The Book of Yolek

The epigraph is a quotation from the gospel of John, chapter 19, verse 7. Hecht presents it in the German translation by Martin Luther, first published in 1522. He has a reason for choosing this version of the text. Luther was known to be antisemitic, and this text, as well as other passages from the gospel of John, have been used over the centuries to justify antisemitic beliefs and hostile actions against Jews. The antisemitic interpretation of the passage is that Jewish people were responsible for Jesus’s death; therefore, they deserve retribution. The notion that Jews are the enemies of Christianity contributed to the antisemitism in Germany that eventually led to the Holocaust. Hecht alludes to this discomforting truth simply by using John 19:7 as an epigraph without further comment.

In a letter dated September 1, 1989, Hecht clarifies the structure of the poem. “It is an interior monologue, and the speaker’s mind wanders in the course of the poem, turning from personal recollection to matters of which he has read” (quoted by Jonathan F. S. Post in A Thickness of Particulars: The Poetry of Anthony Hecht, Oxford University Press, 2015, p.