Correspondences Read online

  ETTY HILLESUM (Middelburg, Netherlands, 1914 – Auschwitz, Poland, 1943) For approximately the last two years of her life, Etty Hillesum kept a diary – from Sunday, March 9, 1941, to Tuesday, October 13, 1942 – eight exercise books she entrusted to friends, with her permission to publish if she did not survive. Her diary is a remarkable act of witnessing – a document of profound growth and depth of spirit, even as she experienced the conditions of Westerbork and her own deportation.

  ALBERT CAMUS (Mondovi, French Algeria, 1913 – Villeblevin, France, 1960) The writer Albert Camus’ nom de guerre was Beauchard. He joined the French resistance and served as editor of the underground newspaper, Combat. Camus was meticulous in his political and philosophical positions; he was, he said, “looking for a method and not a doctrine” and believed in practising “methodical doubt.”

  HELEN KELLER (Tuscumbia, USA, 1880 – Connecticut, USA, 1968) Helen Keller was a radical socialist, a pacifist, and a suffragist. Her work, along with the works of Einstein, Kafka, Brod, and thousands of others, were banned and burned in the infamous book-burnings of May 10, 1933, in Germany. Keller believed that death was like passing from one room to another. And in that other room, she said, “I will be able to see.”

  S.Y. AGNON (Buczacz, Galicia, 1888 – Jerusalem, Israel, 1970) In 1966, the novelist and short-story writer S.Y. Agnon shared the Nobel Prize with Nelly Sachs. At the dinner following, in his banquet speech, Agnon said, “I will now tell you who am I, whom you have agreed to have at your table.”

  CHARLOTTE SALOMON (Berlin, Germany, 1917 – Auschwitz, 1943, with her unborn child) In 1939, Charlotte Salomon’s father sent her to stay with her grandparents in France, where he believed she would be safer than in Berlin. There, Salomon, humming while she painted, made nearly eight hundred gouaches, with text and overlays, the basis of her memoir, Life? or Theatre? This work survived the war in the trust of a family friend, Dr. Georges Moridis. “C’est tout ma vie,” she told him. “This is all my life.” In 1943, she married an Austrian refugee, who relinquished his false identity and confessed himself a Jew so they could marry. Not long after, they were deported.

  NELLY SACHS (Schoenberg, Germany, 1891 – Stockholm, Sweden, 1970) Nelly Sachs and her mother fled Berlin for Stockholm in 1940, with the help of the writer Selma Lagerlof, who intervened on Sachs’ behalf with the Swedish authorities. Sachs had received her deportation order only days before. Sachs lived with her mother, and continued to live after her mother’s death, in their tiny apartment in south Stockholm, Bergsundstrand 23. The Swedish Academy declared Sachs a “bearer … of solace.” When they met, Celan was forty; Sachs, sixty-nine years old. In giving something to each other, they made a place beside them for others. Sachs wrote, sitting with her typewriter, looking out over the water.

  Most of the individuals portrayed in these pages are accompanied by their own words. Sometimes an individual’s words are brought together from more than one source. On occasion, the words of another writer become the voice for the individual portrayed. The pages unfold in a myriad of arrangements, and voices speak not only from the singularity of their souls but one to another, embracing all that has been placed beneath and inside. A layered kinship is formed, a touch across the pages.

  PERMISSIONS AND SOURCES

  1. PAUL CELAN: lines from the poem “Zurich, the Stork Inn” from Paul Celan: Selected Poems, translation copyright Michael Hamburger, 1972, Penguin Books, 1972.

  2. JOSEPH SCHMIDT: title of a song recorded by Schmidt in 1934.

  3. ROSE AUSLÄNDER: three separate lines from the poems “Motherland,” “Amazed,” and “The Mother.” “Motherland” and “Amazed” from After Every War: Twentieth-Century Women Poets copyright © 2004 by Eavan Boland. Published by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. “The Mother” from Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, CD-ROM, edited by Paula E. Hyman and Dalia Ofer, Jewish Publication Society of America, 2006.

  4. FERNANDO PESSOA: two quotes from The Book of Disquiet, translated by Richard Zenith, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2001. Copyright © Richard Zenith, 2001. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  5. FRED WANDER: two quotes from The Seventh Well, translated by Michael Hofmann. Copyright © 2005 by Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen 2008 by Michael Hofmann. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.

  6. CHARLOTTE DELBO: prose quote of two lines and lines of poetry from Days and Memory, translated by Rosette Lamont, Marlboro Press/Northwestern 2001.

  7. ANDRÉ SCHWARZ-BART: quote from The Last of the Just, translated by Stephen Becker, Bantam Books, 1976, published by arrangement with Atheneum Publishers.

  8. PRIMO LEVI: line from the poem “Reveille” from Collected Poems, translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, Faber & Faber, London, 1988, reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber and Brian Swann. Prose quote from The Drowned and the Saved, translation by Raymond Rosenthal, originally published by Summit Books, a division of Simon & Shuster, Inc., 1988; First Vintage International Edition, 1989.

  9. DEBORA VOGEL: quote is a phrase Vogel used to describe her style of poetry. Source found on the Jewish Women’s Archive website.

  10. BRUNO SCHULZ: prose quote from Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass from The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz, translated by Celina Wieniewska, Walker Publishing Company, Inc., 1989.

  11. FRANZ KAFKA: first prose quote from The Zürau Aphorisms by Franz Kafka, by Franz Kafka, translation copyright © 2006 by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Second prose quote from Letters to Milena, by Franz Kafka, translation copyright © 1990 by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  12. ANNA AKHMATOVA: two separate lines from the poem “Requiem” from Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems, translated by Richard McKane, Oxford University Press, 1969. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

  13. ALBERT EINSTEIN: quote from Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kutter, Oxford University Press, reprint edition 2006.

  14. TERESKA: lines from the poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” by Emily Dickinson, from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, published by Little, Brown, and Company, 1960.

  15. OSIP MANDELSTAM: lines from the poem “What shall I do with this body they gave me,” translated by A. S. Kline.

  16. ISAIAH MICHAELS: quote is from Isaiah Michaels, with Yiddish translation.

  17. ITSIK MANGER: lines from the poem “The Patriarch Jacob Meets Rachel,” translated by Leonard Wolf, from The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse, edited by Irving Howe, Ruth R. Wisse, and Khone Shmeruk, copyright © 1987 by Irving Howe, Ruth Wisse, and Khone Shmeruk. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  18. W.G. SEBALD: prose quote from The Rings of Saturn, translated by Michael Hulse, New Directions Books, 1999.

  19. NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM: Hope Abandoned is the title of one volume of Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoirs.

  20. JEAN AMÉRY: prose quote from At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities, translated by Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld, Indiana University Press, 1980.

  21. ETTY HILLESUM: quote is from Rilke’s poem “The Elopement” from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941–43, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, Persephone Books, 2010.

  22. ALBERT CAMUS: prose quote from Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, translated by Justin O’Brien, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1955.

  23. HELEN KELLER: quote is from Paul Celan’s poems “Homecoming” and “Flower,” from Paul Celan: Selected Poems, translation copyright Michael Hamburger, 1972, Penguin Books, 1972.

  24. S.Y. AGNON: prose quote from short story “The Sign,” translated by Arthur Green, from A Book That Was Lost and Other Stories, edited by Alan L. Mintz and Anne Golomb, Schocken Boo
ks, 1995.

  25. CHARLOTTE SALOMON: quote is from Life? or Theatre?, translation by Leila Vennewitz, Waanders Publishers, Zwolle, 1998.

  26. NELLY SACHS: lines from the poem “If I only knew” from After Every War: Twentieth-Century Women Poets, by Eavan Boland, Princeton University Press, 2004.

  Unfold, v. tr.: 1. To open and spread out (something folded); extend

  2. To remove the coverings from; disclose to view

  3. To reveal gradually by written or spoken explanation; make known

  Enfold, v. tr.: 1. To cover with or as if with folds; envelop

  2. To hold within limits: enclose

  3. To embrace

  To go to the poem Correspondences, click here.

  Individual Biographies with Permissions and Sources

  biography

  PAUL CELAN (Czernowitz, Romania, 1920 – Paris, France, 1970) In 1954, Paul Celan wrote to Nelly Sachs, praising her poetry, especially her “Chorus of Orphans.” Few correspondences have begun with deeper subtext and unspoken longing. For both, language was a leap of faith, staggering and minimal: the hope that experience might be spoken, in some way represented, even if there is no listener – a language the dead might understand and trust. Only in the particular space of their correspondence was there, for both, no exile. On May 25, 1960, Celan and Sachs met for the first time at the Stork Inn, a café on the river Limmat, in Zurich. They met once more, in Paris, where Celan lived with his wife and son. Their correspondence was essential, and lasted through years of, for each, intermittent breakdown. In April 1970, Celan left his apartment, crossed the street, and drowned himself in the Seine. Sachs died the day Celan was buried.

  source

  Lines from the poem “Zurich, the Stork Inn” from Paul Celan: Selected Poems, translation copyright Michael Hamburger, 1972, Penguin Books, 1972.

  biography

  JOSEPH SCHMIDT (Davideny, Bukovina, 1904 – Gyrenbad, Switzerland, 1942) The tenor Joseph Schmidt, “the tiny man with the great voice,” was popular throughout Europe but especially in Germany; he sang in forty-two operas on German radio before he was banned from broadcasting in 1937. He died, age thirty-eight, in a refugee camp outside of Zurich. “Ein Stern Fallt” is inscribed on his gravestone: “a star has fallen.”

  source

  Title of a song recorded by Schmidt in 1934.

  biography

  ROSE AUSLÄNDER (Czernowitz, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1901 – Dusseldorf, West Germany, 1988) The poet Rose Ausländer avoided deportation by fleeing to a series of hiding places. For the rest of her life, moving from country to country, she carried all her possessions in two suitcases. In the Czernowitz ghetto, Ausländer met Paul Celan.

  source

  Three separate lines from the poems “Motherland,” “Amazed,” and “The Mother.” “Motherland” and “Amazed” from After Every War: Twentieth-Century Women Poets copyright © 2004 by Eavan Boland. Published by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. “The Mother” from Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, CD-ROM, edited by Paula E. Hyman and Dalia Ofer, Jewish Publication Society of America, 2006.

  biography

  FERNANDO PESSOA (Lisbon, Portugal, 1888 – Lisbon, Portugal, 1935) Fernando Pessoa wrote using more than seventy heteronyms, which he created with an intricate tenderness. When he died, he left more than twenty-five thousand unpublished pages: poems, letters, fragments. The first translation of Pessoa’s work into German was co-translated by Paul Celan.

  source

  Two quotes from The Book of Disquiet, translated by Richard Zenith, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2001. Copyright © Richard Zenith, 2001. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  biography

  FRED WANDER (Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1917 – Vienna, Austria, 2006) Fred Wander, born Fritz Rosenblatt, was interred in twenty camps, in Germany, Poland, and France, during the Second World War. Afterwards, he lived in East Germany, adopting the pseudonym Fred Wander. He began to write about the war only after the death of his ten-year-old daughter Kitty.

  source

  Two quotes from The Seventh Well, translated by Michael Hofmann. Copyright © 2005 by Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen 2008 by Michael Hofmann. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.

  biography

  CHARLOTTE DELBO (Essonne, France, 1913 – Paris, France, 1985) Charlotte Delbo was sent to Auschwitz, part of a convoy of women who famously entered the camp singing “La Marseillaise.” Soon after the war, she wrote about her time there but did not publish this memoir for another twenty years.

  source

  Prose quote of two lines and lines of poetry from Days and Memory, translated by Rosette Lamont, Marlboro Press/Northwestern 2001.

  biography

  ANDRÉ SCHWARZ-BART (Metz, France, 1928 – Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, 2006) Though barely a teenager, and proficient only in Yiddish, Schwarz-Bart joined the resistance and was a member of the Maquis. He learned French on the run and, after the war, from library books. In 1959, he won the Prix Goncourt for his masterpiece, The Last of the Just.

  source

  Quote from The Last of the Just, translated by Stephen Becker, Bantam Books, 1976, published by arrangement with Atheneum Publishers.

  biography

  PRIMO LEVI (Turin, Italy, 1919 – Turin, Italy, 1987) Like Jean Améry, Primo Levi’s camp number is recorded on his gravestone. Levi’s university research was on the asymmetrical properties of carbon. The carbon atom exists in several allotropes; at one extreme, the diamond – translucent and hard; at the other extreme, graphite – opaque and soft enough to stain a page.

  source

  Line from the poem “Reveille” from Collected Poems, translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, Faber & Faber, London, 1988, reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber and Brian Swann. Prose quote from The Drowned and the Saved, translation by Raymond Rosenthal, originally published by Summit Books, a division of Simon & Shuster, Inc., 1988; First Vintage International Edition, 1989.

  biography

  DEBORA VOGEL (Burshtyn, Galicia, 1902 – Lvov, Poland, 1942) Debora Vogel was an avant-garde poet who wrote in Yiddish, now known mostly for her correspondence with Bruno Schulz. She was a steadfast and acute friend, encouraging Schulz in the work that became The Street of Crocodiles (Cinnamon Shops), written by Schulz between 1930–32.

  source

  Quote is a phrase Vogel used to describe her style of poetry. Source found on the Jewish Women’s Archive website.

  biography

  BRUNO SCHULZ (Drohobycz, Galicia, 1892 – Drohobycz, Galicia, 1942) On November 19, 1942, the artist and writer Bruno Schulz was shot by a Gestapo officer in the ghetto of the town where he was born and had lived his life. Much of Schulz’s work – hauntingly original – has been lost, including the manuscript of an unfinished novel, “The Messiah.” There is no known gravesite; Schulz’s spirit rests in the art of many others, in the music, film, fiction, and poetry inspired by his life and work.

  source

  Prose quote from Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass from The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz, translated by Celina Wieniewska, Walker Publishing Company, Inc., 1989.

  biography

  FRANZ KAFKA (Prague, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1883 – Keirling, Austria, 1924) Franz Kafka’s request of his friend and literary executor Max Brod – that all Kafka’s unpublished manuscripts be destroyed, unread, after his death – is well known; as is Brod’s decision not to honour this request, not as a betrayal but as a deeper devotion to Kafka and his work. When Brod fled Prague in 1939, he carried suitcases filled with Kafka’s papers.

  source

  First prose quote from The Zürau Aphorisms by Franz Kafka, by Franz Kafka, translation copyright © 2006 by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Second prose quote from Letters to Milena, by Franz Kafka, translation copyright © 1990 by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted b
y permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  biography

  ANNA AKHMATOVA (Odessa, Russia, 1889 – Leningrad, USSR, 1966) Akhmatova’s poems were banned for many years in the Soviet Union, but her readership remained devoted, circulating her work in samizdat and committing her poems to memory. She would write on a scrap of paper, wait while her guest memorized the poem, then immediately strike a match and burn it. Her poem “Requiem,” written in response to her son Lev’s imprisonment, was not published in the USSR until 1987.

  source

  Two separate lines from the poem “Requiem” from Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems, translated by Richard McKane, Oxford University Press, 1969. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

  biography

  ALBERT EINSTEIN (Ulm, Germany, 1879 – Princeton, USA, 1955) In early 1933, Einstein was in the middle of a return crossing to Europe from the United States when he learned of the events in Germany; he made the decision never to enter German territory again, a resolution he upheld for the rest of his life. His ashes are scattered on the grounds of Princeton University. Einstein loved to sail and found the open water conducive to thought: he especially favoured windless days because, he said, calm is the greatest challenge to a sailor.