new semester and some
Settling into the rhythm of school and work &c. My classes have turned out rather well--particularly 19th cent. novel of education, Israeli lit, and early-middle ages history. Work continues to fascinate with its world of eastern european jewry, its people, books, way of life all of which intrigue me although, or perhaps because in so many ways they mirror my own. And it's great fun to translate excerpts of poems by such writers as Tschernikhovsky, &c.
I've barely a minute to spare, with my classes scheduled back to back and work immediately before and after. SoI can't take my camera along because though it is a small thing, my commute, and the books and laptop I take with force me to cut out anything at all superflouous. Which is a pity, because there are times when a camera is utterly indispensable, and yet. . .
I'll have to paint a picture with words but i know from the start it can only fail. Still , here I go:
a little boy, at most two years old, with golden hair and high yellow boots walks among the pigeons on a rainy day on campus. as i come nearer to the boy and the pigeons i notice he has his arms outstretched and is following a single bird, waiting to grasp it. but the pigeon flies away, and the boy, his faith resolute, finds another to follow. he does so silently, with slow, steady determination. but this one, too, flies away, as does the next and the one after. but for as long as i watch the boy will not give up. i want to stick around and watch the boy, and hold him when the realization finally sinks in that his determination will yield no results, to soften the blow, to ease the shock. but i can't stay. his mother will tell him that birds, alas, will fly away. and he will learn of his own limits, limits he can do nothing about, and perhaps he will come away inspired to dig deeper, or else he will come away crushed. there's no knowing how it will end. the little boy in yellow boots, wading in the puddles as the birds, one by one, fly away.
I read an excellent review of Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. Reviewer Ron Rosenbaum writes of how with all the Holocaust museums and exhibitions that we have, the individual, immediate experience is simply impossible to convey. This because, as Mendelsohn explains, visitors entering a cattle car in a museum in Washington D.C., cannot possibly conjure up the anguish, the pain and suffering of a victim who entered the cattle car having seen his/her loved ones tortured, beaten, killed. To this end, it seems language might in fact be the closest we can come to understanding the Holocaust, an event experienced at once on a colossal and a deeply individual level. As Rosenbaum quotes a witness in Mendelsohn's book: "The Holocaust is so big, the scale of it is so gigantic, so enormous, that it becomes easy to think of it as something mechanical. Anonymous. But everything that happened, happened because someone made a decision. To pull a trigger, to flip a switch, to close a cattle car door, to hide, to betray.”
"Sometimes," writesRosenbaum, "words are worth a thousand pictures."
I've barely a minute to spare, with my classes scheduled back to back and work immediately before and after. SoI can't take my camera along because though it is a small thing, my commute, and the books and laptop I take with force me to cut out anything at all superflouous. Which is a pity, because there are times when a camera is utterly indispensable, and yet. . .
I'll have to paint a picture with words but i know from the start it can only fail. Still , here I go:
a little boy, at most two years old, with golden hair and high yellow boots walks among the pigeons on a rainy day on campus. as i come nearer to the boy and the pigeons i notice he has his arms outstretched and is following a single bird, waiting to grasp it. but the pigeon flies away, and the boy, his faith resolute, finds another to follow. he does so silently, with slow, steady determination. but this one, too, flies away, as does the next and the one after. but for as long as i watch the boy will not give up. i want to stick around and watch the boy, and hold him when the realization finally sinks in that his determination will yield no results, to soften the blow, to ease the shock. but i can't stay. his mother will tell him that birds, alas, will fly away. and he will learn of his own limits, limits he can do nothing about, and perhaps he will come away inspired to dig deeper, or else he will come away crushed. there's no knowing how it will end. the little boy in yellow boots, wading in the puddles as the birds, one by one, fly away.
I read an excellent review of Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. Reviewer Ron Rosenbaum writes of how with all the Holocaust museums and exhibitions that we have, the individual, immediate experience is simply impossible to convey. This because, as Mendelsohn explains, visitors entering a cattle car in a museum in Washington D.C., cannot possibly conjure up the anguish, the pain and suffering of a victim who entered the cattle car having seen his/her loved ones tortured, beaten, killed. To this end, it seems language might in fact be the closest we can come to understanding the Holocaust, an event experienced at once on a colossal and a deeply individual level. As Rosenbaum quotes a witness in Mendelsohn's book: "The Holocaust is so big, the scale of it is so gigantic, so enormous, that it becomes easy to think of it as something mechanical. Anonymous. But everything that happened, happened because someone made a decision. To pull a trigger, to flip a switch, to close a cattle car door, to hide, to betray.”
"Sometimes," writesRosenbaum, "words are worth a thousand pictures."
posted by shoshana at 3:01 AM
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