.
The content of the book is laced over 15 chapters from the ‘No vindication to Venomous Verdict’ to ‘Portrait of an Airport as a Bloodthirsty Death Camp’.
In each chapter one poem is chosen as a representative writing of a poet. The aesthetic mechanism of Ronny Someck’s poem Mr Auschwitz is nicely explored in the first chapter as the dynamics of the textual continuum or sequence. The verbal unit of a run on line is amazing: “This evening I think again/About many days…” comparable to the lines in Yehuda Amichai’s poem: “I saw roads that lead/From one man to another woman.”
The discussion centres on weeping truth: “This is a weeping truth,/But sometimes that truth weeps out of happiness.”
In this chapter, the beauty of run on lines is shown also from the poem of Nathan Zach, Doomed to Death: “Othello bent down over Desdemona, to put an end to the play”.
In the second chapter David Fogel’s poems come under scrutiny. He was the forefather of modern Hebrew/Israeli poetry. Following in the aesthetic footsteps of his august master and literary mentor, the poet Abraham Ben-Itzhak, he sculpted aesthetically the poetic portrait of modern Hebrew poetry. Sometimes the poems of Fogel are not directly connected to the Holocaust as the poetry of Lorca was not always directly related to Franco’s dictatorship. But the tender tone is all important to create the ambience: “With gentle fingers/The rain plays /A somber, whispering song /On the night’s black organ.”
This can be compared with verses by Ben-Izhak: “A foreign, large night descended upon us/ An evening wind touched us and hummed like black violins.” The focus is on decadent lament-like theme though the presentation is different. Sometimes there is an effort to instill confidence: “Don’t be afraid, my child/ That is just the rain’s finger/ Wetly tappin on the window/ We shall not let it in.”
Nature and fear of war ravages come mingled in a brilliant way. Homey nocturnal situation that is carefully cultivated enriches the thematic-rhetorical framework of poem after poem.
In other chapters too we get beautiful analysis of poems that depict the trains that heartlessly transferred millions of Jews, including one million children and infants, to the Nazi death camps and gas chambers and the horrible blood chilling description of the road: “The roads are wet like a drowned woman/ Who was pulled out of the river as dawn broke/After frantic search of delirious lights/ Now it is quiet/ A dead body beams.”
Hayyim Gouri wrote in the poem ‘Little Kathy’: “Her story turn bleak and black over the Western skies /Hovering over snowy roads”.
Gouri translated his protest to poetic verses and metaphors in this kind of poem. Little Kathy is the prominent protagonist and the narrator’s perspective becomes focused: “How many beautiful women like little Kathy are resting now /Under the shrouding snow?”
The book concludes rightly and optimistically that “Death is not as ultimate as we sometimes believe. We continue living in the memories of our loved ones”. As mentioned in the opening, this book presents Israeli Holocaust in a systematic arrangement of poems which are analysed in such a way as was never earlier done or probed. It is a matter of interest that poetry was the first artistic vehicle that introduced the Holocaust in the realms of Israeli art that includes painting sculpture, theatre prose fiction or film. The great thing about poetry is that it addresses the target audience indirectly.

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Book: Israeli Poetry of the Holocaust; Author: Yair Mazor; Publisher: Faieleigh Dickinson University Press; Pages: 256; Price: Rs 590