New York, New York ... sau in cautarea lui Neverland

I want to wake up in that city/That doesn’t sleep/And find that I’m the king of the hill/Top of the head.

"Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"/

(Emma Lazarus - the poem written on the Statue of Liberty)

Cum a trecut ceva vreme de cand nu m-am mai plimbat pe aici, cum am incercat sa arat ca identitatea/istoria unei natiuni e doar apa de ploaie in fata identitatii/istoriei individului, cum oboseala ce m-a acaparat in ultimul timp pare a fi rupta dintr-un rand din cartea lui O’Neill, si cum cica disertatia mea [fara prof’, fara subiect] ar avea legatura cu imigrarea/felul in care vedem un oras, m-am gandit sa visez acum la New York.

Alunec rapid pe-o panta a amintirilor si-mi amintesc de-un alt eu ... ti se intampla si tie cateodata? Imi amintesc de-un eu mai ambitios, mai tanar, ma increzator ... sau uneori, mai batran, mai lenes, mai pesimist. Alunec printre evenimentele de azi si ma trezesc in fata celei ce visa candva la o schimbare, la cea care visa la un alt oras, la o alta lume, la un nou inceput ... ce s-a schimbat oare intre timp?  O atmosfera, un decor, un gand, o rafala de vant. E ca si cum m-as uita intr-o camera plina de oglinzi, ce reflecta alte parti din mine, alte perioade, alte stadii ... a te schimba sau a nu te schimba, a-ti recunoaste sau a nu-ti recunoaste trecutul e o alta tema de gandire (prezenta de asemenea si-n cartea lui O'Neill), azi vreau sa ma gandesc la New York. La New York-ul din cartea lui Joseph O’Neill.

Cartea lui Josehp O’Neill, Netherland, (roman distins cu PEN/FAULKNER AWARD, si nominalizat la Booker Prize 2008) e una dintre cartile not for college, citita printre Black Boy, Beloved, The Joy Luck Club, Ceremony, si alte cateva. E o carte, pentru mine, in primul rand despre prietenie, apoi despre New York si imigrare, despre omul matur, care descopera o lume fara dulcegarii si alte cateva mituri, despre cricket (desi eu una ii las pe altii sa-si spuna opinia), despre 9/11, despre dezradacinare, despre rebuilding, reshaping ... Un roman cu o furie mocnita, ascunsa in actiune si printre cuvinte, care te invata sa privesti lucrurile (viata, dragostea, prietenia, orasul) din mai multe unghiuri, cu mai multe umbre si culori.

Unul dintre lucrurile pe care le-am admirat la aceasta carte a fost ironia subtila, care incepe inca din titlu. Desi o buna parte din carte este despre New York, si doar o amintire sau doua ne duce pe strazile Olandei, romanul, plecand de la o istorie a orasului american, este numit Netherland. Pe mine una mereu Netherland ma duce cu gandul la Neverland, la lumea lui Peter Pan, unde totul este posibil ... asa cum New York-ul este vazut de multi dintre noi. Numai ca povestea lui Hans ne arata ca povestea unui oras, ca felul in care vedem lucrurile din jurul nostru, nu tin atat de traditia/istoria locului respectiv, ci de propria stare, poveste, traire, etc. Hans porneste in calatoria lui, trezindu-se la jumatatea drumului intr-un oras al terorii, singur, parasit de sotie, de fiu, de legaturile cu Olanda/Londra, intr-un oras al tuturor, al ironiilor, al miscarii, si al vietii. Pentru el insa, si alte cateva personaje, tot focul si toata aceasta miscare se estompeaza intr-un cerc repetitiv, de la o incercare (mereu esuata) de a face o schimbare, pana la indiferenta adusa de suferinta.

Am spus la inceput ca pentru mine, acest roman este si o carte a prieteniei (masculine). Motto-ul cartii,

„Mi s-a aparut in vis un oras care nu poate fi biruit, chiar daca s-ar napusti/asupra lui tot restul pamantului, si era noul Oras al Prietenilor ...” (Whitman/Am visat un vis)

anunta bizara prietenie intre Hans si Chuck, personaj ce mi-a amintit de Dean M. Din The Road, a lui Kerouac (Chuck fiind de altfel motivul rememorarii perioadei din New York).   De asemenea:

„Trebuie sa-i declar ei, sau tuturor celor interesati, ca sunt extrem de indurerat? Ca, desi 2 ani poate ca nu-mi fusese dor de el, acum imi lipsea teribil? Trebuie sa le spun ca l-am iubit pe Chuck? Asa ar trebui?” (340)

Ce mi-a ramas dupa citirea romanului, pe langa ideile pentru disertatie, e refrenul lui Frank Sinatra: New York, New York ... mi-a ramas un gust al New York-ului, al orasului viselor, al nostalgiei. Mi-a ramas ideea identitatii personale, mult mai puternica decat identitatea sociala, un regret subtil pentru neincrederea din mine, neincredere ce-mi asigura ca New York-ul si toata America vor ramane pentru mine un Neverland mult prea indepartat.

 

"Cand nu ma ia somnul, noaptea" ...

Sunt zile ciudate. Zile in care iti omori Timpul, in care gasesti orice altceva de facut decat ceea ce e esential. Zile in care valsezi cu propriul hybris, si te intrebi daca acest vals va avea vreodata un sfarsit. Zile in care oamenii din jurul tau iti arata cat de singura esti, in care totul te enerveaza, de la lucrurile cele mai banale pana la lucrurile la care ai cedat de mult. De la oamenii pe care-i suporti doar de dragul oamenilor la care tii, oameni la care vrei sa urli, sa le raspunzi ironic, sa le spui ce simti despre toata ipocrizia lor si tot tacamul, sa stai cat mai departe de ei, pana la detaliile pe care acum, doar acum, ai vrea sa fie intelese si respectate.

Mi-e dor de oameni, de pagini vechi, de chipuri, flori sau nori. Pentru ca in dictionarul meu sufletesc a-ti fi dor = a iubi. Astazi mi-a fost dor de o cana de cafea in mijlocul oamenilor, amaruie si fierbinte, cu o carte-n fata. Sa ascult o muzica data poate prea tare, sa stau undeva in spate, sa ma uit la oameni, sa ma frig ca intotdeauna cu o cafea prea fierbinte, sa fiu singura cu o carte si cu o cana de cafea. Pentru ca a trecut prea mult de cand nu am mai facut asta, pentru ca astazi m-am saturat sa ma mai gandesc la alte lucruri ... Mi-a fost prea dor de asta astazi, acum, atat de dor incat imi pare rau ca am urcat doua etaje, ca am intrat intr-o sala pe jumatate plina, langa oameni … de care in astfel de zile nu-i vreau langa tine. Sunt unii care atunci cand nu sunt ok incep sa vorbeasca cu oricine despre problemele lor; sunt altii care se indeparteaza de cei dragi si vorbesc cu restul populatiei despre lucruri de doi bani, pentru a uita. Ceea ce doare. Pentru unii ca mine, a spune “te rog” face mai mult decat teoriile oricui, pentru mine, in astfel de zile, cand valsez cu-n hybris brat la brat, nu mai suport sa stau langa cei insignifianti. Si ar fi frumos, dragut, MINUNAT, daca macar in astfel de zile i-am simti pe cei dragi langa noi, nu? Pentru oameni ca mine.

Si in astfel de zile, mai descoperi din cand in cand, atunci cand te certi cu propria molesiune, o carticica diferita, de care-ti aminteste de timpuri vechi. Enea rănit, de Jeton Neziraj. O altfel de carte, diferita de cele cunoscute. O carte de teatru, micuta, care aminteste puternic de Marin Sorescu, de Iona, si de ce nu, de astfel de zile. Un scriitor albanez, tanar, care preda dramaturgie contemporana la o Facultate de Arte. O piesa greluta, plina de simboluri, care ar merita sa fie citita cu atentie.

"Când nu mă ia somnul noaptea, înainte să-mi închid ochii, iau şi mănânc o hartă de istorie, cu puţină apă, desigur … Cu puţină apă, deoarece vârfurile munţilor şi deşerturile îmi irită gâtul … Nu-i că mănânc toată harta dintr-o dată. De obicei, o impart în bucăţi mai mici. Încerc s-o impart în aşa fel, încât să nu separ oraşele, statele sau chiar continentele. … De obicei, urmăresc cu atenţie liniile de graniţă şi, în timpul sfâşierii, mă străduiesc să nu-i rămân dator niciunui stat… Deşi, dacă aş vorbi de unde iese sufletul, ar trebui să accept că cea mai mare problemă o am cu statele mici… E groaznic când mă zbat să mănânc statele din Balcani!"

Asa se deschide piesa, asa incepe povestea. Recenzia la ea probabil ca va aparea curand in alta parte, asa ca ma limitez aici la ce am de spus. Pentru cei interesati, o pot citi online aici: http://librarium-haemus.blogspot.com/2009/11/jeton-neziraj-enea-ranit-teatru.html

Pentru cei care ma mai cunosc si citesc acest blog, stiti unde sa ma gasiti. Acum insa sunt prea ocupata sa fiu la randul meu acel Enea, prea ocupata cu un vals, cu un Timp pierdut, cu un anotimp ...   

Death of Literature?

I was in the eleventh grade, meeting Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, when I first heard and thought of this question. How can Literature die? How can God die? But after all, how can we die? …

Years passed by and I met different writers, different views, different novels. I miss that year, that grade, that age … in the same year I met the writings of James Joyce, Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek, and some novels by Marquez. I began to be thirsty of Literature, to feel its voice in my heart. In the twelfth grade I read Goethe’s Faust and, as a graduation present to myself, I read Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Lovely books. Probably I read in my life a couple of great books … then I met again Joyce, and I met myself in Ulysses, and I saw the birth of literature, of culture, of humanity, I met the Irish nation and the human nation, and at the same time, I started thinking of this question: can Literature die?

There are days when I can’t read. Sometimes weeks. There are books that I hate, that I judge, that I dislike, that I wish I had never heard. There are times when I think “oh, but I saw this theme/motif/idea somewhere else. And it was better.”  Sometimes I am sorry that I read so much, that I saw so many things. Why? Because I LOVE to talk about Literature, but there are so few people that really read … the books that I love. And I feel miserable from time to time because I never really talk about these books … Furthermore, when you read the “best books” from a genre, it’s impossible for you to have any sympathy for the rest of the books. For instance, I love magical realism. I read 3-4 novels by Marquez (and the best remains A Hundred Years of Solitude), I read Rushdie, Bulgakov, and Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban. It is hard for me to like and to put in the category of magical realism a book like Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless me, Ultima. Of course that I shall probably use this book in teaching my students, of course that I found it a nice book, but you can’t ask me to love, to appreciate it. So if we think from this perspective, we could say that literature is dead for a part of me, for the part that read the books that should have come before “the easy ones”.

        However, this year I stumbled across another writer. Leslie Marmon Silko. She’s an Indian, a Native American, and I said in my mind “this is something different”. And I guess it was. Have you ever thought how many writers, from various countries, have a story to tell? How many writers are unknown to us just because they are not English/American/French? How many writers are not good enough for us just because they are swallowed by Time and Unknown Space? Think of this.  

Ceremony is a novel written by an Indian. It hides in its pages a different culture, extremely different from the West, from the things that we know, a world that could be understood completely only if you are an Indian. If you have seen movies like Burry my Heart at Wounded Knee, Thunderheart, Dancing with the Wolves, you would know the specific Indian atmosphere/style … like a lyrical ever-lasting song, beyond words. This is one of the things that I liked at this book: its style, how Tayo’s story is linked with Indian poems/traditions/legends. I have also liked the oscillation between past and present, between the chains of memories and the everlasting present. In this aspect, Faulkner helped me … indeed, he is more complicated, complex, more mythical, but still … I love writers that play with Time. Moreover, the narrator doesn’t offer to us complete access to the action, at least not all the time … after all, does it really matter the things that happen in a novel or is it most significant the atmosphere, the transmitted message (think of Woolf’s Mrs. Ramsay, from To the Lighthouse)?

It is a novel about loss – of identity, of dear ones, of a nation, of self, of will to live. A nice aspect that is present in Ceremony is the relation between Death and Life; Tayo, in his road (or his Ceremony), learns that there are things which are worse than Death. The more he accepts Death, the more he sees the World around him, the more he starts Living.

Remorse plays an important role here. Remorse for being who he is, for his roots, for being the survival of the war, for his brother’s death, for his family’s feeling. Silko presents not only how a war destroys a man and a nation, but how the white people (and not only) destroyed a culture.

“If the white people never looked beyond the lie, to see that theirs was a nation built on stolen land, then they would never be able to understand how they had been used by the witchery; they would never know that they were still being manipulated by those who knew how to stir the ingredients together: white thievery and injustice boiling up the anger and hatred that would finally destroy the world, the starving against the fat, the colored against the white. The destroyers had only to set it into motion, and sit back to count the casualties. But it was more than a body count, the lies devoured white hearts, and for more than 200 years white people had worked to fill their emptiness; they tried to glut the hollowness with patriotic wars and with great technology and the wealth it brought. And always they had been fooling themselves, and they knew it.”(Ceremony, 191)

But Tayo doesn’t want to be an Indian or a white fellow. He just wants to be a human being.

“It took a great deal of energy to be a human being, and the more the wind blew and the sun moved southwest, the less energy Tayo had.”(Ceremony, 25)

On the other hand, yes, there are various clichés presented in this book, themes that are also present in European/American books. One simple example could be the war and all the things that he causes, the remorse, the loss, the haunting of the past. But to me the key difference is the ceremony, the strong connection with the land, the level of humanity searched by the protagonist, his integrity in the Ceremony of Life ...  

So, is Literature on its finale road? I think that all the readers will always have something to learn, to discover in it. I think that writers shall always have something to say, with their own voice, in their own style, to shape not only the outside world, but also their inside one. And if the outside world can be the same for many of us, the inside one has always something unique, different in it.