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 Eva Hoffman: wanted English to be ‘a fully expressive instrument’ |
A virtuosity shaped by migration
Simon Wroe hears how Eva Hoffman’s plans to be a concert pianist were diverted to writing when she left Poland for the West
AT the age of seven, when her toes could touch the pedals, Eva Hoffman started piano lessons. A quiet lady called Mrs Witeszczak taught her on a polished baby grand in sombre, post-war Krakow; the year was 1952.
Her Polish parents, who had survived the Holocaust by hiding in a bunker in the Ukranian forest, thought it a suitable, middle-class interest for their child.
Hoffman fell in love. Playing required precision and discipline, and “a great honesty of craft”. In her book Exit into History (1994), she would later add the Polish word “polot” – a sense of spark and inspiration – to that list.
Next week, Hoffman, now 63, will explore the relationship between art and craft with the academic and cellist Richard Sennett as part of Jewish Book Week. Yet she does so as a writer rather than a pianist.
Although groomed for the concert hall in her youth, everything was “confused and diverted” by her family’s emigration to Canada when she was 13.
The celebrated Jewish author, who lives in Belsize Park, describes immigration as a “big monkey wrench”, a heavy, forceful instrument that shifted her priorities away from music and towards the enormous importance of language.
In the move to an English-speaking country, she had lost the power of communication, and she suddenly saw how dim a world without language was.
“Immigration was very formative in my understanding of how each of us is deeply shaped by the culture and language of the place in which we live.”
“I wanted English to become a fully expressive instrument. For that, I needed to learn not only its vocabulary and grammar, but its inflections and rhythms, its specific music,” she says.
She began writing a diary when she was 14 to better express the world. From that first teenage diary entry, writing has allowed Hoffman, a former academic and New York Times journalist, to delve into the collective experience of events, to “explore, decode and deepen the terrain of memory”.
In Shtetl (1997), she studies the ingrained anti-Semitism in the relationship between Jews and Poles living side by side in Poland; in Exit into History, it is the aftermath of the “Velvet Revolutions”.
“I’ve always tried to bring the person into interaction with the world outside and to think about how any self is affected by the world. I’m very interested in the intersection between sensibility and history.”
Writing, she says, has allowed her to “make something from within her particular voice” in a way she did not feel she could through performance.
“I felt, in a retrospective sense, that it would have been very difficult to contribute something new. We have absolutely fabulous pianists and recordings of the piano repertoire.”
Hoffman makes it clear that she has not abandoned music, however. It is the subject of her latest novel, Illuminations (Harvill Secker £16.99) and continues to inform her writing as a whole.
“Music is a medium in which many things can be held together in the full picture and in the full pattern. It is something that music can do wonderfully, and that is a kind of subliminal criterion and standard for me as I write.”
And between novels, when she is not working, there’s still a grand piano in Hoffman’s living room that she likes to play.
Highlights of the week
Sunday February 22:
8.30pm: The Doctor in the House: Jonathan Miller interviewed by Mark Lawson. Doctor, opera director, writer... Miller’s various interests will be uncovered as he discusses his passions and bêtes noires in conversation with journalist Mark Lawson.
Tuesday February 24:
7pm: Frederic Raphael on ‘Fame and Fortune’. Chicago-born Raphael was told by his father to grow up being an English gentleman rather than an American Jew. He has won an Oscar for his film scripts and will be talking to Bryan Cheyette about identity, writing for the cinema and the problems of translating ancient Greek. Includes readings by actor Tom Conti.
Thursday February 26:
6pm: The Jazz Baroness. Film-maker Hannah Rothschild tells the story of her great-aunt Pannonica Rothschild who headed from France to New York in the 1950s. Throwing off the burden of her family’s surname, she befriended Charlie Parker, became his patron – he died in her hotel room. She also was
close to jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, who she nursed through his final months.
Saturday February 28:
8pm: Yiddish cabaret takes centre stage with Michael Wex and David Schneider. Based on the eclectic 1920s Yiddish inspired shows and featuring tales, acts of magic and music it promises to be an insightful evening.
Sunday March 1:
2pm: Pursuing Justice: Thomas Buergenthal with Phillipe Sands. Buergenthal is one of 15 judges at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. He talks with Phillipe Sands of his journey from Auschwitz to the Hague.
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