Every Jew is secretly a little bit in love

[Virgil]

Prince, I loved this poem too. Virgil When I read the line...
Like a surgeon you wielded your armies and all the instruments of state...what came to my mind, was an operating room with all the gruesome instruments lined up on the tray just like an army troop in formation. I think that image will stay with me for awhile. What do you think, could that be a valid interpretation?

Sure it's valid. I didn't read it that way. I guess it's suggestive of that, though not precisely stated that way. That would be an interesting metaphor if that's what he meant.

[JBI]

As a Jew, I can't help but find that offensive - it shows lack of sensitivity, or nay understanding really of the universal Jewish condition.

[qimissung]

Prince, I loved this poem too. Virgil When I read the line...
Like a surgeon you wielded your armies and all the instruments of state...what came to my mind, was an operating room with all the gruesome instruments lined up on the tray just like an army troop in formation. I think that image will stay with me for awhile. What do you think, could that be a valid interpretation?

If you don't mind my responding to your question, Lynne50, I believe yours is a valid and extremely vivid image that you conjured. I think it will stay with me awhile, too.

[PrinceMyshkin]

As a Jew, I can't help but find that offensive - it shows lack of sensitivity, or nay understanding really of the universal Jewish condition.

As a Jew myself, I well understand the offense you take - at the last stanza in particular, I assume? Where the original lines

Every Jew is secretly a little bit in love
with Hitler, who never lied to us

came from, I can't really say, but I tried to soften or contextualize them by inserting I sometimes think, so that the intuition or notion becomes in effect a bit of self-portrait.

It is the acting out of some desperate fantasy: that if only Hitler had known me or any other typical Jew before he launched his murderous programme, he might or would have seen that we were loveable. In that sense there is some kind of twisted logic here: Since one cannot, could not hate the actual Hitler deeply enough, perhaps one could go in a directly other direction?

[qimissung]

I come to you now master
With a fresh bouquet of ash and gold fillings
That was sold to me as a fertilizer for my dreams
Of a unified nation
The cost was never explained to me
The label said ‘the end always justifies the means’
Could this be true? Could the world be saved?
I know you tried your hardest
But were thwarted by a lack of courage
‘One of the greatest socialist leaders’
Is what the burnt texts did say
The ones that anticipated your victory
But I am not a gypsy
And I am not a Jew
I am one who cried when I heard the game was through
So now I join in the line of children who dare to dream
And present you with this humble bouquet of ash and gold fillings
You, leader of the people, Hitler thy name

Germany, as seen through the eyes of one of Hitler's Youth.

[AuntShecky]

The second and third stanzas --"strophes" -- are by far superior, but the verse as a whole is quite good, and, as always in all of your pieces, thought-provoking.

Your speaker --and I believe--you, yourself are such forgiving souls that a little bit of a less negative view toward the inexplicably-respectful term "Mr." Hitler sneaks in. But I wonder, sometimes, that amid our society's need and sincere wish to be compassionate, we might sometimes go overboard in our quest to be forgiving. This
villain may or may not find forgiveness from a being removed from this deeply-flawed world.

When I read this I thought of something I read years ago -(-where? Maybe in Gibbon ) in which he says one of the failings of the post-Christian, all-inclusive Roman Empire was that it "suffered from an excess of open-mindedness."

In any event, your piece, as always, provokes much thought and discussion. That's one of the things the best of contemporary literature should do!

[MANICHAEAN]

I think actually in the bulk of this discussion that we are in agreement.
1. How or why man was created cannot be ascertained in a definitive manner from history/theology unless one assumes a totally blind acceptace of that laid down in Scripture.
2. The argument based upon cause/effect reaction leading to the conclusion of an initial cause of Creation, of which I'm sure you are familiar, is a bit too obtuse & cold blooded for my taste.
3. So I've given up trying to reason it, but quietly accept a faith within myself based on feeling & instinct? Is there a North-West Passage to the spiritual world?
4. Thanks for the point on "devolution". One of the variables I missed.
Best regards.

[PrinceMyshkin]

To all those who previously read this: please note that I've made a change to the end-lines.

[acdouglas92]

Prince, I must admit this is a hell of a poem...well done. I'd love to see your perspective on it, but mine is as follows:

Hitler originally proclaimed that he would wipe the blight of depression from the German economy, when instead, he ended up attempting to wipe the self-proclaimed blight of the non-Germans from the rest of the world. I love the satire in this one, it's really quite striking how you address him as "Mr. Hitler". Really well done, I'll be back to comment more on this, but that's all that my perplexed mind could come up with at the moment.

Again, well done!

[Virgil]

To all those who previously read this: please note that I've made a change to the end-lines.

Ok, I happen to like the previous version better, but I understand the change. The original I think was better poetry and really more psychologically penetrating. For me "secretly in love" with Hitler suggests the the sort of passivity from the Jewish community at large that occured during the halocaust, while "secretly in awe" suggests to me a desire to replicate his actions on someone else. I wonder what others think.

[qimissung]

I think I liked the first version better, like a girl who respects a boy's brutal honesty; mainly it's the idea of loving Hitler, and the brutal juxtaposition therein.

[MorpheusSandman]

I also liked the first better. Don't shy away from controversy, Prince. I know many might read a kind of blasphemy into the comment, but I think that's only superficial, and more will be provoked to really ponder and penetrate the subtlety of the statement.

[Lynne50]

Prince,
I can understand why you felt the need to change the last stanza, but I have to agree with Virgil and Morpheus and say that I think the first version is more powerful. The last stanza, in it's orginal form is very thought provoking; your new version seems a bit watered down.

You know I'm one of your biggest fans, so continue to write with your own voice.. It's only a poem..people can read it or not read it... regard it highly or disregard it entirely. Keep your poems coming!

[blazeofglory]

You cut away a third of us, Mr. Hitler,
but the remnant
will expand
to incorporate the genius
and, yes, the flaws
of the untimely dead.

Like a master surgeon
you wielded your armies
and all the instruments of state
to carve the rot
from the German body politic

History
has been slicing and dicing us
from the beginning
and we, and the world,
are tired of our kvetching.

To be a Jew
is never to be whole
but a remnant of the remnant.

Every Jew, I sometimes think,
is secretly a little bit in awe
of Hitler, who made us, indeed,
the "chosen people."

This poem is really mind blogging. This interprets the profound truth of what Jewish-ism and how the world hitherto not ceases seeing it as a vestige.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I, too, am taken by the ending. The lot of the outcast is never easy; I like that you point out the usually unacknowledged and intimate bond between bully and victim. But the aching part of your poem is the one before, "To be a Jew is to never be whole, but to be a remnant of the remnant..."

Yes, the bond between bully & victim, and what I think has come to be called the "Stockholm Syndrome," these lie somewhere in the background of the closing lines (now restored) which, frankly, shocked and sickened me when I first thought of them (without the intended softening of "I sometimes think").

To all those who previously read this: please note that I've made a change to the end-lines.

Correction

In response to several persuasive responses, I've restored the ending of the poem to what it was originally. Thanks to all those who 'voted.'

I do think this a remarkable poem Prince, not the least for its psychological insight. And the profoundity of it really does grap me in the gut. The word "remnant" takes on an incredible power. When a word seems to grow in meaning through the poem you know you have a winner of a piece. The first and last two stanzas are absolutely top notch, as good anything published by any major poet. I do have reservations about the second and third stanzas though. They echo with cliches: "instruments of state," "wieliding of armies," "slicing and dicing." Actually the second one nears a mixed metaphor that is somewhat confusing: surgeon intertwined with wielding armies. I like the surgeon metaphor and it gives justification to and softens the "slicing and dicing" phrase. I guess as I'm thinking out loud here, it's really the second stanza, the weilding of armies and instruments of state that rings off for me. Perhaps some tweaking on that second stanza might make this poem perfect. But whatever you do, it is a fine work.

Thanks, Virgil. All of stanzas 2 & 3 were meant as elaborations of the surgeon metaphor, "wielding his armies" as a surgeon might (in this case) a particularly sharp scalpel. If I can come up with anything better, I'll post the alteration.

And by the way, I want to disclaim credit for my use of the image of the "remnant." It is a phrase that has long been used for the survivors of any mass anti-Jewish action and may be found, in other connections, as far back as "Revelations."

Prince, I loved this poem too. Virgil When I read the line...
Like a surgeon you wielded your armies and all the instruments of state...what came to my mind, was an operating room with all the gruesome instruments lined up on the tray just like an army troop in formation. I think that image will stay with me for awhile. What do you think, could that be a valid interpretation?

Yes, that is very much a valid interpretation. In fact, it'what I had in mind. Thanks for your sensitive reading.

I come to you now master
With a fresh bouquet of ash and gold fillings
That was sold to me as a fertilizer for my dreams
Of a unified nation
The cost was never explained to me
The label said ‘the end always justifies the means’
Could this be true? Could the world be saved?
I know you tried your hardest
But were thwarted by a lack of courage
‘One of the greatest socialist leaders’
Is what the burnt texts did say
The ones that anticipated your victory
But I am not a gypsy
And I am not a Jew
I am one who cried when I heard the game was through
So now I join in the line of children who dare to dream
And present you with this humble bouquet of ash and gold fillings
You, leader of the people, Hitler thy name

I hope one is meant to read this, as one of the respondents suggested, as being in the voice of one of the enraptured Hitlerjugend, and as such is is every bit as devastating as I hoped my own poem would be.

You might want to read "Death Fugue" by Paul Celan: http://mason.gmu.edu/~lsmithg/deathfugue.html