Tea Arciszews­ka (née Tau­ba Lip­s­ka, 1890 – 1962) was born to an illus­tri­ous Hasidic fam­i­ly in Mława, Con­gress Poland. ^{1 1} For recent research on Arciszewska’s life, see Aviv Liv­nat, ​“Far undzere kin­stler (For Our Artists). Tea Arciszews­ka and the Jew­ish artists,” in Art in Jew­ish Soci­ety, ed. Jerzy Mali­nows­ki et al (Pol­ish Insti­tute of World Art Stud­ies & Tako Pub­lish­ing House, 2016), 25 – 36; Mar­ta Orzeszy­na, ​“Siostry Lip­skie” [The Lip­s­ka Sis­ters], L’Officiel Pol­s­ka 10 (2019): 152 – 163; Rena­ta Piątkows­ka, ​“Artys­t­ki i miłośnicz­ki sztu­ki – kobi­ety w żydowskim życiu artysty­cznym między­wo­jen­nej Warsza­wy. W kręgu Żydowskiego Towarzyst­wa Krzewienia Sztuk Pięknych” [Artists and Art Lovers: Women in the Jew­ish Artis­tic Life of Inter­war War­saw. In the Cir­cle of The Jew­ish Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Fine Arts], Stu­dia Judaica 47, nr. 1 (2021): 175 – 211; Sonia Gol­lance, ​“Tea Arciszews­ka: Remem­ber­ing the Mod­ernist Play­wright on her Six­ti­eth Yort­sayt,” Dig­i­tal Yid­dish The­atre Project (Jan­u­ary 2022). After spend­ing sev­er­al years in Jerusalem as a teenag­er, she returned to War­saw and became one of the few women to fre­quent I. L. Peretz’s cel­e­brat­ed lit­er­ary salon. As an actress, artist’s mod­el, founder of the Azazel the­ater troupe, pur­port­ed muse to Peretz, arts patron, and salon­nière, she was a daz­zling fig­ure in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Yid­dish cul­tur­al scene in War­saw. Dur­ing World War II, Arciszews­ka lived in War­saw with Aryan papers, and was interned (as a Pol­ish cit­i­zen) in the tran­sit camp Burg­wei­de and the con­cen­tra­tion camp Gross-Rosen; her broth­ers Jean and Elia per­ished in the Holo­caust. After the war, she moved to Paris, where her sis­ters Sara (a visu­al artist) and Liba (a dancer) had sur­vived; Arciszews­ka lived in an apart­ment in the 14^th arrondisse­ment that had belonged to Jean. She pub­lished her play Miryeml (1958 in Cana­da, 1959 in Paris) and sev­er­al short­er pieces before her death in 1962. ​“The Sil­ver Can­dle­sticks,” the poem trans­lat­ed below (or the ​“frag­ment,” as Arcizews­ka referred to it), appeared in Almanakh in 1960. Léon Lene­man excerpt­ed the poem in his obit­u­ary for Arciszews­ka in the Forverts, claim­ing that this, her final piece of writ­ing, was an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of her reli­gios­i­ty and iso­la­tion at the end of her life.

Arciszewska’s deci­sion to focus on Yom Kip­pur can­dle­sticks alludes to the sig­nif­i­cance of can­dles in East Euro­pean Jew­ish rit­u­al. Women would tra­di­tion­al­ly mea­sure wicks for Yom Kip­pur can­dles from ances­tors’ graves, a prac­tice recount­ed in Bel­la Chagall’s 1946 mem­oir Bre­nende likht (Burn­ing Lights), itself a work with fre­quent descrip­tions of can­dles and can­dle­sticks. Yet the graves of vic­tims of the Holo­caust are fre­quent­ly unmarked or inac­ces­si­ble. For the speak­er of this poem, the can­dle itself stands in as a memo­r­i­al. With its focus on Yom Kip­pur as a day for remem­ber­ing depart­ed relatives, ^{2 2} Rosa Palat­nik also com­pares Yom Kip­pur in Paris with the cel­e­bra­tions of the protagonist’s child­hood. See Rosa Palat­nik, ​“The Yom Kip­pur Lights Went Out,” trans. Jes­si­ca Kirzane, Yid­dish Book Cen­ter, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2017. For Yid­dish, see Rosa Palat­nik, Krosh­nik-Rio: dert­sey­lun­gen (Monte Sco­pus, 1953), 194 – 98. the poem also hints at the yizk­er memo­r­i­al prayer recit­ed on Yom Kip­pur, which Rokhl Oyer­bakh famous­ly invoked to com­mem­o­rate the destruc­tion of the War­saw Ghet­to in her essay ​“Yizk­er, 1943.” Like Arciszewska’s oth­er writ­ings, this poem rec­og­nizes the pow­er of mate­r­i­al objects, espe­cial­ly as a reminder of pre­war Jew­ish life. Her use of this motif res­onates with Mal­ka Heifetz-Tussman’s lat­er poem ​“Kel­ers un bey­de­mer” (Cel­lars and Attics), which com­mem­o­rates the destruc­tion of East Euro­pean Jew­ish civ­i­liza­tion through the dis­ap­pear­ance of val­ued possessions. ^{3 3} Mal­ka Heifetz-Tuss­man, ​“Cel­lars and Attics,” in Yid­dish Amer­i­can Poet­ry: A Bilin­gual Anthol­o­gy, ed. Ben­jamin and Bar­bara Har­shav (Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1986), 606 – 11. In Arciszewska’s poem, can­dle­sticks are the sole sur­vivor among miss­ing house­hold fur­nish­ings, just as the speak­er is left alone on a day she used to mark with her fam­i­ly. Read­ing ​“The Sil­ver Can­dle­sticks” under­scores themes — such as lost par­ents, wit­ness­ing, rit­u­al objects mourn­ing their Jew­ish own­ers, and the con­trast between pre­war wealth and wartime dev­as­ta­tion — that ani­mate Arciszewska’s mag­num opus Miryeml.

As in Arciszewska’s play, where the protagonist’s speech often rhymes, ​“The Sil­ver Can­dle­sticks” is char­ac­ter­ized by allit­er­a­tion and by its fre­quent inter­nal rhymes and occa­sion­al end rhymes. The inter­nal rhymes lend a sense of momen­tum and musi­cal­i­ty to the poem that con­trasts with the oth­er­wise frag­men­tary, hes­i­tant, unpre­dictable verse. In my trans­la­tion, I have tried to main­tain the ele­ments of rhyme and allit­er­a­tion, as well as give a taste of the refine­ment that Arcsizewska’s col­leagues regard­ed as one of her defin­ing characteristics.

I am grate­ful to Dalia Wolf­son and Jes­si­ca Kirzane for their com­ments on this trans­la­tion and reflec­tions on Arciszewska’s style. Thanks to Miguel Friede for his per­mis­sion to pub­lish my trans­la­tion of his grandmother’s work.

Click here to down­load a PDF of the text and translation.