Part 3: Over and Done

Leivick playing Bergelson

From the letters of an imaginary poet to an imagined letter from a real writer.

Shmuel Charney, in his massive critical biography, takes Leivick slightly to task for his Miracle in the Ghetto — and I can imagine that he might have done so here, had he not died the previous year — for dramatising something not ready to be dramatised.

Here’s Charney on Miracle in the Ghetto:

‘We do not have the power to consider them as examples of artistic characters; they are still too alive, they are still too close to us, even when they breathe no more, to become material, even should it be artistic material. We are partnered to their fate, it gives us terrible pain when they are humiliated, we take pride in their pride; we are still not prepared to accept them as artistic characters.’

This piece, in my own opinion, rides that same line of what is permissible in art, of making art out of something, someone, who is not yet ‘material.’ Putting your own words in the mouth of a real person who, once, not so long ago, had their own.

And the voice we hear from it is clearly Leivick’s — not Bergelson’s in the slightest. The complaint here about degrading the paroches (the curtain which hangs covers the ark in a synagogue) reminiscent of Leivick’s article of a decade earlier, written as himself, about chewing gum on the bimah while opening the ark:

‘I lift up my eyes when the moment of opening comes and — a chill runs through me. I see something which I never could have expected: A middle-aged man, dressed, naturally, in a tallis, goes up to the ark, starts to pull aside the paroches, pulls it back, opens the ark and — the whole time, chews chewing gum!

The holy ark is open. The Torah scrolls are removed; the whole time, the one who opened the ark stands on the little platform, by the holy ark, near the paroches, and does not stop: his mouth moves up and down, up and down, masticating his chewing gum.’

We might also notice here some of that language regarding idolatry which shows up, as I mentioned, in the first go at ‘Bullfight,’ in relation to Soviet Russia.

Over to Leivick Bergelson.

Over and Done

——— ‘It’s 1952, Colleague. I write to you in idea. In thought. I write to you many times.

I sit captive in a solitary cell in the Moscow Katorga prison Butyrka. Imagine — I, Dovid Bergelson, have sat here since 1948. More than three years now that I have sat here. Can you imagine it? Try. I know you’re familiar with Butyrka.

What do I do in a prison cell? — I am isolated. I am in a dead world. Truly as if in a tomb.

I walk around the narrow little tomb, I lie down and stand up and lie down again. You know, though, what one does in a prison-tomb.

I start, in thought, to write letters to my family, to my wife, to my son, and also to a few colleagues, near and far. Also — to the estranged, to those from whom I, myself, with my own hands, broke off and interrupted every contact. And you are one of them. There was a time when we were friends. I also write a letter to you. In thought. Indeed, very often. Particularly when I recall that you, in the Tsarist years, sat in this same Butyrka prison. Who knows — perhaps in the same cell in which I now find myself sitting through Stalinist might.

A shudder runs through me, a chill goes through my brain when I say ‘through Stalinist might.’ I can barely realise the thought. Not to speak of — making peace with it. I don’t need to describe to you, how I am enveloped in horror.

If you know me a bit, you know terror isn’t in my nature. I’ve never allowed that state of mind near me. I’ve always driven it away. Although you know that sadness and solitude aren’t foreign to me. I have often experienced the sorrow and loneliness of my heroes. Particularly that of the characters of my first work — the sorrow of Over and Done.¹ — I myself, though, always held on, if one may say so, to the wings of hope, of cheer, of creativity energy. But now, I am enveloped in horror, in horror, in horror.

I sometimes try to tell myself one of my old jokes — say a humorous word. But the words are skewed on my lips. I mean that my lips, themselves, grimace and from my heart, a wail begins to overflow.

Yes, a wail.

Yes, overflow. Inside. Inside me. Because externally, I do not allow this wail to burst out and begin to strike against the bars. — I try to be a bit as before, but do not succeed.

I don’t know how you felt when you sat here in Butyrka. At the moment, I envy you. Not your being free, not your being in America that I envy, but that you sat in Butryka in the past, not today, that you sat in Tsarist Butyrka. Oh, how happy, how happy you were that you didn’t sit in Stalinist Butyrka.

Oh, how little people know about what happiness is!

Oh, what to do know what knowing means for one of our people, for a Jewish writer in Soviet Russia who gave Stalin everything, everything, everything, his body and soul, his parents, his wife and his children, yes, everything, everything, everything, and his people, as well. Yes, his people, as well, alas, alas. Also his people. His people.

Oh, what do you know, what do you know of what it means that a Markish sits in prison? A Hofshteyn sits in prison, a Feffer sits in prison. In Soviet Prison. In Stalin’s prison. A laugh. Ha ha.

I must laugh, though, dear friend, I must: — You say Stalin — you mean light, you say Stalin — you mean luck, you mean sun, you mean freedom, you mean joy. ——

Ach, you, dear Itzik Feffer — ah, you!

At the heart, I could not bear his, Feffer’s, tra-la-la-ings about Stalin’s, not only divinity, but hyper-divinity. Because comparing Stalin to just God wasn’t enough. —— I couldn’t bear it; But was I any better? Didn’t I do the same thing, though in a different manner? —

Did I not write these words in my work Penek: ‘The doors of a cupboard, which was called the ‘holy ark,’ were opened wide. In tallis and kittel, Yehoshua Freydas — hoary, unkempt with troubles — deliberately giving the string of the second paroches too hard a pull toward himself, tensed and looked around audaciously, as if after lifting a woman’s skirt.’ — — What sort of day did I write this in connection to? To Yom Kippur. I desecrated Jews. I desecrated the holy ark and the paroches. I compared the paroches to a lifted skirt — a lifted skirt! Wanted to strike at the very heart of Jewish sanctity, the very point of Yom Kippur fear of God. Wanted to run it through and dirty it and insult it. For what? For whose pleasure? — For Stalin! And only for him? — Also for Molotov, for Vyshinsky, for Khrushchev, for Malenkov, for Mikoyan, for Beria. They are all in Stalin. And Stalin is in all of them. They all do Stalin’s will. Stalin in the embodiment of all of them. I also went and allowed myself to be embodied by him. Allowed myself violated in him, through him, by him, to the point of disgust.

He violated me and now — thrown away. — They, everyone who does everything for him, also did so: Violated me and — thrown away. Me and all our writers. All our books. And our language. Me, and everyone who allowed themselves violated, having no choice. And now I sit, violated, defiled, here in a Butyrka cell, and write, in thought, to you. Today, while I still breathe, when my heart tells me that I will not leave this place.

My heart tells me that these are my final days — final days before being shot. Yes, they will shoot me! Shoot!

You know what the finality of finality means, but they, my former erstwhile friends, particularly those amongst you in the US, those, who in my good years, fawned, and I let them fawn — I let them counterfeit ‘Jewish Culture’ with my name — they, who it is beneath my dignity to even mention what they are called, they are not bothered by my finality. They are only concerned that I, Bergelson, live my final days beneath the shadow of annihilation. They want, after my annihilation, to continue counterfeiting in my name. They want my annihilation to be hushed up. They want my annihilation to be taken and lied about by printing and reprinting my story. They also wish to violate me, as have Stalin and his assisting lieutenants.

However much I may have sinned, I do not deserve violated so many times. I don’t deserve it. True, I abused the paroches. I only did it once, though. And God, the knower of hearts, knows why I did it. And if He is the all-vengeful, He is also the all-merciful. But here I sit, oppressed in a cage, in a darkness, under the government of an idolatrous power which I and all my colleagues welcomed in good faith as a redeemer of world and people; an idolatrous power which drags me off to death without a why or wherefore. Savage, senseless — my brain bursts. An idol for whom mercy is only a joke. For his under-idols, too, mercy is a joke.

When will these words of mine reach you? When will they pierce through all the darknesses, undergo all the incarnations of silence and restraints and pierce through and reach you? It will take, it could be, years until they reach you. Where will I be then? Where will my work be? And will my work still have any connection to that Bergelson which once was, which I myself, the present intimate of Death, scarcely glimpses in my nightmarish dreams here on the bunk of Butyrka? —

Oh, God, why did you curse me so that my whole life should be under the sway of over and done?

I argue this to the God whose paroches I insulted in order to make an idol.

And to you, dear friend, I write in thought, because I cannot bear my lying on a prison bunk. You could, and I cannot.

I don’t know what you would do if you were here in my place, on the same bunk where you lay in the days of Tsar Nikolai and there was meaning in it. — I don’t know. Be happy, I say again, that you don’t lie here on the bunk now, on the bunk of today’s Butyrka. And I — I am unhappy. I am betrayed. I cannot bear it.

And as I cannot bear it, I beg one thing of you: Judge me favourably. There were days when you desired favour. Yes, yes. And as you cannot stand up for my freedom, for my life — stand up for my honour. Although I had to distance myself from you and even often had to speak out against you, I know that you understand and won’t bear any anger toward me. Stand up for me against those who have forsaken my life, who have remained silent about my lying in prison, and will certainly want to remain silent when I am shot.

Those of them who still have a bit of an uneasy conscience, want to drown out their conscience with lies, that they don’t know the truth of all of our being annihilated. They will become even more obstinate. They will be like Ahab, of whom was said: Have you murdered and also inherited? — They will murder me, and afterwards inherit my work, which they can use in their totalitarian interests. Stand up for my unfortunate, trampled honour. Stand up for me when I am over and done, when I am a murdered Dovid Bergelson.’

— H. Leivick, Tog, 12 May, 1956.

1. My own rendering of the title Nokh Alemen, which has also been rendered in English as both The End of Everything and When All Is Said And Done. I chose my own variant to work a bit better with the way Leivick uses it (and uses it and uses it) in the article.