piątek, 22 listopada 2013
The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Gail Anderson-Dargatz, kanadyjska pisarka, wydała swoją pierwszą powieść, The Cure for Death by Lightning, w 1996 roku, za którą otrzymała nagrodę Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Nagroda ta przyznawana jest za najlepszą powieść napisaną przez mieszkańca Kolumbii Brytyjskiej. Jest to jakby klasyczna powieść o wchodzeniu w dorosłość, swoistym rytuale przejścia, odkrywaniu tego co nas prześladuje i co zrobić, aby odesłać to coś w zaświaty. Tytuł The Cure for Death by Lightning - leki na śmierć od pioruna - pochodzi z dziennika matki Beth. Styl pisarski Gail Anderson-Dargatz niektórzy określają jako "Margaret Laurence spotyka Gabriela Marqueza." Z tego co wiem, powieść nie została jeszcze przetłumaczona na język polski, więc może to jest jakiś pomysł.
Akcja powieści rozgrywa się w zapadłej mieścinie, Turtle Valley, w Kolumbii Brytyjskiej pod koniec II Wojny Światowej. Życie piętnastoletniej Beth Weeks nie tylko pełne jest dziwnych zdarzeń - koleżanka z klasy zostaje rozszarpana przez dzikie zwierzę, dzieci giną w pobliskim rezerwacie, tajemniczy osobnik śledzi Beth, ale również obfituje w nietypowych bohaterów - Nora, zmysłowa pół-Indianka, zakochana w Beth, której przyjaźń jest swoistym azylem dla Beth, Brudny Billy, pomocnik z syndromem Tourette'a oraz matka Nory, która ma dodatkowy mały palec. Jakby tego było mało, jest też ciemna strona jej własnej rodziny. Dominujący ojciec cierpiący na nerwicę frontową i niekontrolowane napady agresji oraz matka, która często rozmawia ze zmarłymi, a z domownikami porozumiewa się za pomocą albumu z wycinkami zawierającymi różne przepisy, kwieciste opisy potraw, prac ogrodniczych czy listy składników do przygotowania leków. W tym wszystkim Beth musi odnaleźć siebie oraz zmierzyć się ze swoją budzącą się i potencjalnie niebezpieczną seksualnością. W momencie porażenia piorunem w Beth dokonuje się zasadnicza zmiana.Od tego momentu, ramię, które zostało porażnone zaczyna żyć własnym życiem. Kiedy John Weeks stara się wykorzystać seksualnie córkę, spotyka się z jej zdecydowanym sprzeciwem. Ramię staje się swoistym źródłem siły i pewności siebie dla Beth. Pomimo posiadania "super-ramienia" Beth w dalszym ciągu obawia się tajemniczego człowieka, który ją śledzi - Jacka Kojota.
Kojot wprowadza elementy magiczne do powieści. Ale kim właściwie jest kojot? Jest to trickster, archetyp boga-żartownisia, przechery, półboga lub śmiertelnika, który przeciwstawia się ustalonym normom i działa wbrew ustalonemu porządkowi. Rolę jaką pełni trickster w różnych mitologiach jest łamanie zasad i dbanie o powtarzanie się tworzenia i niszczenia. Jest to łotrzyk, który zmienia swoją postać, kłamie lub kradnie, będąc jednak często pozytywną lub przynajmniej ambiwalentną postacią mitów. W niektórych mitologiach niedoskonałości świata materialnego tłumaczy się tym, że to trickster stworzył świat wbrew woli głównego bóstwa lub w jakiś sposób przeszkodził w tym, by dzieło stworzenia było doskonałe. W literaturze i mitach Indian, Kojot jest uważany za półboga, stwórcę ludzkości i dostarczyciela żywności. W wielu legendach Kojot postrzegany jest jako obrońca lub źródło zła.
Turtle Valley nie jest wyjątkiem. Kojot nawiedza miasteczko od jakiegoś czasu, jednak mieszkańcy nie wiedzą o jego obecności i o wpływie jaki na nich wywiera. To właśnie Kojot straszył w pobliskim lesie oraz porywał i zabijał dzieci z miasteczka i rezerwatu. W związku z tym, że Kojot jest duchem, aby zabić kogoś, musi przejąć kontrolę nad człowiekiem. Osobami, które najłatwiej dały sie kontrolować, były osoby słabe psychicznie, z obrażeniami głowy, pijane lub takie, które spędziły sporo czasu samotnie w lesie. Jednak były osoby, w których Kojot czuł się jak w domu i nie potrzebował zabijać. Kiedy taka osoba umierała, Kojot odchodził wraz z nią do świata duchów. W powieści The Cure for Death by Lightning, Kojot jest również metaforą wojny światowej.
środa, 6 listopada 2013
Canadian Magic Realism and Post-Colonial Discourse
I've been on here for almost two months now. I guess it's time I wrote a piece for my English-speaking friends. It's not really an academic piece of writing yet, it's more like an attempt at one. So here it is:
As far as the definition is concerned, magic realism is a term used to describe a literary mode rather than a particular genre. It is distinguished by a paradox of a union of opposites and conflicting perspectives. The opposites that are brought into play include subjects such as life and death or precolonial and post-colonial existences. The rational and supernatural are placed together in the literary work, giving different perspectives of reality. Historical and imaginary realities may and do coexist in the fiction.
As Robert Kroetsch and Linda Kenyon observe, magic realism as a literary practice seems to be closely coupled with a perception of "living on the margins," encoding within it, perhaps, concept of resistance to the imposing imperial center and its totalizing systems. Therefore, the use of the concept of magic realism, then, can itself signify resistance to central assimilation by more stable generic systems and more monumental theories of literary practice, a way of suggesting that there is something in the nature of the literature it identifies that confounds the capacities of the major systems to come to terms with it.
Given the lack of theoretical specificity or theoretical vacuum, Stephen Slemon believes that magic realism can provide a way of effecting important comparative analyses between separate post-colonial cultures, and that it can facilitate the recognition of continuities within individual cultures that the established genre system might blind us to: continuities, that is, between present-day magic realist texts and apparently very different texts written at earlier stages of a culture's literary history. To this end, Stephen Slemon has chosen two magic realist texts from within a single post-colonial culture, namely, English Canada. He has decided to focus on Jack Hodgins' The Invention of the World and Robert Kroetsch's What the Crow Said.
Since the magic realism suggests a binary opposition between the representational code of realism and fantasy. Such opposition is reflected in the language of narration where a peculiar battle between these two systems takes place. Each one of them is trying to create a different kind of fictional world from the other. It is self-evident that the ground rules of these two worlds are somewhat conflicting therefore neither one can fully come into being, and each remains suspended, locked in a continuous dialectic with the "other." Slemon suggests that despite its precise form "the act of colonization initiates a kind of double vision or 'metaphysical clash' within the colonial culture, a binary opposition withing the language that has its roots in the process of either transporting a language to a new land or imposing a foreign language on and indigenous population."(12) To put it simply, the magic realist text mirrors real conditions of speech and cognition within the actual social relations of a post-colonial culture, a reflection Gabriel Garcia Marquez calls a "speaking mirror."
In The Invention of the World Jack Hodgins portrays Vancouver Island community, especially The Revelations Colony of Truth, renamed the Revelations Trailer Park. Its depiction is always set in the real world of familiar space. However, the realism of the site is somehow impaired by the historical as well as metaphorical re-enactment of the process of colonization which, in turn, transforms the novel's regional setting into a metonymic focal point for not only English-Canadian culture but also for post-colonial culture as a whole. According to Slemon, the novel epitomizes a process of psychic liberation from Old World domination and its cognitive codes. What Slemon finds interesting is the fact that the re-enactment process triggers a release from historical domination.
Robert Kroetsch's novel, What the Crow Said, is set in a region lying "ambiguously on the border between the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan," and the people there have absolute control over the horizontal dimension whereas the "vertical world" is a mystery to them. Kroetsch uses a series of motifs such as the stranding of the dying Martin Lang between the sky and earth or JG's fatal fall from the tree to prove that human control in the second dimension represents an impossible goal. Apart from the binary opposition between horizontal control and vertical incompetence, there are also two conflicting time schemes, for example, the passage of a few seasons contains several years of calendar time. Stephen Slemon believes that the site of the novel can be seen as a metonym for post-colonial space.
There are a few things worth keeping in mind. Firstly, both texts present a sort of post colonial discourse involving the recuperation of silenced voices as axial to a "positive imagined reconstruction of reality." Secondly, both texts highlight plurality as well as the fact that marginalized presences gravitate towards the centre. Thirdly, the site of each text as a localized region epitomizes the post-colonial culture as a whole. And last but not least, each text foreshortens history "so that the forces operating in the real social relations of the culture are brought metaphorically into play."(20)
more to follow ...
Work cited:
Stephen Slemon, "Magic Realism as Post-Colonial Discourse"
As far as the definition is concerned, magic realism is a term used to describe a literary mode rather than a particular genre. It is distinguished by a paradox of a union of opposites and conflicting perspectives. The opposites that are brought into play include subjects such as life and death or precolonial and post-colonial existences. The rational and supernatural are placed together in the literary work, giving different perspectives of reality. Historical and imaginary realities may and do coexist in the fiction.
As Robert Kroetsch and Linda Kenyon observe, magic realism as a literary practice seems to be closely coupled with a perception of "living on the margins," encoding within it, perhaps, concept of resistance to the imposing imperial center and its totalizing systems. Therefore, the use of the concept of magic realism, then, can itself signify resistance to central assimilation by more stable generic systems and more monumental theories of literary practice, a way of suggesting that there is something in the nature of the literature it identifies that confounds the capacities of the major systems to come to terms with it.
Given the lack of theoretical specificity or theoretical vacuum, Stephen Slemon believes that magic realism can provide a way of effecting important comparative analyses between separate post-colonial cultures, and that it can facilitate the recognition of continuities within individual cultures that the established genre system might blind us to: continuities, that is, between present-day magic realist texts and apparently very different texts written at earlier stages of a culture's literary history. To this end, Stephen Slemon has chosen two magic realist texts from within a single post-colonial culture, namely, English Canada. He has decided to focus on Jack Hodgins' The Invention of the World and Robert Kroetsch's What the Crow Said.
Since the magic realism suggests a binary opposition between the representational code of realism and fantasy. Such opposition is reflected in the language of narration where a peculiar battle between these two systems takes place. Each one of them is trying to create a different kind of fictional world from the other. It is self-evident that the ground rules of these two worlds are somewhat conflicting therefore neither one can fully come into being, and each remains suspended, locked in a continuous dialectic with the "other." Slemon suggests that despite its precise form "the act of colonization initiates a kind of double vision or 'metaphysical clash' within the colonial culture, a binary opposition withing the language that has its roots in the process of either transporting a language to a new land or imposing a foreign language on and indigenous population."(12) To put it simply, the magic realist text mirrors real conditions of speech and cognition within the actual social relations of a post-colonial culture, a reflection Gabriel Garcia Marquez calls a "speaking mirror."
In The Invention of the World Jack Hodgins portrays Vancouver Island community, especially The Revelations Colony of Truth, renamed the Revelations Trailer Park. Its depiction is always set in the real world of familiar space. However, the realism of the site is somehow impaired by the historical as well as metaphorical re-enactment of the process of colonization which, in turn, transforms the novel's regional setting into a metonymic focal point for not only English-Canadian culture but also for post-colonial culture as a whole. According to Slemon, the novel epitomizes a process of psychic liberation from Old World domination and its cognitive codes. What Slemon finds interesting is the fact that the re-enactment process triggers a release from historical domination.
Robert Kroetsch's novel, What the Crow Said, is set in a region lying "ambiguously on the border between the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan," and the people there have absolute control over the horizontal dimension whereas the "vertical world" is a mystery to them. Kroetsch uses a series of motifs such as the stranding of the dying Martin Lang between the sky and earth or JG's fatal fall from the tree to prove that human control in the second dimension represents an impossible goal. Apart from the binary opposition between horizontal control and vertical incompetence, there are also two conflicting time schemes, for example, the passage of a few seasons contains several years of calendar time. Stephen Slemon believes that the site of the novel can be seen as a metonym for post-colonial space.
There are a few things worth keeping in mind. Firstly, both texts present a sort of post colonial discourse involving the recuperation of silenced voices as axial to a "positive imagined reconstruction of reality." Secondly, both texts highlight plurality as well as the fact that marginalized presences gravitate towards the centre. Thirdly, the site of each text as a localized region epitomizes the post-colonial culture as a whole. And last but not least, each text foreshortens history "so that the forces operating in the real social relations of the culture are brought metaphorically into play."(20)
more to follow ...
Work cited:
Stephen Slemon, "Magic Realism as Post-Colonial Discourse"
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