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We met on the Day of Atonement
When the sky swelled with the tears of Israel
For the first time we examined together
The clay frames of our souls
Those stale and archaic amphoras
Yours had a certain transparence
And an amethyst light beaming from the interior
Consciousness masterfully persuaded us
That we were in an urban park above a pond
Within the autumn's flaming trees
Inside our souls purpled with much suffering
But we weren't really there.
Clouded heavens thundered loud music
Of the trumpets of Jerusalem,
the Archangel extinguished the sun
And the funereal earth was bursting
This was our first encounter The next will take place on Judgment Day.
Hi. I'm here to see some letters
in the Józef Wittlin correspondence and compositions.
Have you been to Houghton Library before?
Uh, no.
- And do you have a library card? - Yeah, I just picked it up.
May I see it, please?
Might you have you the call number for the collection that you're after?
That is...MS Slavic 7.
Mm-hm. There are 446 items
in the Wittlin correspondence and compositions.
Do you have an item number?
Item number 23, Zofia Bohdanowiczowa.
This...looks good.
The box is in this library.
It'll take about 15 minutes for me to prepare it for you.
Great.
You'll have to check your coat and bag into the cloak room.
We only allow the bare minimum of what you'll need to do your research.
And will you be taking notes today?
- Yeah. - On a laptop?
No, in notebooks.
Okay, you'll have to use this pencil.
I actually really don't like pencils. I prefer to use a pen.
No, we don't allow the use of pens in the reading room at all.
Kindly put your coat and bag into the cloak room
and I'll meet you in the reading room in 15 minutes.
And, if you haven't done so already, please put your cellphone on silent.
When you're...
..reading a letter,
you're so aware of...
..the barest motivations...
..to record and to communicate.
And there's something...
..kind of...
heartbreakingly...
desperate about how...
straightforward that intention is.
And I think...
that partly goes back to...
the letter as...an object...
and like, what a letter means...
..which is...
..a message that traverses a public system...
and arrives with a recipient.
It travels over distance to get there...
..and the very...
that very action, the very meaning of a letter
like, completely aside from the content of the letter...
..is to travel and to deliver.
And I think...
..that a letter is so...
um...
completely tied to its objecthood...
that...
It's like its objecthood, the meaning of the object
reinforces...the content of the letter
and they're completely intertwined with each other, and...
So seeing...
..the actual, physical, objects...
There's something incredibly raw about it,
um, kind of horrifyingly raw.
In...
um, this project that On Kawara did
called I Got Up, he...
..writes the phrase, "I got up", and the time that he got up each day
and mails it on a postcard to a friend.
And so by reducing the content of the postcards
to this repeated phrase,
uh, that's devoid of symbolism or narrative
he...
reduces the postcard,
uh, only to an object
and I think, through doing that, you're really able to see...
..what the meaning of a postcard is or what a letter is.
There... is a repeated...
..phrase in almost all of Zofia's letters.
Um, first of all being, uh,
that the city will destroy your soul.
Secondly, that uh,
the countryside is the only place for a writer,
where they can find quiet and stillness.
And the third being, um,
through her investment in his talent
um, that she has this conviction
that if he goes to the country, he'll be able to write his greatest work.
And that seems to be...
..what she wants.
Um...
She loves his work.
And there is this amazing repetition in the letters as well of...
..her incredible belief in the written word, which is...
..in her love of poetry, novels, and also of letters.
Of truly feeling it's the only thing that can...
transmit a feeling, and a thought, to another person.
And so the fact that...
..she wants him to be writing, and wants him to be writing
his best work is kind of the...
..I think is, like, a really intense desire for connection.
And so just the content, um,
of the letters being this desire for connection and...
..the actual action of a letter being mailed...
..are so completely parallelled with each other.
Zofia has so many references to speed...and to birds.
She says, um...
..that their connection was immediate...
..and speed is this only thing that can overtake distance.
So it's this idea that...
..their connection...
transcends distance...
..is connected by language, is connected by this letter.
Can I get you another drink?
Uh, yeah, I'll have the same. Thanks.
Sorry, hi. I'm Angela. My mother is Christine.
Uh, my mother and I went with Eddie, Lina and Jan to Poland.
Uh, about, almost ten years ago.
Jan was our fearless leader and he led us around to family
and many other places
and it was evident that you could see the love
and the caring that they shared for each other.
So if everyone could raise their glass...
to happy 60th anniversary, Jan and Lina.
Ladies and gentlemen, please listen to this wonderful melody.
Written by Polish composer Andrzej Kurylewicz.
This is entitled Polskie drogi.
Polish...roads, Polish ways.
Polish journeys.
This is a beautiful, nostalgic, and patriotic piece of music.
That I thought would be very appropriate.
Polskie drogi.
Aunt Anya, I'm so glad you're here.
Oh, Audrey, hello.
Isn't this...something?
It really is!
Um, there's actually something that I wanted to talk to you about.
How are you?
It's a family party.
Yeah.
What have you been up to this summer?
Oh, well, surely you must know I was in Berlin?
Oh, no, I didn't know, I had no idea.
Oh! Oh, well, I usually spend Berlin summers getting ready for the Fall,
but, um, well, this wasn't one of my best trips, I'm afraid.
I'd just been having a regular day.
I went to the Hamburger Bahnhof and met with the curator there
and then I was able to see the Hanne Darboven show, which was...
I'm so envious. I really wanted to see that.
It was a great show.
I walked onto the Tiergarten, you know, and after that I got exhausted
and I thought I would take a rest in the Holocaust Memorial.
That doesn't sound restful.
- Well, I suppose it's peaceful. - Right.
And, uh, then, I was there about two minutes or so and, uh,
I was approached by this group of very beautiful young boys,
about 11 or 12 years old.
Very finely dressed and, um, they handed me a paper
which explained that they were deaf
and looking for donations for their organization.
So I, I went into my purse
and I think I gave them whatever I had, about 10 Euro.
And then they gave me this paper that was a contract that I should sign.
And, um... And then I suppose
they must have seen my iPhone in my coat pocket.
And one of them grabbed it and they all started running.
And so, you know I was just in shock.
And, and I yelled out, "Hey!" you know, loud.
But, um, then one just ran back and handed me back my pen,
which he wouldn't have done if he was deaf.
But, I was just... I didn't know what to do, you know.
At that part of the memorial, the concrete blocks are so high
I couldn't run after them, I just felt so stupid.
- That's a nightmare. - It absolutely was.
'Anya.
'I actually just wanted to ask you a thing about great-grandmother Zofia's estate.
'Basically, there was a list of inventory
'and on that list there's something missing,
'which is basically there are these...'
letters from Józef Wittlen.
He was, like, this famous Polish poet.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize at one point.
Anyways, there are these letters between him and Zofia.
'But, I've looked through all of the stuff and I can't find these letters anywhere.
'You don't have any idea where the letters are?'
'No. No, I'm sorry, I don't.
'Is it possible...
that, when you were cleaning out her house, like, maybe...?'
I mean, there's so many things
that I had to care of, really, when she died.
- There was so much stuff I... - Yeah.
- 'I don't know.' - 'I mean...'
'I mean, there were some letters, but they were, you know,
'things that my boys had written to my mother
'or things I'd written as a child and I just gave them to Mark and David.'
Well, maybe they were among those?
Like, maybe you could look at the letters you gave Mark and David?
They could've been mixed in with them.
They're definitely not in there.
'I mean, it'd be great if you could take a look,
'just because, I'm really just trying to get the whole estate in order
'and have all the objects...together
'so I can kind of, decide what I want to do next.'
'I mean, uh, there might have been someone
'inquiring from Harvard after the letters or...'
'Harvard? That's interesting.'
'Well, I can tell you,
'I've been in and out of there all year and it's turning into a dump.'
I also booked an overhead projector?
And you can't take that with you.
I know, I'm going to finish it.
Zofia talks a lot about...
..birds in her poetry,
birds basically being...messengers.
And...basically the symbol of birds is...
..this idea of...
..arrival, and when a bird...
..a bird sings out,
that is, language uncomprehended,
and then, when a bird flies away
in the sky, there's a vanishing point
at which the bird is no longer visible...
except in...
kind of, the echoing memory of the bird...
..which actually doesn't last very long.
There is...
I've been reading a lot of Susan Howe.
And she has really amazing...
She has this essay called The Quarry where she talks kind of...
I mean, it's her essay on Wallace Stevens and she talks a lot about...
um...
Basically what happens in trying to...
articulate something,
and the sort of grasping that I'm talking about.
Um...
How the, the sort of...
..the feeling of grasping something and then losing it
is basically a feeling of unreality.
Um...
And this feeling of un...
..reality is basically
what exists between all lines of poetry...
..basically is the feeling that you feel
almost immediately after any...
amount of euphoria, of the feeling of...
of life, or, like, a feeling of a moment.
I'll see if I can find...
Howe talks about nature, um, about visiting a park...
in an unfamiliar city.
And she talks about the atmosphere of the park in a way that...
..reminds me of how Zofia talks about, um...
..about nature, she says, uh.
"The urgent local appeal on the part of everything,
"immersed in time to be reinterpreted."
She quotes the Wallace Stevens poem.
"So much less than feeling, so much less than speech.
"Saying and saying the way things say, on the level of..."
"..on the level of that which is not yet knowledge."
It's almost, like, the effort...
of everything to become language.
'I mean, I'd appreciate your input.
'I'm interested in putting together some kind of exhibition of her work.'
'Oh, like a family event?'
Something here? I should let you know it's a little expensive.
'I was thinking more of a public gallery.'
'Oh, so this has become quite the hobby for you.
'Well, it's not a hobby, it's a job.
- 'I'm the literary executor.' - 'And who's going to pay?'
Well, there hasn't been any money coming out of the estate,
but that's because no-one's doing any work for it.
If you write to publishers and try and get reprints
or new translations, then there's a possibility
that money could come out of it.
'So you're trying to make a business out of our family history.'
'Am I a hobbyist or an evil capitalist?
'I don't even really know what you're accusing me off.'
Look, Audrey, there's a misconception nowadays
that, somehow, anyone can be a curator.
But I can tell you, it actually requires a lot of education
and training and you have to do an undergraduate degree
and then you have to do a masters degree
and then you have to do a placement at an important gallery
so that you actually see how it's done. You can't just go and do it.
'So, I can't try and do anything with my great-grandmother's work
'because I don't have a masters degree?'
'Fuck, who cares! Do you know how many things have to be dealt with
'when you're dealing with a financial estate?
'And when someone dies, what it takes?'
Well, it wasn't your property. I mean, that is my property.
So, I mean, I get to make the decisions about it.
Whether you think it's stupid or uninteresting
is kind of beside the point.
Hi, I'm done for the day.
I just wondered, do you have access to the details surrounding donations?
Like, when they were donated and by who?
Ah, yes, let me see. Um...
Yes. Yes, I see here, it was donated a year and a half ago.
- That doesn't make any sense. - And why is that?
My grandmother died two years ago.
Maria Bohdanowicz, she was the previous literary executor.
Mm.
No, I don't see Maria here, Bohdanowicz is correct.
- Ah, it was a woman named Anya. - Anya.
- Yes, that's right, Anya Bohdanowicz. - Anya...
Anya is my aunt and she's not the literary executor.
- Has she passed away as well? - Not yet.
Maria Bohdanowicz was the literary executor
and she stated in her will that the estate now belonged to me.
If you have documents saying that Anya is the literary executor,
those are not binding.
And I should be able to take the letters home today if I wanted.
Look, if what you're saying is true...
yes, at some point you might be able to take them home with you.
It will take time and legal work to clear this up.
If you think you're leaving with them this afternoon,
I'm sorry, it's not happening.
Well, thanks so much for meeting with me and for the translations.
They were really helpful.
Um, I guess I just had a couple specific questions
about word choices and things.
Um...
For instance, even in the first letter it says, uh,
"I feel for you mint."
Um, I mean, I only speak English,
I don't even, uh, know the first thing about Polish grammar,
and so I just wondered, um...
I guess, how metaphors and similes are structured in Polish?
Um...
Like, in English you would have to say, "I feel for you like I feel for mint."
Um... Is it different in Polish?
I guess is my question.
I have a really short answer for that. Um, I have no idea.
Mm.
I didn't really preoccupy myself
with the rules of metaphors or the rules of grammar.
Um... Now here she's referring to a poem that she wrote, right?
Called, uh, "Mint Mint Thyme".
So, "I feel for you mint."
Mint is a spice, right? A seasoning. A herb?
- A herb. - A herb, or "erb".
It's really powerful right? It really comes out,
it really has a strong, strong flavour.
Like if you... Whatever you cook,
even though it's spiced with garlic or what not
if you add mint, mint always comes out, right?
Now, she's referring to a poem that she wrote, to him, right?
But the gist of it is that she is calling him mint
in the sense that, whatever he's going through in his life
whatever she is going through in her life...
um, and notice that...
One of the through lines of all the letters is she...
Um...
I don't want to say blame, but kind of blames him for his life,
that he's so busy in a city,
instead of moving to a peaceful place and devoting himself to, to poetry.
So, basically, what she's saying is she sees, his...
his beauty of expression.
She sees him, and also she's saying that her affection for him,
through thick and thin, through whatever she's...
But in terms of...
the sentence structure,
"I feel for you mint."
Like, can you say, "I feel for you sun."
"I feel for you dog."
- Like... - You could, if...
if whatever she wrote before
referenced dog, or sun,
in a way that would express deep affection,
because... It's simply based on something she wrote before, you know?
And, I wouldn't get hung up on...
you know, structure and stuff like that, it's the content that's more...
important here, the content, the narrative of affection and love
that's throughout all these letters here.
- Why... Yeah. - I mean, I guess...
I mean, I suppose I consider myself a close reader.
I am interested... My line of inquiry is...
- ..grammar, um... - Yeah.
And, I mean, I'm interested in the letters as objects.
Um...
It's more, it's the content of what she's writing, right?
That's, that's kind of... the meat of those letters.
Do you understand? Like...
She's expressing affection.
- Yeah. - Did you get that?
- Like, there's... - Yeah...
Like, throughout the letters, is a journey, right?
A physical journey, she goes from Wales, comes to Canada.
Now, also, that journey,
there's another journey, her distance to him.
She always expresses it. She mentions it, uh, quite a few times,
"When I go to Toronto, we're going to be physically closer."
Yeah, I mean, I see...
love, in it, but...
I see admiration and respect.
And maybe a bit of... fantasy of love...
Um...
- On her part. - I don't want to...
Yeah, I don't want to condescend...
to my great-grandmother, but it...
..it seemed a bit imagined.
Did you read the poem she wrote, um...
right after they met in Toronto? The whole...
- Yeah, I actually, I have it, with me. - You have the poem with you? Okay.
- Yeah, I do. - Can I read it to you, actually?
Okay.
That is so dark.
- What is? - Well, "We met on the day of atonement
"when the sky swelled with the tears of Israel... By the day of atonement.
"For the first time, we examined together the clay frames of our souls."
And then she goes on, "Those stale and archaic amphoras"
This is... This is after they first met. That's how she sees their...
She mentions in her letters
that she was extremely elated and happy that they met,
and yet, they didn't talk.
But I wanted to skip to the end, She goes, um...
"Clouded heavens, thundered loud music of the trumpets of Jerusalem
"the archangel extinguished the sun."
- Yeah! - Oh, my God.
It's, uh... "We met and it was the apocalypse."
Exactly! Exactly.
"And the funereal earth was bursting."
"This was our first encounter.
"The next will take place on Judgment Day."
"June 26th, 1958.
"Dear Mr Józef
"I have just dug out a barrel of vegetables
"from the garden of my sick roommate, for sale.
"The vegetables, not the roommate.
"I have planted some 200 lettuce plants. Now I'm making broth, and writing to you."
"The more we get to know each other, through these letters,
"the more I get preoccupied about you, dear sir.
"You are living in a climate harmful to your soul...
"causing physical disorders, motorial sadness,
"and even more importantly,
"the destruction of the wings of your creativity.
"You were born to be a poet, this is why you got your life.
"Still, you flounce between futile things, and suffer.
"Because nothing torments a human being more
"than missing the mission given to us by God."
"That almost sounds stupid, but I would like, somehow, to be helpful."
"Sometimes, while sitting in the silence of my countryside,
"I think about people in the city.
"Dirt, noise, rashness, polluted air.
"Working in foul smelling dusty places
"and relaxing with cinema, television and newspapers.
"That is how a human being is killed."
"Let's stop complaining about modern times though.
"It is a privilege of old people.
"Still, I do not want to trespass on your patience.
"The world turns around anyway, and whining won't do any good.
"Run for your life is the rule, so, please, run, dear sir.
"And write me some more about you because I do really feel for you."
"Me, and my husband are sending you
"thousands of warm wishes of getting better."
"Zofia Bohdanowiczowa."
Your turn.
I want to read the one where she calls him Mr Bird.
"The 23rd of January, 1959.
"Dear Mr Józef.
"I have not been writing to you for such a long time.
"I mean, since your trip to Europe.
"I sent a letter to poste restante in Munich
"but I don't know if you received it.
"In fact, you have been flying from one country to another.
"I can almost imagine all those dazzlements and enchantments.
"Some disenchantments too.
"Sometimes places we miss are prettier in our memories than in reality.
"Have you had a good rest after that travel?
"I always imagine you as a wild bird, storming within the walls of a skyscraper.
"Angry and frightened at the same time.
"I should have started this letter with, 'Dear Mr Bird',
"because it's all about flying over Europe.
"Somehow I can't help writing in that birdy mood."
"I would like to write something about myself too,
"but this countryside is so plain
"that it is hard to pick something interesting."
"Today is an exceptionally pleasant day
"because all the literary work is knocked off,
"the laundry done, the sewing is ready and the house is clean.
"I can sit and write to my dear Mr Józef
"who has surely forgotten me a bit. It's my fault after all."
"We are getting ready for moving overseas.
"Probably this summer, unless something unpredictable happens.
"I'm not keen on leaving, perhaps because I feel well here.
"But if I move to Canada, I will manage to meet you sooner or later.
"That is one of the great attractions I am looking forward to
"on the other hemisphere.
"Sincere regards, Zofia Bohdanowiczowa."
I have to get a train pretty early in the morning.
Okay.
You're going to have to find your own lift back to the city.
The party isn't over yet.
Well, I can see that. It's just Sasha called me,
he's had some kind of emergency and I have to go.
I had planned to get a lift back with you and we're all the way in Etobicoke.
I'm sure you'll figure something out.
No-one else is getting a ride back into the...
I remember, when you were a little girl,
you loved to make forts.
You would take all the couch cushions off and you would pile them up
and take every blanket you could find from everywhere in the house
and make this, this little castle that you'd move into
and you would do everything in there
you would nap, you would talk to yourself, sing...
have imaginary friends and... you even wanted to eat in there.
But there came a time
when you actually had to take on the consequences of your actions.
And your mother said that you had to clean up your mess.
And she was right.
She told you that if you did not put all the couch cushions
back where they belonged
that you wouldn't be able to eat any supper.
Well, you tried to put that couch together but you just couldn't.
You couldn't figure out how one cushion should go on the bottom
or another should go on the top, and...
and so, being the little brat that you were,
you just refused and went on a hunger strike.
And you were so spoiled.
You were so spoiled and you were so entitled.
I mean, you had no capacity for work.
You had no understanding of what it actually took
to clean up after your own mess.
And it took you, I don't know, maybe three or four days
to actually figure out how to put the couch together again.
And then all of a sudden, you understood, you actually understood
what it takes to make something, and the work that's involved.
You understood the consequences of messing around.
You weren't interested in making forts any more.