Poetry: STILL

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 6

STILL

Describe the meaning of the poem STILL in one word. 

Still - the first stanza, lines 1 -5

Across the country's plains

sealed boxcars are carrying names:

how long will they travel, how far,

will they ever leave the boxcar -

don't ask, I can't say, I don't know. 

What does the last line suggest about the attitude of the audience whom the speaker addresses and the attitude of the speaker of the poem: 'don't ask, I can't say, I don't know?' 

Still - the second stanza, lines 7 - 10

The  name Nathan beats the wall with his fist

the name Isaac sings a mad hymn,

the name Aaron is dying of thirst,

the name Sarah begs water for him. 

What do the names included in the stanza stand for?

What does the choice of diction suggest?

Still - the third stanza, lines 12 - 15

Don't jump from the boxcar, name David.

In these lands you are the name to avoid,

you're bound for defeat, you're a sign

pointing out those who must be destroyed.

Why does the speaker forbid 'the name' to jump from the box car? 

Still - the fourth stanza, lines 17 - 20

At least give your son a Slavic name:

he’ll need it. Here people count hairs

and examine the shape of your eyelids

to tell right from wrong, “ours” from “theirs.

Why does the speaker suggest 'at least give your son a Slavic name?'

What does the sentence 'here people count hairs' suggest? 

What does the last line suggest?

Still - the fifth stanza, lines 22 - 25

Don’t jump yet. Your son’s name will be Lech.

Don’t jump yet. The time’s still not right. 

Don’t jump yet. The clattering wheels

are mocked by the echoes of night. 

Why is 'the time still not right?' 

Why are 'clattering wheels mocked by the echoes of night?' 

Still - the sixth stanza, lines 27 - 30

Clouds of people passed over this plain.

Vast clouds, but they held little rain - 

just one tear, that’s a fact, just one tear.

A dark forest. The tracks disappear.

There is a Polish proverb included in this stanza: 'A big cloud gives a small rain.' Explain this proverb in the context of this stanza. 

In this context, the context of WWII ' the Jews 'were the problem'; yet, they were not problem at all. 

Still - the seventh stanza, lines 32 - 35

That’s-a-fact. The rail and the wheels.

That’s-a-fact. A forest, no fields.

That’s-a-fact. And their silence once more,

that’s-a-fact, drums on my silent door

Why 'a forest' but 'no fields?' 

Jewish population in Poland

• Ghettos - a precursor to the grouping of Jews in concentration and extermination camps; In Warsaw 30 % of the population was forced to live in 2.4 % of the city area.
• Trains - without this mass transportation, the enormity of The Holocaust would not be possible
• In 1933, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe, comprising 1.7% of the total European population. This number represented more than 60 percent of the world's Jewish population at that time, estimated at 15.3 million.
• Poland: On the eve of the German occupation of Poland in 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived there. At the end of the war, approximately 380,000 Polish Jews remained alive, the rest having been murdered, mostly in the ghettos and the six death camps: Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust. The Nazis also targeted other groups for persecution and mass murder. These groups included Soviet POWs, ethnic Poles, Roma, View This Term in the Glossary and people with disabilities, among others.

Poetic Universe of Szymborska

The poem can be interpreted on several levels but what can be felt especially strongly is the universally human meaning, here having both an existential and a deeply ethical dimension. Szymborska writes with particular consistency about the moral aspects of human history, which of course includes a long series of examples of spiritual imprisonment and different crimes against human rights – crimes that give all too clear evidence that people neither can nor wish to draw obviously correct conclusions about history’s cruel experiences. For that very reason, hatred is one of our own century’s motifs. It is hate that most often leads to war and to totally unnecessary suffering and death.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1996/szymborska/article/ 

Terminology

• Rhyme
• Meter / metrical foot– the recurrence of rhythmic stresses or accents in a regular pattern' e.g. iamb  
• stanza
• line
• assonance 
• consonance

Assonance is a literary technique where the same or similar vowel sound is repeated. (plains - names; far - boxcar).

Consonance is a stylistic literary device identified by the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words. (The name of Nathan beats the wall with his fist.)

iamb

A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. 

Auschwitz camp complex included also nearly 50 sub-camps, located mainly near industrial plants and coal mines in Upper Silesia as well as Western Lesser Poland. The territories were highly urbanized and populated with a dense network of roads and railway lines, which facilitated the escapes of prisoners. The Poles, who lived and worked in the region frequently helped them.