Eine von Polens vergessenen Autorinnen

Mila Elin (auch Elinówna) gehört zu den vergessenen Autorinnen der polnischen Literatur. Sie war die einzige Frau im Umkreis der Krakauer Avantgarde. Sie wurde um 1907 geboren – der Dichter Tadeusz Peiper erwähnt eine 16jährige Elin zum Zeitpunkt des Erscheinens der ersten Nummer der Zeitschrift Zwrotnica. Zwischen 1927 und 1932 veröffentlichte sie 16 Gedichte in Avantgardezeitschriften. Sie soll im Warschauer Ghetto gestorben sein.

Unter dem Gedicht, das Alexandra Bernhardt freundlicherweise aus dem Polnischen übersetzt hat,  folgen ein paar Auszüge aus einem Aufsatz über „Polens vergessene Autorinnen“.

Mila Elin

Erinnerung

Weinend sangen die Frauen beim Nachbarn
und hoben zum Himmel die Hände schmal und lang,
und lang fiel das Haar ihnen zu Boden
wogend wie streifiges Wasser.

Ich höre auf das Weinen, das die graue Stunde sättigt
und singt mit den Tropfen des Regens auf meinem Fenster.
… Wieder zurück kommst du in lautlosen Blitzen,
ein Raubfisch aus der Tiefsee.

(Übersetzung: Alexandra Bernhardt)

Wspomnienie

Płacząc śpiewały kobiety u sąsiada
i podnosiły do nieba ręce wąskie i długie,
i włos długi ku ziemi im opadał
falując jak wody smugi.

Słucham płaczu, który szarą godzinę nasyca
i kroplami deszczu śpiewa na szybach.
… Znów powracasz w cichych błyskawicach,
głębinowa drapieżna ryba.

Aus: Linja. czasopismo awangardy literackiel. #4. Krakow 1932, S. 93 https://monoskop.org/images/6/61/Linja_4_1932.pdf

Aus dem Aufsatz „Poland’s Forgotten Women Poets“ von Agnieszka Warnke:

Statistics state that during the Interwar period, every 10th Polish poet was a woman. When looking through biographical notes on women writers of the time, each is listed as the wife, sister, daughter, friend or acquaintance of a male writer. Men often exist independently (in encyclopaedias – but not, of course, in reality).

Therefore, in order to break the patriarchal model of the poetry groups of that period, a woman poet had to be at the very least talented, as it was assumed that even if she learned the rules of the craft, she would never transcend them.

(…)

It was customary to call women poets ‘only children’ (girls, of course). This is how the Kraków Avant-Garde group, with its exhaustive poetic programme, regarded Mila Elin. The more malicious probably referred to her as Tadeusz Peiper’s ‘bastard’, considering the fact that he was the only one who valued her at that time.

Mila Elin was the only woman associated with the Kraków Avant-Garde group. All you could really say for certain is ‘she existed’, as her biography leaves many questions.
When exactly was she alive? She must have been born around 1907, since Tadeusz Peiper mentioned a 16-year-old Elin who began to correspond with him shortly after the first issue of Zwrotnica (Points), a magazine issued by the Kraków Avant-Garde, appeared. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Elin died in the Warsaw Ghetto, although the Jewish Historical Institute is not able to confirm these hypotheses.

We know a few details from Marian Piechal, the co-founder of the Meteor poets’ group. For example, we can determine that she lived in Warsaw – first on Leszno Street, then on Elektoralna – and that she was the daughter of a watchmaker.

(…)

The period of flirtation between Elin and all that literature encompassed for her spans just six years. Beginning in March 1927, it ends in October 1932 in Kraków, taking place between the pages of the magazines Zwrotnica and Linia (Line). In the meantime, Elin became involved with the Łódź Meteor, a magazine devoted to verse which was issued in Warsaw in three editions under the same title.

(…)

Elin was always faithful to Peiper, with whom she had an intellectual affair. Its fruit is her poetry – a woman’s intimate response to an exceedingly masculine worldview, or, as Andrzej Waśkiewicz would have it, a negative of the works of Peiper, this ‘pope’ of the avant-garde.

(…)

Bis heute gibt es auch in der polnischen Wikipedia keinen Artikel über Mila Elin, nur zwei Erwähnungen.