Stairs to no End

Tags

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Knowledge, religion, repression, Richard Dawkins, Tove Janssen, Vimeo

Daniella Koffler, who is shortly to become my daughter-in-law, attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design after completing her M.A. in Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. When they met she and my son, Eitan, quickly found that they had a lot in common, and have been together for the last five or six years, during which period both of them were studying at Bezalel, Animation in Daniella’s case, an M.A. in Industrial Design in Eitan’s.

For her graduation project Daniella was required to produce a film on any subject, and after a lengthy gestation process, created ‘Stairs to no End.’ An animation film is by no means a simple thing to produce, and in Daniella’s case it involved writing a scenario which also contained a rhyming background narration in English, evolving an entirely new animation technique, and sending a clear ideological message. In addition, the sound track includes a musical accompaniment, which was produced by Eitan. Truly a wonderful partnership!

The scenario and ideological message are closely intertwined, depicting the stultifying effect of hidebound orthodoxy of all kinds on independent thought. The reference is oblique, and could apply to any established religion, any political regime, or even the traditional paternalistic family, if taken to the extreme. The innovative animation technique combines a distinctive and colourful aesthetic in which actual human eyes are incorporated. The effect is both disturbing and engaging, involving a real facet of the human face with the stylised depiction of human attributes.

Recently the film was launched into the public domain via the internet (http://stairs.daniellakoffler.com), and was posted on the Vimeo site, which has established itself as the curators of online short film, short-listing it as ‘Short of the Week.’ In addition, the film has been accepted by several festivals of animation films, and has been shown, or is about to be shown, in Germany, Brazil, Spain and elsewhere.

Daniella says that she was influenced by Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book, ‘Infidel,’ as well as by Richard Dawkins’s ‘The God Delusion.’ In making ‘Stairs to no End’ she claims that her idea was ‘to make a children’s tale for adults,’ using images similar to those of Tove Janssen’s Moomin Family, creating ‘Tove Janssen meets her dark side’ as it were.  Thus, the characters are simultaneously both attractive and vulnerable, human and non-human, making it easier to relate to the very powerful message being conveyed without being offended by it.

Interestingly,  after auditioning several girls in order to find the right eyes for the heroine, Daniella found that Eitan’s were the most appropriate, and that eyes are unisex. The various technical aspects of the production are interesting in themselves, presenting any number of challenges, which all seem to have been overcome. The narrator’s voice is Daniella’s own, and to my astonishment although she is a native Israeli with no trace of Anglo-Saxon heritage in her background, her accent and intonation are in a faultless American idiom.

The film is both aesthetically pleasing and intellectually stimulating, as is borne out by the large number of comments posted on the site, apparently coming from all over the world judging by the names of their authors. It certainly provides food for thought in an entertaining way.

Translation Trauma

Tags

Carlebach, Hamburg, Holocaust, Translation

In the course of the last year or so I have been engaged in translating a book by Miriam Gillis-Carlebach entitled ‘Each Child is my Only One.’ The book, originally written in German, recounts the story of the Hamburg branch of the Carlebach family, and is essentially an account of the life and times of the Jewish community of Hamburg in the period leading up to the Second World War, as well as of what befell the various members of the family.

I was originally approached by the author, who is a professor of Jewish History at Bar Ilan University and head of the Carlebach Institute there. and asked to try and find a translator for the text. I was unsuccessful in my quest and volunteered to undertake the task myself, especially since there was no source of funding for the project at that stage. The first part of the book contains an account written by Professor Gillis-Carlebach of her parents, their former homes, their marriage and the life she and her eight siblings led in pre-war Hamburg. The second part of the book consists of letters written by the various children of the family to their parents, and those from their parents to them, after the five oldest children had been sent abroad, to England and Israel, in order to escape the fate of the Jews of Germany.

I personally had decided to cease translating material for Yad Vashem many years ago, as I found the accounts of Holocaust survivors too harrowing and upsetting. But I found myself unable to avoid translating this book. My own father and many relatives were originally from Hamburg, and the book containing the letters written by his mother, Regina van Son, in the same period had been published by the Hamburg authorities, with the help of Professor Carlebach. So I felt that I owed her a debt of gratitude.

But as I worked on the translation I found myself falling into an ever-growing trough of sorrow. Translating involves as close an association with the written text as that of the author. The translator has to examine every word and every phrase, weigh up significances and emphases, familiarise him/herself with the fine points of what lies behind each expression, and eventually choose the one that best expresses the original thought while at the same time not sounding false or foreign. It is a long and laborious process, and in the course of delving into the text I came to know the various members of the Carlebach family, each one with his or her own characteristics and foibles. I found myself walking the streets of Hamburg in my mind, recognizing familiar buildings, and even dreaming about the place at night.

The main focus of the book is on Lotte (Charlotte) Carlebach, Professor Gillis-Carlebach’s mother. It was she who was the quiet mainstay of the family, the rock on which the household stood,serving as the perfect foil to her husband, Rabbi Joseph Carlebach, the charismatic teacher, preacher, and communal leader. Like all rabbis in Germany, Rabbi Carlebach was also required to have a higher degree in a secular subject, and he had chosen mathermatics, so that his official title was Rabbi Dr. Carlebach. By all accounts, he was a brilliant man.

In the years leading up to the war, and especially after Crystallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, as more and more Jews managed to leave Germany, those Jews who remained were subjected to ever-increasing restrictions and humiliations, being deprived of their homes, livelihoods and property. But Rabbi Carlebach did not leave, feeling that he could not desert his community in its hour of need. He also spent a great deal of time and energy visiting other Jewish communities and preaching there, especially during festivals, as more and more communities were left without a spiritual leader.

Right to the end, including during the deportation of the Jews of Hamburg, Rabbi Carlebach, together with his wife and four youngest children, stayed together with the members of the community, doing their utmost to provide them with support, succour and solace in their despair. Many members of the community were relieved to be being ‘sent east’ in the company of Rabbi Carlebach, convinced that no harm could befall them if he was by their side.

The letters written by Rabbi Carlebach and his wife, as well as the accounts given by other members of the Jewish community, make it clear that the family acted with dignity and restraint throughout their ordeal, setting an example to the rest of those condemned to suffer the indignities of the train journey to the Riga Ghetto, the horrible privations of the living conditions there, and the subsequent liquidation of its inmates.

It would be impossible to translate a text of this nature without being affected emotionally, and I must confess that I shed many a tear as I read the descriptions of the last festivals celebrated in the synagogue before its destruction, the valiant attempts of the family to adhere to the Jewish traditions in the most adverse circumstances, the little joys and consolations of daily life, and the constant yearning of the parents to once again see their children, who were still only teenagers when they were parted from them, as well as the homesickness felt by those children for their parents and siblings.

Even so, when I came to the end of the book, having known all along how it would end, I felt a pang of sorrow at having to end my association with that family, as well as profound grief at the terrible fate that befell them and so many others. It is impossible to translate a text that is so imbued with emotion without identifying with its contents in one way or another.

Perhaps someone should define a new occupational hazard: translation trauma.

Live vs. Recorded?

Tags

Beethoven, Brahms, Loch Lomond

Attending two marvellous concerts this week set me off thinking about the benefits of a live performance as compared with listening to music on the radio, a CD, or any of the various i-media that are proliferating around me as I write (I apologise for ‘harping on’ about music too frequently, but this is a subject that seems to get my few remaining grey cells functioning).

In the first concert, consisting of chamber music, after some brief introductory remarks by one of the professors at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, we were treated to brilliant performances of Brahms’s string sextet op. 18 and Schumann’s piano quintet op. 44. Both of these works are rightfully much loved, displaying the rich genius of each composer. As the music began, I settled into my seat with a sigh of satisfaction, as, I think, did most of the audience.

In my student days, almost longer ago than I care to remember, when more or less the only way one could hear music was by means of 33 r.p.m. vinyl records, I loved both these (and other) chamber works, and would play them on my gramophone constantly in my room as I studied. One of my friends, who was originally from Scotland, was puzzled by what seemed to her my curious love for music. But she pricked her ears up when she heard the second movement of the Brahms sextet. “Why, it’s just like ‘Loch Lomond!” she exclaimed, and proceeded to sing the song. Now, there’s no denying there’s a certain similarity, and for all I know Brahms may well have got the idea for the movement from the folk song, but this much I do know: Brahms wrote it in a minor key and the folk song is in a major one. You don’t need to be a great musical maven to know that singing major on top of minor isn’t going to work. But that’s what my friend invariably did, laughing at my distress at the disharmony thus created (strangely, we are no longer in contact). However, her memory lingers on, and whenever I hear that beautiful, haunting music I am reminded of Sylvia singing ‘Loch Lomond’ and laughing at me. I won’t say that she has managed to spoil the music for me forever, but the association has never left me.

The second concert consisted of two hoary old favourites, both by Beethoven: his first piano concerto and his fifth symphony. Who doesn’t know every note of the fifth symphony backwards and forwards? When I hear it on the radio I hardly take any notice of it. In the concert hall, however, it’s a very different matter. Suddenly, you see how the whole orchestra is involved, how themes recur at various points, how they are bounced back and forth between the different sections of the orchestra, how even the humble piccolo has a solo passage, echoing the flute, and how the tympanist (in this performance it was a woman) has her work cut out, setting the beat, giving emphases where and when needed, and what important roles are played the brass, the double basses, and the celli, each in their turn.

But the main thing is that sitting in an auditorium means that you can focus on the music and are not busy at the computer, or reading, cooking or driving, as I usually am when I’m listening to music. Music is medicine, I saw on one of the TED lectures, and I can believe that’s true. But for me music is meditation, and it is music alone that can transport me to a higher sphere and put me in touch with the divine spark that exists in the universe.

Can’t sleep, won’t sleep

Tags

insomnia, Sleep

Sleep, which knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, to use Shakespeare’s phrase, is sometimes an elusive beast. It sneaks up upon us as we’re watching TV or sitting in a concert. In my case, it tends to happen at the opera, usually in the last act, when things are really hotting up, and we’re sitting in seats for which we’ve paid a lot of money. Why does it happen to me just when I don’t want it to? And why won’t it come when I do want it to, such as now, at 3.30 a.m?

Yes, I know what the experts say. Keep to a nightly routine. No TV or radio in the bedroom. Focus totally on getting ready for bed and going to sleep. Or perhaps have a drink of hot milk (yuk!) before going to bed. No, I’m afraid all that doesn’t work for me. I do have a nightly routine, I confess, and then go to bed and watch TV for an hour or more, and that usually does the trick.

But that ‘usually’ is getting more and more unusual. So, as happened tonight, I wake up after a couple of hours’ sleep and can’t, just can’t, get back to sleep. I suddenly remember that I haven’t done something I should have, and totter off to my study, where I sit down in front of the computer and, lo and behold, the whole world is at my fingertips. After I have checked my e-mails and my favourite sites U-tube beckons me, providing an endless source of diversions. These can be an instructive TED lecture, a funny sketch with Hugh Laurie and Steven Fry, some nostalgia with Danny Kaye, or anything in-between.

I did, I really did, try to coax my mind into the relaxed state that gently guides me back into slumber. I try to recall the names of all the children who were in my class in my last year at primary school, when we were all about ten years old. Miriam Oppenheimer, Naomi Bornstein, and about twelve other little girls. Then come David Elstein and Jonathan Kornbluth and about ten little boys. None of them are little any more, I’m sure, and I don’t know what has become of most of them, though I heard that David Elstein became a BBC producer and I know that Jonathan Kornbluth is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But that device doesn’t always do the trick, either, and I get to the end of the list and I’m still wide, wide awake. What a nuisance! Even the mantra I was given at the Trandenscental Meditation group I went to about 40 years ago doesn’t help.

I could, I suppose, even do some work, writing or translating, or adding something new to my blog — as I’m doing at present. The main thing is to keep doing something until, hopefully, I’ll suddenly feel my eyelids drooping and be ready to climb back into bed. But it isn’t happening. My mind flatly refuses to go into shut-down mode, and the thoughts that have been bothering me continue to do so. Even some soothing music on the radio, which thankfully plays all through the night, isn’t helping.

I daren’t take a sleeping pill by this time, because if I do I’ll be asleep for half the coming day, and that would be a total waste. Oh, but hey, I think I can hear the birds beginning to chirp to greet the dawn. That means that the daily paper will soon be delivered to our door and I can honourably go down, have breakfast, and start my day.

Hallelujah! The night is over, and the world is starting to join me in my alert state. Good morning, world. Here comes another day.