An Objection – Using Poems to Understand Each Other
One might object that we
have assumed that each poem in the series “Marked Car” is useful for
understanding the others (hence, “shade” in “The Organization” helps us to
understand “shade” in “Testimony”) without considering the possibility that
each poem might have a different speaker and its images might have entirely
different meanings in the context of the poem. Yet, this assumption makes sense
partly because all of the poems are part of the same series and partly because
“Marked Car” presents a chronological progression, from before the Shoah (in “Europe, Late”) to after (in “Draft of the Reparations
Agreement”). Moreover, each poem has links to the others, thus suggesting that
each one is useful for reading the others. “Europe, Late” and “Written in
Pencil in the Marked Car” both end in fragments without punctuation; “Europe,
Late” and “The Organization” end in the same phrase: “כאן לעולם" (in “Europe, Late,” “Here
for the world,” l. 18, in “The Organization,” “Here to the world,” l. 11),[1]
while “Written in Pencil in the Marked Car” also begins with “כאן" (“Here,” l. 1), etc. Given
the historical progression in “Marked Car,” these links help us to understand
each poem. The juxtaposition of “here”s among “Europe,
Late,” “Written in Pencil in the Marked Car,” and “The Organization,” for
example, emphasizes what being “here” as part of the world becomes. In “Europe, Late,” here represents a peaceful place, filled
with dancing (l. 8), romance (l. 10), etc., where nothing like the Shoah could
ever happen, “for the world” (l. 16-8). Yet, the very next line, after “Europe,
Late” concludes, is “Written in Pencil in the Marked Car”'s “כאן במשלוח
הזה"
(“Here in this shipment,” l. 1), suggesting that what was impossible in
“Europe, Late” has happened “here.” If we then note the end of “The
Organization,” in which the narrator is not allowed (and does not want) to rise
to the “here” of the world (ll. 10-1), we see the transformation of “here” from
a small place of safety to “here” as including the entire world and evoking
dread. Returning to “Europe, Late,” the irony of the statement “here for the
world it won't happen” (l. 17) is not only that it does happen, but that
it happens for the world in its entirety, not just the town originally
meant by the speaker in “Europe, Late.” Thus,
we see that an understanding of poems later in the series helps to inform the
nuances (at least) of the previous poems. Although it is an assumption
that each “here” has bearing on how we should read the others, it remains true
that this assumption is both well-grounded and useful for understanding the
poems.
[1] Although the line is equivalent in the two
poems in the Hebrew, each has a different function in the sentence. The phrase
“כאן
לעולם" has two meanings in
Hebrew. Idiomatically, it means something similar to the English, “There's no
way in the world that...” Literally, though, it means, “Here, to the world.” In
“Europe, Late,” the idiomatic meaning makes
the most sense, a fact which becomes clear when we look at the line in context:
“here for the world it won't happen, / you'll see / here for the world” (ll.
16-8). Here, the speaker is attempting to convince his audience that something
has no chance of occurring, which makes the idiom “There's no way in the world
that...” fitting. In “The Organization,” on the other hand, the idiomatic
meaning does not make sense, while a literal meaning does. The context of the
line is: “I won't be missing, please. The check will rise / without me: here
for the world” (ll. 10-1). In this poem, a group is leaving somewhere without
the speaker. Because the speaker is not expressing disbelief but talking about
going from one place to another, the literal meaning makes the most sense. The
fact that these lines are identical in the Hebrew and both end poems is
significant, and a more thorough examination of the links between Pagis's poems
would be wise to dwell upon this textual phenomenon, but because our goal here
is to show that it makes sense to examine these poems together and that doing
so can be fruitful, I will limit myself to the claim that an investigation of
these two lines would likely be interesting precisely because they function so
differently even as they look identical.
