In the past few decades the writings, novels and essays of Joseph Roth (1894-1939) have undergone a renaissance. Michael Hofmann’s translations have brought many of the more obscure works of the Mitteleuropa-Jewish writer to an English language audience.
Jerzy Kosiński was the Polish name his father gave to save him
So he was forged for a new eternal existence.
He was born Józef Lewinkopf in Łódź,
A child of the Shoah.
The cylindrical wicker stand
Supports a metal plate
On which is perched a candle
In earthen coloured shades.
Morning light flecks and floods
the house. A thought breaks out.
A shower sprays.
It runs away.
Breakfast cereal box
as, watching the clock,
there is an idea to toss
and then off.
Did dogs burst out barking
with the discovery in digging and dis-earthing
the finding of the King’s near complete skeleton?
Debilitated as a beached whale,
The child trembled like an old woman beyond the pale.
After the cyclone, the town is like a smashed termite top,
Hot as a flaming sunspot.
What have we done
now that we’re committed?
How could Dexter and Rosalie
pull off this poetic con
to discover unchartered hinterlands of talent
believing they are better than ordinary?
Tough little Miss Muffet,
Eating her curds and whey
Swaying on her tuffet
Would have thought about a better way,
And tastier stuff than her messy dish.
Graham Greene described Shusaku Endo, a Japanese who converted to Catholicism, as “one of the finest novelists of our time.” Irving Howe hailed him as “one of the most accomplished writers… living in Japan or anywhere else”, and A.N. Wilson said of one novel: “Endo is always a moralist, but When I Whistle shows him to be a great artist as well.” Endo, one of Japan’s leading writers, was well known.
When Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon was published in France its importance could be measured by the French Communist Party’s response, which was to purchase thousands as they ran off the press for the sole purpose of burning and destroying them.