Done and Becoming-Again
by Malka Heifetz Tussman
A few weeks ago I shared Malka Heifetz-Tussman’s moving poem “To Spite,” suggesting that we can read it as a kind of negative Holocaust poetics, along the lines of Maimomidean negative theology. I’m excited to follow up with another poem from Tussman’s same 1977 collection Haynt iz Eybik (Today is Eternal).
If you want a refresher on her biography, you can click that link above, to the previous post. Today I’ll share, instead, something a little tangential. Like many Yiddish poets of her generation, Tussman was published regularly in the leftist press, including in the daily New York communist newspaper, Morgn Freiheit (Morning Freedom). The little clip below is taken from a 1922 edition of the Morgn Freiheit; the headline reads: “Poles and Jews are the Enemies of the Ku-Klux-Klan, says New Klan Wizard.”
It’s a historic artifact from a time when neither Ashkenazi Jews nor Poles had been accepted as white in the United States. The article goes on to describe an anti-KKK organization which had opened a New York City office, and whose membership totaled about 130,000.
But this article is also, of course and alas, not only a historic artifact. It points towards a model of cross-ethnic solidarity against white supremacy, a model whose contemporary relevance should be obvious in this moment of white supremacist resurgence and normalization.
I’m thinking of the ways that the legacy of leftist Yiddish organizing can be a model and an inspiration for the kinds of anti-far-right organizing that are necessary today, and I pass this news clipping along in its spirit.
Anyway, here is Tussman’s poem:
Done and Becoming-Again
It befalls me, a Becoming-Done:
Out of world,
Out of self
Without fear,
Without joy,
Without sighs, without tears—
Done.
Suddenly,
Like new birth
Comes a Becoming-Again,
Comes with reverent joy
And tears
As if the holy Shabbos
Could appear at home
During the week.
I bless this Becoming-Again.
It's as new, every time, as the first time,
And severe
And compassionate,
And compassionately it hurts me.
One marker of much mediocre poetry is a reliance on too many abstractions, without enough specificity or concrete, tangible language. It seems to me that many of Tussman’s later poems display an exceptionally rare ability to build a poem out of abstractions and to somehow make it work.
A lesser writer’s abstractions alienate us from the world of their poetry through their insubstantiality, but Tussman’s, here and elsewhere, invite us into a relationship with her language with her poem, as we work to make our own meaning from her language.
“Done and Becoming Again” begins by describing a kind of depressive state: feeling both fearless and joyless, alienated from oneself and from the surrounding world, without the emotional vitality needed to weep or even to sigh.
And out of this state, “suddenly,” like a small and unexpected redemption: “Becoming-Again.” My own subjective reading understands this as that moment when the fog of a depression lifts, when clarity or joy or simple vividness breaks through a period of fatigue, of murkiness, of dragging along and going through the motions.
Classical Jewish sources sometimes present the Sabbath as “a taste of the world to come,” as an experience of messianic redemption even within this very unredeeemed world. Here Tussman borrows that theological framing to describe the experience of psychological rebirth and creative rejuvenation.
It’s a pleasant and joyous experience, but it’s not only that. This “Becoming-Again” is painful and merciful; the pain is itself a form of mercy. Why? I don’t have a great articulation of this, but it strikes me intuitively as a true and insightful statement. Perhaps the rebirth of a “Becoming-Again” involves an uncomfortable clarity about oneself. Any honest look in the mirror reveals flaws and shortcomings, and shows how much work there is left to do. It’s a joyous thing, to see oneself clearly after a time of murkiness, but it also hurts, like a splash of ice-cold water. Or perhaps any painful sensation is a merciful relief from the numbness of this poem’s initial “Becoming-Done.” As Warren Zevon sings, “I’d rather feel bad that not feel anything at all.”
(One quick, more technical point, a little glimpse under the hood of my translation thought process: you might have noticed that, unlike maybe every other poem I’ve shared in this newsletter, I capitalized the first word of each line here. Yiddish, of course, doesn’t have capital letters like English does. I did this for a few reasons, in part because it seemed to seemed to me a helpful and generative way of heightening the tensions created by Tussman’s idiosyncratic, deliberate line breaks, and to point towards their intentionality.)
I like this poem, but I don’t “get” it. It tantalizes and eludes me, giving me just enough detail to identify with the human experience it describes, while denying me any presumption of understanding. I often find this kind of vagary frustrating in a poem, but here it draws me in. So I am curious to ask: do you find it similarly elusive and tantalizing and resonant, or just elusive?
I did also want to reiterate: On December 11, I’m hosting a paying-subscribers-only Zoom discussion. If you’d like to participate, it’s not too late to sign up. We’ll be chatting about some of the poems I’ve sent out, and discussing any ideas or questions that have come up along the way; it should be a great time. I’ve also held the first book giveaway for Founding Members of this newsletter—the lucky winner is Mr. Noam Freshman of Brooklyn, New York. After chatting with Mr. Freshman about his background and reading interests, I sent him a new copy of a classic Sholem Aleichem collection, including Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman sequence and Railroad Stories.
Very much in the "tantalizing and resonant" camp. The closing 2 lines especially are absolutely beautiful.