Notes

The Angel of History is not about experiences. It is for me the opening of a wound, the muffling and silence of a decade, and it is also a gathering of utterances that have lifted away from the earth and wrapped it in a weather of risen words. These utterances issue from my own encounter with the events of this century but do not represent “it.” The first-person, free-verse, lyric-narrative poem of my earlier years has given way to a work which has desired its own bodying forth: polyphonic, broken, haunted, and in ruins, with no possibility of restoration.

The epigraph is from Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Part IX, from “Illuminations” by Walter Benjamin. Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt.

“THE ANGEL OF HISTORY”

Hôtel-Dieu is a hospital near Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

Comment me vint l’écriture … is from René Char’s poem “La bibliothèque est en feu.”

Tr.: “How did writing come to me? As goose-down on my window in winter.” le silence de Dieu est Dieu is from Elie Weisel’s poem “Ani Maamin.”

Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung … is from Gershom Scholem’s “Gruss vom Angelus,” included in Part IX of Walter Benjamins “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Tr.: “My wing is ready for flight / I would like to turn back. / If I stayed timeless time, / I would have little luck.”

a boneless string of vowels is from C. W. King, “Gnostics and Their Remains.”

Puerto Diablo and El Playon were “body dumps” in El Salvador, where the remains of the “disappeared” were often left.

Passages arising out of El Salvador are dedicated to my husband, Harry Mattison, and my friend Margarita Herrera.

“THE NOTEBOOK OF UPRISINGS”

Anna refers to my paternal grandmother, Anna Bassarová.

Part IV derives from a tribute to the French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Borovská is the surname of Zuzana Borovská, the daughter of my grandmother’s sister.

She lives in Brno, the capital of Moravia, which is now in the Czech Republic.

Vltava is the river that passes through Prague.

Teplice is a town on the road to Terezin.

Terezin is a town in the Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia), where the Nazis located a prison and transit camp, Terezinstadt.

into your sun-blessed life is my translation of dans ta vie ensoleillée, a line from the poetry of Robert Desnos, who died at Terezinstadt, two days after the camp was liberated by Russian troops.

űivnostenská banka is a bank in Prague.

Národní is a street in Prague, where there are kiosks for news postings.

konvalinka is lily of the valley, which blooms in May and is sold in small bouquets on the streets of Prague.

Jan Palach is the young student who immolated himself in 1968 in protest of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Hana Minka and Gabi Friová were children interned at Terezin.