London is an ... "Art of Pariahs"

I have been studying in the British Library for the past two weeks and I will for the following weeks. I have been working on an essay on transnationality and as London inspires me I have been very busy writing.

I'll post here one of my favourite poems from Meena Alexander's book "The Shock of Arrival".

Art of Pariahs

Back against the kitchen stove

Draupadi sings:

In my head Beirut still burns.*

The Queen of Nubia, of God's Upper Kingdom,

the Rani of Jhansi, transfigured, raising her sword,

are players too. They have entered with me

into North America and share these walls.

We make up an art of pariahs:

Two black children spray painted white,

their eyes burning, 

a white child raped in a car

for her pale skin's sake,

an Indian child stoned by a bus shelter,

they thought her white in twilight.

Someone is knocking and knocking

but Draupadi will not let him in.

She squats by the stove and sings:

The Rani shall not sheathe her sword

nor Nubia's queen restrain her elephants

till tongues of fire wrap a tender blue,

a second skin, a solace to our children.

Come walk with me toward a broken wall

- Beirut still burns - carved into its face.

Outcastes all, let's conjure honey scraped from stones,

an underground railroad stacked with rainbow skin,

Manhattan's mixed rivers rising.

London Fields...

... where the homonymous Martin Amis's novel is NOT set.













Greetings from London! I'll be also covering the literary London...

“Because of India. Selected Poems and Fables” by Suniti Namjoshi

Rated among the best Indian contemporary poets, Suniti Namjoshi has published several books of verse. In spite of this, her best achievement are nonetheless prose pieces: unusual fables, “Feminsit Fables” (also the title of one of her books) of which there are a couple of examples in this  collection published in 1989. Being fables, Nanjoshi’s fragments – I cannot but call them such, as they are merely one page each in length – feature animals rather than humans and have a moral lesson.

My favourite fable of this book is “The One-Eyed Monkey Goes into Print”, where the monkey wants to have its book published, but she is been told that, as they are not many one-eyed monkeys, she should write about humans if she expects humans to read her book (or about crocodiles if she expects them to read her book). Consequently, the monkey leaves a blank space every time the expression ‘one-eyed monkey’ appears in her manuscript, but she is been told by the editor that it is not clear who is talking to who, therefore it is not possible to publish the book. Tired and frustrated, the monkey fills the gaps with the original words and tries with a small publishing house. Her book is accepted, but because there is no audience for such a book, she is asked to contribute with some money for the publication. At the end of the story, the monkey decides to rewrite her book with the help of her crocodile friends and she publishes it with the title ‘The Amorous Adventures of a One-Eyed Minx’.

This story tells of how the publishing world works, of course, but is also a metaphor for the situations which people like the author have to face every day. Suniti Namjoshi is in fact an Indian lesbian feminist writer, hence the choice of a one-eyed monkey as the protagonist of her fable: they are not very common, they can even be called exceptions in the natural world, as lesbians and, even more, Indian lesbians are. Yet, the monkey would like to be published and the reader clearly wants the monkey to achieve its goal. Sadly, there is hardly any audience for third-world lesbian poets. Suniti Namjoshi uses animals as a metaphor for gender and for a different sexual orientation that makes her Other. She writes in the preface to a section of poems called “The Jackass and the Lady”: ‘It’s apparent to many women that in a humanist universe, which has been male-centred historically, women are “the other”, together with the birds and the beasts and the rest of creation. And identification with the rest of creation, possibly with the whole of it, would only be logical” (pg. 29). Now I’m curious to read more of these fables and that is what I will do when I’ll look for another of Namjoshi’s books. In my opinion, they are so much better than her poetry: more original and fresh, funny and immediate, but also deep and wise.

Through the words of Suniti Namjoshi (in this book there are poems, but also short introductions to every section) the reader learns of the steps the author took before reaching a feminist and lesbian conscience. It is interesting and puzzling to learn that at the beginning, she did not even included the word ‘lesbian’ in her vocabulary, resorting to a ‘“Well, all right, do what you like, but BE DISCREET”’ (p.9) kind of attitude.

Her poetry is simple and linear (she uses everyday words exclusively), but the result is sometimes stilted. Luckily, when her poetry is more relaxed (this collection spans twenty years, with ups and downs) some interesting images come out (an upside swan, for example, has me thinking since I read that poem). In her work she often expresses the difficulty and fear of facing a real love affair and not imagined, unnreal ones (‘And if I spoke to you, what would I say? / That there’s a change? That I can still feel the ground / Shifting and giving under my feet?’), but also tackles issues such as cultural clash, or the bundle of languages spoken in contemporary India (‘The government official / speaks in English with friends, / in Hindi with servants, / and reserves his mother tongue / for his 2 Alsatian dogs’) and the role of poetry in a world of violence (‘Next time a battery / of poets will be ready’).

She often resorts to mythology – ‘Homage to Circe’, for instance, is one of my favourite poems in the collection – or literature: “Alice in Wonderland”, a book congenial to her because of ‘the sense of the absurd, the satirical devices, the effective alteration of perspective ad the subversive skills of “the outsider”’ (p.103), but also Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, attractive perhaps because of its exotic location (‘in English, things Indian became exotic’, p.42) and of course because of the presence of Caliban, a perfect Other.

All in all, it is a nice introduction to this little known poet. It provides a lot of information on how, when and where her single books were written. It is not exhaustive and one feels that a couple more fables would have been appropriate, but for that you have her other books anyway. There are some interesting ideas in the poems as well, but it is not the kind of poetry I enjoy the most: no word plays, no lyrical moments, almost no verses that stick to your mind, only down-to-earth evocations of the most common images of poetry (the mermaid, the moon, the rose). The fables are so much better: who can resist a fragment called 'The Saurian Chronicles'?

"La Linea d'Ombra" di Joseph Conrad

La mia recensione di questo libro è uscita su Paperstreet ed è disponibile a questo link. In più, vorrei suggerirvi di leggere l'introduzione al libro scritta da Roberto Saviano, scritta per l'edizione  della Biblioteca di Repubblica. Tra le varie cose che dice su questa novella (o romanzo breve?), c'è questo passaggio che vorrei riportare, non perché sia una cosa che non è stata mai detta su "La Linea d'Ombra", ma perché riassume in poche righe qual è il succo di questo testo:

Alcune narrazioni sembrano dei romanzi per l'anima. Ti spiegano come affrontare delle situazioni esistenziali, come smontare e rimontare le idee che ti sei fatto a proposito. "La Linea d'Ombra" è uno di questi: un capolavoro della letteratura che può divenire strumento pratico di consapevolezza del proprio essere e agire nel mondo. Perché racconta di un'esperienza universale, la gioventù e il passaggio all'età adulta, dalla quale però - come spiega Conrad nel libro - "ci si attende una sensazione particolare e personale: un po' di se stessi".

-- and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
          In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
          What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families
shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands!  Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

          I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
          I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops?  What price bananas?  Are you my Angel?
          I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
          We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

          Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in
an hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?
          (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
          Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

          Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
          Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Berkeley, 1955
Allen Ginsberg

“Domani nella Battaglia Pensa a Me” di Javier Marías

Alla fine del libro – per lo meno dell’edizione spagnola che ho comprato per comprovare che sono ancora capace di leggere in questa lingua – c’è un breve epilogo che non è altro che la trascrittura del discorso tenuto da Marías in occasione della consegna del premio Rómulo Gallegos. Qui ci viene rivelata una cosa molto importante riguardo al significato ultimo di questo romanzo. Marías dice: “Quizá estamos hechos en igual medida de lo que fue y de lo que pudo ser” (“Forse siamo fatti in egual misura di quello che è stato e di quello che sarebbe potuto essere”). I personaggi di “Domani nella Battaglia Pensa a Me”, infatti, si trovano spesso in situazioni precarie, frequentano luoghi a loro estranei dove sono quindi degli intrusi, e devono ricorrere alla menzogna per non farsi scoprire. A volte prendono momentaneamente il posto di un’altra persona e, soprattutto, alla fine dei conti subiranno le conseguenze dei loro sotterfugi. 

Il protagonista Victor Francés è un ghost writer (un “negro de la escritura”, come si dice in modo alquanto buffo in spagnolo) che vive della fama degli altri, scrivendo copioni per la televisione e discorsi per vari personaggi pubblici. Nel bel mezzo di un appuntamento galante con una donna sposata, l’uomo si trova in una situazione paradossale che non può che turbarlo profondamente: la donna si sente male e nel giro di pochissimo tempo, senza quasi rendersene conto, muore lasciando un bambino piccolo a dormire in una stanza piena di modellini di aeroplani e l’ospite, oramai divenuto un intruso in una casa sconosciuta, ad interrogarsi sul da farsi. Che cosa sarebbe successo se Victor Francés non si fosse trovato a cena da quella donna? Cosa sarebbe successo al bambino? E se invece Marta, che ora giace morta sul suo letto mezza svestita in modo imbarazzante, si fosse ricordata per tempo che il marito era all’estero per lavoro e avesse invitato a cena il suo “solito” amante, di cui Victor scopre l’esistenza grazie ai messaggi della segreteria telefonica che riascolta numerose volte? Sono queste alcune delle domande che si fa il protagonista-narratore, mentre continua a mentire per intrufolarsi nella vita dei familiari della donna morta per curiosità, come d’altronde facciamo noi lettori quando a forza ci intromettiamo nella vita dei personaggi dei romanzi che leggiamo, scovandone i segreti più inconfessabili e le emozioni più intime, senza vergognarcene e provando persino piacere nella continua finzione.

Javier Marías si ferma a descrivere le singole scene nel dettaglio, rallentando costantemente la narrazione, di modo che siamo costretti – almeno, io sono stata costretta – a leggere lentamente, assaporando la qualità delle riflessioni, spesso anche esistenzialiste, dell’autore. Per questo non è uno scrittore per tutti: la noia a volte è in agguato, nonostante l’indubbio valore letterario. Lo sforzo di sopportare un ritmo talmente lento da risultare addirittura snervante, credo venga ripagato dalla profondità e dalla lucidità di acune considerazioni sulla morte e sulla precarietà dell’esistenza. Chissà quanto Marías è consapevole della propria verbosità e quanto abbia lottato con editori (e lettori forse?) per non modificare questo stile, oserei dire, quasi proustiano. 

Diverse citazioni letterarie e cinematografiche arricchiscono il testo, da quella memorabile di Shakespeare tratta dal Riccardo III che dà il titolo al romanzo a quella di “Campanadas a Medianoche” di Orson Welles, che non sono, come accade troppo spesso, gettate nel testo per autocompiacimento, ma contribuiscono ad approfondire le questioni trattate nel testo. Sono dei mantra che ricorrono, facendoci riflettere su come le emozioni umane siano ricorrenti, come una frase che Shakespeare mette in bocca al fantasma di una regina assetata di vendetta possa essere valida anche nella Madrid contemporanea. Il libro tra l’altro sfrutta i benefici di un’aura da romanzo giallo: a chi appartiene, per esempio, quella voce che nella segreteria piange in modo inconsolabile e la cui voce suona irriconoscibile per il pianto? 

"Domani nella Battaglia Pensa a Me" di Javier Marías

edito da Einaudi, 1998 (12 €)

Sull’autore: Javier Marías è uno tra i massimi scrittori spagnoli contemporanei. E’ nato nel 1951 a Madrid, figlio di un filosofo che è stato un oppositore di Franco. E’ autore di numerosi romanzi, tra i quali “Tutte le Anime” (1989, tradotto in Italia solo nel 1999), “Un Cuore Così Bianco” (1992) e “Domani nella Battaglia Pensa a Me” (1994) formano la cosiddetta “Trilogia Sentimentale”. Nel 2002 ha pubblicato il primo capitolo di una seconda, ambiziosa trilogia chiamata “Il Tuo Volto Domani”, che comprende i romanzi “Febbre e Lancia”, “Ballo e Sogno” e “Veleno e Ombra e Addio”. Javier Marías è anche traduttore, in particolare di romanzi inglesi in spagnolo.

“The Country Without a Post Office” by Agha Shahid Ali

In the case of Agha Shahid Ali (1949 – 2001), the entry about the author’s country that I usually have at the beginning of every review makes me feel ill at ease, so I decided to leave that out. We are speaking of a Kashmiri-American poet, born in New Delhi in a newly independent India and forced into exile in the United States  because of the violent reality of Kashmir, which was annexed to a mostly Hindu nation, India, even if it was a predominantly Muslim region also claimed by Pakistan. To express this uneasiness, the poet uses among other things the metaphor of stamps (“I’ve brought cash, a currency of paisleys / to buy the new stamps, rare already, blank, / no nation named on them”).

The country without a post office in the title is obviously Kashmir, written in endless ways (“Kashmir, Kaschmir, Cashmere, Qashmir, Cashmir…”) to stress the elusiveness of the places of memory, which in the meantime change but in our minds are  still as we left them, even though faded and distorted by the present time we live in. In Kashmir, incidentally, several layers created by migrations, conquests and conversions have set up a multiplicity of meanings, mirrored in the name of the region and in its different transliterations. These layers, superimposed but also cause of frictions and fractures, perfectly describe the poems of Agha Shahid Ali. Outlining it, Meena Alexander speaks of a “geography of dissonance, place tearing open to reveal another place, an elsewhere the poet must claim in order to reach where he wants to go” (Poetics of Dislocation, p.9). It is thus possible that the phone rings in America and, when the conversation has finished, you hang up the phone in Kashmir, as it happens in the poem that gives its name to the entire collection.

 Those who in front of a poem always feel the urgency to understand should take note that Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry is built through associations rather than through a concrete narrative plot. Yet the poet often speaks of real events, like when in 1990 the post office of Srinagar closed down for several months because of violent insurrections against the government and the mail piled up in the house of a friend of the poet’s father.

Agha Shahid Ali’s poetry is packed with nostalgia and awareness of the fact that once you have left the native country and one’s past are irretrievable. The dreamlike quality of his poetry are triggered by this desire to grasp, to own once again the places of childhood and one’s roots. Yet it is a desire accomplished only in brief moments when several places superimpose, or in dreams, which obstinately and unreasonably bring us back to the places we have lived in, distorting them and adapting them to the concrete reality of the present. Exile, for the poet, is like the Arab language, used in prayer by all Muslims, but not always possessed or understood. In the couplets of a ghazal, Agha Shahid Ali expresses these feelings:

The only language of loss left in the world is Arabic –

These words were said to me in a language not Arabic.

[…]

From exile Mahmoud Darwish writes to the world:

You’ll all pass between the fleeting words of Arabic.

At an exhibition of miniatures, such delicate calligraphy:

Kashmiri paisleys tied into the golden hair of Arabic!

[…]

When Lorca died, they left the balconies open and saw:

his qasidas braided on the horizon, into knots of Arabic.

(“Ghazal”)

Agha Shahid Ali has introduced Americans to the poetic form of the ghazal, through his works and his translation of the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Some American poets, after him, have experimented with this poetic form in English, as García Lorca had done before with Spanish. Ali said that every couplet, repeating in its second verse the rhyme in the first couplet, is like a stone from a necklace, which should continue to shine in that vivid isolation.

This is the kind of poetry that has apt quotations, sometimes from poets also interested in the problems of nationalism and self-rule, for instance Yeats “Now and in time to be / Wherever green is worn, … / A terrible beauty is born”), or from cherished poets, like Emily Dickinson who lived in Amherst like him. Of her he reports a few lines at the beginning of a poem (“If I could bribe them by a Rose /  I'd bring them every flower that grows./ From Amherest To Cashmire”). In spite of this he has an extremely original style: he uses free verse as well as some specific poetic forms (villanelle or ghazal, for instance), thus mixing several poetic traditions. He speaks of utterly personal feelings and experiences of loss and nostalgia, but he also reflects on the ultimate meaning of history and of human conflicts.

About the author: Agha Shahid Ali was born in New Delhi in 1949. He was educated there and in Kashmir, before emigrating to America. There he was the recipient of several grants. He is the author of, among other things, "A Nostalgist's Map of America" (1991), "Call me Ishmael Tonight: A book of ghazals" (2003) and "The Country Without A Post Office" (1998). He also edited a book of ghazals in English, "Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English" (2000). He died of brain cancer in 2001.