And Perhaps It Was My Dream

A key to the illustrations of Tzila Binder

One of Tzila Binders’ beautiful illustrations is an illustration for the poem Boredom from the book I Have a Secret by Miriam Yalan-Stekelis: a child’s palm holding-cupping-kissing her cheek; one line unites the cheek and palm. This line harbors yearning, the need for touch; passion lies beneath this line.

Tzila’s illustrations speak clearly without stating a word; sans lyrics but not without tune; a melody that exudes from the lines and the composition and their arrangement upon the books pages - or, ‘spreads’ in the professional jargon.

Tzila immerses you, the reader-observer, into the book - and that, in my opinion, is of her more significant aspirations, if not the strongest of them all: not to remain beside the things, rather than stroke them, unite with them; or in Alterman’s words: “I do not wish to write them / to touch their hearts I long”.

The soul’s desires moves it towards the movement of things. That is the Platonic Eros: the eyes and body follow the movements, the ears trace the sounds, and a yearning heart will encounter them. The heart has a metaphorical orientation - it leans-yearns-desires - it pines to things. The pull towards Tzila Binder’s illustrations is precisely this Eros: Tzila’s illustrations pine. Tzila longed to the books and to be snug in between the words and to draw out a line for those who wrote them - and whoever sees that, without even knowing what they are actually seeing - pines along with her to leap into the books themselves.

How does Tzila do it? How does one enter the books? Let us look at Tzila’s illustration for the inner lining of Cheerful Eyes by Fania Bergstein. The lining paper, painted and glued to the cover on the inside, both at the beginning and the end of the hardcovered book, is called Forzatz, from the German word Vorsatz, meaning: purpose, goal, reason; and there lies the idea that Forzatz placed in the beginning of the book stands as a compass guiding the way into the book. Forzatzes are like decks of ships, the decks of books. Journeys begin on deck. In order to embark on a journey in Tzila’s wake, in order to decipher the fashion of her lines, one can seemingly just open the books, observe the illustrations and analyze them - but the deep, true discoveries will occur in the flow from the original materials, to the fashion in which they appear in the books, alongside discoveries I’ve had along the way. Let me tell you about it here: in the artists bequest, resting in the Kipp Center for Hebrew Literature and Culture in Tel Aviv University, in the vastness of her work, lie the original illustrations for the book I Have a Secret by Miriam Yalan-Stekelis. But what I thought I'd find solely in the lines - Tzila’s soft and determined ones - turns out to be beyond them. Tzila drew quite the amount of illustrations featuring young girls enthralled in whatever they were doing - reading, drawing, writing or sleeping - in that matter, all these are self-portraits of Tzila, deeply concentrated while drawing (sometimes these are also portraits of the reading and observing child). In The Girl Meelik, Tzila doesn’t only sketch the ill-sleeping-dreaming girl to fit the poem - she also places her sketch in such a manner that the character pulls-directs-leads the turn to the next page.

A significant leap in my research occured when I understood that Tzila is a daughter of a book binder (as her surname heavily hints - Binder). Her father owned a binding factory on Raanan St. in Florentin, in southern Tel Aviv, and before that in Grodno, Poland (from where, in 1931, the Binder family immigrated to Tel Aviv, when Tzila was 12). And as a binder’s daughter, she had a deep familiarity with the large sheets of paper, fresh from the printer, folded to become pages in books. She knew of the string, the one sewing the paper together to a book. As an illustrator, she was accustomed to the ‘orphaned pages’ (those empty pages, as named in the professional jargon) and gave them solace with her drawings. The silhouettes she places in those so-called ‘orphaned pages’, function as onlookersanticipators of the next page. Her entire view of illustration is rooted in how the book is grasped as a space of it’s own- in a single page and in an entire fold: what joins the page on the right, what maybe sneaks away on the left, what’s facing inwards, towards the spine, what acknowledges the poetic column , when does the illustration stray from the head of the page, facing down, towards the floor. Tzila’s drawing considers the entire fold, none less than the text it brings to life. Tzila’s view of the fold is seen as an arena, a place where things happen. The child in I Have a Secret closes her eyes and recites her secret into the white hatch placed above her forehead, on the clear strip of paper that the illustration seems to outline, to the text’s right.

Tzila is the one who thoughtfully placed her drawings upon the entire fold, creating ratio, composition and orientation among the drawing, the text, and the arena of the book. The page isn’t simply the platform on which the art is placed - it is merely part of the art itself. The page is the actor while the fold is the stage - and that is one of the ways how Tzila manages to enter the books themselves. See the sketch of the girl for the poem Good Night, Chair (from Goat Song by Miriam Yalan-Stekelis). The girl is covered by the page: two lines mark the blanket; no more is needed to illustrate it, simply because it is there - the page itself is the blanket. And if the page itself is the blanket - the poem printed upon it covers the child. That is how Tzila enters the book; she immerses herself in the books and texts with her illustrations.

Her drawings for Alterman’s books are distinctly different than those in the poetess’s books. In her illustration for The Magic Overshoe by Nathan Alterman, the pages, their margins, are cluttered with her lines: plenty geese, chicks and bunnies. Alterman isn’t hers but they densely co-exist on their shared books’ folds. In books of other writers Tzila sets a special place for the emptiness, and creates a silent melody upon the paper: the swing has room to swing and for the child riding it; in those books Tzila is calm, allows herself a breath or two, to weave pining yarn and summon motion. The illustration finds its place and becomes part of existence, as it does in the beautiful prosody: “And noon/ marvelous noon upon the world/ sunset-/ cows in the pasture greet it/ and there is no ending to this upgoing road./ the ends of roads they are all only longings.”

The exhibition "Moran Shoub: Tzila Binder's Cheerful Eyes" will be held from 6 February to 6 April at the Megidd Community Center (Nordau Boulevard 63, Tel Aviv).