By EDITH BRUCK
Translated by JEANNE BONNER
Poems appear below in English and the original Italian.
Translator’s Note
What I find indelible about Edith Bruck’s work is the subtle ways she introduces the topic of the Holocaust. A poem like “Pretty Soon” provides a glimpse of the author’s mindset – she managed to survive Auschwitz, and she hasn’t wasted a moment since her liberation as a teenager. She’s been incredibly prolific as a writer, and has traveled the world. But winning her freedom is an event forever married to the worst event ever: losing both of her parents in concentration camps. The challenge is to render that subtlety, which in the original is effortless. This is her life – it’s what she’s always known.
This thematic back and forth is also present in “There Were Eight of Us.” There were eight of us – but not anymore. One brother was swallowed up by the Holocaust, to use a phrase Bruck often employs in other work.
Bruck’s poetry is often brief, recalling such better-known Italian poets as Giuseppe Ungaretti and Alda Merini. And it’s often written in a fairly straightforward way, without unnecessary flourish. But brevity and economy don’t mean simple, in terms of meaning or in the act of translation. In “Pretty Soon,” Bruck captures the ennui of modern life and the reality of even the most painful moments of world history: many people will experience them merely as trivia. That reflects an awful complexity in the lives of survivors.
—Jeanne Bonner
(1)
Pretty Soon
Pretty soon
When people hear a quiz show master
Talk about Auschwitz
They’ll wonder if they would have guessed
That name
They’ll comment on the current champion
Who never gets dates wrong
And always pinpoints the number of dead.
Yawning sleepily
They’ll say maybe they would have preferred
Greek and Roman history
Over these Jews
They have always made people talk about them
They really bring on their persecution
Tra non molto
Tra non molto
Quando dalla bocca
Di un esperto di quiz
La gente sentirà parlare di Auschwitz
Si chiederà se avrebbe indovinato
Quel nome
Commenterà il campione di turno
Che non sbaglia mai le date
E azzecca sempre il numero dei morti
In uno stanco sbadiglio
Dirà che forse preferiva
La storia Greco-romana
A questi ebrei…
Hanno sempre fatto parlare di sé
Attirano proprio la persecuzione
(2)
There were eight of us
There were eight of us
Two died young
One they killed
One sells pants in Sao Paulo
One skirts in Buenos Aires
One bread in Brooklyn
One battles the mentally ill
In an Israeli hospital
One, they say she does nothing. She writes.
Eravamo in otto
Eravamo in otto
due morirono piccoli
uno l’hanno ucciso
uno vende pantaloni a San Paolo
uno gonne a Buenos Aires
uno pane a Brooklyn
uno combatte con i malati mentali
in un ospedale israeliano
una, dicono che non fa niente, scrive.
Edith Bruck is a transnational Italian writer and the author of two dozen novels, short story collections, books of poetry and works of nonfiction. Born in Hungary in 1931, she has been publishing works of literature in Italian since 1959, five years after permanently settling in Italy. Her 1974 short story collection, Due Stanze Vuote, was a candidate for Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Strega. She was also a finalist for the 2021 Strega Award for her memoir Lost Bread, which was published in English in 2023, only her third book-length work to be translated in the US. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch and German. She has long been a committed visitor to Italian schools to teach children about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Jeanne Bonner is a writer, editor and literary translator. Her essays and reporting have been published by The New York Times, Brevity, The Boston Globe, American Scholar, Longreads, NPR, and CNN Travel. Her translations have appeared in Asymptote Journal, Consequence, and the Kenyon Review. She was a 2022 NEA literature fellow in translation; her project consists of translating short stories by Edith Bruck, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who writes in Italian. She has taught courses in writing at Wesleyan University and Italian literature at the University of Connecticut.
