Monika Shafi's Talk

Professor Shafi's presentation of the life and works of Gertrud Kolmar was very interesting. As an English major and a creative writer myself, I love to find out about how the personal life of an author influenced and shaped their work. Kolmar's integration of an autobiographical element into her seemingly general poetry is genius--it enables the reader to see the bigger picture and not judge the works solely by Kolmar's personal bias, but it also weaves a strong, identifiable female voice into the text. As a female Jewish artist, Kolmar seemed to be working against all arenas of society at the time she was writing; her feelings of isolation and hopelessness were, without a doubt, not only in her head.

I think the quote that Professor Shafi included at the end of her presentation was most telling of Kolmar's true aspirations. In a letter to her sister on July 19th, 1942, Kolmar wrote: “The earlier decades when we were doing ‘very well’ were not for me, they demanded qualities of a gregarious, social kind that, for the most part, I lacked; but what the present demands—that I have in every way; I am a good match for today.” Kolmar knew that she could never fit in. Her physical appearance, her artistic inclinations, and her attachment to her Jewish identity all prohibited her from finding happiness in much of her life, even when her family was "doing very well". But, from what Professor Shafi told us and in looking at this quote, I don't believe Kolmar ever truly had a problem with this. She knew that she was meant to be an outsider, and that she was given a rare artistic gift. And, while it may have caused her some emotional strife, she also embraced it. When it came time for her to leave, she chose to stay with her elderly father, even though she knew that she was living in constant danger. As a female Jewish artist, one of the few ways that Kolmar had to preserve her legacy was through her literature, through words that could never fade away. She almost seemed to know that she was destined to a premature death, and if not completely committed to the idea of self-sacrifice, she certainly seemed to accept it.