In rereading the Yiddish book "My Father's Bequest" by the gifted poet, Chaya Rachel Andres, I entered once again the particular world of her poetic folk motifs.
Her recollections reflect a constant yearning for the life-style of the past. . .of far across the sea. She understands that only her memories can bring to life those long-lost yesterdays. ..and she strives not to let go of the threads that bind her to dreams of that time-long gone.
This haunting longing vibrates in her hearty, lyrical verses, in which she depicts the town of her birth...the home of her childhood and youth. She introduces us to every splendid and sordid phase of that environment. Before your very eyes appear the home of her parents. . . visions of her brother and sisters. She has preserved in her memory the sacred and honest beauty of the Sabbath and the holidays, as well as the week-days of want and the yoke of seeking a threadbare livelihood. . . made easier to bear by the coming of the Sabbath, with its divine spark, which helped lift the spirit. She writes also of the Sabbath eves.... which began on Friday, with the bringing into the house of the ingredients for the Sabbath meal.
"The Sabbath is already on the threshold;
Yellow as wax-the floors washed and scoured. . .
The pump-drawn water is already in the household,
And deep within hot oven, the 'cholent' is stored."("My Home Just Before the Sabbath")
Tears well up from the yearnings within her heart. The haunting chants of the Sabbath songs echo through the house...as does the aroma of Sabbath delicacies, tantalizing and sweet in the eating. The farther the distance from those exalted days, the greater becomes the yearning for those Sabbath meals, which brought hominess and love to the traditional order of life.
"The aroma of heavily peppered fish tantalizingly persists. . .
The twisted 'challeh' for the blessing is readied. . .-"("My Home Just Before the Sabbath")
And when the treasured Sabbath draws to a close at dusk, and the last red rays of the sky float midst encroaching dark shadows, her young heart filled with gloom and fluttered with the desire that the holiness of the Sabbath would not end so swiftly.
Chaya Rochel Andres, the sensitive poet, constantly recalls the early days of her life. She describes the great need that prevailed during the full six days of the week, when one constantly yearned for the Sabbath. However, as always the week dragged on...with its grinding poverty, with its bitter struggle for a small livelihood...where a bit of bread and a piece of herring provide sustenance. Nevertheless she paints this life of need as an idyllic portrait. And why? Because, as difficult as that way of life was, she was with her father, mother, brother and sisters. Indeed it was an indigent home, but a hearty one, where love encompassed everyone.
Chaya Rochel Andres is a poet who adheres to that select group of'~poets who reveal their emotions, their dreams full of yearning, in stirring poetry-in the inimicable style of tuneful narration, in the simple language of our people.
From a number of her word portraits emerge images of her mother and father, her town and family. . . destroyed. . . However, she remembers, and sees them through her tears.
"You see my father, aged,
In white prayer shawl wrapped-
And gently you embrace
My mother's mild, wrinkled face....
Now you weave blue bows
Into sister's thickly plaited braids. . "("My Song")
Chaya Rochel Andres was so deeply imbued with the traditional home-spun environment of "shtetl" life, that it remained fresh in her mind, as if only recently torn from the soil of her yesterdays. . . regardless of whatever later experiences might have brought. Not even for a single day did she feel spiritually separated from the experiences of her past, in the simplicity and coziness of her parents' home. For this reason she is all the more shaken by the horrible tragedy that befell her people: her town-devastated, and all her near and dear ones-slaughtered. The heart of this poet has become a leathern flask filled with tears. . .
Tears of anguish permeate her words; they are laments that mourn the fateful course of Jewish generations, who for thousands of years suffered martyrdom. The anguish of this martyrdom is keenly felt in the mood of this talented poet. The strongest expression of her grief is revealed in her poem "Longing." It is in the style of liturgic odes that mourn the disasters wrought upon our people. . .and never forget our heroes and martyrs.
"Tell me, dwarf pine trees,Close to the shore,
Where are the hands
That planted you there?
"Tell me, little stream,
Clear and crystalline-
Do you long for Jews of yore,
Who, at 'tashlekh," lined your shore?"("Longing")
Chaya Rochel Andres is not all-encompassing in her subject matter. Nevertheless there are a goodly number of poems in which there flourishes a variety of motifs.
In a light tone of irony, she describes the natural process of aging: the body becomes flabby, and can no longer respond as in the past. It is her way of attempting to hide the aches and pains that pervade various parts of the body.
"In those years of childish antics,
When my knees would freely bend, in races frantic,
Who would have thought-on that score-
That those knees of mine would bend no more.
("My Knees")The same holds true of the eyes. They are beset by cataracts, dimming the vision. The hearing becomes impaired (as hers has?. Yet though she cannot hear clearly the sounds of speech, she is well aware of the pains that beset the world around her, and her heart brims over. Glistening to the sounds of suffering of all the oppressed and tortured.
"No more can I hear the noise
Nor listen to the tumult any longer
Of the sounds of children's cries
In painful hunger. . .
Nor the wailing of a mother
Heart torn in desolation,
On the loss of one and only son
In war's devastation."("My Knees")
One feels that she does hear the sorrows of the hungry, and that she suffers together with all those who suffer. In a direct manner, she speaks to her grandchild? Rachel? and wants her to understand the pain and woe of those who are trying to combat need by engaging in struggle 'the powers that be.' It is important to Chaya Rochel that her grandchild know that the world is full of the "lowly," who are at the bottom of the heap and are like grains of sand under the footsteps of the rich and powerful. She depicts the scene of poverty-ridden streets;
"Yonder, on tiny streets, wet-quagmired-
On threshold of each house there stands
With staring, hungry eyes-a child,
With small skeleton hands. . .
Unashamed... ragged....
Begging. . . with arms outstretched
For stale crusts of bread. . .
Children, who have not been fated
With the fruits of the earth to be sated. . .
So they suffer-
Hungry and affronted....
And we, my child, are plagued by conscience. . .("Rachel")
The structure of Chaya Rochel's poem is in the usual poetic style of poets of the people, whose poems are warmed in the dreams of longing, in the dreams that are spun out of people's moods. The tears of joy and of sorrow are those they have absorbed within them in their old home.
The poems of the talented poet, Chaya Rochel Andres already possess within themselves the vibrant and clear resonance of genuine lyric folk-creativity. In numerous poems she exhibits an artistic skill.
She controls her vocabulary, that she fits into the structure of her poems. A fine illustration of her poetic attainment can be seen in her poem "My Dream." Veritably every word is a painting of musical verses, whose rhythm is the melody of song. It is high time that this poem catch the eye of some Yiddish composer, who could set this song to music for the people.
"An apron...a frock-
A jacket...a shawl....
Dancing, interlocked....
Spinning in a reel. ..
'Mid them musicians play merrily-
With Sender on the Bass. . .
Pouring forth a melody-
Improvizing, to suit the whirling pace.
Indeed, 1, too, join the flock
And away, dancing, I go. . .
In long flowing frock,
White as the driven snow. . .
I leaped as I danced-
Till all breath was gone,-
Finally to be awakened
By the chill of the morn."("My Dream")
While rereading some of Chaya Rochel's poems, her experiences and moods in poetic form have led me into her world of emotions and thought.
The resonance and delineation of her verse is fresh and challenging, thus insuring the originality of her talent.
Chaya Rochel Andres has been fortunate in that her poems were published not too long ago in a Hebrew version, with superb translations by the Israeli poetess, Esther Zametzki. Now the English reader will have the opportunity to become acquainted with her poetry in the lyrical and resonant translation by Yudel Cohen. Yudel Cohen is a faithful and able translator. He has succeeded in retaining the picturesque quality, the lyricism and the rhythm of her emotionality and her dream-inspired verse.
In reality, Chaya Rochel's poems need no preface. She possesses the ability to transmute the moods, sounds and feelings of life into truly poetic folk-song. Her poetry opens the door to the uniqueness of Jewish life of the "shtetl" prior to its destruction by the Nazi German murderers. Simultaneously we hear the tearful plea which she murmurs like a morning prayer: that peace, like the bright dew, shall settle on the tents of Israel, and that tranquility reign over the newly plowed, generations-longed-for, piece of earth of Jews everywhere. We murmur together the divine prayer of yearning, that peace will soon reign on the sacred land of Israel, which was paid for by the blood and tears of our people.
"Sea of Kinnereth, brightly blue-
I sing my song to you....
My song of joy-truly blessed-
From a heart that hopes and quests
For the blessed hour of peace and rest."("Sea of Kinnereth")
The poem "For Whom Do I Sing My Songs?" which gives this volume of poetry its title, first appeared in the Spring, 1977 issue of the literary Yiddish quarterly, "Zamlungen."
Chaya Rochel Andres, who agonizes in verse over her personal life experiences and the terrible times we Jews have lived through, would like her poems to be read. Every poet is filled with the desire that the writer's lyrics reach the reader, who, in turn, should be moved by the quiver of similar feelings from within. Such painful feelings are imbedded deep within the breasts of all poets.
It is difficult for me, as for all of us, to find the words of solace to meliorate the pain of longing and sorrow. Chaya Rochel Andres does, after all, find a purpose for her songs-and that is, to hallow and preserve for the next generation and for generations to come the blessed memory of the millions of tortured and martyred Jews, annihilated in the Holocaust. Though they drowned in their own blood, they enriched the world with their deeds. It is for them that she lights the "Eternal Flame" in her poems.
"Daughter. . . sister. . . Jews-all-
Lost in awesome carnage...
Were contributions
Beyond duty's call. . .
To leave a blessed heritage,
For which you gallantly stood
And implanted
With your Yiddish blood.
'Tis good-'tis good
That the song will remain.
'Tis for them
That you always can
Sing the song,
Again and again
Yes, for them
You sing your songs-
This hearty Yiddish refrain.("For Whom Do I Sing my Songs")
Chaya Rachel Andres' quiet, hearty poems are a contribution from a meritorious, sensitive poet with a unique poetic quality. She will most assuredly deserve the joy and recognition on the part of the English reader. We send her our blessings and hope she will live to see her dream of a joyous and peaceful Israel come true, and that her visions of freedom throughout the world be realized, as she herself envisions it:-
"Oh, how I long to live to see-
In my ripe old age-
No more hunger. . . and everyone sated be
In every home and cottage."("Rachel'')
-Sholem Shtern*
*Sholen Shtern is a well known prize-winning Canadian Yiddish poet and literary critic, whose works have been translated into English, Hebrew and French.