Mendele: Yiddish literature and language --------------------------------------------------- Contents of Vol. 1 no. 10 June 3, 1991 1) The Poetry of Anna Margolin (Leonard Prager) 1)------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 02 Jun 91 15:29:26 IST From: leonard prager Subject: Mit halb farmakhte oygn by Anna Margolin Dear noyekh shames (one m, please, despite the dagesh in the mem in Heb. sha`mash): I wrote the following several years ago at the request of someone who was preparing a critical anthology of Yiddish poetry. I did not pursue the project, but I am now curious as to how my reading strikes other readers of Anna Margolin, in whom there seems to be a certain interest these days. I just heard the Dept. of Yiddish at the Hebrew Univ. has issued a volume devoted to the poet -- I have not yet seen it. This reading has not been tested by reference to the poet's work as a whole, but it does glance briefly at her life. A Reading of Anna Margolin's "Mit halb farmakhte oygn" by Leonard Prager (Haifa) I. Transcription (according to the Standard Yiddish Romanizaton) "Mit halb farmakhte oygn" Zitsndik bam tish in groyen zal, foyl un umruik zikh viklendik in shal, kuk ikh den af dir? Ruf dikh den tsu mir? Nor royter iz mayn moyl atsind, un di halb farmakhte oygn mit a roykh fartsoygn. Nor farfleytst bin ikh fun roysh un likht, un dayn gezikht ze ikh durkh nepl un flam, un af di lipn iz sharf der tam fun zun un vint. Nor ikh tsi zikh aruf mit farshtiktn geshrey, ikh vaks flaterndik, fiberdik azoy {azey}, un dos vaksn tut vey. Farrukt in vinkl fun dem groyen zal, In di lange flamendike faldn fun shal, kuk ikh den af dir? Ruf dikh den tsu mir? Nor ikh hob veytiklekh, un tif, un blind mit halb farmakhte oygn Dikh ayngezoygn. II. Translation (more-or-less literal) "With Half-Shut Eyes" Seated at a table in the gray hall, Idle and anxious, wrapping myself in my shawl, I don't look at you, do I? I don't call you to me, do I? But my mouth is redder now, And my half-shut eyes Are smoky. But I am flooded with sound and light, And I see your face through fog and flame, And on my lips the taste Of sun and wind is sharp. But I pull myself up with a choked cry, I grow trembling, feverish, And this growing hurts. Removed to a corner of the gray hall, In the long flaming folds of my shawl, I don't look at you, do I? I don't call you to me, do I? But a little painfully and deeply and blindly, With half-shut eyes I have taken you into myself. III. Commentary (division into Theme and Form is for the purpose of analysis only). A. Theme The speaker of Anna Margolin's "With Half-Shut Eyes" addresses a lover with whom she is and yet is not in contact. The "action" of the poem concerns the speaker's solution to this dilemma. The setting of the poem is a "gray hall," doubtless like one of those meeting halls where Anna Margolin (1887-1952) and her comrades, in her days as secretary of the anarchist _Free Workers' Voice_ met to confront the fateful political issues of the twenties or thirties. We do not know why the speaker must avoid her lover, but her two starkly colloquial and somewhat petulant question- statements with the almost impossible-to-translate particle _den_, questions which appear in identical form in the third and fourth sentences of the first and last stanzas, suggest an answer. By some express or silent compact she understands that her private passion must be subservient to the social struggle or to some undefined spiritual goal. Or if not subservient then at least muted. Speaking of Anna Margolin's generation of Russian-born Jewish idealists, but with reference to those who went to Palestine rather than to North Ameri- ca, Anita Shapira succinctly describes "the typical Second Aliya aversion to a public display of emotion. Any relationship between the sexes was then a deeply serious, even ponderous matter, in the spirit of the great Russian novels, not to be discussed openly and certainly never to be referred to lightly."(1) The first stanza of "With Half-Shut Eyes" opens with the restless speaker symbolically enveloping herself in her shawl as she would like her lover to take her in his arms. This opening stanza poses an incommensurable opposition between "gray hall" and "red{der} mouth." Red is the color of desire and gray, an achromatic color, is in the popular sense a non- color, one associated with death and desolation. This opposition of "hall" versus "mouth" emblematically defines the issue at stake. Moreover, it does so ironically, since the hall, probably a meeting hall, is a place where mouths are at work articulating abstrac- tions. The speaker, whose mouth is a very red one, feels flooded with emotion and outside ordinary con- sciousness. Her half-shut eyes are eyes that refuse to yield the night's dreams or to accept a dayworld de- fined by others. Whether or not the hall is "smoke- filled," the speaker's eyes are shaded by a protective mist, generated from within, which shields her subjec- tive truth. In the second stanza, the speaker describes her heightened state. Her eyes and ears have been overwhelmed by sound and light, which is to say that her being is alive with sensation. Having earlier referred to her mouth, she speaks here of the _taste_ of sun and wind on her lips. _Sun_ and _wind_ are images of natural energy, of cosmic force as opposed to the cultural products of the _gray hall_, of institu- tion and of society. The fresh tastes are ingested at the mouth, as a child first relates to the world through the mouth. The second section of the "broken" second stanza records the speaker's efforts to "pull herself up" so as not to be overrun by her feelings. She manages to do so "with suppressed cry" and her self-struggle is a painful one as she consciously dampens her sexual ardor to meet the "gray hall." The last stanza finds the speaker "displaced in a corner of the gray hall," the folds of her shawl "flam- ing" because she is so feverish (l. 13). Her passion notwithstanding, she continues to assert her indepen- dence and does not summon her lover. Here we finf a true psychological displacement. Not wishing to call to her lover --and thus, perhaps, appear weak and dependent and unintellectual -- she introjects him, sucks him into herself. The crucial final word of the poem _ayngezoygn_ consists of _ayn-_ 'into' and _zoygn_'to suck' -- as infants do at the mother's breast.(2) This introjection is "blind," unillumined by conscious will or by the intellectual's enlighten- ment. The speaker keeps her bargain, but not with complete passivity. She absorbs her lover into her very being, exhibiting a power which is feminine, elemental, maternal. Were she a philosopher she might echo Maurice Merleau-Ponty: "The world is not what I think, but what I live." B. Form This love lyric consists of three seven-line variously end-rimed stanzas, with the middle stanza broken into two parts of four and three lines respectively (1: aabbcdd/ 2: effg hih/ 3: aabbcdd). The first and last stanzas are identical in number of lines and in rime scheme. Some readers may see four stanzas (1: aabbcdd/ 2: effg/ 3: hih/ 4: aabbcdd). The stanzaic pattern in conjunction with the rime scheme helps to structure the poem's meaning. The first and third stanzas contain three couplets and a single unrimed line, the fifth. The fifth line of the first stanza rimes with the fifth line of the third stanza. Moreover, these fifth lines rime approximately with the fourth (and central) line of the second stanza: the perfect rimes _atsind_ and _blind_ obliquely riming with _vint_ The eighth line, the only line in the poem which does not even rime obliquely with any other end of line, does rime with a word in the middle of the ninth line: _likht_ and _gezikht_ are significantly linked. In the poet's own Northeastern Yiddish, _azoy_ is pronounced _azey_ and therefore all three lines of the second part of the second stanza end rime perfectly. If, however, we prefer the Standard Yiddish _azoy_, then slant rime is also present in this part of the stanza, _azoy_ riming approximately with cit.geshrey_ and _vey_. Rime, then, plays an important role in this poem. The approximate rimes are centered in the middle of the poem where the speaker attempts to break out of her passionate mood. The rimed couplet with which the poem ends adds to the feeling that a solution at some level has been found.(3) ................ 1. See Anita Shapira, _Berl: The Biography of a So- cialist Zionist_, translated by Haya Galai, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 41 {originally published in Hebrew by Am Oved Publishers, Tel-Aviv, 1980}. Margolin, incidentally, also lived in Palestine in the course of her eventful life. 2. "ayngezoygn" (see :HP1.Groyser verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh: "aynzoygn", 3:1153, col. 1) is a tough word to translate in the present context. 3. My thanks to Peter Everwhine for commenting on an earlier draft of this reading.