The Economist Asia - 27.01.2018

The EconomistJanuary 27th 2018 Books and arts 73

I

N 1921 Françoise Frenkel, a young Polish

woman of Jewish faith, opened the first

French-language bookshop in Berlin. She

described it as a “calling”. A friend termed

it a “crusade”. The venture drew authors,

artists, diplomats and celebrities. For

many at the beginning, the bookshop was

a vibrant hub for the exchange of ideas. For

others during the darker years of eroded

liberties and stifled thought, it became a

haven, a place to rest the mind and breathe

easy. In July 1939 Frenkel finally realised

that, whereas blacklisted authors and con-

fiscated newspapers once jeopardised her

livelihood, escalating persecution and

violence now threatened her life.

Frenkel shut up shop, fled the country

and spent four years in occupied France.

Miraculously she lived to tell her tale. “No

Place to Lay One’s Head” was written and

published when Frenkel was in exile in

Switzerland. It then disappeared for de-

cades, resurfacing only in 2010 in a flea

market, after which it was republished in

French. Frenkel died in Nice in 1975. This is

the first time her memoirhas been translat-

ed into English.

The book’s opening chapter touches on

Frenkel’s book-filled childhood and her

studies in Paris, before covering the highs

and lows of the bookshop years. The re-

mainder—indeed the majority—of the nar-

rative is devoted to her struggle for survival

in the south of France. Relying first on her

wits and lateron the comfort of strangers,

Frenkel moved from one refuge to another.

She relates the challenge ofobtaining a res-

idence permit and the injustice of arrest.

She evokes the agony of being cut off from

family and friends and the horror of Nazi

clampdowns and roundups. Tension

mounts when she is hunted and faces de-

portation, leaving her no alternative but to

plan a desperate escape across the border.

A preface by Patrick Modiano, a Nobel

prize-winning author, and a 30-page dos-

sier add further context. However, Fren-

kel’s story can be read without these props.

It stands as both an illuminating depiction

of wartime France and a gripping and af-

fecting personal account of endurance and

defiance. Frenkel writes candidly through-

out about her fears and ordeals (at one

point even considering taking “the ulti-

mate way out”), but she soldiers on, refus-

ing to be beaten. Whether she is evacuee or

refugee, fugitive or captive, the reader roots

for her every step of the way. 7

Memoirs of the second world war

Indomitable spirit

No Place to Lay One’s Head.By Françoise

Frenkel. Translated by Stephanie Smee.

Pushkin Press; 299 pages; £16.99

American poetry

Wordsmithing

T

HE first living poet to have his work

published bythe Library of America

was John Ashbery, and this is the second

volume of his collected poems. He died

last September, about a month after he

turned 90. So this book serves as a dual

celebration, memorialising his sprawling

life and his many accomplishments.

The inaugural volume appeared in

2008, and it contains his first 12 books of

poetry. This second volume compiles the

seven collections—including Ashbery’s

two book-length poems from the 1990s,

“Flow Chart” and “Girls on the Run”. Like

the first book, it brings together a wealth

of uncollected poems that answer the

inevitable question of what a B-side

Ashbery poem might look like. Even in

the minor poems in his collections, the

stamp of his voice is always present.

In the 1990s the constellation of work,

as well as the variety of form and in-

vention of Ashbery’s art, shifted and

grew exponentially to release more and

more energy in his writing. “Flow Chart”

introduced that new epoch, and lines

from it begin this new volume:

Still in the published city but not yet

overtaken by a new form of despair, I ask

the diagram: is it the foretaste of pain

it might easily be? Or an emptiness

so sudden it leaves the girders

whanging in the absence of wind,

the sky milk-blue and astringent? We know

life is so busy,

but a larger activity shrouds it, and this is

something

we can never feel, except occasionally, in

small signs

put up to warn us and as soon expunged, in

part

or wholly.

Ashbery’s poems carry Western thought

to such an extreme that it almost begins

to appearEastern in its preoccupation

with impermanence. His ideas are at

once both inscrutable and sublime. He

once said his poems aim to capture “the

experience of experience”. Searching

high and low through the English lan-

guage, he appears to have lifted stone

after stone until there was nothing left

hidden. AsAshbery wasoriginally from

Rochester, New York, home to Kodak and

Xerox, he was certainly no stranger to

representations of representations. “Girls

on the Run”, in particular, was inspired

by Henry Darger, an artist who used

photocopies and collage to make compo-

sitionsjust as Ashbery, also an accom-

plished collagist, did with language, as

this brief passage so memorably shows:

The oblique flute sounded itsnote of resin.

In time, he said, we all go under the fluted

covers

of this great world, with its spiral dis-

sonances,

and then we can see, on the other side,

what the rascals are up to.

John Ashbery: Collected Poems 1991–2000.

The Library of America; 838 pages; $45

History will be a kind judge

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