Jacques Burko left us in the full strength of his creative powers, although he lived within several languages that he mastered perfectly (Polish, Russian, French, English, Yiddish). And yet he felt at home only in the Polish language, even if he thought and dreamed in French. After a life rich in concrete achievements—a life as an engineer, in the course of which he had, he told me, built a good hundred or so factories across the world—he had decided to change his life.
Jacques had thus become a passeur, a ferryman, between these languages he commanded and these cultures he loved. First a literary translator, from Polish and Russian into French—work for which he had been rewarded with a translation prize—he had then opened, at Buchet-Chastel, a series of world poetry: books of small format, that one can easily keep in one’s pocket. Little jewels gleaned from a multitude of languages, sorted and chosen with love before arriving in our own.
I came to know him better over the past ten years or so, ever since he was a member of the editorial committee of Plurielles, while also running Diasporiques with others. We benefited greatly from his vast knowledge of worlds, of cultures, and of the Polish, Russian and Yiddish languages. Jacques was a creator as demanding of himself as of others, and we were glad of it.
To make you understand the complexity of Jacques in his relation to language and culture, I would like to read you a few passages from an article he had entrusted to Plurielles, which appeared in 1996: a kind of autobiography.
A being from nowhere. Being from nowhere, I was at home everywhere, available to integrate myself into any milieu that did not reject me without giving me the chance to belong to it. And therefore at home in France. For years I enjoyed the French welcome; I wanted to be like those around me, simply one of them. As the years passed, the so-called classic syndrome of the native land caught up with me. I have lost the authentic; good people, pity me.
I was born in Warsaw, in 1933. The only son of parents who were Jews more than they were jewish: religion played no role that I have memorized in that household. A Polish-speaking household to a degree that now astonishes me when I try to scrutinize it. In daily life, the cooking was the affair of the Polish maid; but we ate no pork. We were not Poles of the Mosaic faith, we were Polish Jews, secular ones.
Apart from the passers-by in the street, I am not aware of having met a single Pole during that childhood. My language, my culture, my consciousness were Polish. When, at sixteen, I left Poland, a year before the baccalauréat, I had managed to steep myself in it irreversibly.
The Poles did much to make me hate and forget that language and that universe. One day they—the Poles—no longer wanted them (the Jews): a Jew would remain a Jew, whatever his language; it was in the genes, they explained. They wanted us out—all out, the assimilated like the rest. They did what was needed to put us there, wave after wave, we, the survivors of the genocide. Better to be out than dead. Many Jews died in Poland.
I did not suspect, on leaving, what a tether I carried. For years, I believed I would end up French of foreign origin, as there are Parisians of provincial extraction. No chance of it. Not even a wrench: I am not from here. French is the language I handle best. It is the only one in which I could properly express this reflection. French culture—I understand everything, I appreciate, I feel. Every subtlety is a feast to me. But I am not at home here.
How can I not understand the anger I bear against those who put me out of my home? Who refused me my roots, who denied our share of “their” literature, of “their” poetry, of “their” life. No, that would be too simple. I refuse this refusal. Return to sender. A futile return, a laughable return… For the harm is within me.
We are dying out softly in the cities of the whole world, without glory, without noise, often in comfort. Our libraries end up in the trash, drained of meaning for our children, who have their own destiny, who have found themselves a native language. We are an error of history. But we exist, and it hurts. This is why I am angry. An irremediable anger, obtuse like my pain.
All those human groups that, like mine, were driven out, that are driven each day from their homes… Often more numerous, more visible. Rarely Jewish these days, but just as worthy of compassion. Little is said of them; when they are mentioned, it is rather to extol their adaptation, their good spirit of integration. One pities the dramatic conditions of their departure, the precariousness of their beginnings elsewhere. The temptation is rarer to speak of their hidden ills; and what can be done about their longing for the lost country?
Were I a believer, I would recite the Kaddish for us all. I am not a believer; these words instead. For the material exile and for the exile of the spirit. Individuals survive for a time, but the group dies. There are dramas more visible, more remediable. Are there any more cruel?
Jacques will be missed.
To Berthe, who formed with Jacques a couple exemplary in many respects, to Judith and to all his family, we say: we are with you.