4 Women transcript

Kaethe Kollwitz

I was the fifth child in our family. At the time of my birth we were living in Koenigsberg at Number 9 Weidendamm. I dimly remember a room in which I was doing pen drawings, but what I recall most distinctly are the yards and gardens. By passing through a front garden we came to a large yard that extended down to the Pregel River. There the flat brick barges docked and the bricks were unloaded in the yard and so piled that there were hollow spaces in which we played house. Running alongside the yard was another garden, also reaching to the river, and at its end there was a round pavilion built out over the water. I remember once hearing my Aunt Lina, who was quite young, singing a lovely but very sad song in that pavilion.

...another yard was connected with ours by a narrow lane between the buildings. I have very strong and lively memories of this other yard. At the end of it, along the Pregel, there was a raft for rinsing laundry. A dead girl was washed onto this raft one day and taken away in the 'poor hearse'. I can still see the terrifying hearse and coffin.

April 1910

I am gradually approaching the period in my life when work comes first...

Sometimes, infatuated with my work, I think I am far surpassing myself. But after a 2 hour pause - where is the stroke of genius?

September, 1913

Sometimes it seems to me that all I lack is moral courage. I do not fly because I do not dare to throw myself into the air...

September 30, 1914

Cold, cloudy, autumnal weather. The grave mood that comes over one when one knows: there is war...

Jan.17, 1916

Where are my children now?...my right son and my left son, as they called themselves. One dead and one so far away and I can't help him…

Feb 21, 1916

When I thought about my work, I vowed that I would be more scrupulous than ever in 'giving the honour to God', that is, in being wholly genuine and sincere.

August 22, 1916

Made a drawing: the mother letting her dead soon slide into her arms...I am seeking him. As if I had to find him in the work.

Oct. 11, 1916

This frightful insanity—the youth of Europe hurling themselves at one another. Peter, Erich, Richard all have subordinated their lives to the idea of patriotism.

Aug. 21, 1921

My desire for external experiences has greatly diminished of late. It used to be that I thought such experiences might help my work. Now that is no longer the case. Whether and how I am able to work is altogether independent of this kind of experience. The readiness forms in waves inside myself; I need only be on the alert for when the tide at last begins to rise again.

Easter 1932

For a short time I have once more had the glorious feeling of happiness, that happiness which cannot be compared with anything else, which springs from being able to cope with one's work.

New Year's 1932

Age remains age, that is, it pains, torments and subdues.

Aug. 1934

I thought that now that I am really old I might be able to handle the theme of death in a way that would plumb depths. But this is not the case. …The menace is more stimulating when you are not confronting it from close-up. When it is upon you, you do not see its full extent; in fact, you no longer have such respect for it.

Eleanor Roosevelt

'You really must slow down'. This is becoming the repeated refrain of my children and all my friends.

In the beginning, because I felt, as only a young girl can feel it, all the pain of being an ugly duckling, I was not only timid, I was afraid. Afraid of almost everything, I think: of mice, of the dark, of imaginary dangers, of my own inadequacy. My chief objective as a girl was to do my duty — my duty as laid down for me by other people.

On the whole, I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the President's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

One curious thing is that I have always seen life personally; that is, my interest or sympathy or indignation is not aroused by an abstract cause but by the plight of a single person whom I have seen with my own eyes.

More and more I think people are coming to realize that what affects an individual affects mankind.

Our obligation to the world is, primarily, our obligation to our own future.

Oh, the world is a sad place to live these days, ...It is not enough to hate war. We must have power to build for peace and we must be willing to make the sacrifices which that entails.

It is not only in war that we fight for freedom.

Waste and stupidity! Why can't we sit down together with a board of arbitration, honestly state our difficulties, and try to work out a sane method of procedure?

We must build up the best possible community services so that whatever problems have to be met will be met by the community and not the lone individual.

Our days continue to be bright and sunny and the moon is so glorious at night it seems a pity not to be 18 again and subject to its influence.

Franklin might have been happier with a wife who was completely uncritical. That I was never able to be, and he had to find it in other people. Nevertheless, I think I sometimes acted as a spur, even though the spurring was not always wanted or welcome.

Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another's failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves.

When I believe, after weighing the evidence, that what I am doing is right I go ahead and try to dismiss from my mind the attitude of those who are hostile. I don't see how else one can live.

I enjoy a good fight and I could not, at any age, really be contented to take my place in a warm corner by the fireside and simply look on.

Golda Meir

Right after the war, when anti-Semitic pogroms broke out in the Ukraine and Poland, I helped to organize a protest march down one of Milwaukee's main streets... I think it was while we were marching through town that day that I realized I could no longer postpone a final decision about Palestine... Palestine, I felt, not parades in Milwaukee, was the only real, meaningful answer to murderous mobs.

In 1918, when elections to the Jewish Congress were held… feelings ran high. If you wanted to campaign among Jews, I decided, the logical place to locate yourself was the neighbourhood synagogue... But since only men were allowed to address the congregation, I put up a box just outside the synagogue, and people walking out on their way home had no alternative other than to hear at least part of what I had to say about the Labour-Zionist platform.

On 7 March 1969 the Central Committee of the Labour Party voted to nominate me as prime minister. I have often been asked how I felt at that moment, and I wish I had a poetic answer to the question. I know that tears rolled down my cheeks and that I held my head in my hands when the voting was over, but all that I recall about my feelings is that I was dazed. I had never planned to be prime minister; I had never planned any position, in fact. I had planned to come to Palestine, to go to Merhavia, to be active in the Labour movement. But the position I was now to occupy? That never. I only knew that now I would have to make decisions every day that would affect the lives of millions of people, and I think that is why I cried. But there wasn’t much time for reflection, and any thoughts I had about the path that had begun in Kiev and led me to the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem had to wait. Today, when I can take time for those reflections, I have no appetite for them. I became prime minister because that was how it was, in the same way that my milkman became an officer in command of an outpost on Mount Hermon. Neither of us had any particular relish for the job, but we both did it as well as we could.

My term in office began with one war and ended with another. The very first instruction I gave to anyone in my capacity as prime minister was to tell my military secretary that I was to be informed as soon as the reports from any military action came in - even if it was in the middle of the night. When the news was bad, of course, I couldn't fall asleep again...Sometimes the bodyguards outside the house would see that the kitchen light was on at 4 a.m., and one of them would look in to make sure that I was alright. I'd make us both a cup of tea and we'd talk about what was happening at the canal or in the north...

I suppose that the little I recall of my early childhood in Russia, my first 8 years, sums up my beginnings-the terrible hardships my family suffered with poverty, with cold, with hunger and fear-and I suppose my recollection of being frightened is the clearest of all my memories... It was a feeling that I was to know again many times during my life-the fear and frustration, the consciousness of being different and the profound instinctive belief that if one wanted to survive one had to take effective action about it personally.

I have never felt—not even for a minute—any nostalgia for the past into which I was born, though it deeply coloured and affected my life and my convictions that all men, women and children everywhere, and whoever they are, are entitled to spend their lives productively and free of humiliation...

Agnes Martin

Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.

The artist lives by perception, what we make is what we feel. The making of something is not just construction... it's all about feeling... feeling and recognition.

I say to my mind, what am I going to paint next? Then I wait for the inspiration. The painting comes into my mind and I can see it. You have to wait if you're going to be inspired... you have to clear out your mind, to have a quiet and empty mind.

In New York, I would stay in bed until late afternoon sometimes, waiting for inspiration so I could get up and paint. Then, I would start painting and be interrupted by a phone call or visitor. When I went back to painting, I would not have an idea of what my inspiration was... I came to a place of recognition of confusion that had to be solved... I had to leave... to have my mind to myself.

For an artist this is the only way. There is no help anywhere. He must listen to his own mind.

You must find your own way.

The solitary life is full of terrors... It is hard to realize at the time of helplessness that that is the time to be awake and aware.

Happiness is being on the beam with life—to feel the pull of life.

We are in the midst of reality responding with joy. It is an absolutely satisfying experience but extremely elusive.