munger

Wednesday May 28

by

My Fathers Farewell to me

A beautiful Spring night at the
foot of the hill where my hometown
Sniatyn lies, at the Railroad station
early in June 1913, my father went
to bid me farewell on my long Journey
to America.

The train is waiting, a long
embrace a kiss, tears streaming
down from his eyes,

Did he have a premonition that
we would see each other no more?

The train is moving out slowly
and by the light of the moon I
could see through the window in the
distance my father [olam haba] weeping
and wiping his tears.

———-

Matt’s Notes

I hesitate to intrude on Papa right now, but if you’re interested to know, here’s what comes to mind when I read this passage:

Somewhere around 1977 or 1978, my fifth grade teacher assigned my class a project called “Where Are My Roots?” for which we all had to write a report on our family histories. (The T.V. miniseries Roots, about an African-American family’s enslaved ancestors, was all the rage back then and had touched off a bit of a genealogy craze.) My report was about Papa’s emigration from Sniatyn, and though I don’t remember much about it, I know the centerpiece was a photocopy of the above entry. (My mother picked it out and my father “Xeroxed” it at his office, whatever that meant).

This sad, sweet passage was my first introduction to Papa’s diary, and though I didn’t quite understand its context (I hadn’t read the whole diary and didn’t know Papa wrote it in the wake of his father’s death) I was fascinated with its structure and scope: It seemed soaring, lyrical, surprisingly literary in the way it switched tenses, familiarly cinematic in its description of Papa’s last, dwindling look at his weeping father from the window of a moving train. From my young perspective, these words felt epic in scale, like they opened onto infinity, and until I transcribed them last year I thought they went on for pages.

When I was a child I used to imagine that Papa’s ghost was looking out for me, hovering just out of sight over my shoulder. I was, in fact, terribly afraid of ghosts and spent many nights awake, under my covers, hiding from them. But to fear something is also to acknowledge its existence; was I willing, I ask rhetorically, to believe the world was full of ghosts just to convince myself Papa’s could still be with me? (It occurs to me now that I also used to think the ghosts in my house lived in a chair my grandmother gave us, a chair that for years occupied the apartment she shared with Papa.)

I mention this because I think it helps explain why, at eleven, this passage felt so important to me. I would not have been able to articulate how much I missed Papa or how much I longed for the lost feelings I associated with him. But to read his words was to hear the gentle murmur of his voice; to become lost in his prose was to feel his warmth; to see him wonder at his father’s “premonition that we would see each other no more” was to experience his idealistic optimism (anyone else would have known that he was saying goodbye to his father for good that night in Sniatyn, yet even eleven years later he chose to interpret the inevitable as a sign of his father’s wisdom).

Though it is, in reality, just one small page of an old pocket diary, this entry has indeed kept Papa with me for the last thirty years. I have hoped to revisit it, I have hoped to understand it more fully, I have hoped it might hold something more for me. I have hoped, each time I sit down to write, that I might one day compose something as spare and perfect and beautiful. But mostly I have hoped to be like Papa because I will never see him again. I will never see him again, even if he is just behind me, over my shoulder.

Thursday May 29

by


I had hoped to go there
and see my beloved
people on the other side,
But the World War, and
my bad luck kept me
from it.

It is now my sole aim
to keep my dear mother
comfortable for the rest of her
life.

——————-

I’ve wondered before if Papa’s father’s death would “spoil” the idea of visiting home for him, and the resigned tone of this entry makes me think that might be the case. Without his father to anchor the image of his “beloved people on the other side,” his thoughts of home cannot sustain him as they once did.

It’s unusual for Papa to hold outside influences responsible for the course of his life, so I think we can see how profound and jarring it is for him to be stripped of the prospect of a family reunion in Sniatyn — only a global upheaval like a World War or an unseen force like “bad luck” could be responsible. I think this notion may actually help him feel less guilty about not making it back and not being able to do more for his family, though such resignation doesn’t suit him; perhaps his vow to take care of his mother is a way for him to withdraw from his foray into helplessness.

Friday May 30

by


[no entry]

————————-

Papa was at the tail end of a forced week off from work on this day, a prospect he had dreaded since it gave him little more to do than think about his father’s recent death. Perhaps, though, the week off was good for him in a way; he wrote some beautiful words about his father a couple of days ago and, the next day, started to get a handle on his sadness by redoubling his commitment to helping his mother.

A bright spot on this day might have been the publication of an article he wrote the previous Monday for the Zionist weekly “Dos Yiddishe Folk.” I’ve discussed the article extensively in a previous post, but here’s the cover of the paper once again:

Meanwhile, the English-language New York Times ran a short wire story that Papa would have been far less excited to see in print:

HITLER WRITES A BOOK WHILE IN PRISON CELL; Tells Interviewer His Uprising Saved Germany From a Stinnes Dictatorship.

Papa obviously didn’t know Hitler was writing Mein Kampf or exactly what this article’s description of “postcards on sale everywhere with Hitler’s picture and evidence of the prisoner’s immense popularity” would one day mean. Still, it does remind us that whatever capacity for resilience he cultivates in the wake of his father’s death will be severely challenged twenty years hence when everyone else in his family dies at the hands of Nazi soldiers and, a few years after that, when one of his surviving sisters commits suicide. It also raises again the question of how someone could go through so much and remain, to the end, as generous of spirit, as forgiving, and as serene as Papa. The answers lie, perhaps, between the lines of his coming weeks’ entries, so we’ll have to watch them closely.

Saturday May 31

by

Death (by John Donne)

Death be not proud though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
For those whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go —
Rest of their bones and souls delivery!
Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, Kings and desperate men
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we woke eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die!

————————–

Matt’s Notes

Papa has tilted back and forth over the past few days as the urge to give in to despair over his father’s death has attempted to erode the integrity of his essentially optimistic, altruistic character. He has written, movingly, of his last moment with his father; he has suffered a bout of self-pity, but he has also countered with a surge of resolve; and today, he shows the clearest sign yet of his desire to master his grief, exploring and challenging death itself with the help of John Donne.

I don’t pretend to have any scholarly knowledge of Donne’s work (when I saw the T.V. adaptation of the memoir “Death Be Not Proud” in the 70’s, I thought the phrase was a statement of fact — “death is not proud,” whatever that would have meant, as opposed to a direct challenge to death’s pride — and even though I’ve since learned otherwise I’ve never been able to shake my “wrong” impression) though I certainly do think the famed poem above indicates a mixed relationship with the idea of death; does Donne truly mock it or does he kind of want to give it a try himself?

In any case, I think Papa reads Donne’s poem, at this moment in his life, as a rallying cry, paying more attention to its final line “Death thou shalt die!” than to its more ambivalent sentiments (the sure, bold hand with which he transcribes the poem conveys a sense of assertiveness, too, as opposed to tearful midnight weepiness.) While Papa is certainly not done mourning, this entry is a good sign, and shows us an interesting moment in his struggle to grieve without giving in to despair. He is deciding, bit by bit, that the best way to honor his father’s life is to live his own life well, and he’s letting us watch.

Sunday June 1

by


Death (by Walter Savage Landor)

Death stands above me whispering low
I know not what into my ear;
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

Remark

(Not thoughts of suicide prompt
me to write the above poems on death
I want to live and have no death plans,
But death claimed my father my
dearest friend and adviser,
so I copied the poems from my
book of lyrics.)

————-

Here Papa gives us another look at the deep and complicated process unfolding within him. Since his father died, feelings of despair and resolve, self-defeat and self-preservation, have sloshed back and forth in his head, combining to create something new, unfamiliar, and volatile. In the last few days, we’ve watched him slowly separate the mixture and attempt to put its more destructive components back where they belong, though in the process he is often surprised by their potency.

Papa’s need to deny any suicidal interpretation of his poetry choices is one by-product of his efforts. It never would have occurred to me to think he has “death plans,” yet he goes out of his way to assure us he doesn’t. Perhaps Papa doth protest too much? Did he, in transcribing poems that acknowledge the seductive temptations of eternal sleep, briefly think he’d prefer it to living with his own sadness? Was the notion so shocking and therefore so obvious to him that he thought it could not but occur to his readers as well?

Several days ago, Papa had a quick brush with pessimism and bemoaned his own bad luck and helplessness in the face of the world’s unfairness. Moments later, though, he recovered himself and vowed to keep his mother and family safe in his father’s absence, thus regaining a sense of command over his own life. I think the same kind of thing has happened over the past few days. He quoted Donne and Landor’s poems as rallying cries against death’s potential power to ruin our lives with fear and sadness, and in so doing forced himself to look at his own fear and sadness, to test himself against it.

The wording he uses toward the end of this entry — “I want to live and have no death plans, But death claimed my father my dearest friend and trusted adviser, so I copied the poems” — demonstrates a growing mastery over his grief. Not only does he literally say he wants to live on, it’s almost as if he says it as a counterpoint to his father’s death: “My father is dead, and though I loved him, I must remember I’m still alive.” It’s another demonstration of how he learned to steer himself through dark and unfamiliar waters by the light of his essential optimism and resolve.

Monday June 2

by


Sent home $40.
30 for a tombstone and
10 to live on, with asking
to select a good stone, and
if it should cost more I will
send it at once.

——————

Matt’s Notes

Papa has stated before his intention to get a loan of $100 in order to wire more money home, and though he hasn’t said so explicitly I think that’s what he’s done to pay for his father’s tombstone.

As I’ve previously noted, when the Nazis occupied Sniatyn in the 40’s they removed the headstones from the Jewish cemetery and laid them as paving stones in front of their local headquarters. According to people at the United Sniatyner Sick and Benevolent society (a descendant of the Sniatyn landsmanshaft from Papa’s day) the headstones have not been replaced and still line the street to this day. Could the tombstone Papa mentions above be among them? I’d like to go there one day and find out.

Tuesday June 3

by

[no entry]

————

Matt’s Notes

Back on May 28, Papa wrote movingly of the last moments he spent with his father before leaving Sniatyn for America in 1913. He was eighteen years old. I think these photos show what he would have looked like at the time (at least they’re the earliest shots we’ve got of him in America):

I like the top one in particular because his hat and coat remind me of young Clemenza’s in The Godfather, Part II, and also because he really looks less American, for some reason, than he does in his later photos. It appears to be a formal studio shot, too, which leads me to wonder why he’s wearing full winter clothes. Maybe it was part of a series he sent back home to show how he looked in various styles of dress.