Successful Writer Blog

Szymborska’s poetry is filled with personas even when she writes about the museum or describing a picture or the house of a great man, she would simultaneously, logically and powerfully show us a very unique point of view. But she also touches the archetype or core of the situation, where everyone – no matter where they come from – would identify with her. When she does refer to herself or her own family, it is always with a great sense of humor and to make a point like in the poem ‘Epitaph’.

This condition changes in her later poems. For instance, ‘The Puddle’, which describes her childish fear of sinking in a puddle, she is deeply lyrical but still anyone can identify with her description of childhood fears or the sunrise in ‘Early Hour’. What I take from Szymborska is indeed the understanding that a poem about a place doesn’t always have to be private; it can be more universal. Hence, as a poet, I can learn to inhabit this place of memories but not consume it with my seriousness.

In her Nobel Prize Winning speech she said that the basic point of view that every artist should begin with is that of “not knowing” and by saying “I don’t know” gives you a great deal more freedom that having all the answers. Another thing she says is that poets don’t have a monopole on inspiration. The real question is what you do with it. These are the lessons I take from her today. 

I have been avoiding answering a letter from the editor of Mashiv Haroach (a Jewish poetry newspaper) for some time. They are about to publish a volume about my homeland, the Negev and I have never written about my homeland seriously. One might say that everything you write is harks back to your home, and now, as I try to write a novel about Ben-Gurion University of the Negev I can see how many emotional charges are there, in the back of my mind. Still I feel that prose, being less concentrated than poetry is a far better way to overcome these obstacles. Or perhaps it’s because that there are some ways of writing that hurt too much, and the writer is only flesh and blood.

I did not plan this but the truth is the books that I chose to deal with this week of Polish literature somehow deal with the questions and problems that I have mentioned.  Pochwala Snow, the wonderful poetry collection of Szymborska’s poetry edited by Rafi Weichert, has the unique ability to give you exactly the poems you need whenever you need them, not only that, the book has a very interesting point of view on the subject of what is a homeland. For the very first time, I’ve read her Nobel Prize speech and there is a lot to learn from it about being a poet, as I shall write in the post about her.

Another book is Witold Gombrowicz’s book Pornografia that tells the story of World War II Poland without being there. Gombrowicz is one of the most important novelists of 20^th century Polish literature and in his first books he also wrote about the idea of youth and its internal battle in the grownup’s mind with adulthood.

The last article this week focuses on a Jewish-Polish writer called Israel Rabon. In his book, The Street, he describes his birthplace from the point of view of a Jewish soldier trying desperately to settle in Lodz. I will also talk about the simple and surreal Shund literature, which served as a basis for this book.

I didn’t have time to write all that I had planned this week so Orwell will have to be delayed to the upcoming weeks.
Today I would love to introduce you to an author who was also down and out in London in the beginning of the 20th century – Josef Haim Brenner. Some of his work was translated into English and Spanish but the truth of the matter is that I don’t know if his work could be understood completely outside of the Jewish Zionist background in which it was created, it has been written in the Wikipedia about his work:

“Brenner was very much an ‘experimental’ writer, both in his use of language and in literary form. With modern Hebrew still in its infancy, Brenner improvised with an intriguing mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, English and Arabic. In his attempt to portray life realistically, his work is full of emotive punctuation and ellipses.”

Brenner is truly phenomenal in Hebrew, but some say that his life, that ended tragically is far more important than his creation. Therefore, it’s important for me to begin this week that focuses on realism with several sentences that he wrote, especially because S. Y. Agnon, the Nobel Prize winner wrote about him after his death that he was a writer with no imagination. In a very well known article, ‘The Israeli Genre’, that he wrote after he immigrated to Palestine, he asks fundamental questions about how we characterize a place that has no history. He says that he as a writer has no problems describing the characters from Russia but the Israeli characters come across as caricatures and the whole idea that there is an ‘Israeli Genre’ is pathetic. Later on he touches the problem in describing such a small place. Every story you tell is bound to be connected to someone you know, people do not believe that you can imagine something that might have been; they wish to be remembered in the novelist’s writing and once published they are offended by his writings.

This is the theme we are going to deal with this week: what is fiction what is non-fiction? Do we really have protection in the declaration that this is a ‘work of fiction, any resemblance to real people and events are purely coincidental.’

The Dwarf (originally ‘Dvargen’ in Swedish) by Par Lagerkvist is one of the crown jewels of literary works that deal with evil. It was written during World War II and was published in 1944. The book tells about an evil dwarf who cares only for his prince, literary researchers guess this is The Prince Machiavelli based his famous book on. He despises what people like and love except from misery and war. The book tells about the preparation for a war as the dwarf is ordered to kill the prince’s enemies with poisoned wine but he also kills the prince’s wife’s lover. In the end the dwarf is locked in the dungeon, never to be released but he is certain that the prince would call on him some day because the prince needs his dwarf. Such an ending seems to harm the idea of the book, but there is a clue that the dwarf never existed but in the mind of the prince.

Par Lagerkvist was born in a simple religious house in Sweden in 1891. He published his first work in 1912. Throughout his life, he published poems, novels and plays that were very successful. His works are based on the tension between religion and heretics. He defines himself as “a religious heretic”. In 1924 he published Onda Sagor (The Tales of the Devil); most famous among them is the story ‘The Elevator who went Down to Hell’. During the 30s he became increasingly interested in the Fascism that swept through Europe. When The Dwarf was published he was compared to Jonathan Swift in his ability to describe the human evil.  Some Israeli readers have compared him with Agota Kristof who we shall discuss in an up-and-coming post.

In 1951 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. There is an anecdote about his winning: apparently he was supposed to win the award in 1949 and again in 1950 but he voted against himself as a member of the Swedish Academy giving the 1949 prize to Falkner and the 1950 to Bertrand Russell. When he finally won in 1951 he was asked if he had a message and he replied: “I have no message. All that I have to say is included in my work.” He died in 1974. But to this day, his creation is considered to be most original. We can learn much from his literary solutions, it has been said that in his writings he dealt with most of the problems that stand before a writer.