The Book of Yolek

“The Book of Yolek” is a poem by Anthony Hecht, one of America’s most distinguished 20th-century poets. It was published in 1990 in Hecht’s collection The Transparent Man and reprinted in his Collected Later Poems (2003). The poem is a sestina, a complex poetic form involving the repetition, in a different order, of the final words of each line as the end words of each stanza throughout the poem. “The Book of Yolek” is about the Holocaust that took place during World War II, in which six million Jews died. The poem focuses on a five-year-old Jewish boy named Yolek and the day, August 5, 1942, he was made to walk to a concentration camp, along with other children, where he would be killed. Hecht wrote a number of poems about World War II and the Holocaust, and this poem is a searing evocation, through the grim fate of one child, of what took place in the Nazi camps.

Content Warning: This guide features discussion of the Holocaust and Nazi concentration camps.

Poet Biography

American poet and critic Anthony Hecht was born in New York City on January 16, 1923. His parents were of German Jewish ancestry; his father was a banker. Hecht attended Bard College, New York, where he began reading 20th-century poetry and decided that he wanted to become a poet. His education was disrupted, however, by World War II. In the spring of 1943, Hecht enlisted in the US Army and the following year was sent to Europe as a member of the 97th Infantry Division. He fought in Germany, France, and Czechoslovakia, and in April 1945 his division helped to liberate Flossenbürg concentration camp. Hecht witnessed the extreme suffering of the prisoners there and was profoundly shocked by the experience. When the allies entered the camp, 800 prisoners were sick with typhus and 80 were dying every day. Because Hecht knew some French and German, he was temporarily assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, in which capacity he conducted interviews with many of the prisoners to learn what had happened to them. Hecht later told Philip Hoy in an interview that “The place, the suffering, the prisoners’ accounts were beyond comprehension. For years after I would wake shrieking” (Anthony Hecht in Conversation with Philip Hoy, by Philip Hoy, Between the Lines, 2004, p. 26).

After the war, Hecht served in Japan, which was under American occupation, until he returned to the United States in 1946. He attended Kenyon College, Ohio, where he finished his degree in English. He started teaching at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop but did not long continue. He had post-traumatic stress disorder following his wartime experiences and sought treatment through psychoanalysis. When he returned to academic life, he enrolled at Columbia University, from which he received a master’s degree in 1950. The following year, he was awarded a Prix de Rome fellowship and spent a year in Rome, working on his writing. His first poetry collection was A Summoning of Stones, in 1954, which showed his mastery of traditional poetic forms and complex, intricate rhyme patterns. His second collection, The Hard Hours (1967), in which he shaped into poetry much of his experience in World War II, made his reputation. It received excellent reviews and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1968.

Hecht taught poetry at the University of Rochester from 1967 to 1985. Over the years he also taught courses at Smith College, Bard College, Harvard University, Georgetown University, and Yale University. From 1982 to 1984, he was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. His third poetry collection, Millions of Strange Shadows, was published in 1977, followed by The Venetian Vespers (1979) and The Transparent Man (1990). The latter collection contained “The Book of Yolek.” Collected Earlier Poems was also published in 1990. Hecht’s later poetry publications were Flight Among the Tombs (1998), The Darkness and the Light (2001), and Collected Later Poems (2003). He also wrote literary criticism including Obbligati (1986) and Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mysteries of Poetry (2003).

He received many literary awards, including the Bollingen Prize in 1983, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1988, the Wallace Stevens Award in 1997, and the 1999/2000 Frost Medal.

Hecht married twice. He had two sons from his first marriage and one son with his second wife, Helen D’Alessandro.

Hecht died on October 20, 2004, at his home in Washington, D. C. One month later, he was awarded the National Medal of the Arts.

Poem Text

Hecht, Anthony. “The Book of Yolek.” 1990. Caladesishore.com.

Summary

The poem has an epigraph in German, which is translated into English at the bottom of the poem. The epigraph is a quotation from the New Testament gospel of John, in the account of the trial of Jesus. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate is reluctant to condemn Jesus, but the Jewish priests insist that he should be put to death because he claimed to be the Son of God, which they declare to be against Jewish law.

In Stanza 1, the speaker paints an idyllic picture of being out camping somewhere in the summer. He has just finished his evening meal of barbecued trout and is going for a walk along a trail. He has no particular destination in mind, he is just happy to be away from home, likely on vacation. He has set up camp in the hills and is enjoying the glorious sunset.

In Stanza 2, the speaker relates a pleasant memory of an incident that took place in his childhood. He remembers a meal he had and the bonfire at summer camp. He also remembers that he got lost on a nature walk and, perhaps a little scared, thought of his home. These are just his private memories; no one else knows of them.

Stanza 3 marks a turn in the poem. Line 1 provides an exact date: August 5, 1942. This was during World War II. The speaker’s mind wanders to what happened on that day in Europe. It was hot, and soldiers came at dawn to an orphanage for Jewish children. They carried rifles. The children were eating a meal of bread and soup but were forced to stop eating. They were lined up and had to walk in formation to a “special camp” (Line 18).

In Stanza 4, the speaker states that he has often thought about that camp, as if he is somehow compelled to do so. He has often thought also of the children who were forced to walk. He mentions one child in particular, a five-year-old boy named Yolek. Yolek was not very healthy, with “bad lungs” (Line 22), but like the other children he had to abandon his meal and walk with the others, armed guards on either side of him.

Stanza 5 returns briefly to the present. The speaker says that August is approaching again, and his memory of what happened to Yolek will return with that month. He then elaborates on that memory. The camp had electrified fences and the prisoners, including Yolek, were tattooed with a number, to identify them. The day that the children walked to the camp was extremely hot. The speaker repeats in the final line that they were all forced to take that “terrible walk” (Line 30).

In Stanza 6, the speaker says that wherever he is, whether walking alone or being in a crowd, whether he is at home or somewhere far away, he will remember that day. He cannot avoid the memory, whatever else he is doing. He will remember what he has read about the smell of the smoke in the camp, and the loudspeakers. Nor can the speaker escape the memory of the boy Yolek. The memory of him will come, wherever the speaker is, and sometimes his meal will be interrupted (just as Yolek’s meal was on that fateful day).

In the envoy (the final three lines of the poem), he tells himself to prepare to receive Yolek in his home. It seems that Yolek has acquired a kind of ghostly presence. Although he was killed in the concentration camp, he will someday walk into the house just as the speaker is sitting down for a meal.