Article aboutn
Rajzel Zychlinsky, Poet, 88. from Gombin, Jewish Bulletin of Northern
California, Jan. 29 1999
Yiddish Poet, 88, Crafts Beauty From Shoah Horror
Yiddish poet
and Holocaust refugee Rajzel Zychlinsky created hauntingly beautiful poems from
the ashes of war.
Now 88
and living in a Walnut Creek nursing home, she still manages to find poetry in
even the most confining circumstances. On a recent Thursday afternoon,
surrounded by the distressed cries of fellow residents, she focuses her
attention on a cardboard cutout of a buffalo pasted to a wall opposite her bed.
"I am enchanted by the
buffalo," the
Polish-born writer muses. "If I would be able to touch it, to see it, I would write a
poem."
One of
relatively few living Yiddish poets, the widely published Zychlinsky has been
writing since the 1920s. She says she hasn't penned a poem since moving to
California from Brooklyn just over a year ago. Still, nothing excites her more
than talking about poetry -- other's or her own.
Her
eyes, shaded by a red cap, noticeably light up when she picks up "God Hid His Face," the most recent collection of her poems and
the first full volume translatedinto English. With gnarled hands, she raises a
magnifying glass and slowly reads aloud:
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When I Was Eighteen
Years Old what was I searching for |
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She then
asks a visitor to recite the poem again, listening intently to each phrase and cautioning
the reader to pay close attention to intonation. "I am in love with
my poems," she says,
speaking not out of vanity but out of a genuine appreciation for her craft and
what it has meant to her. "Poetry saves my life. For example, if I have troubles, I recite to
myself one chapter of Charles Baudelaire's poem `Death of the Poor.' I recite
it and I feel better."
Local
audiences recently heard three of Zychlinsky's poems recited in A Traveling
Jewish Theatre's production "Diamonds in the Dark." In it, performers
wove the words of Yiddish poets into a tapestry of Jewish experience. The
production featured one of her many poems about memory:
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Everything
we have seen |
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ATJT
performers considered hundreds of poems before choosing a handful for inclusion
in the production. ATJT actress and co-founder Naomi Newman lauds Zychlinsky's
seamless depiction of the inner life. "Her images are extraordinary," Newman says. "My hunch is she will end up
being a major poet."
Zychlinsky
wrote her first poem as a teenager, standing at the window of her family's
Polish home gazing at the falling snow. "It inspired me and I started to look for
other inspirations," she
says.
Her
first collection, "Poems," was published in 1936 in Warsaw. Her
second volume, "The Rain Sings," came out just weeks
before the occupation of Warsaw by Hitler's troops. More books followed.
Zychlinsky
chose to write in Yiddish rather than Polish, she says, because her mother
spoke to her in Yiddish and because the language provides "melody, music" for poetry.
Zychlinsky,
whose poems have been translated into German and French, was born in Gombin,
Poland, in 1910. Her father, a tanner, made several trips to America before
settling in Chicago, where he died in 1928. Her mother, a religious woman,
feared the secular blandishments of this country would corrupt her children's
piety. She thus refused to emigrate. The poet's mother and siblings perished in
the gas chambers of Chelmno. Zychlinsky, however, escaped to Russia in 1939
with her late husband, psychiatrist and author Dr. Isaac Kanter. They had one
son, Marek, a mathematician for Pacific Gas and Electric who lives in Berkeley.
The poet writes of her personal losses over and over again -- subtly, as in
this verse from the poem "My Sister Chaneh" :
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But
often the mirror weeps. |
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Zychlinsky
writes of womanhood, motherhood, solitude and nature. But she has been most widely
commended for her Holocaust poems. "When one reads her poems, one is convinced that
only poets can rescue this most tragic episode in the life of the Jewish people
from the jaws of meaninglessness," writes Emanuel Goldsmith, a Queens College literature professor,
in an introductory essay to "God Hid His Face."
After
the war, the poet lived in Poland and France before arriving in America in
1951. Settling in New York, she continued writing while working at a factory,
attending City College and raising her son.
"She's a very self-willed
person," Marek Kanter
says of his mother. "Once she gets an idea into her head, she doesn't let go."
When she
looks at her work as a body, Zychlinsky sees her poems' accessibility as a
common thread. "My poems are very aynfakht, uncomplicated," she says. "I don't try to climb
walls as some poets do."
To
poets, she advises: "Don't make yourself more poetic than you are." Today Zychlinsky suffers from
congestive heart problems and has difficulty walking. Age has taken its toll on
her body but her artistic spirit remains intact. "I am a very old
woman," she says, "but with young
poems."
Back to Rajzel Zychlinsky Web Site
Last Updated
December 2nd, 2003