Shṭoṭ fun palatsn: lider un poemes

Yiẓḥak Berliner, 1899–1957 (Author)

Diego Rivera, 1886–1957 (Illustrator)

Shṭoṭ fun palatsn: lider un poemes (City of Palaces: Songs and Poems)

Mexico: Der ṿeg, 1936 

The Yiddish author Yiẓḥak Berliner was born in Lodz, Poland, and immigrated to Mexico in 1922. His dynamic and socially conscious poetry resonated with the mainstream themes of the most progressive Mexican artists and authors of his generation. Among his friends was Diego Rivera, the celebrated Mexican painter and muralist, who learned about Berliner’s poetry and interest in Mexico by word of mouth. Impressed, Rivera invited him for a meeting, and the encounter led to a fruitful collaboration that resulted in this book. Berliner’s works also left a subtle but important impact on the art of Frida Kahlo, Rivera’s wife and an equally famous Mexican artist.

The modernistic, sharp style of Berliner’s poetry is amplified by Rivera’s vivid expressionist drawings. The poem Kloysters (Churches) emphasizes the enormous power of the Catholic Church in Mexico and the cruel machinery of inquisition in this country in the 16th and 17th centuries that tortured and executed those suspected of heresy—all in the guise of purifying their souls. In the center of Rivera’s illustration for the poem is a Marrano (Christianized) Jew being tortured, although Berliner does not explicitly state this in the poem. The art serves as a chilling reminder of the persecutions that these “converted” Jews who clandestinely adhered to Judaism endured. Rivera purposely portrays the Jew using anti-Semitic tropes in order to demonstrate the level of anti-Semitism at that time.