When I try to write about human suffering (that is, the suffering of others), it's imperative I remind myself that I am only a witness not a victim by association. (When I'm the victim, I assume I'll know it & won't need many/any reminders.) I have to remind myself to try to identify with the others' suffering as much as I can AND only up to a point. I have to remind myself that no matter how well-intentioned my motives may be, I'm always dangerously close to co-opting someone else's suffering for my art, or whatever. To do /that/ is disgusting & unforgivable. I have to remind myself to tell my 12-year-old self to knock it off, that suffering isn't a contest nor is it some perverse bromide for whatever aches my soul may have that day. The fact that I have to remind myself of these, & a great many other things, means, of course, that I'm a repeat offender of these, & a great many other things, when I try to write about the suffering of others.
Another way, maybe, to think about this question--an essential one--is to consider what the "real" or "true" subject of any elegy may be. The answer is always the same in every case: every elegy ever written is in many ways unconsciously, though primarily, about the self writing it. That's an ugly fact, but if we're cognizant of it we can begin to work against it.
One of the ways Borbely manages to write about his own suffering is using the frames & templates (per se) of myth. He's able to abstract himself from the trauma (temporarily, as any of us can only hope for) to write about that trauma as though it happened to someone else (which in a way, it did; he's not the same person in the year 2000 as he is in the year 2014, for example). Myth universalizes suffering, generally; in Borbely's case, myth universalizes suffering while it also eternalizes it, & in order to achieve any of this, he must first externalize his suffering, identify his with that of others. Were he not able or willing to reach out from his own suffering into others', In a Bucolic Land would not just be a lesser poem; it would not exist.
No matter how impersonal a poem (or any work of art) may seem or be, the fact that a person still wrote it is irrefutable. The self's limitations are, ironically, boundless. For example, as much as I'd like to get out of my head, go beyond my experiences, feelings, & thoughts; my autobiographical "I" can go only so far. I can't not (alas) be me, & as a younger writer I found this to be freeing. Eventually, like sugar, the allure of the self wears off. Good thing, too, because it's a selfish, self-involved approach to writing. The more of "the knowledge and the language" of others I can understand, the better (however we might try to define "better") I might be as a poet, sure, but as a person, too. It's really hard to be a racist, sexist, elitist jerk when I'm reading in the library all day...I hope.
Borbely speaks beautifully & credibly in these poems. I hadn't thought to doubt either until I read the prompt.
The beauty is self-evident & pervasive. I haven't charted the book in this manner, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one vivid image or turn of phrase in each stanza (at least). And this is in translation! Damn!
I'm not sure how to understand "credible" other than "authentic" & "authoritative," synonyms which may speak to the kinds of credibility a work so deeply informed & invested in trauma must earn & keep. Never once was I compelled to doubt or lose trust in the speaker &, by extension, the sources of his trauma. So, as a fact-gathering-&-verifying reader, I've got no problems. For another sort of credibility--authenticity, or emotional truth, or...--I /believe/ what happens here (even if it didn't), even if some of it is difficult to /conceive/ of doing or happening, let alone /believe/ any of it. Not just Americans, but most Western readers, may struggle with the seemingly anachronistic & utterly foreign & alien world Borbely remembers, describes & creates.
Lastly, I more deeply trust this speaker because of his seamless weaving of myth into mundane & brutal rural life in mid-to-late Communist Hungary.
Well, I just finished a couple days ago, and I'm rather devastated.
The ending(s) are devastating.
It's upsetting--the loss of this author who was able to create so much tenderness on the page. Yes, horrors, but I felt also tenderness in the technique, as if he was carrying around a snow globe of the village inside him. Anyways, I'm rambling here. But still thinking about the book. The mythologizing of the entire world and experiences was fantastic.
I concur with the beauty part of the equation, but I have trouble with the credibility aspect. I'm not talking about his depiction of the actual events of that night. I mean his interpretation as to why it happened because the strong suggestion is that his mother brought it upon herself by shirking her fate and trying to rise above her station in life. I mean the nerve of the woman to want a dresser with a mirror and wood planks to cover her dirt floor! The idea is that you stay in your lane or you pay. She was the one who wanted to pick up and leave each year after the Party meeting when they never got any return for their hard work all year, for instance. And at the end of that chapter, it's said that the Furies sat on their roof and waited. She was tempting her fate and her family's fate. So I guess that if you come from a place where that's a deep-seated unshakeable understanding of things then what happened to her is credible, but it runs radically against the grain of the average American's worldview where we have the freedom and agency to create our own life.
Interesting. While this scene is portrayed in a particular (not general) way, for some reason, my takeaway is that the Furies sit on top of everyone's rooftops, waiting.
I believe they are after the mother. I know it's a repulsive thought. But part of the genius of the work is how he evokes an ancient and to our modern 21st century Western minds alien worldview--one that just might permit or even expect such a thing.
Yes, the poems speak (to me) with both credibility and beauty.
These poems demonstrate Borbely's mastery of extending our knowledge and language through his own expression of self. He processed the last hideous event in stages, perhaps hoping to make himself whole again; it's what we all do to understand trauma, and he had so many. As we know now it didn't work.
When I try to write about human suffering (that is, the suffering of others), it's imperative I remind myself that I am only a witness not a victim by association. (When I'm the victim, I assume I'll know it & won't need many/any reminders.) I have to remind myself to try to identify with the others' suffering as much as I can AND only up to a point. I have to remind myself that no matter how well-intentioned my motives may be, I'm always dangerously close to co-opting someone else's suffering for my art, or whatever. To do /that/ is disgusting & unforgivable. I have to remind myself to tell my 12-year-old self to knock it off, that suffering isn't a contest nor is it some perverse bromide for whatever aches my soul may have that day. The fact that I have to remind myself of these, & a great many other things, means, of course, that I'm a repeat offender of these, & a great many other things, when I try to write about the suffering of others.
Another way, maybe, to think about this question--an essential one--is to consider what the "real" or "true" subject of any elegy may be. The answer is always the same in every case: every elegy ever written is in many ways unconsciously, though primarily, about the self writing it. That's an ugly fact, but if we're cognizant of it we can begin to work against it.
One of the ways Borbely manages to write about his own suffering is using the frames & templates (per se) of myth. He's able to abstract himself from the trauma (temporarily, as any of us can only hope for) to write about that trauma as though it happened to someone else (which in a way, it did; he's not the same person in the year 2000 as he is in the year 2014, for example). Myth universalizes suffering, generally; in Borbely's case, myth universalizes suffering while it also eternalizes it, & in order to achieve any of this, he must first externalize his suffering, identify his with that of others. Were he not able or willing to reach out from his own suffering into others', In a Bucolic Land would not just be a lesser poem; it would not exist.
No matter how impersonal a poem (or any work of art) may seem or be, the fact that a person still wrote it is irrefutable. The self's limitations are, ironically, boundless. For example, as much as I'd like to get out of my head, go beyond my experiences, feelings, & thoughts; my autobiographical "I" can go only so far. I can't not (alas) be me, & as a younger writer I found this to be freeing. Eventually, like sugar, the allure of the self wears off. Good thing, too, because it's a selfish, self-involved approach to writing. The more of "the knowledge and the language" of others I can understand, the better (however we might try to define "better") I might be as a poet, sure, but as a person, too. It's really hard to be a racist, sexist, elitist jerk when I'm reading in the library all day...I hope.
Borbely speaks beautifully & credibly in these poems. I hadn't thought to doubt either until I read the prompt.
The beauty is self-evident & pervasive. I haven't charted the book in this manner, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one vivid image or turn of phrase in each stanza (at least). And this is in translation! Damn!
I'm not sure how to understand "credible" other than "authentic" & "authoritative," synonyms which may speak to the kinds of credibility a work so deeply informed & invested in trauma must earn & keep. Never once was I compelled to doubt or lose trust in the speaker &, by extension, the sources of his trauma. So, as a fact-gathering-&-verifying reader, I've got no problems. For another sort of credibility--authenticity, or emotional truth, or...--I /believe/ what happens here (even if it didn't), even if some of it is difficult to /conceive/ of doing or happening, let alone /believe/ any of it. Not just Americans, but most Western readers, may struggle with the seemingly anachronistic & utterly foreign & alien world Borbely remembers, describes & creates.
Lastly, I more deeply trust this speaker because of his seamless weaving of myth into mundane & brutal rural life in mid-to-late Communist Hungary.
Well, I just finished a couple days ago, and I'm rather devastated.
The ending(s) are devastating.
It's upsetting--the loss of this author who was able to create so much tenderness on the page. Yes, horrors, but I felt also tenderness in the technique, as if he was carrying around a snow globe of the village inside him. Anyways, I'm rambling here. But still thinking about the book. The mythologizing of the entire world and experiences was fantastic.
On a practical note; please resend the zoom link for tomorrow's meeting (9.18.22 Sunday). Thanks.
I concur with the beauty part of the equation, but I have trouble with the credibility aspect. I'm not talking about his depiction of the actual events of that night. I mean his interpretation as to why it happened because the strong suggestion is that his mother brought it upon herself by shirking her fate and trying to rise above her station in life. I mean the nerve of the woman to want a dresser with a mirror and wood planks to cover her dirt floor! The idea is that you stay in your lane or you pay. She was the one who wanted to pick up and leave each year after the Party meeting when they never got any return for their hard work all year, for instance. And at the end of that chapter, it's said that the Furies sat on their roof and waited. She was tempting her fate and her family's fate. So I guess that if you come from a place where that's a deep-seated unshakeable understanding of things then what happened to her is credible, but it runs radically against the grain of the average American's worldview where we have the freedom and agency to create our own life.
Interesting. While this scene is portrayed in a particular (not general) way, for some reason, my takeaway is that the Furies sit on top of everyone's rooftops, waiting.
I believe they are after the mother. I know it's a repulsive thought. But part of the genius of the work is how he evokes an ancient and to our modern 21st century Western minds alien worldview--one that just might permit or even expect such a thing.
Yes, the poems speak (to me) with both credibility and beauty.
These poems demonstrate Borbely's mastery of extending our knowledge and language through his own expression of self. He processed the last hideous event in stages, perhaps hoping to make himself whole again; it's what we all do to understand trauma, and he had so many. As we know now it didn't work.
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