As Adam Kirsch's essay states, and you no doubt have realized, Moods is a fragmented book, in some ways as much like poetry as prose. Since you'll be reading poetry next semester in 102, I think it's good to develop some strategies about how to read complex texts. One good strategy in a text like this is to mark as you read specific sections that strike you as interesting, important, peculiar, puzzling, etc. and then return to those moments and try to make sense of them apart from the whole text. That way you learn to focus and be specific instead of making generalizations and vague statements unsupported by the text. Let's practice together:
45 begins:
"Penina Tuchner we loved like the Twin Towers, especially when they were burning. If her bra were preserved in a museum, we'd go there and break the display-case glass.
How she'd say 'Shalom,' ["peace" in Hebrew, used both in greeting and farewell] with that first syllable precisely placed between s and sh. Generally. She pronounced words like a swan sailing along on the Thames, next to the hotels..."
It's easy to see how 46 follows 45, esp. w/ this delightful statement:
"We thought to ourselves then that they (which is to say, Mr. and Mrs. Tuchner) brought a baby girl into the world and waited until she grew up and now we take off all of her clothes."
However, how does 47 go w/ these two sections? A big part of reading Hoffmann seems to be the fluctuation between traditional transition and juxtaposition. Explore these three sections to see what the book is doing.
You might want to try this w/ some different sections in the reading.
Also...
One question that I asked last week, which I feel we're only starting to explore, is the importance of the Holocaust to Hoffmann (we could just as well ask the importance of the Holocaust to all Jews). Neither Hoffmann nor his parents were put in a concentration camp, in fact, the reason they immigrated to Israel was to escape the Nazis. Still, the Holocaust seems to be a big part of Hoffmann's book, like it is for a lot of Jewish writers. Why do you think this is? How does he write about the Holocaust? (One good example is in section 49 where the narrator tries to see if the tattooed numbers on Mr. and Mrs. Hirsch's arms are in sequence. Jews were tattooed w/ numbers as they were being interred into the camps during WWII.)
When I started reading Moods I did not understand the first pages. It was only after reading the text "Primal Vision" that I realized that I had to read Moods differenment. I tried to see if there was a link between two or three chapters and I found some level. For example between eighteen and nineteen the link between the two is "death". For towards the end of the eighteenth century he wrote "And it happens that a writer can die before ...", and at the beginning of the nineteenth he wrote "What exactly the widow".
ReplyDeleteI think the Holocaust is important to Hoffmann because like all Jews, the Holocaust marks the most attractive time in their history. The atrocities they experienced in the concentration camps.
He speaks of the Holocaust in a way that is somewhat hidden in these writings. In my opinion the example of tattoos on the arms can be interpreted in this way. These tattoos are real signs of this tragic time lived by the Jews but also see these tattoos back painful memories to those who wears it.
Really lovely response, Diedzom. Poetically stated!
DeleteHoffman's uses different techniques in his writing. He likes to put all his ideas over the place but they all come together in the end. For example, in the beginning Hoffman talks about death and love. These two subjects are similar because we all have loved someone but everyone dies. Hoffman loves to talk about these two subjects because I think that everyone can relate to it. When Hoffman talks about Penina Tuchner, we see that it is someone that they really love. When he talks about the twin towers, I think he is trying to say that if she died that they would still love her. These people adored her because they say " if her bra was located in a museum that they would break the case". I think that Hoffman is trying to say that she was so loved that she should be in a museum and seen by other people. Penina Tuchner will always be an important person in his life because it looks like she can do no wrong and the twin towers being burn down was a historic memory to people.
ReplyDeleteGood response, Shania! The author Samantha Hunt says that one of the first things that occurred to her after she had her first child was that she "made a death."
DeleteHoffman confuses me a little because when I read over the statement he said about Penina and the museum, he is describing her as a figure to be seen by everyone. In page 47, we than see that he says "that she was brought into this world and grew up, but now we take off her clothes". This makes me second guess what was Penina's purpose in this story. I think that the Holocaust is an important part in Hoffman's story because it was his childhood. His parents were not put in camps and neither him. This is viewed to something great for Hoffman because he was never punished by the Jews or probably killed. These tattoos are put on people to mark them. I think this is a smart way for the Jews to keep track of people but painful for the people on the other side. People are being viewed as "owned". People could not have done what they wanted too. They were living the life of a hostage.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think that a lot of people of Hoffmann's generation have what's called "survivor's guilt."
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ReplyDeleteWhen Hoffman talks about penina tuchner he describes he as a flawless person who he loves. On pg 45 he used the twin towers to describe her as a important figure in her life and if she died he would still see her as beautiful. He used her bra in the display case as something he would keep to remember her by
ReplyDeleteThe holocaust is import to Hoffman and other Jewish writers in there culture for the ways Jews were affected. Everyone knows what the holocaust was which was the massacre of 6 million people in concentration camps but Hoffman doesn't speak about it openly it’s more subliminal . He uses the image of the tattoos on peoples arms in the camps to show that the atrocities won’t be forgotten and he wants others to see what happened in that time period. It’s important event in Jewish history because the Jewish people were almost eradicated over Nazis prejudice against them
Nice response. Yes, Hoffmann shows us another way to write about atrocity that is more subtle than the usual way. Or maybe he shows that it's impossible for a Jewish writer to NOT write about the Holocaust?
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