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Vera Schwarcz: Reviews |
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 Comparisons
between the Jewish and Chinese cultures usually involve stereotypes
and prejudices. But in her latest book, Vera Schwarcz, a Sinologist
and the Romanian-born daughter of Holocaust survivors, moves beyond
generalizations to create a haunting and original counterpoint of two
very disparate traditions. ''Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and
Jewish Cultural Memory'' is at once a scholarly consideration of
Chinese and Jewish intellectual life, a poetic evocation of the
wrenching imperative of historical memory and an extraordinary
personal story about uncovering family secrets. In this intensely felt
and often difficult work, Schwarcz ventures into risky territory,
plumbing her own experience in a second-chance family in which
''something was dying to be said.''''My focus,'' she writes, ''is upon a shared commitment to the transmission of remembrance.'' Where Chinese poets call for a revival of lost connections through fu gu, or returning to the ancients, the Jewish ethical imperative is zakhor, ''to recall and relive'' the Exodus and the Sabbath. Despite their differences, both the Talmudic and the Confucian traditions emphasize an active quest for the wisdom of the ancients through the study of texts. In her creative exploration of these distinctive cultures, Schwarcz relies heavily on metaphoric bridges thrown across time. She quotes much poetry, including her own, and draws on many sources, from ancient records of Chinese Jews to the archives of the Holocaust Museum in Washington. She also travels to Jerusalem to search for a record of Agnes, a lost half sister from her mother's first marriage.... In the book's most dramatic sections, Schwarcz describes uncovering the secret of ''the other Vera,'' a child by her father's first wife who died in 1940, a few days after her birth. Schwarcz had never been told she was named for a half sister who had died. She also describes her dismay in discovering that her mother's reparations file, laboriously compiled to satisfy the demands of German bureaucrats, contains no mention of her own birth. For Schwarcz, memory does not heal, nor does history retrieve satisfying stories that allow us to get on with the present. Rather, acknowledgment of the past involves a process of loss that cuts wounds open but allows us to become more fully human. ''I no longer avoid looking into the black hole of my birth town,'' she writes, although ''to remember is not to become well or whole again.'' Yet if Schwarcz's journey did not bring comfort, it surely involved a certain triumph -- the recovery of a personal heritage obscured by family secrets.
Wesleyan Connection
Newsletter January, 2005
History, East Asian Professor Explores Trauma Through Poetry
When visiting Jerusalem in 1991, a striking oil painting caught Vera Schwarcz’s attention. The Romanian-born daughter of Holocaust survivors instantly felt a connection with the artwork titled “Memories.” “I was deeply moved by its abstract depiction of a shattered world,” Schwarcz said. “The painting evoked huge, shards of stone, a rubbled world held together by a fragile thread, lace and barbed wire that I envisioned as memory threads held onto by sheer will alone. In wake of total annihilation, that moved me as an act of spiritual courage.” Schwarcz, professor of History and East Asian studies at Wesleyan and published author and poet, later met the painting’s artist, Chava Pressburger. Pressburger, a native of a Jewish community in the Czech Republic, was imprisoned in Terezin in1943-44. Her younger brother was killed in Auschwitz in 1944. Although Schwarcz was born after the war, their similar backgrounds were the start of a friendship and professional collaboration. Six months ago, the duo released a book together titled “In the Garden of Memory,” published by March Street Press. The publication, which they consider “a conversation in paper, poetry and print,” features 18 poems by Schwarcz with accompanying paper-art images by Pressburger. Pressburger's artwork is created from paper she produced herself from plants cultivated in her garden and near her home in Nagev, Israel. “As a Jew, as a China scholar, the past is not dead for me. It’s very alive, very important,” Schwarcz said. “I have been looking for ways to give it voice. Through this collaboration, we are putting into the world something that will seed reflection and pleasure. A garden is a bordered space for slow placed reflection. This is an invitation to come into the garden.” Before going to print, Schwarcz and Pressburger exhibited the artwork in Prague, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The display explored the themes of historical trauma in contemporary life. Schwarcz, like many children born in the generation following the war, was named after other children who had died in the war. “Our parents often did not tell us about the earlier kin. We thus grew up carrying the name, the destiny of precursors who remained a haunting, vague nameless presence,” she said. “Hence, perhaps my compulsion as a writer to name things, as a historian to document truth. If something can have a name and place in the heart, mind the page, it may be somehow be laid to rest.” “In the Garden of Memory” isn’t the first time she’s written about the holocaust. In her last book, “Bridge Across Broke Time,” she wove together her own family's memoirs to with words of poets and historians to show how it is possible to maintain cultural identity in the face of the most disheartening events. “What was new in this project with Pressburger was poetry, an art form I have been exploring for two decades. Here finally was a way to write about something historical and personal--using the craft of poetry I had been polishing for a while,” she said. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College in 1969, a master’s degree from Yale in 1971, and a Ph. D. from Stanford in 1977, she wrote over fifty articles on Chinese intellectual history and comparative memory studies. She’s also the author of five other books titled, “A Scoop of Light,” “Fresh Words for a Jaded World,” “Time for Telling Truth is Running Out: Conversations with Zhang Shenfu,” “The Chinese Enlightenment: The Legacy of the May Fourth Movement in Modern China,” and “Long Road Home: A China Journal.” Since the publication of “In the Garden,” several other artists – and photographers – have approached Schwarcz interested in similar collaborations. She’s interested, but she’s already made a commitment with a 19th century Manchu Prince named Yi Huan. Huan (1840-1891) wrote poems in Chinese responding to the burning of Beijing's princely palaces by French and British armies in 1860. “I am adapting Yi Huan's voice to the cadence of historical traumas in the 20th century, including the post September 11th scorched landscape that is our inheritance today,” said Schwarcz, who is fluent in Chinese, French, Hebrew, Romanian and Hungarian, and can read Japanese and German languages. To date, Schwarcz has already published about 25 of these renditions and envisions publishing a collection of 50 poems in the next two years called “Sea of Shards.” Recently, she’s working on a new book, “Truth in the Ruins of History: A Comparative Inquiry.” And her latest prose/academic book, “Singing Crane Garden; Art and Atrocity in One Corner of China,” was submitted to the University of Pennsylvania Press this month. It will be part of a series on the history of landscaped spaces. “I find myself wanting to write new books all the time,” she said. "In the Garden of Memory is available at Broad Street Books and http://www.marchstreetpress.com/ |
