INTERVIEW WITH BERNICE EISENSTEIN, AUTHOR OF - I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS
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We recently had an email interview with Bernice Eisenstein to ask her about her book I was a child of Holocaust survivors (2006). She very kindly responded back to us and provided us with insightful information. Below will be the questions we asked and her responses.
Question 1: How would you describe your style of illustration?
Bernice: Hmm, my style. I usually think that I'm the worst person for describing this, since it's not really something that I spend much time thinking about. But I'd like to think that it's recognizable, in the way that everyone has their own signature. I'm better at trying to say what I'd like my drawings and paintings to have--both a lightness and a weight, for them to have a feel alive. Perhaps in asking me this question, it's a good place for you me to ask the same of you--how would you describe my style? But I think expressionistic fits. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 2: What were some of the influences for you memoir’s illustrations?
Bernice: If you are asking me about who are the artists that have had an influence on me, who I admire and have learned from, then it's artists such as van Gogh, and Ben Shahn and Chagall and Saul Steinberg. There are others, but their sensibility, the effect their work has had on me, has been important. There's a book by Milton Glaser titled "Drawing is Thinking" that's wonderful. The title says it all, and add to it the next line which would be: Thinking is Drawing. And my book is about a process of memory into not only my past, but the past of my parents and their friends. For me, the time I spent writing and drawing was a place of discovery. So, the photographs I look at, the faces I looked into in order to feel who they were, and who they once were before I had known them, became a guide, a voice to listen to, in order to make them come alive on the page. Memory--going to another terrain--was the propelling influence, and from that, feelings of compassion and loss, helped shape the paintings. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 3: We are theorizing on your use of colour. We were wondering why some illustrations have colour and others do not? Was this use of colour intentional, or more intuitive?
Bernice: The individual family portraits are in colour. And then black and white are meant to take the reader elsewhere. In a way, the same question could be rephrased and you could be asking me why and when I decided to write, use words, and not draw or vice versa. Colour and black and white are a language. For me, the colour, the individual portraits, was a way of stopping a moment, slowing down the pace of absorption, as if to say, here is this person, this individual, this life, this soul. And with the black and white--here is a moment in time, a memory, a past, sometimes my past, sometimes theirs, and then I could add words to that drawing, and have it be ironic, both sad and funny--and then it was also a way of showing how my own mind worked. That is, trying to see more than one way. The black and white is seeing/hearing me think. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 4: We noticed through your use of line, colour, and expressions, that your images are very emotionally charged. Could you elaborate on your drawing process for us? What is it like from start to finish? When do you know that your illustrations will effectively evoke emotions like those in your memoir?
Bernice: This is a very thoughtful question. Not easy to answer without sounding mysterious. If only you could have been inside my head and heard what went on while I worked. And I feel that your question is also a compliment, since you felt that the images were "emotionally charged." To me, that means you have already felt the answer to your question, because that is what I felt when I drew or painted. It is exactly those feelings that are the process, and which guide the pen and the brush...See, I told you this answer might sound mysterious. But you've asked, and I want to be honest, and hopefully don't sound obscure. I believe in the poetry and truth of searching, and in painting, you look for that place of relationship to "subject." I'll try to describe the process of when I first started doing portraits of my father. I knew that I didn't want to just paint him in a realistic manner, to have him only recognizable from his physical being. I wanted to describe and place on paper what I felt was inside of him--a distillation, I believe. So when I draw him, his essence comes forth--and then I am in his company, having a conversation with him. And I remember his silences and his passion and his hurts and his devotions, and all of that mixes together to become his portrait. And that is the point that I feel the portrait is complete--not perfect, but full and filled. So, I start from a place that at first feels unsure, and open, not knowing if I can get it right, or do it justice. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 5: What was it like creating your own personal memoir as opposed to creating content for someone else?
Bernice: There were different stories to tell, and from different vantage points. And even if it was a story from someone else's past, I knew at times it was still came from my reflection and understanding of it. So it was hard at times--to find the right voice from which my own thoughts could appear. It was always about finding the right tone, like hitting the right notes of music to be played. The book is not an autobiography of my life, but more to the point, it is a memoir of a sensibility, a relationship to the Holocaust that integrally formed that sensibility. And that means it is not one thing, not based on facts and numbers, but on individual lives and my understanding and feelings for them. The difficulty then was how to create fluid movement between myself and my entry into those lives. Once understanding that my book was not going to proceed in a chronological, a linear form, with time movement forward, I then found the freedom to move back and forth through time as I needed. This allowed me to sometimes speak through my own voice--and at various ages--and then also integrate and write about someone else.(Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 6: We were wondering if we could get more details on your life in high school and university as well as your travels.
Bernice: Ah, now you're asking about my life, some facts. I spent most of high school reading, but not necessarily what was required for classes. I loved grade 13 math--yes in the days when grade 13 still
existed. Our teacher handed out a pack of playing cards to each one of us, so we could properly learn computations--which would be useful for playing poker or going to the racetrack and figuring out the
odds. As for university, at the time, I wasn't terribly secure about my abilities as an artist, so I chose not to go to art school, but I knew that I loved to read, so I went to York University and that's what I did. I studied literature, and I read. And had the great pleasure of studying with a couple of very wonderful professors, who made a difference in my life. I think I was lucky, and it was the beginning of taking my studies seriously. And then I went back to painting. You can tell, I think, that I'm rather private about "facts" concerning my life. As for travelling--I'll only sound like a cliche--you diminish and you grow at the same time. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
existed. Our teacher handed out a pack of playing cards to each one of us, so we could properly learn computations--which would be useful for playing poker or going to the racetrack and figuring out the
odds. As for university, at the time, I wasn't terribly secure about my abilities as an artist, so I chose not to go to art school, but I knew that I loved to read, so I went to York University and that's what I did. I studied literature, and I read. And had the great pleasure of studying with a couple of very wonderful professors, who made a difference in my life. I think I was lucky, and it was the beginning of taking my studies seriously. And then I went back to painting. You can tell, I think, that I'm rather private about "facts" concerning my life. As for travelling--I'll only sound like a cliche--you diminish and you grow at the same time. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 7: Why did you structure your memoir the way you did?
Bernice: I might have answered a part of this one in #5. The book is about a process of memory, so the structure had to be organic. And I wrote and drew those pieces, hoping they would become the shape of that experience I was engaged in. Time fell away, and another flow came forth, following the direction of an inward eye. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 8: What was your intention in telling us stories from survivors, like your mother?
Bernice: I'll answer this one specifically about my mother. I had her story on tape, and it was hers to be told. So I struggled with finding her voice, unadorned by mine. There is a gravitas, a centre to be found in her chapter. And again, it is about memory. If facts are to be told, then they could come from her own story. From the other survivors, the friends of my parents that I grew up with--I had bits of overheard conversations, moments in time when stories were told, that gathered over time. Writing about them, in the way that I did, was to evoke their lives, where an instance in a present also held the undercurrent of their past. This meant that moments of joy were tinged with sadness. I wanted to find a way to reveal that essence, and if I could, then they would feel the embrace of compassion I had felt. My intention? Only to say it was important. There is so much to learn about our own hearts. I had learned from the hearts of others. Rather than "intention"--there's a beautiful Jewish saying: there is no heart more whole than a broken heart. And that's where I travelled. I journeyed in their company for a while. (Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 9: Why was it important for you to include humour in your memoir?
Bernice: Because it's how I see things. Both sad and funny and ironic and paradoxical. It's a good vantage point from which to stand and look out from when you look into a dark place; because you might see more. "Tell the truth and shame the devil"--it's a great phrase. And because humour holds what's both sad and true and honest. In writing, it meant I could also be playful, pull the rug out, so to speak, from whatever expectations might have been in dealing with the Holocaust. Because I knew that being humorous would never undermine the seriousness of what I was writing about. And without humour, I would not have been me, I would not have found my voice from which to write, to find the words or the pictures to draw.(Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
Question 10: What moral message(s) would you want the readers to take from your memoir?
Bernice: I don't know about "moral" messages. We've all been taught in some way or another the same things. Be kind, don't kill anyone, try to be a good person, help an old lady cross the road, and recycle your garbage. How far have we advanced? The lesson of history seems to be how much we have to learn. I'm sure the cavemen recycled their sticks, and sharpened them into more efficient weapons. Perhaps this is where I turn it around and ask a question of you. How did you feel when you read my book? Did the people who live in my book become people who entered your hearts. And if they did, my own is warmed."(Eisenstein, personal communication, 2011)
We would again like to thank Bernice so much for her time and for writing her memoir.
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1 comments:
I was very lucky to have found this link again (as the site it was originally on deleted it recently). This is another interview with Bernice Eisenstein about her memoir. It covers some information that we looked at in the process of our research. It offers more information and depth to our topics and compliments the interview that we conducted with her.
http://www.mcclelland.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780771030642&view=printqa
Victoria
(sorry for it not being clickable. The site will not allow this)
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