Sunday, February 13, 2011

To Love and Murder Easily

[careful. the love and anguish of murdering easily applies to the opening sentence. if i tortured syntax like that very often, i'd be facing charges in the hague.]


ENG 201-013
6 December 2010

To Love and Murder Easily
The Balkans...is...a gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered foods, drank strong liquors, wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for starting wars. Less imaginative westerners looked down on them with secret envy, sniffing at their royalty, scoffing at their pretensions, and fearing their savage terrorists. Karl Marx called them “ethnic trash.”
        I, as a footloose youngster in my twenties, adored them.
                   ——C. L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles, 1969.


    Cultural critic Theodor Adorno famously—or perhaps, infamously—is quoted from an essay in 1949 as saying that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,” a statement he defended several times (in 1955 and 1962) before backing away from such a stance a few years before he died (he stated in one of these essays that not only poetry was barbaric but that, indeed, “all culture after Auschwitz, including its urgent critique, is rubbish”) (“Negative Dialektik,” Adorno). He elucidated upon what he meant in a 1962 essay by responding to a treatise by Jean-Paul Sarte: “The question asked by a character in Sartre’s play Morts Sans Supulture, ‘Is there any meaning in life when men exist who beat people until the bones break in their bodies?’, is also the question whether any art now has a right to exist...” (“Commitment”). This line of thinking infuses virtually every form of art, poetry, literature, and music that has come about since World War II, and has been retroactively applied to examine events predating the mid-20th Century. It would be a futile and quickly dismantled argument to claim that there is no link between events of great barbarity and the art which follows it, but to debate the points of to what purpose is an artist using such events is a question as old as “barbaric” art itself and, in a more modern context of a culture saturated by media, the question is added of when it becomes acceptable to do so.

    Whether it is Sylvia Plath using Holocaust imagery to reflect her own personal tragedies or the ancient Hebrew people singing victory songs about the vanquished enemies they themselves annihilated (that is, committed genocidal ethnic cleansing upon), the grotesque paintings of mass murder and neighborly atrocity as depicted by Vasily Vereshchagin and Pieter Bruegel, the fact that art and literature has been created from such massacres is not the point of debate. The question, as posed by Adorno’s stance becomes, is it barbaric to do so?

    To answer this, an examination of five topics related to the Bosnian Genocide in the 1990s will be discussed: a keynote address concerning the importance of the artist living in a barbarous culture, a contemporaneous film currently being made about the genocide, an American author and activist who smuggled herself into Sarajevo during its siege years, some anecdotal evidence gained from first-hand accounts from two indigenous artists in the Balkans (a poet and a film-maker), and a privately-printed memorial poem concerning the Srebrenica Massacre in 1995.

    In a keynote address at the Streamlines Conference in November, 2010, Dr. Jonathan Barz commented that he had “read that the Iranian government was gravely concerned about the number of their college students who were majoring in the humanities” (Barz) and quoted the article as saying “[Khamenei] called the humanities a field of study that ‘promotes skepticism and doubt in religious principles and beliefs,’ and that it was worrying that almost two-thirds of university students in Iran were seeking degrees in the humanities” (qtd. in “Crackdown”). Barz went on to clearly state his opinion on this matter by saying “Is it just me, or is there something wonderfully affirming about hearing that our field of study cannot be tolerated because it is inimical to repression and thought control?” This “field of study” being, of course, that of literature; including the barbaric poetry written after Auschwitz. The two major points Dr. Barz implored his audience to consider about the study and reading of literature—especially controversial literature—was that “literature invites us to develop the habit of moral reflection” and that “literature reshapes our character by encouraging empathy.” these are crucial points to consider when assessing the place “barbaric poetry” has even in, as Adorno stated, a culture of rubbish. While the debate about culture is better left to another thesis, the importance literature plays in casting light and reflection upon genocide is paramount. But, even in challenging Adorno’s stance on the subject, there is a wide ground to consider before staking an empirical response to declare what is, or is not, beyond the pale of acceptance.

    Consider that in the late summer of 2010—15 years after the political end of the Bosnian War—one of the biggest names in Hollywood film-making began production on a project she wrote, and is producing and directing. According to several local news services in Bosnia and Serbia, the film Angelina Jolie (who is also a “Good Will Ambassador” for the UN) is making concerns “a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) woman who falls in love with her Serb rapist and commander of a wartime prison camp in which she is held” (“Suspends Permission”). This is, of course, an extremely controversial subject in the area from all sides involved. There is concern that Jolie’s film will profit on the romanticized misery of the victims of the war without shedding light upon the actual trauma and daily struggle many still face. The government agencies involved with issuing work permits for the film initially denied, then later granted permission to film the movie in Bosnia (“Suspends Permission” and “Reissues Permit”). However, due to protests against the film, production in the country was cut short “partly due to bad weather, but also because of politics,” as a spokesman for the production company stated; Jolie herself was never present on the set in Bosnia (“Cuts Filming”).

    Based on the information gleaned in news reports as the actual script for the movie has not been made public—this could be seen as a case in which barbaric art is taking advantage of the victims of a tragedy and reflects in a very direct way upon both of Adorno’s points. One, that making art from another’s misery is distasteful, and, two, that such actions promote a culture which caters to the worst elements in it. These points are in direct opposition to the status both Dr. Barz and the Ayatollah Khamenei place upon literature and the arts: that of encouraging moral reflection while simultaneously promoting skepticism of any proffered narrative. How then to bridge the gap between opposed ideologies through art? Should we accept that making art from cultural trauma is ethically wrong?

    When the Bosnian War was going on—when the city of Sarajevo was under military siege and international embargo—the American author, critic, and political activist Susan Sontag saw it as an opportunity to comment on the larger issues at hand. Unlike the overwhelming majority of people, politicians, and, more to the argument at hand, artists, did not even acknowledge the events that were transpiring in Europe as they blithely went on with their routines steeped in the safety and comfort of the objectively peaceful United States. What Sontag did in smuggling herself into a city being bombed was to do the only thing an artist is capable of doing. She made art. Produced in a theatre lit only by candles, enacted with local Sarajevan actors, Sontag directed a version of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. The line in the play “Mr. Godot told me to tell you that he won't come this evening, but surely tomorrow,” takes on a cut-to-the-bone air of black humor that may not be understood outside of regions decimated by death. “Like the outcasts [of the play], Sarajevo has waited for relief from afar, the Western military intervention that many here believe is the only thing that can stop the Serbian nationalist forces besieging the city from destroying what is left here,” a New York Times articles quotes, and to Sontag, the statement is a call to arms for artists in the rest of the world (their weaponry of artists being, of course, brushes, cameras, guitars, and the mightiest weapon: the pen) because she, “who is virtually alone among the well-known writers and artists and performers of Europe and the United States in coming to Sarajevo during the siege” called the Siege of Sarajevo:
The Spanish Civil War of our time … In 1937, people like Ernest Hemingway and Andre Malraux and George Orwell and Simone Weil rushed to Spain, although it was incredibly dangerous... They went as an act of solidarity, and from that act grew some of the finest literature of their time. But I don't think the fact that Sarajevo is dangerous is really the reason. I think there is an underlying reason that is deeper and more disturbing ... I think there has been a failure of conscience on the part of writers and intellectuals in the Western world.


    Here then, Sontag is stating that atrocity needs to be fought not with bullets and bombs, but with art. An opinion shared by two Balkan artists who were on opposite sides of the war in the ’90s.

    Serbian poet Matija Bećković was a long-standing nationalist and member of the conservative Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was a vocal advocate for Serbian control of the former Yugoslavian states and, during the NATO bombing campaigns of Belgrade in 1999, he was one of the authors of a protest phrase that followed the Serbian downing of a US stealth bomber: “We’re Sorry We Shot Down Your Plane, We Didn’t Know It Was Invisible.” An act some would say was a feeble response to overwhelming military and technological force, but a response befitting an artist, even one whose opinions may not be shared by outsiders to the conflict. This, coming from a man who in later years would make the compassionate statement that, “Bridges are the most important creation in human history. The bridge does not ask who crosses it.” By way of metaphoric exclusion, Bećković was stating that when walls and fences are constructed, bridges are needed more than ever. Poetry becomes a method of building such bridges.

    Across the battle lines, in Bosnia, Sarajevan film director Danis Tanović relates a tale from the war in which he was filming a battle for Western media and took refuge in a small house during mortar fire. A painter was set up in the cottage and was working on a canvas, painting by the light a homemade candles. His canvas depicted a pastoral scene of Sarajevo’s old town square in winter. When asked by Tanović how he could be painting during the bombing, the painter replied, “What else would you have me do?” To him, the only response to warfare was to continue producing his art. After telling of this experience, Tanović offered an insight to the issue of art from atrocity, “If there can be no poetry after the Holocaust, there can be no art of any kind after Sarajevo.” Coming from a director who won an Academy Award for a film about the Bosnian War, this is, pardon the pun, a loaded statement.

    Art can exist following large-scale atrocities. Some would contest that is must. Susan Sontag is one such voice. So is Bosnian poet Melika Salihbeg Bosnawi, who wrote a memorial poem about the Srebrenica Genocide of July 1995 on its fifth anniversary. In it she details the major players involved with orchestrating the massacre and makes word-play of their peaceful names. The military leader General Ratko Mladić’s name means “youth” and the poem tells of how the victims “only wished … that no mother give birth to a youth to call, gun in hand … to hunt human beings!” The name of political leader, Radovan Karadižić, means “rejoice.” Bosnawi’s poem tells of how the victims in Srebrenica “desired … that no Montenegrin she-wolf rejoice to suckle a son...” The poem concludes with some of the most vicious imagery in modern poetry:
I have yet to call for help … / Hieronymus Bosch and Brueghel. / I have yet to ask them / to paint: / the regions turned to Hell, / the torment of the innocent, / iconostasis of horror, / and, then, to thread up a caravan of satanic faces, / the horde of the damned, lost souls, / on their blood-soaked / course / in the twentieth century / to Gehenna, / as they pass through / Bosnia.


    Bosnawi’s poem drives home the point of barbaric poetry. When asked about such writing, an elderly survivor of Srebrenica who lost her husband and sons to the ethnic cleansing program of Mladić and Karadižić, replied, “Of course [this] poetry is barbaric! It has to be! How else will someone understand what [genocide] is like?”

    Even if—or perhaps, especially if—culture is relegated to the midden heaps of barbarity, visceral poetry, art, and literature must never turn away from the most vile acts humans perpetuate. As a recent scholarly work cited, arts and literature “become tools to present contrasting viewpoints in a form where ideologies may be considered without condoning nor condemning them. This is done not to exonerate the participants but to complicate our judgment of such situations.” To cause a moral reflection in the self. And, if the bridge does not ask who crosses it, then poetry—that is, literature, music, art—does not ask who reads it. but to be read, such things must first be written.



Works Cited


Adorno, Theodor. Prisms. tr. Samuel and Shierry Weber. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1983. Print.

Anonymous Srebrenica Woman. Personal interview. 3 July 2010.

Barrett, Kírk. “The Atrocity Exhibit: A Travelogue...” Streamlines: An Undergraduate Conference Celebrating Language, Literature, and Writing. Dubuque, IA. 12 Nov. 2010. Presentation.

Barz, Jonathan. “Literary Studies: The Radical Art of Learning How to Be.” Streamlines: An Undergraduate Conference Celebrating Language, Literature, and Writing. Dubuque, IA. 12 Nov. 2010. Keynote Address.

Bećković, Matija. Personal interview. 3 June 2010.

Bosnawi, Melika Salihbeg. Srebrenica Je Zvijezda Padalica [Srebrenica Is A Falling Star]. 2nd ed. Sarajevo: Melika Salihbeg Bosnawi, 2000. Print.

“Bosnia Suspends Permission for Jolie Film.” Balkans Insight. 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

Harding, James Martin. Adorno and “A Writing of the Ruins”: Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture. Albany: State University of New York, 1997. Print.

“Iran Launches New Crackdown On Universities.” Radio Free Europe. 26 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 December 2010.

Sulzberger, C. L. A Long Row of Candles; Memoirs and Diaries, 1934-1954. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Print.

Tanović, Danis. Personal interview. 25 June 2010.



~•~

A Holy Work of Grace

ENG 233
30 November 2010


A Holy Work of Grace:
The Glossolalia Narrative in “Slota Prow–Full Armour” by David Eugene Edwards


    When the bleak, unsettling strain of a viol begins on the song “Slota Prow–Full Armour” by David Eugene Edwards, it would be difficult to imagine the music of another David, playing his harp in the court of Saul to ease the king’s suffering and please the Lord. But there are more than musical chords which link David strumming his harp in Saul’s narrative from the Tanakah to the modern David channeling the power of spirit like an electrical charge through the tightened and tunes coiled metal strings of his more contemporary harp, a Gretsch guitar. Like David before Saul, Edwards has taken up the task of being armor-bearer for his king to defend against the forces of darkness.

    The structure of the song—for purposes of narrative comparison—is broken in five movements: the viol intro; a description of how the Word is lame when written or spoken; the glossolalia; a bridge; and a concluding declaration from Ephesians. These movements will correspond to selections from the Tanakah and the Pauline epistles to form a sort of Biblical narrative in song and (pun not intended) verse.

    The narrative of such a story begins with Saul’s affliction:
Now the spirit of Yahweh had withdrawn from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh afflicted him with terrors. Saul's servants said to him, ‘An evil spirit from God is undoubtedly the cause of your terrors. Let our lord give the order, and your servants who wait on you will look for a skilled harpist; when the evil spirit from God comes over you, he will play and it will do you good.’ Saul said to his attendants, ‘Find me, please, a man who plays well, and bring him to me.’ (NJB, 1 Samuel 16:14-17)

    When David was sent to Saul’s court, it is said that Saul was very fond of him and David “became [Saul’s] armor-bearer.” A verse later the famous musical association is revealed: “[W]henever the spirit from God came over Saul, David would take a harp and play; Saul would then be soothed; it would do him good, and the evil spirit would leave him” (1 Sam. 16:21, 23).

    This sets the scene for the intro to “Slota Prow–Full Armour.” The tone of this viol beginning the song is not merely unsettling—indeed, it quickly becomes bleak, disturbed—its modulations paint an Apocalyptic landscape more befitting a painting by Brueghel or Boshe than church psalms and hymnals, or even the overwhelming majority of modern “Christian” popular music. But this tone reflects the struggle of the human soul, torn by conflict and afflicted, like Saul, with temptation and human depravity. Its timbered strains seem to say that without darkness light can never be experienced. Without falling into, as Edwards points out in another musical piece, that without falling into their own “corners of Sodom,” a human soul cannot experience the redemption of the Word of Yahweh. And the Word brings about the first lyrics of the song.

    With a musical percussive that sounds like a fallen body, Edwards begins the self-referential spoken word word movement by proclaiming, “It reads lame now written down / It is frail now that it makes its sound.” This shows the difference between the Word of God—“the Word that was with God and the Word that was God,” as the Gospel of John states from its very beginning—and the words that are used to describe the divine. The Word is the sound uttered at the moment of creation while words are used by humans to describe the world created around them. As I Samuel points out, “The Glory of Israel, however, does not lie or go back on his word, not being human and liable to go back on his word” (15:29), which indicates the word of God is vastly different than the word of humans. Jeremiah asks people to “listen … to Yahweh's word, let your ears take in the word his own mouth speaks” (9:19). But, as Edwards indicates in his lyric, that word becomes cripple and weak when confined by human usage.

    It is from this inability to handle the Word of God that leads to the question of what use then is human language if it is unable to withstand such power? Edwards answers this question with the next movement when—in a rush of “sound as of a violent wind”—he is beset by what is described in Acts of the Apostles as having tongues of flame come upon him and, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” Edwards begins to speak a different language, “as the Spirit gave ... power to express” (2:1). This “violent wind” is a translation of a word that in both Hebrew and Greek means both “Spirit” and “Breath” (NJB, fn. c. 1801), and certainly what follows comes out in what is understood to be a violent rush of wind, breath, and Holy Spirit. Edwards glossolalia is rendered as “Prashnom moldich svetoven … Vashene osh miashte / Endevik saferen seduc / Bullvenya oshkye … Moldich fudjok eveshek prashene / Tovet dotchen oshkye / Vana ratache oshvende / Dok bledsin dok slota prow...”*


----
*. When written, this resembles Old Slavonic, while audibly, it sounds akin to Romany. However, other than a few scattered syllables, these phrases do not belong to any known language.
----


    There are five places in the Gospels and Epistles where speaking in tongues is explicitly mentioned, and at least two other instances which refer to the phenomena. The Old Prophet Isaiah says, “with stammering lips and in a foreign language, he will talk to this nation (28:11), while Paul’s Letter to the Romans describes how “the Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness, for, when ... the Spirit makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words” (8:26). The Gospel of Mark famously mentions snake-handling after his glossolalia reference of “signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues” (16:17), while the second chapter of Acts mentions the wind of Breath and Spirit, later in that book believers are astonished when the Holy Spirit pours on people who “strange languages and proclaim the greatness of God” (10:45). In 1 Corinthians 12-14, Paul discusses speaking in “various kinds of tongues” as part of a wider discussion concerning the gifts of the Spirit; his remarks shed light on his own speaking in tongues as well as how the gift of speaking in tongues was to be used in the church: “I shall sing praises with the spirit and I shall sing praises with the mind as well” (14:15). In a final reference, which links directly back to the musical odyssey, Acts relates the instance of Paul’s journey to Ephesus, when he “laid hands” upon a dozen men and “the Holy Spirit came down on them, and they began to speak with tongues and to prophesy” (19:6). It is to Ephesus the song’s narrative journeys following the Spirit’s descent upon the singer.

    During this glossolalia movement of the song, it could easily be imagined that such singing comes from a turn-of-the century tent revival. In a presentation paper, theological scholar Richard M. Riss quotes Ruth Carter in describing one such singing in tongues episode which dates from 1918. “An agnostic musician” is passing a Mission Room in Los Angeles when “[t]he sound of music attracted him into the church building. He … heard singing” and “stopped to listen—such harmony, such blending of chords he had never heard.” He went in and question a member of the church:
“What is this?”
“This is a gospel meeting.”
“But who taught the people to sing like that?”
“No one taught them. It is God.”
“But how did they learn such harmony?”
“They did not learn it; it was given by the Holy Spirit.”

    Riss goes on to say that music is “one of the most important sources for praise and worship choruses … ‘singing in the Spirit’ … can be the most concentrated and supernatural setting in which this form of worship has taken place” (“Singing in the Spirit”). Despite the menacing overtones of the music, this “singing in the Spirit” is exactly what Edwards is doing in “Slota Prow–Full Armour.”

    Following a brief musical bridge which links the two titled sections of the song—like an interlude between the Hebrew Prophets of the Tanakah and the Gospels which form the foundation of the New Testament—a piano begins with a slow but determined scale which results in a lifting of the musical doom, only to be replaced with an atmosphere of concerted imploring. Like one of the Old Prophets, David Eugene Edwards takes on the sound of a oracle as he extolls the listener to understand what is needed to battle such forces as Paul’s letter to the Ephesians details: “Put on the full armour of God … [f]or it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle, but against the principalities and the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in this world” (6:11-12).

    Edwards navigates this dark path where those without sight and who speak only with the power of the Holy Spirit lead the way. Those who tread this path face not adversaries of flesh and blood but the very “spirits of evil in the heavens” (Eph. 6:12). “In the helmet of his salvation,” the lyrics tells us, quoting almost verbatim from scripture, “With his belt of truth / The chestplate of his righteousness / And his gospel boots / In full armour...” In the guise of a modern musical song, albeit one built upon strange nodes and chords played and sung by what might seem to be preternatural hands and voice, listeners learn what it is like on the front lines of a spiritual battle between light and darkness, and what is needed to defend one’s own soul against malign domination. “By the sword of the spirit / And the shield of faith,” Edwards instructs before reminding again the would-be combatants that it is not a battle for this world, but of another—“Not of hands / Not of man / A holy work of grace / In full armour / He turns my cheek / In full armour / Contrite and meek / In full armour...” His voice rises, over the din of musical battle to call unto the heavens from out the darkness encroaching upon his soul. The warning is clear: no one will be spared this final judgment; we arm ourselves against the foul spirits, or we are overtaken. Here are the weapons, this song says, it is your choice to take up arms against evil principalities.

    Although it is not told in the Bible, there is a theological saying from the counter-reformer, St. Teresa of Ávila, which tells of how “Christ has no body now but yours / No hands, no feet on earth but yours / Yours are the eyes through which He looks / compassion on this world / Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” David, playing his harp in the court of Saul, would be one of the first to agree. His fingers seemed guided by the breath and spirit of Yahweh to ease the afflicted soul of his earthly king. David Eugene Edwards performing his own brand of hellfire lyrics and brimstone rock is certainly an example of using his hands to forge a holy work of grace. In hearing “Slota Prow–Full Armour” it seems, that like Saul beset by spirits; like David playing to keep the darkness at bay; like Martin Luther concerned with evil’s grip upon this world; Edwards can do no other.




Works Cited


Edwards, David Eugene. “Slota Prow–Full Armour.” Mosaic. Glitterhouse Records, 2006. CD.

———. “Dirty Blue.” Mosaic. Glitterhouse Records, 2006. CD.

The New Jerusalem Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985. Print.

Riss, Richard M. “Singing in the Spirit in the Holiness, Pentecostal, Latter Rain, and Charismatic Movements.” North American Renewal Service Committee. Orlando. 28 July 1995. Paper presentation.

Saint Teresa of Ávila. The Interior Castle. New York: Image /Doubleday, 2004. Print.


~•~

A Showcase of Arguments



[cheesy, but true!]

ENG 201
29 November 2010



A Showcase of Arguments


    On Saturday, November 12, the University of Dubuque hosted its fourth annual undergraduate conference for English Literature. UNCW sent three representatives to the conference and, with all objective perspective, fielded 3 of the 5 best presentations out of 68 student panels (which is a testament to the UNCW English Department as much as anything else). In academic terms what was most significant about the day was the collective of ideas—the showcase of arguments—provided by such a gathering. Agree or disagree, reinforce ideas or discover a new expansion of thought, these presentations were all remarkable in their own way.

    My two companions were in the opening panel of the day—ostensibly titled U.S. Lit–20th Century—along with a young lady presenting a paper on the Holocaust imagery in Sylvia Plath’s work and a young man discussing Nietzschean philosophy as applied to Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men. Lisa Graham offered her convincing interpretation of suicide as inevitable and necessary in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and, the only non-senior on this panel, Sarah Holder offered theories about femininity as adaptation in avian symbolism in a trio of texts: The Time-Traveler’s Wife, Mother Love, and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (this last title was the source of continual harassment from Lisa and me towards Sarah; we referred to it as Romancing the Stone, and wondered why Tennessee Williams wrote a movie for Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner). The presentation on Sylvia Plath’s work linked to similar critical theories as my own, and led to some insightful and intense debate which ended only because time for the panel ran out. The Nietzsche-McCarthy argument was solid in writing, but extremely lax in presentation. As far as literary polemics go, the evidence was ample, but the public offering of that evidence was not convincing.

    There was a presentation of questionable evidence that completely fell apart under the weight of its own fundamental premise which was notable to the North Carolina contingent. A woman who began her talk by declaring herself a Yankee who journeyed to Tennessee in order to examine the mythic history of Southerners in regards to the Civil War (which, of course, is better known in the more humid climes as the War Between the States). The presenter talked about the post-Civil War South creating a mythological history yet her basic premise as stated was that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery (which, as a declarative statement, is historically unsound). This was an example of an academic argument gone awry by issuing inaccurate evidence as the thesis. It also gave us our first look at what not to do with a presentation and how not to formulate a critical argument.

    In contrast to that, the keynote address at the banquet lunch was nothing short of astounding. Dr. Jonathan Barz, who was the organizer of the event, delivered a speech about the importance of literature and critical thinking. It touched upon totalitarian governments jailing dissident thinkers (who are almost always the writers and literature professors of a given state), other schools in universities who scorn literary departments yet voice envy at the ability of those students to dissect and analyze arguments, and how it is only literature and the arts by which we as a culture are forced to examine our own ideology and rectitude. Following the speech, I approached Dr. Barz and expressed my admiration for it. I had been taking notes as rapidly as I could but did not manage to scribble all the references I wanted to catch; I asked him if it would be inappropriate to ask if he might email me a copy of the speech. He smiled and told me he didn’t think he could do that but, he said while opening his leather notebook and folder, he would be glad to hand over his reading copy for me to keep. It was a remarkable request on my part followed with an equally amazing response; his marked-up copy closely resembled our trio’s own presentation copies of our work. It was a small validation that the younger scholars were treading a similar road of those who came before us. But upon learning how to walk, we were encouraged to find our own path through the jungle of critical thought and academic argument.

    My own presentation was at the end of the day, and I was the first among four people reading excerpts of fiction. A major difference in my own work when compared to those on the same panel is that I was presenting a partial story with only a tenuous grasp as to being called “fiction.” I presented part of a story about a woman sniper in Sarajevo during the siege from ’92-’96, followed by a peek behind the story to the “scaffolding” which lead to its composition: my own meeting of the women in the Dinaric mountains north of Višegrad and the personal conflict which resulted in feeling sympathy for a woman whose actions I found reprehensible. This presentation harkened back to the question raised in the first panel of the day concerning Plath and her use of the Holocaust to represent her own fears and uncertainties. Theodor Adorno’s quote about poetry being barbaric after Auschwitz was cited that morning, and it is one I have examined and contested in my own work with the Balkans. My response to such a claim comes in the use of a metaphoric quote I picked up in Serbia on my travels—and what I concluded my own presentation at Streamlines with: “The bridge is the most important creation in human history,” Serbian poet Matija Bećković told me while we shared coffee and conversation in Belgrade, “The bridge does not ask who crosses it.” I quoted that in relating the origin of my story of the sniper in Sarajevo. “Stories are like that,” I offered, “A story doesn’t ask who reads it.”

    Our journey to Dubuque for this conference is indelibly etched in my mind as a pinnacle of academic and literary achievement. The three of us represented the school, Sigma Tau Delta, and ourselves as (publicly) serious scholars whose work is accomplished and worthy of deep consideration. Privately, we were anything but serious, which formed a bond I hope with last for the duration of our lifetimes. The Streamlines Conference was in many ways a first step. A first step that is now behind us. I look back and smile at what we attained in that journey. Then I turn around and look ahead.

     The next step of our journey awaits.


~•~

In Addition to a Yes and a No, the Answer Contains a Maybe


ENG 201
12 November 2010


In Addition to a Yes and a No, the Answer Contains a Maybe


    After a great human tragedy there is often a mourning period which lasts for an indefinite amount of time before the daily reminders of the tragedy are set aside and, as a modern lyrical proverb says, life goes on. At some point following the tragedy and the mourning period, what temporary memorials that were constructed come down and, depending upon the circumstances of the tragedy, a permanent memorial is sometimes erected. Amidst all of this is an underlying factor that is often overlooked or forgotten, at least until someone takes offense at the words or actions of another. This factor concerns the creation of art based on the tragedy. From some perspectives, such artistic creation raises a dilemma: is it ethical to create art from tragedy?

    The association between art and tragedy dates back to at least the 2100 BCE with the Sumerian text of Sha naqba īmuru (The Epic of Gilgamesh). Perhaps more famously, there is a direct connection between mass death and art with the oral storytelling of The Iliad from around 1190 BCE and several centuries later when most of the Psalms were written. With The Iliad, the mass slaughter incurred between the Trojans and Achaeans inspired the epic poem (and later, another: The Odyssey). With the Psalms, several were written as victory songs following great battles the Hebrews won, as well as several that lamented their exile into Babylon—an event that could be likened to the ethnic cleansing episodes seen in several parts of the world in the last years of the 20th century. For as long as there have been humans, there have been tragedies of mass death. And for as long as there have been records of human endeavors, there has been art made to memorialize, honor, and sometimes to vindictively remind others of such tragedies (this last point calls to mind an epigram etched in stone at Thermopylae, Greece, that translates to read: “O stranger, tell Lacedaemonians that here / We lie to their sayings in obedience”).

    To pay honor to the dead, especially those who have perished in a great and terrible event is a principle reason art is created from tragedy. There is a desire to have an external, tangible thing to go to or to experience in order to remember the deceased or affected. Contrary to this is the idea that victims of a great tragedy become victims a second time when works about their suffering are portrayed as feature films or subject matter of voyeuristic news articles. In a question about making art in the aftermath of tragic events, specific replies were varied. A comment held that art is fine up “to a certain point, then it’s uncalled for,” while another opined that “very little art is from happiness.” One reply stated that such art “can help a person heal,” yet a second considered that art should only be created after “the right amount of time has passed.” A notable pair of comments involved the indefinite borderline between “good” and “bad” art: “there’s a line between tastefully done or going overboard” and “ There is a line but … we wait to set [it] after we are offended” (“Issue Essay Peer Edit”).

    To illustrate these two perspectives, the focus can be made on one specific event and one particular attempt at making art from that event. That focus will be the Bosnian Genocide of the 1990s and the current endeavor by a feature film production company headed by one of the biggest names in modern media to make a movie about that event.

    In August, 2010, actress Angelina Jolie announced he intent to film a movie in Bosnia which was set during the wars of the 1990s. Jolie, who is also a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), filed for a permit to film in the country. The script, written by Jolie, involves “a romance between a Bosniak woman and a Serb soldier set during the 1992-95 Bosnian war” (“Jolie ‘Plans Film’”), was met with skepticism by some authorities in Bosnia, and was denied a permit to film her movie there. The culture minister of Bosnia’s Croat-Bosniak partition suspended the permit after meeting with representatives of “an association of women who had been raped” during the Bosnia War. The Women Victims of War told the cultural minister that the film’s subject was a Bosnian Muslim woman who falls in love with the Serbian commander of a prison camp who repeatedly rapes her. The Women Victims of War spokesperson stated that such a story was “outrageous and humiliating misrepresentation of our ordeal” (“Bosnia Suspends Permission”). An editor of a Serbian-owned television network had reported she had read the script and “had seen the script and “was ‘disgusted’ by it. ‘It is about a Serbian soldier who rapes a Muslim woman, cuts off one of her breasts and then they fall in love’ (“Serbian Media”). This then is a primary example of an attempt to create art from tragedy which is met with resistance from people who were victims of the tragedy being depicted. The main complaint against the attempted art is a lack of compassion and misrepresentation of the situations involved.

    The other side of this stems from the filmmaker herself, Angelina Jolie, as well as the Bosnian actress cast in the lead role of the film. Jolie’s commentary about the content of the film is that it is “an apolitical love story between a Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] woman and a Serb who meet on the eve of the Bosnian war.” The actress involved in the film stated that she was “fascinated” by the manner “ in which Angelina managed to write our story in such a simple and authentic way” (“Bosnia Suspends Permission”). Several months after the request to film in the country—after the permit had been revoked—Jolie held a press conference where she said, “The choice to make a film about this area and set in this time in history was also to remind people of what happened not so long ago and to give attention to the survivors of the war” (Jolie Responds”), which is a direct authorial statement of intent meant to clear away what she perceived as misunderstandings of the project. An attempt to show that the artistic endeavor was meant to be disrespectful in any manner, but to educate others about the atrocity which befell Bosnia 15 years ago.

    This example is specifically narrow, but could be applied to any number of events in recent or distant past. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, several documentaries were made that crossed the line from information to political (and thus, by some measures, a matter of artistic license) commentary. The national and international sympathy for the victims and animosity towards the American government hierarchy placed the majority of opinions on the side of the documentarians in this case. On the other extreme, following the events of September 11, 2001, the majority of the nation not only didn’t want to see their tragedy depicted in art, but many media industries took steps to retroactively protect the feelings of the victims of the tragedy by cutting scenes from television shows and films that showed the World Trade Center Towers.

    Between these extremes is the art created after tragedy which does not directly comment upon the tragic event itself, thus doesn’t fall into the same category as the previous examples. When a viewer looks at Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, which its seemingly unnaturally vivid sunset colors behind the anguished titular character, few of them ever even know they are looking at the product of a tragedy which directly claimed the lives of almost 37,000 people, and indirectly tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of others worldwide. The colors in the skyline of this painting is a result of the massive explosion of the volcanic island Krakatoa, the ash of which colored the sky around the world for almost a decade afterward (“Astronomical Sleuths”).

    With so many degrees of differing opinions, what is the answer? How do we determine what is “tasteful” honorable expression and what is disrespectful? Who makes that determination? When does the moment go from “too soon” to “right time”? Even the infamous quote by critic Theodor Adorno (“to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”) was recanted by its author less than two decades after it was written (Harding, 147). Perhaps there is no single answer. The conundrum is further complicated with a recent quote from Sarajevan film director Danis Tanović which plays off of Adorno’s quote: “If there can be no poetry after the Holocaust,” Tanović stated, “then there can be no art of any kind after [the Siege of] Sarajevo” (Tanović). Coming from a filmmaker whose most lauded work is one which focuses specifically upon the Bosnian War, this sort of comment turns the conundrum into a paradox and brings the answer no nearer.


Works Cited


“Angelina Jolie ‘Plans Bosnia Film.’” Balkans Insight. 24 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

“Astronomical Sleuths Link Krakatoa to Edvard Munch’s Painting The Scream.” Sky & Telescope. 9 Dec. 2003. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

“Bosnia Suspends Permission for Jolie Film.” Balkans Insight. 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

Harding, James Martin. Adorno and “A Writing of the Ruins”: Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture. Albany: State University of New York, 1997. Print.

“Issue Essay Peer Edit.” English 201-013. UNCW. 5 Nov 2010.

“Jolie Responds to Critics of Bosnia Film.” Balkans Insight. 15 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

“Serbian Media Accused of Distorting Jolie Film.” Balkans Insight. 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.

Tanović, Danis. Personal interview. 25 June 2010.



~•~

“Hello, Satan. I believe it’s time to go.”


ENG 233
Response 4
2 November 2010


“Hello, Satan. I believe it’s time to go.”*


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*. “Me and the Devil Blues” by Robert Johnson
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    One of the most confounding characters in the literary narratives of the Bible is that of Satan in the Book of Job, and perhaps the most common—and incorrect—assumption about the character is that this character is synonymous with that of the devil as depicted in the New Testament. When working with only English translations of the text, the two characters could easily be confused. But the texts involved were not written in English, and, indeed, most often English version of the Bible are translations of translations and not chronicled from source materials.

    In Hebrew, the character who appears in the Book of Job is ha-satan, “the Adversary,” from the verb satan, meaning “obstruct” or “oppose.” This titular character is named as such 10 times in the first two chapters of Job. It is only one of three books in the Hebrew Bible where the character is so named (the other two being 1 Chronicles and Zechariah).

    In the New Testament, the name is repeatedly used in connection with “the devil”—“The great dragon, the primeval serpent, known as the devil or Satan, who had led all the world astray” (Rev. 12:9)—and most frequently appears (9 times) in the Book of Revelation. But in the texts written in Greek, the word used to describe the character is diabolos, meaning “slanderer.” A fascinating connection between word and scene appears in Revelation: diabolos stems from the verb diaballein, which means “to hurl across/through,” and these words connect to the scene where “the devil, who led them astray, was hurled into the lake of fire and sulphur” (Rev. 20:10).

    The Adversary’s appearance in Job takes on a more complex and deeper level of potential when disassociated from the diabolical connections the title has in the New Testament. For instance, in his first appearance, it is stated that “one day when the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh, among them came Satan” (Job 1:6). This puts him as one of several characters attending to God, but given prominence by being described by titled name. When, in Job 1:7, God asks Satan where he has been, Satan replies “prowling about on earth … roaming around there,” a phrasing used again in 2:2. Satan then could be seen as an agent of God, prowling around the earth looking for those who might be tempted towards maliciousness and reporting his findings to God. Rather than acting in a contrary manner, this is a being who works in conjunction with God’s will and purposes. The two characters argue over Satan’s reporting about Job, and God is annoyed that Satan keeps mentioning that Job is a candidate for temptation even though, as God asserts, “‘[Job] persists in his integrity still; you achieved nothing by provoking me to ruin him’” (2:3).

    But God allows the ruining of Job, even as Job maintains his faith in the Lord, weathering all temptations Satan lays in toils and snares, and Job praises God throughout his days. But all actions from Satan are given authority and allowance by God. Satan works n agency to god, not a diabolical evil being. He is not, as is repeatedly stated in the New Testament, the Devil; at best, merely the Devil’s Advocate.




~•~

The Cost of Speaking to the Dead



ENG 233
Response 3
19 October 2010




The Cost of Speaking to the Dead


    When Saul feels himself abandoned by God, he resorts to consulting a necromancer in order to gain information he feels he needs to survive or win the upcoming battle with the Philistines. There are multiple aspects of irony involved in this including Saul’s previous actions as a ruler and a repeated tenant of Mosaic Law.

    Long before Saul faced this particular problem, Moses stood on Mt. Sinai and listened to Yahweh list off an incredible amount of specifically detailed to rather generally interpreted laws that would govern the people in their own lands. Included in this ad nausem list was “You will not allow a sorceress to live” (Ex. 22:17). Nothing further was mentioned by God to Moses about exactly what sort of traits, actions, and characteristics were to be included in defining a sorceress (other than, by the nominative noun, being female).

    So, when generations later, it is stated in 1 Samuel 28:3 that “Saul … expelled the necromancers and wizards from the country,” it might come as a surprise to some readers that Saul himself consulted with just such a character. He first “consulted Yahweh, but Yahweh gave him no answer” (1 Sam. 28:6), so Saul—apparently lacking no advisor in the spanning gulf between prayer and necromancy—commanded of his servants to “‘Find a necromancer for me,” (which, much like the Law of Moses stated, implied such practitioners were inherently female; making it all the easier for upstanding religious men-folk to despise them) “so that I can go and consult her.’” The response comes surprisingly quick from his servants: “‘There is a necromancer at En-Dor’” (1 Sam. 28:7).

    The irony of this brief tale is told clearly within it when the necromancer herself asks the disguised ruler, “‘[Y]ou know what Saul has done, how he has outlawed necromancers … from the country; why are you setting a trap ... to have me killed?’” Saul then violates at least a second of the Mosaic Laws when he places his own word as that of God’s and offers a divinely-instituted promise (something beyond his his power) in telling the necromancer, “‘As Yahweh lives … no blame shall attach to you for this business’” (1 Sam. 28:9-10).

    What follows is the summoning of Samuel by the necromancer, a stern lecture from the ghost to Saul about over-stepping the boundaries of his kingship and religion, and the slaughtering of a fatted calf to pay for the consultation of black arts. The necromancer feasted on roasted meat while Saul had a main course of bitter ironic poisoning followed by an apéritif of just desserts.


~•~

“Dig Deep or Go Home”


ENG 201
30 September 2010



“Dig Deep or Go Home”


    The topic question of this research is a response argument to Adorno quote conerning how poetry shouldn’t be written after the Holocaust: Is it ethical to make art from genocide? This question, as needs must, limits itself to a single instance of systematic slaughter, that of the massacre which took place around the UN-declared “safe area” of Srebrenica, Bosnia in July, 1995.

    The research process is diverse and complex but direct. Although subjective reasoning is inherent to this debate, it does not exempt the process from the same scrutiny as a more objective research question. In many ways, the verification standard is raised in order to elevate the findings to a point where they can be viewed beyond the bias of subjective detractions. One step in the process is to sort through and identify material that is directly related to the subject (that is, the Srebrenican Genocide) and then to determine if that material is not only credible, but does something more than merely state what happened from a military, political, or historical perspective. That is, does the material address any issues related to literature, art, or poetry in relation to the subject? “Credible” in this context then is determined by how far removed is the material from the event and what claims to authenticity does it have. For instance, one poem found in The Kenyon Review mentioned the Siege of Sarajevo and the deaths at Srebrenica in its beautifully composed verses, but the author merely mentioned these events in distant context, not addressing them directly. This source was not used to further the argument of this topic question.

    Another step in the research process was to directly visit the location of the subject and to speak with those involved in not only the event itself, but in the creation of art and poetry following such cultural brutality. In speaking to surivors, a number of them voiced—without being asked—how important it is for there to be a record of the subject that is separate from the narrative constructed by politicians and military historians. Many directly affected thought literature spoke of deeper truth in such circumstances than a more formalized “allegedly objective” viewpoint would even attempt to. This perspective was, somewhat surprisingly, challenged by several artists who had already created such a record of poetic literature. This paradox enhances the argument rather than nullifies it.

    Research work still needed to be done is to coninue collecting material in this manner as well as testing the structure of an objective rubric which assesses such a subjective argument. This will be done as was detailed in the section which initially address the research process, that is, asking is each item of research is credible in terms of being directly related to the topic and asking if that material addressing the issues of the subject in the argument. Just because a rubric is formed does not automatically mean it works in the manner intended. Continued testing is needed, and discarded material can still serve in measuring them against other material; why was a particular item included while another item with similar subject matter excluded?

    The author’s own’s biases is somewhat self-evident. As a writer and photographer, he stands with the opinion that art and poetry is needed to reflect upon aspects of a traumatic event which is not addressed by the historical record and is often trampled by political agendas. Although both of those objectively-accepted perspectives have their importance and included some context and causality, they often do not explore the philosphy and ideology which leads people to behave in the way they do. Art, on the other hand, is usually entirely based in ideological-philosophical terms.


~•~

Teotwawki

[one of the dumbest papers I've ever written.]




HST 103
16 September 2010



Teotwawki*


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*. Despite its autochthonous appearance, this word is a modern acronym for The End Of The World As We Know It.
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    In the literature of conquest, prophecies from indigenous cultures often serve multiple functions. They simultaneously display the native people as exotic and mysterious but also simplistic and primitive for believing in such things. Of course, the belief system inherent in Christianity is never scrutinized nor subjected by the same methodology by those who adhere to it as divine truth, lest it be judged just as barbaric and superstitious as those from the “primitive” cultures. Perspective in this, as in most everything, determines the measurements of modern judgment.

    The first three texts of Victors and Vanquished present a trio of different perspectives relating to omens seen as foretelling the invasion of the Aztec empire by the Spaniards. Through these three different viewpoints, the importance auguries to the indigenous culture can be more readily seen, as well as how such portents could be used by the conquerers to further justify their actions as being ordained by God. Even if such superstitions are considered beyond the pale of true faith, fortune-telling is vindicated when it becomes a harbinger of one’s own victory. By examining several smaller perspectives of a subject, a deeper understanding of the whole can be reached.

    Fray Bernardio de Sahgún records eight omens from the Nahua people in the twelfth book of his Florentine Codex. These omens were said to have begun a decade before Cortés arrived, and although most of them can be reduced in modern terms as natural phenomena, others range from the merely curious to the outright baffling. For instance, in the first omen, when “a flame or tongue of fire, like the light of dawn” (31) is described, it, like the fourth omen—“looking as if it were sprinkling glowing coals” with “a long tail, which reached a great distance” (32)—can be scientifically seen as the description of a comet. Given the geology of central Mexico, when the second omen describes a mountain that “burned and flared up … it just took fire itself” (32), it can be deduced that this is an account of an erupting volcano. The lighting strike of the third omen is, despite the consideration that it “was not raining hard” and the “sun was shining” (32), would not be considered unusual in a modern context. The imagery, however, is almost archetypal when compared to the lightning struck tower in medieval tarot cards (an iconography which were certainly not unknown in 16th century Spain). The boiling lake of the fifth omen might seem curious at first, but again a comparison with modern geological studies of a seismically active region, such as Yellowstone Park in the United States, reveals that earthquakes below bodies of water can cause the lake to bubble and make “exploding sounds” (32). It is the latter three omens which seem to range from perplexing to stupefying, and can possibly attributed to mere superstition, or possibly apocryphal stories. A woman who goes along “weeping and shouting” ominous questions about children going to “forever” (32) can be attributed to almost anything. The final two omens involve highly exotic tellings which involve the subject of the amazement to vanish when subjected to scrutiny. An ash-colored crane caught in fishing nets that has “something like a mirror” on its head that “perforated, where the sky, the stars, and the Fire Drill [constellation] could be seen.”  Yet when Moteucçoma had his advisors examine it, the bird disappeared. This vanishing act was also the end result of the eighth omen’s two-headed “thistle-people” (33). When the human oddities were taken to the royal court, they too, disappeared without further comment on the part of the Codex.

    Fray Martín de Jesús de la Coruña’s Popular Auguries and Prophetic Dreams recounts prophecies from the Tarascan people, a traditional enemy of the Aztec empire. Most of these omens involved destruction or defilement of Tarascan temples. In one, the temples were “burned from top to bottom” then “burned again” (33). Another omen tells of how a priest of the Tarascan dreams that people came “bringing strange animals” and who “soiled the temples” (33). These people turned out to be the Spaniards with their horses who, a few years after felling the Aztecs, would annihilate the Tarascan state. The excerpt from Coruña’s account ends with a brief debate as to when the outbreak of smallpox and measles began. The text states that the Spaniards were “unanimous … that this disease was general throughout New Spain,” but that the Tarascan contended that the diseases were “unknown until the Spaniards brought them” (34). The tone of this excerpt and the after-the-fact debate indicates that, although the document is invaluable for the viewpoint it presents from an enemy of the Aztecs, the authenticity of the dream as related to Coruña is questionable. This is evidenced in the telling of how the Tarascans would be “given food and … marry … Christian girls,” but they “dared not tell [this dream prophecy] to the Cazonci” (33-34). This sounds distinctively like a retroactive appeasement story on the part of the Tarascans to the Spaniards.

    Appeasement is not necessary in Diego Durán’s record of indigenous culture, The History of the Indies of New Spain. It presents a unique perspective as being both a Nahuatl viewpoint, but also an examination of pictorial record-keeping habits of the Aztecs. This excerpt details repeated ominous warnings of danger and destruction at the hands of coming strangers, and the fall of Aztec temples. When the prophecies became such that they reveal threats to Moteczoma’s life and sovereignty, he imprisoned the oneiromancers and ordered that they “be given food in small measures until they starved to death. After this,” Durán states, “no one wished to tell his dreams to Moteczoma” (36).

    It was when Moteczoma had “the best artist of Mexico” (37) brought to him that the pictorial record-keeping comes to bear in this record of Nahuatl history. Wishing to understand the nature of the strangers invading his lands, Moteczoma ordered the artist to paint what he knew of them. The artist visually depicted the Spaniards and their ships, their colorful clothing, helmets, and belted swords. Documenting something unknown and beyond one’s own culture is a remarkable difficulty. The Nahuatl lacked a vocabulary to describe certain aspects of the Spaniards which had not previously been encountered in their realm, and so it was only via painting them that any kind of understanding be determined. In modern terms, this could be equated to spy satellite technology. What is revealed with a photograph may not be immediately comprehendible, but it is a static image which can be studied and compared to others. In manner more specific to the 16th century encounter between the Spaniards and the Aztecs, an image that could be studied to prepare them for eventually seeing with their own eyes the actual thing the depiction represented. Moteczoma wished to have as many paintings as possible created for him of the strange invaders so that he could best formulate a plan of action should they arrive at his palace. These painters became his intelligence agency. Through visual documentation, prophecy had become the seed of strategic planning.

    With a colorful tapestry of words, the Spaniard Francisco López de Gómara painted an apologetic picture of Hernán Cortés in Istoria de la conquista de Mexico. From the Spaniard perspective, the rational and reasoning of how events transpired between Conquistadors and the Aztec people was, of course, considerably different from the indigenous vantage point. Gómara’s work in particular is notable for this. Although he was a writer of incredible talent, who used some of the most vivid language in the canon of Spanish conquest literature, his bias in favor of Cortés was nothing short of hero-worship. His work sanitized the bloodshed inflicted upon the Aztecs and absolved Cortés of any possible wrong-doing. So powerfully did he aggrandize Cortés and the conquest of Mexico that, by the 1550s, even in his own country, his work had been banned by royal degree. A clear example of the absolution of Cortés in Gómara’s accounts can be seen in his simple statement that “the Captain entered in [the Aztec Temple] with fifty men, and without any Christian respect slew and murdered [the Aztecs] and took from them all their treasure.”  Gómara continued this description with what is almost an aside to ensure the beneficent light in which Cortés should be seen. “Although this fact seemed odious to Cortés,” Gómara wrote, that Cortés did nothing to stop his men from their actions because “he might have need of them” and certainly needed “to avoid contention amoung his company” (162). Thus, in such accounts of Gómara, Hernán Cortés had no blood on his hands in the felling of the Aztec empire. Within a generation of the violent events, the whitewashing of genocidal history had already found a powerful voice.

    Standing in slight counterpoint to Gómara—although far from being sympathetic to the Aztec—is Bernal Díaz’s seminal work, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Even though, as the editor Stuart B. Schwartz relates, “Díaz was often candid about his desire for wealth and women, he … sought to justify his actions by … spreading Christianity” (217), the Spanish historical writer did not present the antiseptic version of conquest that Gómara did.

    In the aftermath of Montezuma’s death and the decimation of his empire, Díaz wrote about how the native people got “rid of the idolatries and all the evil vices they practised … [the native people] were baptized” (218). He extolled the virtues of the many churches built in New Spain, detailing their fineries, their “patens and silver plates … and censers all worked in silver.”  The pueblo churches had “chasubles, and fontals … of velvet, damask and satin, and of taffeta of various colours … embroidered with gold and silk.”  He proudly told of how there are more trumpets in “this province of Guatemala” than there are  in his own country of Old Castile (218). He, of course, bragged about the speed with which the Spaniards eliminated the indigenous culture, and is just as haughty in his tone concerning the native people quickly taking to the only true religion, Christianity: “[B]oth men, women and children … know all the holy prayers in their own languages … they bow their heads with humility, bend their knees, and say the Prayer ‘Our Father,’” which, of course, they were taught by their conquerers in order to save their souls from “Infernal regions” (218-219). This point is especially crucial to the historical document Díaz recorded, for the bodily slaughter of a entire people means nothing if those surviving cannot have their souls saved by “the holy passion of our Lord Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ” (219).

    After waxing poetic on the new churches and converts to his religion, Díaz marked his account with a few examples of how some of the “Mexican Indians” had learned to read and write. Since it is not stated what language they have learned to read and write, the implication is clear that Spanish is, like the country’s religion, the only true language to learn; the Mexican Indians were illiterate when they knew only their native tongue. Along with a new language, the people of Mexico and Guatemala learned new crafts, trades, and laws by which they might cease being such vile, ignorant, evil heathens  Concluding the excerpt of this account, Díaz stated, “Not to waste more words … I will tell of many other grandeurs which, through us, there … are in New Spain” (221). He is saying that all old traditions—arts, crafts, and trades—were worthless, and that it is only through the civilized manners and knowledge of the Spaniards that these native people have finally come to know what true culture is.

    The old Tarascan prophecies of local temples being burned and strangers coming to defile them had come to pass. Once those temples were erased from the land they existed only in the documents which mentioned them as mere footnotes of history. A new God had arrived and His agents sacrificed the worshipers of the old gods in the name of power and glory to a distant ruler. As distant to the native people of Mexico as their time is to our own.

    Despite modern explanations which drain mystery from omens and portents of past civilizations, it is the perspective from within those eras which viewed the powerful forces of nature with curiosity, fear, and wonderment. Careful consideration of such viewpoints is sometimes lost when examining events from the safety and security of 500 years of compiled scientific knowledge. But no less an amazement is expressed when a modern-age viewer experiences an absence of electrical power and, enveloped in the complete darkness of night, the nocturnal heavens stretch out to an expansive unknown depth. To ancient people, such a sight would have been commonplace. What is a comforting ubiquity to one culture may be uniquely foreboding to another. It is accounting for this difference in perspective which creates the possibility for understanding. And understanding the wonders and fears of past cultures is a crucial purpose for the study of history.






~•~

Saturday, February 12, 2011

My Big Fat Balkan Warlord Wedding


ENG 201
14 September 2010



My Big Fat Balkan Warlord Wedding


    The 1998 essay “Balkan Wedding Revisited: Multiple Messages of Filmed Nuptuals” (sic), Dina Iordanova is taken from a thesis paper at the Centre for Mass Communication Research at the University of Leicester (published in 2000 by the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota). The essay compares two actual weddings which took place in the Balkans between 1992 and 1995 with several depictions of weddings depicted in feature films.

    The first of the actual weddings is infamous for being, according to the essay, a trigger event for the Siege of Sarajevo, while the second is infamous for being a much-hyped and gaudily-priced filmed wedding between a Serbian “turbo-folk” singer and an accused Bosnian Serb militia warlord. As for the feature film weddings mentions, in a short span, 19 films are mentioned, including one that offers a fictionalized account of the wedding which allegedly sparked the 44-month Siege of Sarajevo. She places these 21 different weddings within the context of how various societies view weddings, to what degree of cultural important is placed upon them, the role of the women in the wedding, and who are the couples involved—be they characters in a film, real-life people, or, in the case of the militia warlord and his folk singer wife, where the line of demarcation can be drawn as to how that distinction can be made.

    The opening of the essay has a sorrowed, almost nihilistic tone, as a brief account is offered of a Serbian wedding in Sarajevo in May 1992 in which a Muslim fired into the wedding party and the father of the groom was killed. A cursory overview and a few details are related of the siege itself when the tone and subject dramatically shifts to the 1995 “wedding of the century” between wanted war criminal Arkan and the folk-singer Ceca. It is described as “showcasing a wealth of peasant and urban wedding folklore,” and then a lengthly footnote follows which explains the term and cultural placement of the Serbian indigenous musical genre “turbo-folk” (Iordanova 2).  This lavish wedding was filmed and aired on Belgrade television at the time, and Iordanova outlines the growing trend of filmed weddings around the world. This becomes the lead-in for the next shift in subject of the essay to the use of cultural weddings in feature films from around the world.

    Of the 19 films mentioned in the next part of the essay, 10 countries are represented from the United States to Japan, with the majority being among the Balkan states. These films are detailed in varying degrees, with the focus being primarily on one of four Bulgarian films included in the account.

    The section of the thesis concludes with a simple account of some archetypal symbols which can be found in weddings, and the cultural place women have within them. The statement is made that “the wedding becomes a gendered metaphor of the Balkan plea for equality, in which Balkans are seen as a bride under the control of a domineering groom,” and that “the idealized image of the bride it is there not to please but to project insecurity and endurance...”  But then, in a sudden switch to contrast that statement, it is noted that in the case of Arkan and his popular singer bride is “exactly the opposite—an over-the-top demonstration of confident self-determination” (Iordanova 7).

    The tone shifts from the beginning of the essay to the end of it. Whereas it began detached, with, as was stated previously, grim and sorrowful elements, it becomes more journalistic as it details the weddings in feature films. By the concluding point of the essay—this section of the longer dissertation—the voice has become direct and forthright, all-but-unrecognizable from the grim depictions shown at the outset. It is a remarkably accomplished piece of writing that undoubtedly served the author well in her academic career.



Works Cited


Iordanova, Dina. “Balkan Wedding Revisited: Multiple Messages of Filmed Nuptuals.” Thesis. Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, 1998. Minneapolis: Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota. 2000. Print.


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The Righteous Offering of Gang Rape

ENG 233
Response 2
14 September 2010



The Righteous Offering of Gang Rape


    Of all the morality tales contained within the Pentateuch, one of the most curiously ethical narratives involves that of Abraham’s bartering with Yahweh to save Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction because their “sin is so grave” (Gen 18:20).  Yet at no point are those sins accounted.  Ironically, far more graphic depictions of moral turpitude come from the protagonist’s family rather than from the twin cities of carnal debauchery.  So great are the incongruities in the narrative that they could easily call to question if these stories were jokes hidden in plain sight meant for the amusement of just the sort of people they were meant to condemn.

    First, Abraham questions Yahweh if it is morally proper to “‘destroy the upright with the guilty’” (18:23), then barters with him: would he “‘not spare the place for the sake of the fifty upright in it?’” (18:24).  The bargaining quickly falters as Abraham, perhaps sensing there aren’t that many upstanding people in the town, lowers the number to forty-five, to forty, to twenty, and finally down to ten.  Yahweh agrees to spare the cities “‘for the sake of the ten’” (18:32).  And yet Abraham does nothing to go about finding even those hypothetical ten upright men; he instead “returned home” (18:33).  So here then is a do-gooder who does not even attempt to save the towns he just bargained to be spared.

    The narrative then jumps to Sodom itself and Abraham’s nephew Lot, who, for some reason, is portrayed as one of those upstanding citizens Abraham swore must live in the city.  And yet Lot’s actions do nothing to convince the reader that he is moral and righteous at all.  For instance, as soon as two strangers enter the town he all but begs them to stay at his house.  Granted, the reading audience is led to believe these strangers are the angels of the Lord come to rain “brimstone and fire” down upon Sodom (19:24), and as angels, one could presume they know a man’s heart more than his deeds, but still, this is the legendary city of buggery, and here is a man who “pressed [the strangers] so much that they went home with him and entered his house” (19:3) in such a city propositioning other men he does not know.  Strictly from the narrative, this could be taken to mean something quite salacious.  Once his guests, the strangers are, by terms of era and culture, entitled to honors and protection as guests in Lot’s home.  Even so, when the townsfolk come calling on Lot to have “intercourse” with the strangers, we the readers understand this intercourse to be of a sexual, not a verbal nature (19:5).  The only difference in the proposition of the townsfolk and of Lot is the apparent position of antagonist and protagonist of the story.  When the townspeople press further, Lot says, “‘Look, I have two daughters who are virgins. I am ready to send them out to you, for you to treat as you please,’” with the clear implication that they father is turning them over to be gang raped by a mob in the street (19:8).

    Again, within the context of the written narrative, is it a righteous man who would rather see his daughters defiled than to have the strangers—two men—be touched by the sodomites?  If readers were to extrapolate merely from this narrative, it could easily be deduced that Lot himself enjoyed the company of strange men, or as Jude records in one of the final books of the New Testament, himself engaged in the town’s penchant for “sexual immorality” and “unnatural lusts” (Jude 1:7).

    Strictly from the accounts in the text, rather than deducing that these protagonists are the people whose morality should be emulated, readers would more likely view Abraham as a lazy gambler and Lot himself as a vile sodomite.  These two factors combine to call into question the coherence of the narrator relating the story, unless of course, it is all sarcastic irony meant to be taken with a grain of salt.



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The Möebius Metaphor of the Forbidden Fruit

ENG 233
Response 1
31 August 2010


The Möebius Metaphor of the Forbidden Fruit


    In literary semiotics, a metaphor is simply a symbol set meant to represent another symbol set.  With the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden (NJB Gen. 2-3), we could then understand this to be a kind of tautological metaphor; that is, the forbidden fruit represents what the text of Genesis claims it to be: that which springs from knowing and understanding.

    The fruit was forbidden to Adam before Eve was created when “Yahweh God gave ... this command: ‘of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die’” (2:16-17).  Once Eve was created to live with Adam in the garden, the temptation to taste of such a forbidden fruit proved too great, and it took little enticement by a serpent: “God knows ... the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods,” (3:5), to convince Eve to eat it.  She found the fruit to be “pleasing to the eye, and ... enticing for the wisdom that it could give.”  She didn’t seem to hesitate in gobbling it and then taking some to Adam.  The difference in their view of the world from before and after their snack can be seen in Genesis 2:25 and 3:7—“both of them were naked ... but they felt no shame before each other,” then “both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked”—which illustrates the basic dilemma of interpreting for what this fruit is actually a metaphor.

    If the metaphor is indeed self-referential, then it becomes a symbol set for all that is unknown and mysterious; all that we as a species have yet to know and learn.  Once we taste of the fruit, once we accept the knowledge and wisdom offered, we cannot ever unlearn it.  In the creation myth of Genesis, it is never claimed that the Lord God, nor Yahweh, is omnipotent (if he were, why then would it be clearly stated in 3:9, “Yahweh God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked,” displaying evidence that Yahweh God did not, in fact, know where Adam was hiding).  But Yahweh God is shown to be a jealous overbearing creator who wishes to keep certain privileges and responsibilities from that which he has created—as seen by the laundry list of curses he places upon serpent, Eve, and Adam in 3:14-24, banishing the human couple from their garden paradise and condemning all humans from that point on.  This is a vindictive act which reads as the revenge of a scorned lover, not a compassionate and forgiving deity.

    This symbol set of the fruit and the tree can bee seen to represent that knowledge and understanding is set in the midst of everything else at the disposal of the two humans in the garden yet, they are told not to touch it under penalty of death.  Yet such death becomes metaphoric as well since once they did eat it, neither they nor the serpent actually died from the fruit itself.  Under their own initiative, or under the sway of a wily serpent—who has, presumably, already tasted of the fruit and so Knows and Understands what it is—the humans to “become like one of us” (3:22), meaning, despite the plural reference, the Yahweh God.  They eat the fruit and metaphorically Know what their Creator knows.  Not only is there something else beyond their ken, but now that they know there are things they don’t know, they can never be satisfied with ignorance again.

    The Garden of Eden is a school.  The fruit is education.  That is the metaphor.  And once we taste of that metaphor, we can spit out that knowledge but we can never again forget the taste of something beyond our range of understanding.



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Art After Srebrenica


ENG 201
30 August 2010


Art After Srebrenica


     Theodor Adorno is often paraphrased in misquote as stating that no poetry should be produced after Auschwitz. The actual quote stems from an essay Adorno published in 1955, the relative translated extract stating, “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” (in its original form: “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch”). Recently, this reference was cited in the midst of my own research into the genocide and war which occurred in Bosnia between 1992-1996. The reference came after I visited the memorial in Potočari for the victims of the Srebrenica Massacre, and met with film director Danis Tanović at a café in Sarajevo. “I don’t know what you want to say about [Bosnia],” the director told me, “If there can be no poetry after the Holocaust, there can be no art of any kind after Sarajevo.”

    My research is in the field of Literature. My subject this semester’s series of papers will involve genocide in Bosnia, particularly that which took place in Srebrenica. This topic is highly controversial, even to the debate of whether a massacre took place there and, if it did, does what happened actually constitute a “genocide”? Those questions are better left asked by a longer and more complex thesis than this series, as my argument will specifically address the Adorno quote as it was referenced by Tanović: is it barbaric to create art after genocide?
 

    The irony of Mr. Tanović’s sardonic allusion is that there has been poetry after Auschwitz and art after Sarajevo; he himself is the creator of some. Historically, art has always followed tragedy. This can be found in the epic poetry of the Ancient Greeks and recounted in Hebrew victory songs in the Tanakh. This sort of art and literature becomes as vitally important as any political or historical documentation of events which transpired. Recording stories in oral tradition, verse, music, written narrative, or image is a way in which deeper connective meaning can be understood.

    Such understanding came into my own experience when I walked through the rows of white obelisks at the memorial cemetery in Potočari and listened to the screaming silence that has shrouded that area for the past 15 years. The dead no longer have voices with which to tell their stories. It must be the living then, those who have ears to hear the stories unspoken, who must pass along the poetry of the dead; the art of slaughtered.

    One aspect, one need, of art and poetry is to shape what is senseless into some temporary comprehensive form. Since the world we experience rarely makes sense, we create texts to offer reason and examination, to formulate some understanding about the way we view the world, especially when it seems to have no immediate meaning. An ubiquitous question asked following a tragedy is why?

    What happened in Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996—and Srebrenica in July, 1995—staggers belief. As the twentieth century came to a close, a modern European capital became the site of the longest military siege in modern history while the rest of the world sat idly by and watched it take place. In Srebrenica, the United Nations, under the promise of protecting refugees, instead conspicuously assisted the aggressors and became complicit in their slaughter.

    But all of this perspective is purely subjective. The question of the semester’s topic is not does art exist after a genocide?—for it is plainly clear and easily evidenced that it indeed does. Instead, the argument question I purpose is the debate of is it barbaric to create art in the wake of a genocide? Barbaric, in this context, should be taken to mean culturally offensive and/or dispassionate rather than excessively violent. This latter question then is one which has far more fertile ground in which to dig to seek out the opinions of the dead.



Works Cited


Adorno, Theodor. “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft.” Prismen, vol. 10A, 1955: pg. 30.

Tanović, Danis. Personal interview. 25 June 2010.


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An Inconsistent Oracle


English 205
May 4, 2010


An Inconsistent Oracle:
Trickster Art & Magic in Truth & Bright Water


                        They massacred the buffalo

                        Kitty-corner from the bank

                        The taxis run across my feet

                        And my eyes have turned to blanks
                                ──Neil Young

    One of earliest myth cycles is that of the trickster.  Trickster appears without warning and, before they leave, the world has been irrevocably changed in some manner.  In Thomas King's Truth & Bright Water the trickster appears as Monroe Swimmer, the "famous Indian artist" and an avatar for the author.  Monroe moves into an old church and proceeds to force a confrontation between authenticity and expectation on a liminal battlefield where reality, mythology, and history blur together in the fog that shrouds the bridge linking the two towns of Truth and Bright Water.  "[T]trickster stories point to the way ordinary, conventional reality is an illusory construction produced out of a particular univocal interpretation of phenomena appearing as signs" (Doueihi qtd by Smith), and to achieve such ends, Monroe enlists the help of an apprentice: the story's 15 year old narrator, Tecumseh.  Through assisting with Monroe's artistic work, Tecumseh learns the world is far larger, and far stranger, than he has conceived from his small corner of it.

    The summation and substantial representation of the Native American Trickster is Coyote. In a critical essay of King's previous novels, Dawn Karima Pettigrew considers the "innate irreverence [which] accompanies Coyote's actions. Unimpressed by titles, rules, or systems, Coyote exhibits a gentle bewilderment coupled with a complete absence of fear or fawning. The white man fails to frighten Coyote. He refuses to be reduced to a victim by the majority culture's vision and values" (Pettigrew 217-18).  Monroe Swimmer is analogous to Coyote, and the famous Indian artist irreverently moves into the old Christian church and, over the course of the novel, proceeds to paint it out of existence.  "[N]o one noticed that Monroe had ... begun to paint the outside walls of the church... [he] began with the east wall first, and because that wall faced over prairies and because you couldn't see it from Truth or Bright Water, no one knew anything was happening..." (King 30).   This act shows an absence of fear or fawning towards the white man's title, system, and rules.  Monroe does not participate in Indian Days, instead he sets up iron decoy buffalo fetishes to lure the bison back to their homeland.  In this, Monroe refuses to play the victim—that is, to pretend to be the sort of Indian expected by the conquering race of tourists—yet operates (via using iron, metal-works, paint, and modern techniques) in methods that are not at all traditional to his tribe or people.  Pettigrew goes on to suggest that although Coyote is "initially open to the contact with white people, [he] quickly becomes cognizant that their societal structures exist to exclude and oppress him. Coyote responds to these social, cultural, and economic barriers by beating their architects at their own game" (218).  Again, this description could as easily be used to describe Monroe's time in Toronto where he became the "famous Indian artist"—as King relates it: "Miles figured Monroe got lucky, that he landed in Toronto just as being an Indian was becoming chic [...] [his] paintings began to sell, and in no time at all, according to Miles, Monroe was rich" (King 28). This got Monroe into trouble with several museums for painting indians into works of art he is meant to restore.  Monroe masters the world of art as measured by the white people, then returns to Bright Water to use their architecture to perform restorations of his own.

    The fact that "in Thomas King's novels, the trickster takes these concepts and uses them to benefit Blackfoot characters who at-tempt to survive life on Canadian reservations in the modern era" (Pettigrew 219) is undeniable when examining—as Pettigrew does in her essay—King's first two novels.  But this begs the question as to the absence of a direct Coyote character in Truth & Bright Water.  It becomes easier then, and perhaps necessary, to consider Monroe as fulfilling this role. Like Coyote, Monroe shows a pridefulness that could easily be written off as egotistical arrogance.  But with Monroe taking the role of Coyote, such an attitude becomes more a matter of magic than ego.  He knows his role and function in the world and is glad to take the mantle.  When Tecumseh first encounters Monroe, he doesn't recognize who he is: "'Famous Indian artist,' says the man, as if he's announcing someone important... 'What?' 'You're supposed to say "famous Indian artist" after you say "Monroe Swimmer"'" (King 46-47).  This "man" is, in fact, the famous Indian artist himself.  The moniker needs to be spoken because—in Trickster lore—words are magic, and Monroe has come to bring fortune and hazard to Truth and Bright Water.  The most notable thing about Monroe when Tecumseh first meets him is his hair, "which reminds me of Graham Greene's hair in Dances With Wolves" (King 47) and which turns out to actually be a wig and not real hair, Tecumseh soon takes the role of apprentice to Monroe, and sees first hand—if without full understanding—of the plans and schemes this trickster has in store.

    When Tecumseh visits Monroe at the church, he takes in the strange and curious changes Monroe is making, and is quickly drawn into the trickster's plans. "There's no altar at the front of the church. I look around to see where Monroe has moved it and that's when I see the buffalo. It's not real, and I know that right away, but it's pretty good" (King 48). Monroe questions Tecumseh directly, "'What'd you think of my buffalo?' 'Is it paper mâché?' 'The real ones are on their way.' [...] Monroe puts on the wig and starts rolling around the room. He circles the buffalo a couple times. 'I'm planning to do some restoration work'" (King 49).  This is the first time Monroe discusses his restoration project.  Although he is known for his work in painting restoration, his current work involves restoring something more than a canvas.  Later in the novel, he and Tecumseh again discuss the project, and again the wig is involved: "I'm hoping Monroe will take the wig off and help.  But he doesn't. 'What do you think?' It's a buffalo. Or, at least, it's the outline of a buffalo. Flat iron wire bent into the shape of a buffalo... 'It's my new restoration project ... I'm going to save the world'" (King 139).  This sort of grand scheme is nothing usual for Trickster, who is often a multi-tasker of mythology playing roles as creator of worlds, destroyer of worlds, and, in some cases, acts to restore the world.

    Tecumseh's involvement in this restoration becomes more laborious.  Monroe enlists him to help at the church in moving his iron silhouettes; his buffalo decoys.  "At first," Tecumseh tells us, "I think all the buffalo are the same," but Tecumseh is catching a glimpse behind the curtain of the trickster.  He sees the working machinations first-hand, even if he doesn't realize the purpose, he knows the intent, "I can see that they are all different shapes and sizes" (King 139).  To fully immerse his apprentice in the workings of his magical plans, Monroe puts the wig on Tecumseh.  Tecumseh doesn't like the wig, he "can see even less now" and the "wig itself smells funny."  But this gesture between Trickster and his charge displays something tangible involving the inclusion of power.  Trickster, in mythology, is almost never on the same level as the gods.  Trickster merely uses mundane powers to fool others into doing the actual work or, when magic is involved, it usually comes in the form of hedge-magic, sympathetic magic; those process which gain power through perception and belief.  "'Before we're done,'" Monroe tells [Tecumseh], "'buffalo will return'" (King 143-44).  The magical ritual has started, but it takes some time, and a number of physical trappings, to achieve its influence. Monroe hasn't yet made the church fully invisible, but already it blends in with the prairie and sky around it.  Monroe warns Tecumseh not to tell anyone about their work because "'If they hear about it, it won't work." It is not the people of Bright Water with which Monroe is concerned, "Real buffalo,'" he whispers, 'can spot a decoy a mile away'" (King 145).  Monroe warns Tecumseh against saying anything because, like speaking his moniker, words hold power and speaking about the work in progress could lead to the words being carried on the winds to reach the buffalo, wherever they may be, and keep them from returning.

    This creates a dichotomy in Tecumseh's world, as exemplified by two conversations in particular.  His cousin, Lum, is firmly planted in the real, modern and present world: "'Garbage,' he says, his voice hissing into the wind. 'The new buffalo'" (King 162).  Lum represents a new generation of indian who does not believe in the traditions of folklore and ghost dances and dog soldiers and magic.  He is fully involved in Indian Days and doesn't have much patience for ideas involving art and restoration.  Contrarily, Aunt Cassie's life involves mystery and unanswerable questions.  In one exchange with Tecumseh, the magic at work is stated directly and aloud, "Auntie Cassie looks towards Truth. 'I hear Monroe is painting the church.' 'You should see it,' I say. 'He's making the church disappear'" (King 174).  Monroe's turning the church invisible can be seen from a realistic perspective as merely using paint to camouflage the building to appear as part of the landscape surrounding it.  On another level of perception, Monroe makes the church's history disappear as he turns it into a place of art and magic—his home—and thus, the church as a Christian house of worship has genuinely vanished.  In this latter sense, we see as well how Tecumseh is learning these same methods from Monroe, "I take my shirt off and rub dirt on my body to kill my scent and help me blend with the landscape...'" (King 205), his actions reflecting what he has learned from the restoration project of his mentor.

    Monroe's message becomes overt and undisguised when he tells Tecumseh, "'Magic ... if you want the herds to return, you have to understand magic. [...] Realism will only take you so far'" (208). Monroe, trickster that he is, is also a reflected manifestation of the author, and so Monroe telling us that magic is afoot and that realism won't bring a conclusion is King slipping in a glimpse of the authorial structure at work, hinting that the novel's conclusion will involve a certain brand of magic; realism alone will not bring us, the readers, to where the author wishes us to be.

    Later, when Tecumseh last mentions the buffalo, he sees that "a few of them have wandered off and aren't where they're supposed to be, but most of the have stayed put. Monroe said they might move around a bit and that it isn't a worry as long as they stay in sight."  Given that the church (may or may not) exist out on the prairie, iron decoys of buffalo moving about on their own doesn't come as a surprise.  Realism brought us only so far.  For something truly remarkable, if we use eyes willing to see, we find that magic will show us other paths.

    Soldier, Tecumseh's dog, has found many of the paths which the human characters traverse in the novel.  Soldier is named after the dog soldiers of old Cheyenne lore, indian warriors who staked themselves to a piece of land to defend it against all invaders, both in this world and the next.  The formation of the Dog Soldier came about after a Cheyenne warrior named Porcupine Bear had a vision of two cousins involved in a fight (Hoig).  This source vision manifest in King's novel through the three canine character—Soldier and the two Cousins.  These dogs are a crucial part of the landscape and act as symbols for both discovery and protection.  When, just prior to the conclusion of the novel, Soldier runs away from Tecumseh, Monroe views it with eyes looking at a different world than the landscape of prairies and mountains and big sky:
        "'Looks like he's on a mission,' says Monroe.
        "Soldier trots down the side of the coulee and disappears into the fog. I'm fairly sure I know where he's going, and I'm not sure it's a good idea.
        "'You better go find him,' says Monroe. 'No telling how far he'll go this time.' He leans against the truck and straightens the ribbon so it lies on the bone like lines of blood. 'When you do,' he says, 'ask him not to both the buffalo.'
        "I don't catch up with Soldier." (King 268-69)

Monroe is the trickster and Soldier is the defender and psychopomp, this passage becomes prophecy; a dark foretelling of the death that soon follows.  Tecumseh cannot catch up to Soldier because the dog must travel a path which leads to sunless lands where the living cannot go.  But this possible trek which Soldier makes, is, like the fog that shrouds the bridge spanning the river between Truth and Bright Water, is obscured and ultimately never definitively revealed.

    Monroe's message to the indians of the reservation, like his art, is not always consistent, and by the novel's end both are left unclear, but that uncertainty is part of what he teaches.  What we learn, much like what we experience, requires the proper eyes with which to see, the proper ears with which to hear.  If we hold rigid expectations about what is going to happen, as Lum and others in Bright Water did, then that is all that we may allow to occur.  If we, like Monroe and to some extent Tecumseh, open ourselves to other possibilities, then what we experience around us will continually be surprising and new.  In a previous novel by King, the narrator and Coyote are talking.  The conversation could almost as easily be placed in Truth & Bright Water as being between Tecumseh (a first-person narrator whose name is mentioned only once) and Monroe.  "'There are no truths, Coyote,' I says. 'Only stories.' 'Okay,' says Coyote. 'Tell me a story'" (King qtd by Ruppert).  The story in this latter novel could be summarized as the trickster climbing to the rooftop of an invisible church and yawping to the world: the buffalo have returned and magic is afoot!



Bibliography


Hart, Mickey and Jay Stevens and Fredric Leiberman. Drumming at the Edge of Magic. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990. Print.

Hoig, Stan. The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980. Internet file. 16 April 2010.

King, Thomas. Truth & Bright Water. 2000. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.

Pettigrew, Dawn Karima. "Coyote discovers America: The cultural survival of the trickster in the novels of Thomas King." Wicazo Sa Review 12.1 (1997). EBSCO. Web. 29 April 2010.

Rose, Wendy. "Just What's All This Fuss about Whiteshamanism Anyway?" Coyote Was Here: Essays on Contemporary Native American Literary and Political Mobilization. Aarhus, Denmark: Seklos, Dept. of Eng., Univ. of Aarhus, 1984. EBSCO. Web. 19 April 2010.

Ruppert, James. "When coyote dreams." World & I 8.6 (1993). EBSCO. Web. 30 April 2010.

Smith, Carlton. "Coyote, Contingency, and Community: Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water and Postmodern Trickster." American Indian Quarterly 21.3 (1997). EBSCO. Web. 29 April 2010.

"Truth & Bright Water Reading Guide." Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2001. HarperCollins. PDF. 22 April 2010.



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