Upon Reading M.F.K. Fisher

From: The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher

"The prettifiers of human passion choose to think that a man who has just watched his true love die is lifted above such ugly things as food, that he is exalted by his grief, that his mind dwells exclusively on thoughts of eternity and the hereafter...the truth is that most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers; they want a steak. Preferably they need it rare, grilled, heavily salted, for that way it is most easily digested, and most quickly turned into the glandular whip their tired adrenals cry for...

Underneath the anguish of death and pain and ugliness are the facts of hunger and unquenchable life, shining, peaceful. It is as if our bodies, wiser than we who wear them, call out for encouragement, strength and, in spite of us and of the patterns of proper behaviour we have learned, compel us to answer, and to eat."



So..I have finished reading all of M.F.K. Fisher's works and have never read anything more lucent. However, in trying to find anything personal about her I've come to the conclusion that she was in fact evasive if not vague about what she has written. It ocurred to me that this is because it is in the past. She never read reviews, she rarely rewrote, and never reread finished work.

In my obsessive research I learned that when a psychoanalyst friend suggested that she look at her past work, Fisher felt sick. Why?

Judith Jones, Mrs. Fisher's editor at Knopf, who coped with her idiosyncrasies said, "she simply sets very high standards. She is a perfectionist, with great modesty and an old-fashioned sense of propriety."

M.F.K. said, "Well, I get so self-critical, I get sick. I think, I have to pull this thing back, but I can't; it is over. Writing is the only thing I know how to do, the only thing that makes me very happy. I write all the time--my house is bulging with things that will never be printed If we survive another fifty years, these pieces might have some value--they might not. I don't care. I really don't care."

There was something about reading this quote this weekend that completely freed me up to the point of feeling absolutely reckless. Isn't that great?

Then there's this:

"I have known a lot of writers," she wrote, "and have always been basically amused by their frantic insistence on being WRITERS."

The simplicity of that sentence. The artfulness of its construction. Great art comes from indirection.

Read "How to Cook a Wolf" or my absolute favorite, "The Gastronomical Me". What porn is to some people, Fisher's work is to me.

A Forgotten Stetl

My latest project has been to recreate the town Antos, (Antosia), Poland, where my mother, Rose, was taken by the Russians to Siberia in 1939. It has been all but forgotten, along with its townfolk.

My mother's maiden name was Czyzyk (Sparrow). When she was fifteen years old she married Stanislas Pienonzek. I recently found out that a Piotr Pienonzek is one of the last of that family line to still live in Antosia, which is now considered part of the Ukraine in the Brodsky Oblast.

I have been visiting my mother on many nights to ask her about the town--dilligently working on a street map of it. I have had my mother recall all the townspeople's names and where they lived. Sometimes the conversations of lost neighbors and childhood memories have made us laugh and at other times It's been quite painful. I believe that my hard-copy of the street map is sodden with my mother's tears. I'm posting it for the benefit of other people of my generation who have family from Antosia. Some may be looking for Kolonia Antos, the name the Poles gave it.

In its heyday, Antos was a verdant and fecund place agriculturally with the land given to men who had fought during World War I. It was the way the Polish government thanked its returning soldiers. Unfortunately my grandfather came back with a bullet lodged in his skull and my grandmother worked the land on her own. How hard it must have been seeing as she was pregnant with my mother...


My grandfather died before my mother was born and is buried in Leszniow on the grounds of a Polish chapel that is being reconsecrated this June 2008. I'd like to put flowers on his grave and feel a huge desire to see and know where my people come from. It's not really desire but a yearning. In Polish we have a word for it. It describes a bittersweet feeling of sorrow. It is called "Zal".

A Tribute To My Mother and Grandmother

On February 10th, 1939 the Russian NKVD invaded my grandmother Anna's farm in Antosia, Poland. And so began a horrific journey by train, with my mother Rozalia in tow, to Siberia.

My mother found herself in a gulag in Archangelsk, while my grandmother was taken further north to the coldest part of the Arctic Circle. My mother was one of 500 thousand human beings who survived out of the original 1.7 million deported-- but she never saw my grandmother or homeland again...

This is my tribute.

By the Light of the Candle

A cold, frosty window against the darkness of the night
A lonely candle burns with a small flickering light
A small girl watches the flame with curious eyes
Mother, you lit this candle, can you tell me why?

I lit the candle to remember the town I knew
people I lived with when I was as little as you
This is for my mother who never had the chance to see
her homeland again and a new world across the sea.

We lived in a time when our Polish freedoms were taken
On a cold winter night, all humanity forsaken.
I only knew them from the stories that were told
as they struggled to survive with their hunger in the bitter cold.

We never had the chance to get back what we knew
our lives were destroyed and there was nothing we could do
our last steps were taken as we struggled to return
And I sit with my so many memories as the candle I lit burns.

I miss their warm hugs that they could have given me
If I had been given just another chance to see
But in my heart I feel all their love stream through
And from my heart I'll try to give Babcia to you.

She was a warrior of faith who loved her land
Her fate was unnecessary and hard to understand
She was proud and gentle and strong
Trapped in a world where everything went wrong.

When each February comes, please remember this light
And the story I told you about those people tonight
May the candle burn bright and the memories survive,
Of Babcia, the Siberaki, as if they're alive.

*Kindly light a candle in memory of the deported Siberaki. Thank you to Nusia Goldbach and Mark Karaczun, who share my new-found family tree in what was once Kolonia Antos. And to Hanna Kaczanowska 2007.