Mother
The theme of the mother has been discussed extensively in our class. The tropes of the “crazy mother”, the idealized, Jewish caretaker, and the mother as survivor have been studied. I would like to transition away a bit from the mother, and focus on the sister in order to examine the gendered experience of the Holocaust and memory regarding those experiences. Particularly, I will look at Jacob Glatstein’s poem entitled, “To A Sister Far Away”. I chose this poem after reading much of Glatstein’s work, and after reading the poem (chosen by Yaarah Shehori) from “My Little Sister” by Abba Kovner. Both poems speak of sisters. Glatstein’s poem directly addresses the sister, but it is clear she is not meant to be the sole audience. At the end of the poem, he comes to a self-realization of sorts, as if the poem was meant to awake in him the truth regarding the situation between the sister and himself. In addition, the title “To A Sister” is distinctly different from Kovner’s title of “My Little Sister”. Glatstein’s sister has the possibility to be representative of all sisters left behind. Kovner’s poem, though not directly addressing the sister in the letter-type form of Glatstein is alluding to his own experiences, and therefore referring in a sense to his “own” little sister. She belongs to him. Although the poems differ in purpose and content, they share similarities. I will first explore the role of the sister in Glatstein’s poem, and then I will compare Glatstein’s sister to that of Kovner.
“To A Sister Far Away” was written in 1943 and categorized by scholars of Glatstein as a Remembrance Poem.[1] Glatstein begins the poem as if beginning a letter. Glatstein visited his family in Poland in 1934 and his writing after this visit was greatly affected by his trip. Presumably, this poem is somewhat autobiographical. The poet (or Glatstein) tells his sister he will write to her only a few words. He warns her that the words will not be easy to read. He calls them “sharp arrows”. The image of sharp arrows implies piercing and pain, but arrows also immediately conjure up the image of Cupid’s arrows. Writing to a beloved sister, Cupid’s arrows of love (though this love is not a romantic love) remind the reader that what the author wants to tell his sister is painful, but bears the truth, and the poet tells his sister the truth because he loves her. The author tells his sister, though presumably he has not seen her in a long time, due to her being “far away” that her “timid braids/are younger than your eyes.” He does not ask her if this is so, he tells her it must be the case. This is important. Glatstein recognizes the tragedy that is ensuing in Europe, and engulfing his family. He presumes without hesitancy that his sister has witnessed events that have forced her to lose her innocence. Her physical youth, demonstrated by her braids, is not on par with the life she has led. The unfortunate loss of innocence and the regret that the poet feels at not being able to protect his sister from this fate is connected to the sister as female. The following line, “Your cheeks are sickly” again presumes that the brother knows precisely how the sister looks. She is frail and if perhaps her brother were not so far away, he might be able to help.
The poet tells the sister that she writes him imaginary letters and then “erases them with a smile”. Once again, he does not know this for sure, but imagines it to be true. Perhaps the poet comforts himself that if it were possible for his sister to write him letters she would, but because it is not possible she writes imaginary letters. Why does she erase them with a smile? Perhaps because the letters are all imaginary, they can be written and re-written as often as she likes, which gives her comfort. At the end of the first stanza, the poet recognizes that the sister may not be exactly as he remembers her. She has grown older since he has last seen her and yet she remains, “A medallion on the breast,/calling up memories.” The poet may be speaking of an actual medallion, which he wears on his breast to remind him of his sister, or he may be speaking of her memory that lives on in his heart. Either way, it is his memory of her to which he is addressing. In this poem, memory is used to create a bridge to a person who is presently unknowable, and yet once was incredibly familiar. The sister, not only a member of the family, but female and therefore present in the home and stationary in life, should be a static and reliable figure for the brother who has grown up and left the home. Yet, due to the tragic circumstances, the sister is far away, unknown, and unable to be reached. The poet must call up the memories in order to address his sister.
The second, and last, stanza is much shorter than the first. The poet suddenly realizes “with a start” that “I am neither far from you nor near,/only apart, unhappily apart.” The suddenness of this realization is as if he has awoken from a dream, and was never actually writing a real letter to his sister but in fact dreaming of her. She is neither far nor near from him because she exists in his memory, close to his heart and yet far away in time and space. He and his sister are apart; a broken familial piece that is unfixable.
Glatstein wrote this poem in 1943, and most likely was not yet fully aware of the tragedies that befell almost all of the Jews in Europe. He may not have known the fate of the sister who was left behind, although he can imagine the worst. The end of the poem is not completely sorrowful since the image of “apartness” gives the allusion that the possibility to be but back together remains intact. However, the prophetic power that Glatstein was often accorded with by scholars who studied him reveals that long before 1943 Glatstein expected the worst.[2] The image of the sister left-behind who grows with the grass, and yet remains locked at one age in the memory of the poet, foretells a sister who did not live to be seen as an older woman. Growing with the grass also is an allusion to becoming again a part of the earth, which refers to being buried in the ground. The sister is memorialized in the medallion, real or unreal, which belongs to the poet.
In Kovner’s poem, the sister is again portrayed as a sorry figure. She is frail, alone, and silent. However, in this poem, the audience is aware of the sister’s story, even though it is told from the poet’s (the brother’s) point of view. The sister is not far away, as in Glatstein’s poem, but right in front of the audience. Similar to Glatstein, Kovner’s sister is innocent, “Hands crossed over her growing breasts” (15.7) and yet she is experiencing the worst of humanity, just as Glatstein’s sister had eyes much older than her braids. The Jewish fugitive sister is contrasted with the holy nuns who receive her. As the nine holy sisters take care of the Jewish sister, Kovner addresses his sister, “say to them nicely/thank you./Be grateful” (39.5-7). In the same thought, Kovner attempts to justify the demanding of politeness from his sister by stating that “Perhaps they were not guilty” (39.10). However, when the holy sisters are not able to save the Jewish sister, the holy sisters become a part of the rest of the world that betrays the sister.
After telling his sister’s story, Kovner tells his audience that his sister died. “She was two hours old/…She was not introduced to the world.” (45.8,11) Did Kovner’s sister die in the hospital, or did she experience the betrayal of the world? Perhaps there are two sisters Kovner speaks of, or in effect, two ways to represent the sister figure. The one who is left behind, silenced, alone, and with lost innocence and the other who never even is allowed to see the world. In another interpretation, perhaps they are one and the same, and the sister left behind is the sister who is murdered and, in a way, never allowed to see the world as it should be.
Click here to continue to analysis of the guilt/anger in Glatstein's poetry