Live Thinking

How it shapes USSR–Sub-Saharan Africa relations

In Summer 1920, Moscow hosted the Second Congress of the Third International (Komintern), which continued the work of definition of the action policies of communist and socialist parties of all Europe (and beyond)[1]. It was in this context that, for the first time, the colonial question (Kolonialny Voproc, in Russian) in the Marxist discourse and the strategies toiling mass parties should have adopted towards national liberation movements in colonial countries were approached officially and systematically[2]. This question was introduced by the same Lenin through the Preliminary Draft Thesis on the National and the Colonial Questions (Pervonachalhy Naprosok Tezisov po Natsionalnomu i Kolonialnomu Voprosam, in Russian), which he made circulate among the international delegates a little less before the opening of the Second Congress, in order to generate a systematic debate on the issue related to the liberation of Eastern countries (which will have been finalised by the Third and Fourth Congress)[3].

In the Draft Thesis, Lenin proposed to offer a reflection on the problems in Eastern countries under imperialist dominion and tried to give an answer to how dealing with such issues and how to approach towards national liberation movement in those contexts that are typically feudal, where the bourgeois hadn’t raised yet, hence they didn’t reach a class system typical of capitalist societies. Fundamental and  original in the Colonial Question as it was presented by the upholder of the October Revolution was the integration of the discourse on the East of the world in Marxist thought – established here as a subject[4] – and the introduction of the national question in the colonial one, which had been considered as two distinguished topics by Marx[5]. Such process led to the formulation of a Soviet theory on anti-colonialism[6], that had a central role in foreign policies of the Komintern and in the relations between Soviet Union and anti-colonial countries; moreover, the colonial question and the Draft Thesis had been the foundation to the rise of Soviet African Studies and of further debates on anti-colonialism in this context[7].

The Colonial and National Questions as proposed to the Komintern and object of debates was introduced by Lenin in the Draft Thesis, but finalised in the Report of the Commission of the National and the Colonial Questions (Doklad Komissi po Natsionalnomu i Kolonialnomu Voprosom, in Russian), produced by the debates on the East between Lenin and Roy, the Indian delegate. This question and these works can be considered as the result of previous reflections made by the same Lenin on Imperialism and on the relations between the East and Western powers, which imposed the colonial dominion on them[8].

The colonial question had already introduced by Marx and Marxist thought in general and several debates emerged during the First and the Second International, wherein the colonial dominion was defined as an extension of the power and exploitation perpetrated by the capitalism[9]; there, it was also clarified the necessity of socialist parties to pursue the «complete emancipation of colonies»[10] so that they could «claim for the natives that liberty and autonomy compatible with their state of development»[11], with a clear condemnation expressed by the Stuttgart Congress of the International in 1907[12]. But then, why was Lenin’s Colonial Question considered the foundation of the following anti-colonial debates in the Soviet context? Because «[…] what was being debated and decided were the attitudes European socialists should adopt towards the process of colonization and towards the colonial countries. For many, the non-Western world was still, as in Marx’s time, an object»[13]. In first Marxist theories, the discussion on the colonial dominion was focused on the approaches the socialist movement should have adopted, keeping aside the colonised countries and distinguishing the national question from the colonial one[14]. On the contrary, Lenin reformulated the Marxist thought on the East, putting it at the centre of the debate and giving it an active role, and not just compared to the West or as an incidental reflection to the great events of history[15]. In Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin described the imperialism as a tool of colonial and imperialist powers to expand their own authority and their sphere of influence[16], «characterised by intense competition, by a ‘striving for domination’»[17], and, in this context, the relationship between the West and the East became more and more complex, based on capital relations, and «colonies were important at every stage in the reproduction of capitalism. Not only or primarily as markets, but as sources of raw materials and as fields for the self-expansion of capital, as investment outlets»[18]; in this process, the East entered the orbit of capitalism, without becoming itself capitalist[19]. Imperialism is thus a new step of capitalism, which aims to the expansion of its own power and «which had divided the world into oppressor and oppressed nations»[20]; the colonial question, therefore, became also national, since «if imperialism meant a structural relationship of oppressor and oppressed it followed that any break in that structure was a blow, not only against a particular imperialist power, but against imperialism»[21] and, thus, every kind of struggle against imperialist dominion where colonies were integrated in capitalist system took shape as a struggle against capitalism and, consequently, considerable progressive and revolutionary[22]. «The colonial question came to be regarded as an ally of the proletarian revolution»[23]. Indeed, it was a duty for toiling masses of workers of oppressed nations to struggle for the right of self-determination of nations[24], i.e. the right to secession which must be acquired by the will of the population and through free votes[25], because it wouldn’t have been so, «the recognition of equal rights of nations and of the international society of workers would, in reality, remain an empty phrase, a mere hypocrisy»[26].

Already before the formulation of the imperialist theory Lenin was interested in the colonial question. In the struggle against the dominion of Western powers, he saw a new historical phase, which could have jeopardised the capitalist system as imposed, «characterised by heightened struggle, which began in Russia and Asia»[27], and had serious implications for the class struggle in Europe[28]. Even though national liberation movement from colonial dominion didn’t have all socialist characters, they took shape as revolutionary movements since they’re opposed against capitalist system, and thus, they could have been considered as a first phase of the path towards a socialist system[29]. «Colonial nationalism appears in Lenin’s theory as part of the one revolutionary process; it is a ‘step’ on the march to socialism»[30] and so that they could contribute to the long overdue global revolution, as desired by Lenin and bolsheviks in the aftermath of Russian revolution, which saw the fall of capitalist system and the triumph of the toiling mass of workers[31]. «”[T]he civil war of the working people against the imperialists and exploiters in all the advanced countries is beginning to be combined with national wars against international imperialism”»[32].

Such interest, therefore, derived from the necessity of promoting the socialist revolution and Soviet Russia, in order to assure the socialist victory in a moment of great uncertainty in the aftermath of the civil war and of a major crisis provoked by the Great War[33]. Since he didn’t find support from Western powers, the «Lenin sought popularity among the small and weak states of Europe as well as the colonies by exposing the methods adopted by then great powers to promote their interests at the expense of the small states»[34]. From this the urgency to systematise the colonial question and the approaches towards national movements of liberation.

The Preliminary Draft Thesis on Colonial and National Questions were Lenin’s formulations on the approaches Communist parties and toiling mass movement should apply in the context of anti-colonial struggle. Here, Lenin stated that the duty of the Communist International was to make an alliance with the proletarians of all nations «to overthrow the landowners and bourgeoisie»[35] because only a proletarian revolution and the victory of the Soviet power could liberate the peoples oppressed by colonial dominance[36]. Specifically, communist parties had to collaborate temporarily with national liberation movements in whatever expression they assume, democratic-bourgeois as well[37], in the context of imperialist regime, where the capitalist system typical of Western nations hadn’t developed yet, but rather they showed feudal or patriarchal characteristics[38], without emerging with them though[39]. Thus, it was necessary that the anti-imperialist struggle policies wouldn’t be built on abstract concepts[40], instead they «should first be based on an exact appraisal of specific historical and above all economic conditions»[41], being aware that what one was fighting for were really the needs of oppressed social classes, and not those of the classes in power which support, for the purpose of their interests, the perpetration of the system of dominance by capitalist nations[42], distinguishing «between the interests of the oppressor and oppressed»[43]. Moreover, communist parties had to expose how the colonial powers imposed their dominance, «creating a stage structure that is dependent economically, politically and militarily upon the imperialist powers»[44], and these parties «must give care to the survivals of national feelings un the long-enslaved countries and peoples»[45], in order to create an alliance between the proletarians of all the world[46] and ensure the victory of Soviet system[47].

In the strategies as introduced by Lenin results a critical issue which was useful for the rising of the following debates regarding the colonial question. This critical issue was the the necessity of communist parties to create an alliance with democratic-bourgeois movements for liberation of nations in those colonial countries where there was no class consciousness. Debates on such issue had already raised before the publication of Lenin’s Thesis, because he made circulate the text among the international delegations before the presentation to the Congress[48], and specifically among those who had already had experience in colonial contexts, such as Manabendra Nath Roy, the Indian delegate, who was fundamental for the development of colonial and national questions. Roy, taking India as an example, pointed out the reactionary nature of some democratic-bourgeois movements[49] and the interests of the latter in establishing regimes which didn’t free nation from the colonial yoke or didn’t take action in the interests of the oppressed peoples, but collaborated with the foreign powers to perpetrate the same relations of power of colonial context, to further their own interests and to establish a capitalist system in their nation, now free from a patriarchal or feudal regime[50]. «He refused to accept that the national bourgeoisie was playing a historically revolutionary role in the liberation struggle»[51] because «[…] the nationalist movement was ideologically reactionary in the sense that its triumph would not necessarily mean a bourgeois-democratic revolution»[52]. Moreover, Roy highlighted that the proletariat was already established and mature also in those contexts, so that there were no reasons for an alliance with democratic-bourgeois movements, especially if they may not have had progressive and revolutionary characteristics, but reactionary instead[53]. Thus, it was necessary encouraging a mass action lead by communism parties, so that a real revolutionary force able to establish the Soviet power would rise[54]. In this regard, Roy produced additional thesis for the Congress. There, he asserted that in colonial context emerged two different movements: a nationalist democratic-bourgeoisie movements – which aims to the establishment of a bourgeoise regime – and the mass of working people and peasants; between the two, there was a relationship where the former oppressed the latter. It was useful, Roy asserted, working together with revolutionary democratic-bourgeoise movements, but only if communists parties coordinate and lead the mass of workers and peasants towards the revolution and help to develop the class consciousness, although being aware that revolution, in an initial phase, couldn’t be communist[55], because «[t]he combination of Military oppression by foreign imperialism of capitalist exploitation by the native and the foreign bourgeoisie, and the survival of the feudal servitude creates favourable conditions for the young proletariat of the colonies to develop rapidly and to take its place at the head of the revolutionary peasant movement»[56].

The reason why Lenin didn’t consider that such movements could assume reactionary character can be found in his view on history as evolutionary process, as it was described by the Marxist ideology[57], «where was politically desirable was also found to be consonant with historical progress and was ’progressive’ in this double sense with each notion of progress (the political and the historical/evolutionary) underwriting the other»[58]. Also the colonial question is included in this process, where the imperialist phase and colonial nationalism appear as a step towards the main goal, i.e. socialism[59], but without taking into account if this step result more like a stopping point and «that national liberation in the colonies […] might be resistant to further ‘progress’»[60].

Taking in consideration and embracing Roy’s thesis[61], i.e. democratic-bourgeois movement were not always revolutionary and progressivist, but reactionary as well, Lenin reviewed the content of the Draft Thesis, whose changes he justified in the Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions, a work he disclosed to the Second Congress. First of all, in this last, Lenin asserted he recognised the nationalist and reactionary characteristics that liberation movements could exhibit, and thus, he decided to substitute the expression “democratic-bourgeois movement” (burzhuaznoe-demokraticheskoe dvizhenie, in Russian) with “national-revolutionary movement” (natsionalnoe-revolyutsionnoe dvizhenie, in Russian)[62], because in colonial nations all national liberation movements are democratic-bourgeois, since «the overwhelming mass of the population in the backward countries consists of peasants who represented bourgeoise capitalist relationship»[63]. This specification was due to the reason that communist parties could support such movements only when they show themselves as really revolutionary[64]. Moreover, Lenin asserted that, as the Indian experience showed, it was possible to inspire an independent political thought also in feudal and semi-feudal countries, where the proletariat lacked[65], and that «peasants […] can easily assimilate and give effect to the idea of Soviet organisation»[66], which is applicable in any context[67], without passing through the capitalism phase[68].

Another interesting review is the explication of the differences between oppressed and oppressor nations (ugnetennye i ugnetayushchie natsii, in Russian), in order to establish «the concrete economic facts and to proceed from concrete realities»[69]. According to Lenin, oppressor countries are those which own «colossal wealth and powerful armed forces»[70], while he meant for oppressed countries those nations that «are either in a stage of direct colonial dependence or are semi-colonies […], or else, conquered by some big imperialist power, have become greatly dependent on that power by virtue of peace treaties»[71].

However, the Fifth Congress rejected Lenin’s thesis on an alliance between communists and national liberation movements[72], despite the reviews Lenin made. Moreover, those who advocated for colonial reforms, rather than the revolution, were silenced of being «national reformist[s]. Soon, those who […] supported anti-colonial revolutions, but not under the banners of the Comintern, were denounced as […] “Trotskvists”»[73], as it was established by the new Soviet leadership, that also rejected the hypothesis of a temporary alliance with democratic-bourgeois movements in colonial nations. Indeed, in Marxism and the National Question already, written before the October Revolution, Stalin (Party Secretary from 1922), had supported the idea that «the proletariat does not support the so called “national-liberation” movements because now all such movements because […] have acted in the interests of the bourgeoisie»[74]. A position that remained as such, and in The International Nature of the October Revolution Stalin emphasised the pivotal and hegemonic role of proletarians in the liberation process, rejecting Lenin’s approach[75]; a rejection that conditioned the Komintern, which, during the Fifth Congress, adopted with a resolution the decision that communist parties should have obtain the support from peasants and oppressed minorities in order to «make them the allies of the revolutionary proletariat of the capitalist countries»[76], whose strategies and exceptions must have been applied depending the conditions of the social and economic system of the nation where the communists wanted to take action in[77]. It’s important to highlight that Stalin, regarding foreign policy, assumed an attitude of closure towards European communist parties and socialist movements. Indeed, «Stalinism required that Communist parties everywhere be parties of a truly new kind with their loyalties due exclusively to Moscow»[78]. The Soviet foreign affair as established by Stalin opened with the rise of fascists parties[79], when the Komintern «directed the communist parties to work for a United Front with social democrats against fascism»[80]. A fundamental decision for the anti-colonial struggle, because communist parties could ally with national liberation movements again, with the purpose of supporting the anti-imperialist struggle and the battle against every Soviet Union’s enemy[81]. This meant the recollection of Leninist thought about Colonial and National Questions, which continued during the post-Stalin era.

If, after the end of the Second World War and the rising of tension between USSR and Western nations, the Komintern and Stalin returned to a closure policy, an about-turn was made by Nikita Khrushchëv, with whom started the Thaw era (Ottepel, in Russian), i.e. an easing in policies of ideological surveillance and an opening toward Western powers. This distancing from Stalinism was also a consequence of 22nd Congress of Communist Party, where the new Party Secretary reported Stalin’s personality cult and Stalinist terror. Moreover, in this context was raising the phenomenon of non-aligned nations, and «Khrushchev began a policy of assiduously courting [them]»[82], in order to create an alliance between these nations and Moscow and gain trust from them towards Soviet Union. A new approach on the colonial question, nevertheless, was adopted, according to which communist and socialist parties should have allied, in order to win over the imperial system and establish a socialist regime, through either armed conflict or non-violent methods[83]. These kinds of policies influenced the relations between Soviet Union and the new nations born from anti-colonial struggle. Many of them adopted socialism, while other ones strengthened their cooperations with the USSR[84]. The result of this was the rise of the concept of national democratic state during the World Conference of Communist Parties in 1960[85], according to which

A national democratic state is one which consistently defends its political and economic independence, struggled against imperialism and its military blocs, against military bases on its territory against new forms of colonialism and the perpetration of imperialist capital, rejects dictatorial and despotic methods of government, and assures to its people abroad democratic rights and freedoms and the opportunity to wok for agrarian reforms and partecipar in the determination of state policy[86].

Also in Sub-Saharan Africa were emerging nations with these characteristics, such as Mali, Guinea, Ghana, where, actually, there were no communist parties[87] (although Ghana was in a good relationship with the Soviet Union)[88].

The USSR started to show an interest in these new nations; indeed, in a report for the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev (succeeded Krushchëv as Party Secretary) emphasised the social transformations that were affecting ex-colonial countries, among which Mali, Ghana, Congo and Buma[89]. The close relations with these nation-democratic states was stressed with an article published by the Izvestia, where these nations were defended, because they «are closely linked with the struggles against colonialism and imperialism, and are lead by revolutionary-democratic figures»[90] and they were actively cooperating with the USSR to protect themselves from the attempt of the US to establish a system of economic imperialist dominance there. This cooperation was confirmed by the presence of many delegation from Sub-Saharan Africa in the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party, and when Brezhnev designed the democratic parties of these nations as revolutionary democratic parties in June 1969[91].

Lenin’s Colonial and National Questions had a great impact on the relations between USSR and new nations raised from anti-colonial struggles. Among these, many Sub-Sharan countries, which started arouse interest especially during the decolonial phase. The theoretical basis of Soviet theory on anti-colonialism and the international relations with these countries had an important role in the development of African Studies in Soviet context too[92].

The interest of the Soviet Union towards these nations was born in 20s, with the participation of the communist party of South Africa to the Third International, which followed the creation of an Independent Native Republic there during the Sixth Congress of the Komintern in 1928; this event put the focus on the issues of South Africa and, consequently, of the whole continent[93]. At that time, the Africanist in Soviet Union were few, and fewer those who were expert on the colonial question; among these, we remember Endre Sik, Ivan Izosimovich, Ivan Potekhin-Man and Alexandr Zakharovich[94]. Sik, from the first meeting of African students, undisclosed a first programme for the study of Africa, where anti-colonialism had a pivotal role, that found as theoretical basis the Lenin’s approach[95]. The Hungarian Africanist emphasised the urgency to take more into consideration these issues, «[…] because in the colonial people of Black Africa, who are more exploited and oppressed than any other, we have potential allies in our struggle against the imperialist system»[96]. The same approach was to find in Potekhin and Zusmanovich’s studies, which, in The Labour Movement and Forced Labour in Negro Africa, described, for the first time in the Soviet context, the economic system of Sub-Saharan African, giving ample space to those problematics related to the exploitation of these lands perpetrated by imperialist powers[97], for which the authors adopted the concept of two-phase revolution, according to that the first phase of revolution was constituted by «the struggle for the land and the war for national liberation»[98], while the second occurred «through gradual transformation of this agrarian-nationalist, bourgeois-democratic revolution into socialist revolution»[99]. Regarding these studies, it was necessary to highlight the ideological character, based on socialism, which undermined the scientific nature of these researches[100]. Moreover, these studies weren’t carried out without field work[101].

The era of Stalinist terror slowed down the development of African studies (despite the innovations, original in Western countries) and of the relationship between Sub-Saharan Africa and USSR. The vision that Africanists expressed «were completely subordinated to the ideological dogma and political directives of the Komintern»[102], and consequently, what they wrote resulted to be, more than studies, guidelines for Communist parties and other progressivist forces which took action in the African continent. This tendency seemed to be continued also in the Thaw era and during the years of anti-colonial struggles, although the study produced in this context resulted original and innovative. Africanists’ researches focused more on the «phenomenon of independence as one colony after another changed its status»[103] then, as it was Zhukov’s study, because, during the decolonisation process, it was necessary that the Komintern was led on how to deal with these changes and how to appear as an ally, in order to impose itself in the international relations these countries intended to build[104]. The role of proletarians in national liberation movement didn’t seem to be off the radar of these studies, as it was established by Stalin earlier. The success of these movements was due to the central role of the proletarians[105] , while national bourgeois movements resulted to be the reasons behind the social divisions in the colonial context[106]. A position that remained such also after the experience of United Fronts and after the resolution of the Seventh Congress of the Komintern[107], as these movements were still considered «active accompliance of imperialist monopolies […] suppressors of the oppressed peoples[108], even during Gorbachëv’s Perestroika, when Soviet foreign policy changed positions[109].

 Reference

[1] BARTLETT, Roger, Storia della Russia. Dalle origini agli anni di Putin, Milano, Mondandori, 2007, p. 280

[2] AA.VV., The Communist International 1919-1943. Documents, Jane Degras (edited by), p. 383

[3] MAITRA, K., “Lenin and Roy on National and Colonial Question at the Second Congress of the Third International”, in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 37 (1976), p. 500

[4] SETH, Sanjay, “Lenin’s Reformulation of Marxism: the Colonial Question as a National Question”, in History of Political Thought, 13/1 (Spring 1992), p. 120

[5] ivi, p. 122

[6] FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), in AA.VV., The Study of Africa. Volume 2: Global and Transnational Engagements, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (edited by), Dakar, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), 2006, p. 204

[7] Ivi, p. 203

[8] SETH, Sanjay, “Lenin’s Reformulation of Marxism: the Colonial Question as a National Question”, p. 122

[9] Ivi, p. 110

[10] Ibidem

[11] Ibidem

[12] ibidem

[13] Ibidem

[14] ivi, p. 122

[15] ivi, p. 114

[16] ivi, p. 115

[17] Ibidem

[18] Ibidem

[19] ivi, p. 116

[20] ivi, p. 119

[21] Ibidem

[22] ivi, p. 120

[23] ivi, p. 122

[24] AGRAWAL, N. N., “Lenin on National and Colonial Questions”, in The Indian Journal of Political Science, 17/3 (July-September 1956), p. 236

[25] SETH, Sanjay, “Lenin’s Reformulation of Marxism: the Colonial Question as a National Question”, p. 233

[26] Ivi, p. 236

[27] ivi, p. 112

[28] Ibidem

[29] ivi, p. 125

[30] Ibidem

[31] Lenin on Foreign Policy of the Soviet State, Moskva, Progress Publisher, 1968, p. 163, in SURENDAR, T., “Ideology and Soviet Policy Towards Colonial and Ex-Colonial States with Special Reference to India 1917-1971”, in India Quarterly, 48/3 (July-September 1992), p. 32

[32] SURENDAR, T., “Ideology and Soviet Policy Towards Colonial and Ex-Colonial States with Special Reference to India 1917-1971”, p. 31

[33] ibidem

[34] ibidem

[35] LENIN, N., “Preliminary Draft Thesis on National and Colonial Questions”, in Lenin’s Collected Works. Volume 31 April – December 1920, (trans. En. by Julius Katzer), Moskva, Progress Publisher, 1974 (2nd Edition), p. 146

[36] ibidem

[37] Ibidem

[38] ivi, p. 149

[39] ivi, p. 150

[40] ivi, p. 145

[41] ibidem

[42] ibidem

[43] ivi, p. 150

[44] ivi, p. 151

[45] Ibidem

[46] ibidem

[47] ivi, p. 146

[48] MAITRA, K., “Lenin and Roy on National and Colonial Question at the Second Congress of the Third International”, p. 500

[49] ivi, p. 501

[50] ivi, p. 502

[51] ivi, p. 501

[52] ibidem

[53] ibidem

[54] ivi, p. 502

[55] SURENDAR, T.,  “Ideology and Soviet Policy Towards Colonial and Ex-Colonial States with Special Reference to India 1917-1971”, p. 34

[56] ivi, p. 36

[57] AGRAWAL, N. N., “Lenin on National and Colonial Questions”, in The Indian Journal of Political Science, 17/3 (July-September 1956), p. 123-124

[58] ivi, p. 124

[59] ivi, p. 125

[60] ibidem

[61] LENIN, N., “Report on the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions”, in Lenin’s Collected Works. Volume 31 April – December 1920, p. 240

[62] Ibidem

[63] ivi, p. 241

[64] ivi, p. 242

[65] ivi, p. 243

[66] Ibidem

[67] Ibidem

[68] Ivi, p. 244

[69] ivi, p. 240

[70] ibidem

[71] ivi p. 240-241

[72] FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), p. 205

[73] Ibidem

[74] ivi, p. 206

[75] ibidem

[76] SURENDAR, T., “Ideology and Soviet Policy Towards Colonial and Ex-Colonial States with Special Reference to India 1917-1971”, p. 39

[77] ivi, p. 40

[78] ivi, p. 42

[79] ivi, p. 43

[80] ivi, p. 44

[81] Ibidem

[82] ivi, p. 52

[83] Ibidem

[84] ivi, p. 55

[85] Ibidem

[86] ivi, pp. 55-56

[87] ivi, p. 56

[88] TELEPNEVA, Natalia, “The Mediators of Liberation: Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Bureaucratic elite, and the Cold War in Africa”, in Cold War Liberation. The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa 1961-1975, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 2021, p. 15

[89] SURENDAR, T., “Ideology and Soviet Policy Towards Colonial and Ex-Colonial States with Special Reference to India 1917-1971”, p. 56

[90] ivi, p. 57

[91] Ibidem

[92] FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), p. 204

[93] ivi, p. 206

[94] Ibidem

[95] ivi, p. 207

[96] SIK, Andre, “K postanovke marksistiskogo izucheniia sotsialno-ekonomicheskikh problem Chernoi Afriki”, in Revolutsionnyi Vostok 8, Pppp 88-89, in FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), p. 208

[97] FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), p. 210

[98] ZUSMANOVICH, Aleksandr Z., POTEKHIN-MAN, Ivan I. & JACKOSN Tom, Prinuditelny trud I profdvizheniie v negritianskoi Afrike, Moskva, 1933, pp. 165-166, in FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), p. 211

[99] Ibidem

[100] FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), p. 216

[101] ivi, pp. 216-217

[102] Ivi, p. 216

[103] ivi, p. 220

[104] Ibidem

[105] Ivi, p. 221

[106] ibidem

[107] ivi, p. 222

[108]MASLENNIKOV, V. A., Uglubleniie krizisa kolonialnoi sistemy imperializma, Moskva, 1952, p.. 44, in FILATOVA, Irina, “Anti-Colonialism in Soviet African Studies (1929s-1960), p. 222

Originally posted on The Moving Lips

The Christmas imaginary, the holiday, celebrations inspired the greatest European authors since the origin of modenrity, from Nikolay Gogol’, Charles Dickens, Boris Pasternak, Alexandre Dumas pére, becoming each time an opportunity to develop the topics of national folklore in a Christian point of view, or to explore the creative mind in the lens of childhood or through the beauty of brief moments of joy, or even becoming an occasion to critique or describing the social context of a given historical period, narrating the fate of a people, of a certain individual.

How many of us book lovers lose ourselves in Gogol’s irreverent worlds with “The Night Before Christmas”, or travelled in the Christmas of our childhood, present and future together with Scrooge, the main character of “A Christmas Carol”, or even thanks to a timeless tale such as “The Nutcracker”, immortalised by the opera of the great Russian musician, Pëtr I. Chaykovsky. “The Nutcracker” had made thousand and thousand of children dream all over the world and given us magic moments for our Christmas, but this beautiful and apparently simple tale hides a complexity which collects History and the collective imaginary of whole generations, because “The Nutcracker” is not just a Christmas story for children.

The original story, titled “Nutcracker and Mouse King” (Nußknacker und Mausekönig) is a novel by E.T.A Hoffmann, written in 1816, during the Romanticism era, and, indeed, many topics of this literary movements are contained in this tale; nevertheless, the story as it’s known by most readers, and used for the well-known ballet put to music by Chaykovsky, is the one told by the version edited by Alexander Dumas pére in 1844, in Positivist era, titled as “The Tale of the Nutcracker” (Histoire d’un casse-noisette). More edulcorated and detailed is the Dumas’s version, more intimistic and crueler is the one written of Hoffmann, these two works, although similar in the plot, show complex ideological differences, given the different historical contexts. Hoffmann takes the Romantic literary tendencies to tell Nutcracker’s story, this toy hero who challenges the evil forces symbolised by the Mouse King, firstly by not hesitating a more intimate vision of the story, describing Christmas atmosphere in a symbolic way, almost like he wanted to imitate children’s gaze, that «[v]iewed from the perspective of the three children, the Christmas tree is magic, and the events feel them with wonder and terror»[1]. Here, moreover, starting from the tradition begun by Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of the Spirit”, he built the structure of the book on the dualism of the identity of the object (i.e. the mind becoming the object of observation), subject and the thematic of the double.

More detailed and realistic, as positivist tradition ruled, is Dumas’s version, that put on the foreground not the individual, but family and society, moving from a magic imaginary of Christmas to social aspects, describing habits and traditions. The story is projected to the world, denying the existence of the “spirit”; «[u]nlike the Hoffmann story, where everything is part of everything else, Dumas disengages himself from the story (also through the distancing “Once upon a time” opening formula), destroying its credibility, and transforming it into a realist type of narrative with detailed portraits of the characters, on which he passes judgement like an omniscient narrator»[2].

This relation with reality by connecting to the outer and to those historic events which inflamed Europe during 19th Century is one of the elements that makes this tale so unique, so appreciated by both children and adults. “The Nucracker” is a universal story, able to adapt to every historical period, and being always modern in its message; it’s a story that mediates between cultures and makes them connect to each other. It was born in Germany, then it moved to France, change language, and got to Russia, where it became one of the most touching classical ballet, to reach the whole Europe, being part of the fabric of this fragmented, complex, and variegated culture-continent, and going beyond. A world becoming the Konfektburg, the Candyland, in “The Nutcracker”, where different peoples – Greeks, Armenians, Tyrolese – lived together peacefully, where social classes are mixed, discuss and respect each other, where Europe and Asia can communicate in a time when it was not possible yet, when China was still closed within its borders, and Greeks and Armenians were fighting for their independence from the Ottoman Empire. A world in peace and united, an utopia dreamed by Marie, the main character, and everyone, in the innocence of childhood, dreamed that it could be exist. A fictional world, but where still the battle which most characterised the collective and cultural imaginary of humanity, which shaped myths and the knowledge of the world, which made us humans: the one which sees the forces of good fights the evils ones. The good, the Nutcracker, the general, the warrior who sacrificed himself, and the evil, the Mouse King, a nearly apocalyptic creature, a monster with seven heads of serpent, who’s firstly stopped by Marie, that received his crown, – who is the mean between the world of toys and the real one –, and then defeated by the Nutcracker, freeing himself from the malediction.

The Nutcracker symbolises the values of Christmas, i.e. communion, altruism, bravery, a united people, the victory of the good on the evil, the beauty of a world that only children (and artists) can see through the ugliness of this disappointing reality.

Note

1. BARNA, C. R. (2018). Experiments in Pattern Recognition Case study: The Nutcracker. International Journal of Arts and Commerce, Vol. 7 No. 5, p. 42

History is not something that exist, something that one can consult, but it’s the question we keep inside ourselves; it’s not something that defines us a priori, but a description we choose for ourselves.

History intende as past is a crystallising of our being to find something that looks like us, to not to deal with the vertigo of the future, to not to fight with our own evilness, to deal with.

James Baldwin wrote that «[…] history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this»[1]. History is, thus, a further tools we can use to give meaning to our existence, a point of view among other points of views that run into and clash between each other. History’s a tale we can still change, and it’s still possible to free the world from that heavy curtain which is racism, but only if we’re brave enough to face our past, not to make it the descriptor of our present, but only a little part, only if we’re brave enough to deal with our evilness, and abandon the fetish of a past that oppressed and to accept that past looks like us very little, that history is our present, something we preserve.

This must be learned by Black people, so that they can tell a different story, to convince themselves their last is not their doom, to learn how to use their history as a tool. «Something more radical had to be done; a different history had to be told. “All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history […] which is not your past, but your present,” Baldwin said. “Your history has led you to this moment, and you can only begin to change yourself by looking at what you are doing in the name of your history.”»[2]

This must be learned by white people in order to free themselves from their guilt, because «[t]he fact that [the white people] have not yet been able to do this--to face their history to change their lives--hideously menaces this country. Indeed, it menaces the entire world»[3]. The white man’s burden is not, as Kipling wrote, to bring civilisation, i.e. to impose an Eurocentric vision of the world, to distant communities, but it’s history, as Baldwin wrote; or better, it’s the burden to have sewn the heavy curtain of race around themselves to divide “we” from “they”, as if these differences existed and they weren’t a way to keep their power, to never put themselves in discussion[?]. And how to face own history if this means to doubt own position, an identity built to the detriment of other?

To understand what history means is to change world.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Reference

1. BALDWIN, James, “The White Man’s Guilt”, in Collected Essay, New York, The Library of America, 1998, p. 723

2. GLAUDE Jr., Eddie S., “The history that James Baldwin wanted America to see”, in The New Yorker, web, 19.06.2020 (https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-history-that-james-baldwin-wanted-america-to-see)

3. BALDWIN, James, “The White Man’s Guilt”, p. 722

Source

1. ALS, Hilton, “The Enemy Within. The making and unmaking of James Baldwin”, in The New Yorker, web, 9.02.1998 (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/02/16/the-enemy-within-hilton-als)

2. BALDWIN, James, “The White Man’s Guilt”, in Collected Essay, New York, The Library of America, 1998

3. BALDWIN, James, “Letter from a region in my mind”, in The New Yorker, web, 9.11.1962 (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/11/17/letter-from-a-region-in-my-mind)

Magic as cultural device for the construction of collective memory

The recollection of West African tradition and the addition of elements inside the narration are another way to build the collective memory, where the African culture becomes a common ground in which sharing meanings, and also an instrument of resistance against dehumanisation. As the slave-owning people tried to deny the humanity of Black people, the latter communicated, resisted and strengthened each others maintaining the practice of their culture. This recovery, as orality in Toni Morrison’s works, is translated also as the addition of magical or supernatural elements of African cultures; «Morrison seeks to address this insecurity by creating an African American cultural memory with her readership through mutual acts of the imagination. In order to achieve this her writing encourages the imaginative participation of the reader in the text through oral storytelling techniques and, despite Morrison's disclaimer, through magic realist devices»[8]. The magic element is connected to the oral tradition to which Morrison referred, because both orality and the supernatural element represent modalities of transmission of her tradition; indeed, «Morrison's two most notable novels, Beloved (1987) and Song of Solomon (1977), both contain magic realist elements which can be traced to African American myth and both novels focus on the importance of the role of memory in oral tradition to perpetuate African American culture»[9].

In particular, ghost stories and the image of the revenant, both present in oral African tradition and recovered by the Afroamerican one, are more relevant in Morrison’s works and these elements are the ones that collect that sense of connection with the past, the relations between being here and now and memory, a process that creates the collective identity from that history shared by the individuals, by the personal experiences to the common destiny of a collectivity. This happens in her most notable novel, Beloved, where the young girl murdered by her mother comes back as a ghost, as a revenant, a spectre from the past and recollection of memory, of traumas, the personal and shared ones. The tragedy of death, of negation of the self, the horror of slavery and of dehumanisation. «The use of a revenant for this story set during the specific historical period of the end of slavery and the reconstruction era is especially poignant. Eugene Genovese notes that during slavery ghost stories were prevalent on plantations and was one way in which elements of African tradition were retained»[10]. The magic element, and in particular ghost stories, has got a double role in the recovery of cultural issues, i.e. the reversal of coercive elements and the reappropriation of cultural images that were confiscated by owning-slave individuals to culturally oppress slaves. «As Fry explains, one means of control over slaves was for the master to create and spread a ghost story set in an area that was difficult to patrol […]. Through this method the master attempted to increase his control over the slaves by appropriating the transmutable force of a ghostly presence»[11]. Also in Toni Morrison, memory becomes a way to resiste culturally and to affirms the personal identity, as well as liberation from the hegemony perpetrated by white people and from oppression, using the alternative cultural reference and recollect those which were transformed into an instrument of control. Indeed, «the use of a ghost in Beloved – whose ultimate effect in the novel is to draw a community together for self-healing and protection - can be seen as a creative act of resistance to such attempts at control in slave history whilst appropriating the very power associated with ghosts for subversive purposes»[12]. But not only this. The use of ghosts in Beloved has also a negative quality, and so not just this of recovery. The ghost can be defined also as a threatening and negative figure, able to bring chaos, fear and division in the community; it’s the image of a dead that is back, the trauma that comes back to haunt. «Morrison establishes Beloved as a ghost in specifically African American terms and in doing so she brings the symbolism associated with the Ku Klux Klan into a familiar realm where it may be controlled»[13]. The reference to Ku Klux Klan means also the return of a violent past, of oppression, of discrimination. The history of slavery coming back to haunt, to scare and the racism of a certain political wing, racist declarations and action return. And recollect certain images, make them inoffensive, is a way to resist, an example of social response, whose purpose is to heal the trauma of an entire community, which is still dealing with the ghosts of the past. In Beloved, the ghost is «the past, and that part of the past which she represents is the internalised selfhatred by African Americans due to persistent racism against them. Sethe's coming to terms with her past is in part a coming to terms with her own self-hatred which she insists that Denver avoids»[14].

From the piece to the wholeness: memory as a creative process

«Memory, then, no matter how small the piece remembered, demands my respect, my attention, and my trust. I depend heavily on the rude of memory […] because it ignites me some process of invention»[15].

Toni Morrison, Memory, Creation and Writing

We’re almost at the conclusion, with another aspect of memory in Toni Morrison’s work, as it was unveiled by her in the magnificent essay Memory, Creation and Writing, about the memory as a creative process. It’s the memory itself, a fragment of reality showing up in the consciousness, a drop of reality, a revived moment, the perception of something that had been which trigger the creative language of Toni Morrison, that creates narrations, stories, characters she tells about in her books. A fragment to create the wholeness, one memory, or better, what this memory brings in mind emotionally. «The pieces (and only the pieces) are what begin the creative process. And the process by which the recollections of these pieces coalesce into a part (and knowing the difference between a piece and a part) is creation»[16]. This makes clear how much permeated is memory in her works, because this one is the origin of creation, but also what gives meaning to the story, what confers a common sense, signifies and orders the world. It means give a sense. A sense to life, to the past, to the horror, to trauma. It means order the present. And giving a meaning is to connect, as Toni Morrison connects pieces, memories, to create the wholeness, a picture that has a sign, that creates a pairing of figured to make it a different, unique one, transformed in it wholeness. It’s the narration that «is one of the ways in which knowledge is organized […] the most important way to transmit and receive knowledge»[17]. Memory is transmission, is the recovery of identities, is to call ourselves, recognising the Other, what has never been, because last is a lesson, is the path that lead us here and it’s the events that shaped us, and only remembering we can give a meaning to what we will remember. Thus, memory means to tell, is an epiphanic process, of realisation, that provokes the creation of a image. And it’s from this that Toni Morrison creates, because «memory meant recollecting the told story»[18].

First part here

Viviana Rizzo @livethinking

Reference

1. DAVIS, Christina, “Interview with Toni Morrison”, in Présence Africaine, 1er trimestre 1988, no. 145, p. 143

2. MORRISON, Toni, “The Site of Memory”, in Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, Boston, Ed. William Zinsser, 1995 (2nd edition), p. 92

3. DAVIS, Christina, “Interview with Toni Morrison”, p. 143

4. NISHIKAWA, Kinohi, “Morrison’s Things: Between History and Memory”, in Arcade. Literature, the Humanities & the World, web, arcade.stanford.edu, 2021 (https://arcade.stanford.edu/content/morrison’s-things-between-history-and-memory)

5. LANIER, Adrienne & TALLY, Justine “Toni Morrison, Memory and Meaning”, in miscelánea: a journal of English and American studies, 52 (2015), p. 155

6. ONG, J. Walter, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 133-134

7. BOWERS, Maggie A., “Acknowledging ambivalence: The creation of communal memory in the writing of Toni Morrison”, in Wasafiri 13:27(1998), p. 21

8. Ivi, p. 19

9. Ibidem

10. Ivi, p. 21

11. Ivi, p. 22

12. Ibidem

13. Ibidem

14. Ibidem

15. MORRISON, Toni, “Memory, Creation, and Writing”, in Thoughts, vol. 59, no. 235 (December 1984), p. 386

16. Ibidem

17. Ivi, p. 388

18. Ivi, p. 389

Sources

1. BOWERS, Maggie Ann, “Acknowledging ambivalence: The creation of communal memory in the writing of Toni Morrison”, in Wasafiri, 13:17 (1998), pp. 19-23

2. DAVIS, Christina, “Interview with Toni Morrison”, in Présence Africaine, n. 145 (1st trimester 1988), pp. 141-150

3. MORRISON, Toni

“Memory, Creation and Writing”, in Thought, 59/235 (December 1984), pp. 385-390

“The Site of Memory”, in Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, Boston, ed. William Zinsser, 1995 (2ª edition), pp. 83-102

4. NISHIKAWA, Kinohi, “Morrison’s Things: Between History and Memory”, in Arcade. Literature, the Humanities & the World, arcade.stanford.edu, web, 2021 (https://arcade.stanford.edu/content/morrison’s-things-between-history-and-memory)

5. ONG, J. Walter, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 133-134

Memory is an extraordinary instrument, capable of connecting individualities, the personal characters, the subjective experience of things, to link what has been, to what has faded to what has still no existence, is a potential act, what could be. Memory shapes identities, people’s characters, the perceptions of the Other and of things. Memory is an act of personal resistance, that is the creation of cultural value that are not collective or shareable, is a processo of building the person and society. And it’s in this sense that Toni Morrison calls memory to herself, makes it a narrative instrument, a collection of fragments which are not linguistically pronounceable, that she makes them part of a complex narration through building the artistic culture socially shared among the Afroamerican people, through building that cultura which was denied by the cultural hegemony of white people, by the tragedy, of the inhumanity of the slavery, of dehumanisation of Black people. In Toni Morrison’s works, the remembering becomes an act of resistance and social construction, of recollection of the African tradition of Black community to build its history and its human and emotive character of individual to whom was even denied the existence.

The construction of collective (and cultural) memory of Afroamerican community

Memory and construction of a historical and cultural identity of Afroamerican community has always been central in the work of the greatest Black American authors, since che beginning, when they, through their memoirs, tried to regain that human sense as recognised in the American Constitution and denied to the them, and show a certain rationality, a quality that the Western tradition considered as a prerequisite of human beings that white people took advantage of to promote an unreal biological superiority. A rationality they proved, in literary practices, as the absence of emotional frames to the autobiographical constructions. Those role of memory is the one that Toni Morrison recognises and uses to build her story, as she told in an interview:

«You have to stake it out and identify those who have preceded you – resummoning them acknowledging them is just one step in that process of reclamation – so that they are always there as the confirmation and the affirmation of the life that I personally have not lived but is the life of that organism to which I belong which is black in this country»[1].

It’s the same Morrison who tracks the artisti chronology of Afroamerican literature in an essay, The Site of Memory, showing how autobiographies and memoirs had the role not to my to tell a personal story or impressions on events and experiences that build the author’s character, but also the one to show authors’s own rationality and humanity, so much that these productions (and also for not making white people feel guilty and making them feel empathic, than accuse them) lack of the emotional side and the most heinous events the authors faced, taking their Ego and their thoughts off from these memoirs, which, thus, became a report on slavery and its brutality, in order to trigger a positive reaction from the Caucasian public.

Memory and personal experience are a central characteristics Afroamerican people’s literary works, and stil, today these practices are fundamental and come back into those books which are less connected to authors’ biography. But we should focus more on another side now, if we want to fathom the role of construction of collective memory in Toni Morrison’s books. The author focuses on, in the first works of Black authors, not on the personal experience, the brutalities these people faced and from which they build the imaginary and the narration of this ethic group, but on the absence of the emotional sphere in these works, what are most important side of these one for Morrison, what she considered as the starting point from which starts her research and, thus, to build her own poetics. Morrison doesn’t have the access to the interior life of these authors, who chose to eliminate it from their writings, and thus, she tried to build it, to recover it from the fragments, from the process of imagination; «[t]hese ‘memories within’ are the subsoil of [her] work. But memories and recollections won’t give [her] total access to the unwritten interior life of these people. Only the act of the imagination can help [her]»[2]. A process of recollecting from the buried memories, from the what’s not told, from that absence which construct the identity, the real story; no the experience, but the interior loves of these individual that shapes the history, «[…] and in so doing was able to imagine and to recreate cultural linkages that were identified for me by Africans who had more familiar an overt recognition»[3]. A process that Toni Morrison called “rememory”, i.e. the collection of traces, fragments, proofs to build the collective memory and to access to this one, because these fragments (such as pictures, manifestos, images, i.e. microhistory artifacts), «[…] for Morrison, possessed [their] own historical weight and [were] not assimilable to confident determination of the past. […] [H]er intention was not to integrate readers into a discourse of “their history” but to confront them with buried memories—things in which they might not even recognize themselves»[4]. This happened in Beloved, where the heinous action the mother did, Sethe, to free her children from the burden of slavery, of dehumanisation, and where the ghost of her murdered daughter represents the connection between present and past; this past, this history that comes back to haunts the living, those who are here, where the fathers’ pain hurts the sons, as in Song of Solomon, where the latter cannot give to this suffering a meaning, because they don’t remember. Past, history and memory are perceived in the acts of the presente, because it’s their result. Recollect this history and this tradition is to build a denied identity, it’s the recover of humanity. A recollection of past that becomes a literary practice, and thus a political actions, because ««[i]n so doing, Morrison’s oeuvre has fostered new understandings of the black self, bringing it to the fore and reimagining its representation as ‘a central symbol in the psychological, cultural, and political systems of the West as a whole’. […] Morrison's novels address the indefinite substance of such a cross-cultural identity and the difficulties of creating that identity in the face of racist opposition and cultural ambivalence»[5].

Oral tradition as construction of memory

The construction of a collective memory, and thus the redefinition of the historical concept of a community, also means the recollection of traditions, values and symbols of a culture determined ad oppressed and the appropriation of those practices of the hegemonic culture used as instruments of coercion and delimiting as alternative expression. In Toni Morrison, this appears as the recover of certain practices and expression belonging to the African cultura, which Afroamerican people used as the ground to build on their own sociological narration. The most important traditional practiced that Morrison uses as narrative device or as techniques of construction of her own rhetoric are the magic enemy’s and orality, where the latter brings to the former.

In an interview, Toni Morrison describes her creative process, that is the reading; she wrote her novel as they’re read, as they are oral stories, and not modern novels. The musicality, the perception and the participation of the Other, and thus of the reader, the word that has got magic power (i.e. evocative writing), the word as imaginary and instrument of communication, of sharing of meanings, are part of Morrison’s writing process. In oral civilisations (that are those societies where only oral language exists), the communicative system is based on conservation and transmission of facts, events and narrations – than on syllogism – whose purpose is to maintain the cultural processes and social foundations. Orality is, thus, the sharing of symbols, images, ideas but also definition of social characteristics, and so of unity and communion between individuals who share those proactive and answer to them (because this is the aim of communication: unite people). Another fact must be highlighted: communication of post-modern societies is called, by social sciences, as secondary orality, a phenomenon provoked from the raise of social networks, a sort of written orality, that «[…] has generated a strong group sense, for listening to spoken words forms hearers into a groups, a true audience, just as reading written or printed texts individuals in on themselves. But secondary groups immeasurably larger than those of primary oral culture – McLuhan’s ‘global village’. […] [S]econdary orality promotes spontaneity because through analytic reflection we have decided that spontaneity is a good thing. We plan our happenings carefully to be sure that they are thoroughly spontaneous»[6]. In a certain sense, Toni Morrison seems she had anticipated this communicative characteristic of post-modernity, this secondary orality, this written orality. An orality that exists in the poetics and in the narrative rhetoric of her books, thus melody, this music infiltrated into the words, into the stories, this voice that tells, the story says. Not written word, but word said. Orality that’s not only part of the writing, but it’s also part of the same narration, where the characters define themselves through their own stories, they create their own narration, they connect, in this way, the past with the present, they make their children and grandchildren partecipate to that personal memory, that, for being extraordinary, is also collective. Collective because it’s shared, because capable of building a common identity, a story that connects people and from which these individuals recognise themselves. An orality that is not only a storytelling instruments, but the recover of traditions, the catharsis of traumatic events which define the imaginary of a whole community. «Oral storytelling tradition in African American literature has been recognised by many critics as a remnant of West African oral cultures in African American tradition and has been documented as a means of cultural continuation during slavery»[7]

Second part here

The fable of Pride and Prejudice is built on those dynamics developed from the relationships between the characters of the novel, and only this narrative construction can cause the events. Yet, the relationships between characters are not all the same: they can be opposition relations, wherein an opponent hinders a subject’s aim towards an object (speaking in Mieke Bal’s terms), or a supporting relationship between a helper and a subject. Moreover, these relations may be developed between an individual and a power or between the former and his own background; indeed, society becomes an opposing power here, as happens with Elizabeth Bennett, or a helping power (especially with those who are able to adapt themselves to values and norms of that social system). Opposing powers are also pride and predjudice, the two concepts which are in the title of Jane Austen’s novel. Thus, in this sense, we could talk about Pride and Prejudice as a novel of relationships.

Subjects and objects in Pride and Prejudice

«The first and most important relation is between the actor who follows an aim and that aim itself. That relation may be compared to that between subject and direct objection a sentence. The first two classes of actors to be distinguished, therefore, are subject and object: actor x aspires towards goal y. X is a subject-actant, y an object-actant»[1].

Given this definition, if we should think of who the subject is in Pride and Prejudice, we would say that all the main characters of the novel are, because everyone has his or her own goal, that is the object towards every action and every choice aim; the object is here a person or a hope but, overall, a marriage.

Marriage, or better, the ambition of getting married in Pride and Predjudice is the common denominator of narratological relations established among character, is the connection between events. It’s the object to which all subjects of the novel. That was explicated by Mrs. Bennett, wishing all her daughters married «’If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield," said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, "and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for’» ; indeed, one of the younger Bennett sisters, Lydia, made an extreme action to reach her goal, as we’ll see in chapter 4 vol.III, when she ran away with Mr. Wickham. Marriage is dignifying to men and the only chance allowed by society for a woman to establish theirselves of the first half of 19th century. And in these dynamics that further subject/object relations develop, always correlated to the desire of marriage. Among these also Mr. Bingley’s wish to marry Jane Bennett; the same for Miss Bingley towards Mr Darcy (but never saying it explicitly) that is in Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s designs, his aunt, who would like seeing him married to her daughter, as Lady herself told Elizabeth «’The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their infancy, they have been intended for each other. It was the favourite wish of his mother, as well as of hers. While in their cradles, we planned the union’»[2].

Elizabeth, the protagonist, soon becomes the object to her father’s cousin, Mr, Collins, who proposed to her, and even to Darcy «’In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you’»[3].

Beyond subjects and objects: opponent/helper relations

It’s not possible to reduce the interpersonal relationships of the novel into such dialectical relation, the fable of Pride and Predjudice may get too simplified. Further kinds of relation comes into play to set in motion events: not only about wishes and desires. Mieke Bal, in Narratology, also talks about opponents and helpers[4]. The opponents are those who hinders the other characters’ path; on the contrary, the helpers are the supporters. A character can be both and, therefore, an opponent or a helper can also be a power too, – not necessarily a person.

In Pride and Prejudice opposition relations result from the clash between two subplots – i.e., the relation an anti-subject has towards an object, that could be or a same or different one from the principal –, or between two ambitions; this happens more frequently when the object is the same (e.g. Mr Darcy as object to both his aunt for her daughter and to Elizabeth on the last part of the novel, occasion that caused resentments between the two women). The most resolute and principal opponent of the story is surely Lady Catherine De Bourgh, who, by virtue of social norms, rejected the very idea of a supposed marriage between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth.

«”While in their cradles, we planned the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family! Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his tacit engagement with miss de bourgh? Are you lost to every feeling of propriety and delicacy? Have you not heard me say that from his earliest hours he was destined for his cousin”»[5].

From this example we can introduce the opponent as power, as a non-person. In Pride and Prejudice, the social system, built on classes, is one of the opponents that hinder a subject’s aim; marriage like those between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy or between Mr. Bingley and Jane are rare because they’re between two people come from different costal class and norms of that system allow complaints such as Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s, or the Bingley sisters’ dislike for Jane Bennett, although subtle. Other opponent of this kind can be considered the two concepts from the title, Pride and Prejudice: Mr. Darcy’s pride, which lead him to not open to a community of a lower social class; and Elizabeth’s prejudice towards Mr. Darcy, which lead her to refuse the man’s proposal (considered offensive by the girl), and the positive one to Mr. Wickham, revealed to be a dissolute. Pride and prejudice, which impede an authentic acquaintance between the principal character of the story written by the great Jane Austen. Particular is the position of Mr. Darcy, who’s both an opponent and a helper. Opponent when he impeded the relationship between his friend mr. Charles Bingley and Jane Bennett, as he will have confirmed in his letter to Elizabeth.

«“But Bingley has great natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgement than on his own. To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself, was no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the work of a moment. I cannot blame myself for having done this much”»[6].

He’s a helper when helps to find Lydia across London and pushing Mr. Wickham to marry the girl as to preserve the Bennetts «“He [Mr. Darcy] came to tell Mr. Gardiner that he had found out where your sister and Mr. Wickham were, and that he had seen and talked with them both; Wickham repeatedly, Lydia once.»[7]. A gesture capable of wiping away Lizzy’s prejudice and to help Mr. Darcy to reach his goal, that is to marry the protagonist of the novel. In this way other characters took part to give a support. The most importance of these were maternal Elizabeth’s uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, who, during a trip, convinced Elizabeth to see Pemberley, Darcy’s residence, where they met Mr. Darcy himself and discover a more affable and kind side of the man. «Her [Elizabeth’s] astonishment, however, was extreme, and continually was she repeating, ’Why is he [Mr. Darcy] so altered? From what can it proceed? It cannot be for me, it cannot be for my sake that his manners are thus softened’»[8]

Notes

1. BEL, Mieke, Narratology: introduction to the theory of narrative, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1997, p. 106

2. AUSTEN, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Penguin Classics, UK, 2003, iBooks, p. 48

3. Ivi, p. 324

4. Ivi, p. 19

5. Ivi, p. 324

6. Ivi, p. 201

7. Ivi, p. 296

8. Ivi, p. 244

Source

AUSTEN, Jane. Pride and Prejudice, Penguin Classics, UK, 2003, iBooks

The poet lives in his poems and only through these he can assert his own existence; the poet can be oppressed, censored, encaged, also killed, but until he can write, until there’s someone who reads his poem, he will go on living, he will be free despite all. Deported poets, exiled poets, poets oppressed by a dominant and colonial culture, but still poets, although they have lost their language. And as it’s possible to lose a language, it’s possible to find a new one to tell about the self in verses; this was well-known to Joseph Brodsky, a Russian poet and author, moved to the USA because he was condemned for parasitism and for a cultural environment more and more saturated with hostility and suspicion which censored and hinder the publication of his poems, shut his poetical voice through editorial obstructionism, denied his existence as an author, and thus also as human.

Brodsky’s verses didn’t officially exist in the Soviet Union (but read clandestinely and published via samizdat), so he didn’t exist himself as poet, as man and to exist, he had to make the hardest of the choice: leaving his home country, his native language, denying it because this language refused his creative soul. He left Russia after he was compelled by the regime, he moved abroad and reaching the USA, a Country completely different from the Soviet Union, too much free, too much noisy, but perfect for Brodsky’s poetry. There he translated his rhymes in English and his works were officially published, there Brodsky exists, there his art is loved. There’s no way to oppress the voice of a poet, because it will always find a way to speak, as well as self-translation, instruments of poetic (and cultural) resistance, as well as changing the language, the Country, traditions. Also forgoing himself.

Self-Translation is when author and translator are the same person, when an author translate his/her own literary work. As it happens in translation, there’s an original and a translation, or there’s no translation (when the author chooses to write in a language different from his/ native ones, a behaviour that in very common among colonial and post-colonial writers). The Self-Translator is a bilingual and, often, bicultural (because he/she is an immigrant or a child of immigrants, lives between frontiers or in a former colonised country). On the contrary to a translator, the author who chooses to translate him/herself has access to the original intention (i.e. now and why the author chooses to write a certain expression and the original meaning), original cultural context or literary intertext. This possibility has, however, some limits: the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung explained that neither the author is completely omniscient (aware of what he wrote in the past) and «[…] have to read it again and may not even completely understand their own motivation for choosing certain passages, certain examples or a certain style»[1]. The most famous authors who translated their own works were Samuel Beckett (from English to French and German, and vice versa) and Vladimir Nabokov (from Russia to French, and vice versa).

What are the types of Self-Translation?

Michaël Oustinof identified three types of Self-Translation: 1. Naturalising Translation (naturalisante): when an author gives priority to the characteristics of the target language (that is that language a text will be translates into). 2. Decentralised Translation (décentrée): when an author introduces in the target language foreign elements that belong to the source language (that’s the language a text is written in). 3. (Re)Creating Translation((re)créatrice): when an author translate and change his/her literary work (or omit some parts) in order to adapt the text to both the target language and culture.

Who are the authors that translate themselves? 1. Bilingual (or polyglot) authors who wants to expanse their audience or just experimenting. Usually, there’s a relation of symmetry between the source and the target language (e.g. French and English). It’s the case of Samuel Beckett. 2. People who speak minority language but choose to write with a dominant language. It’s the case of Luigi Pirandello who translated his plays in Italian from Sicilian dialects. 3. Colonial or post-colonial author who write both in their native language and colonial language. 4. Exiled or emigrant authors who write in the language of the Country they moved to. It’s the case of the Russian Vladimir Nabokov who, after moving to France, started writing books in French (such as his famous novel “Lolita”) and the same Joseph Brodsky.

The case of Brodsky and other Russian emigrée is a unique case of self-translation. Usually, who translate theirselves are those authors living in a condition of colonialism, i.e. they’re from a colonised from another of more prestige and political and cultural power, consequently their native languages becomes hegemonic to the language spoken by the colonists; the authors who live this kind of experience chose to translate their literary pieces to the dominant language, that is the colonist one, so that their work can emerge from a state of oppression, then reaching a larger number of readers and settling their existence as a creative and make raise their culture from the barriers of the dominant one and speak to the colonists through that; so, we’re talking about a form of cultural resistance.

Emigrant Russian authors didn’t choose to translate their world into the language of the Country which welcomed them, because their native culture weren’t oppressed, but because they were oppressed by their own culture; their works were usually divergent from the aesthetic ideals of the regime, thus they were censored or the official publishing was denied (and, often, neither by Russian magazines abroad); to survive as writers and giving life to their literary pieces, most of these authors chose to translate themselves. This kind of self-translation is, in this case, symmetrical, according to Rainier Grutman, because Russian and Western languages have got the same literary prestige, and the bilinguism here is exogenous (always according to Grutman’s definition) because these languages (especially about the relation between Russians and English) have never shared the same geographical spaces.

What pushed Joseph Brodsky to leave his home country and starting a new life and a new poetic and translating in the USA was the accuse and the arrest for parasitism, happened in 1964 (for which Brodsky was interned in the psychiatric hospital of Moscow and after deported and condemned to the forced labour near Arkhangelsk, on the extreme North of Russia). Thanks to his fame, he was freed in the November 1965 after a petition signed by Russian and foreigner colleagues but for the Party Brodsky was a hostile figure to the regime; in fact, when we requested a permission to go abroad, after he was invited by Robert Lowell to attend the International Festival of Poetry in London, «the Union of Soviet Writers answered there were no poet with that name in Russia: he was crossed out from the official list of Russian writers»[2]; they denied him the right of writing, the natural right to proclaimed himself poet and for a real poet this means denying his life, denying his dignity. Refusing his poetry is to refuse him and thus happened when, in 1972, he was commanded to leave the Soviet Union; that means he was not welcomed by his move country, his Russia, his Russian any longer. So, what can a poet do? Brodsky remembers: «on 10th May 1972 I was called out and they told me:”Take advantage of one of the invitation people make to you to leave for Israel. We prepare a visa for you in two days”. “But I don’t want to take advantage of”. “So, prepare for the worst”. I couldn’t do anything but to give up: I managed to make the gems prolonged to 10th June (“after this date, you’re going to have no identity card, absolutely nothing”): I wanted to pass until my 33rd birthdays with my parent in Leningrad, the last one. When they gave me the expat visa, they make me jump the line: there were many Jews waiting days and night for the visa who looked at me astonished, envying me […]. I past the last night in the USSR writing a letter to Brezhnev. The following day I was in Vienna»[3]. He was in Vienna when he met the English poet Brodsky loved most, Wystan Auden, with whom he attended the International Festival of Poetry in London, event that allowed him to meet other authors from the literary Anglo-Saxon world, such as Robert Lowell, but he already left Vienna to move to the US in the July of the same year: he was offered to work to the University of Michigan (where he taught until to 1980). Thus began one of the most important phase of Brodsky’s work and his path to self-translation, which allowed him to reborn as a man and a poet. He lost his language, his Country, but he found a new language through which thinking, loving, writing, through which expressing himself, through which existing. To write is to exist.

Translating ourselves to exist, translating as that our own work to overcome national and cultural borders, to destroy linguistic barriers, to annihilate the borders. «Civilization is the sum of total of different cultures animated by a common spiritual numerator and its main vehicle – speaking both metaphorically and literally – is translation. The wandering of a Greek portico into the latitude of tundra is translation»[4]. Translation is what allows us to converse with other cultures, with the Other, and the translator is, thus, a cultural mediator that lays between two interlocutors and help them to understand each other, not only linguistically, but also culturally, that let bonds between values, norms and beliefs be understandable to who doesn’t know them. Brodsky gave new life to his poems, already oppressed by the hostility of Soviet regime, and he gave the, new social coordinates, although he destroyed the grammar, i.e. the foundation of English language in order to adapt this language to the linguistic malleability of Russian, in order to everything, the intrinsic structure and so the semantic built by that could persist. «Brodsky […] insisted strongly on a mimetic translation i.e. a translation which would retain a poem’s verse structure – especially its rhymes, verse metre, rhyme patterns and stanzaic design should be preserved above all»[5].

A mimetic translation, them, which doesn’t break the architecture of poetry and it fits, as well, the presence of Russian soul in the English language and so the in grammar and morphosyntax, that comes from Pushkinian tradition, according to the form and the content corresponding and so, none of them should be sacrificed in the translation. A tradition enhanced by the Acmeists (such as Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelshtam), from whom Brodsky took inspiration. According to the Acmeists, in translation, must be preserved the number of lines, verse metre, rhyme patterns, types of enjambements, rhyme types, linguistic register, types of metaphor, special devices and changes of tone. Following this tradition Brodsky translated his poems from Russian into English, though transforming and upsetting the target language, though drowning bitter criticisms for that which will be have called “Englishness”. Upsetting the language in order to appear himself as a poet, as a Russia. His soul must have to emerge, if he wanted to live through poetry, and the only way to do it, in this case, is to annihilate the rule of the other language, a language chosen to survive. This foreigner who transformed a language that is not his to make it an instruments of resistance, an instruments of existence. The harshest criticism towards his English was from the British School, which blames Brodsky of transforming the language to make it adapt to his needs; a criticism that hide the will to protect the integrity of the language from an “intruder” like the Russian Brodsky. Despite all, the poet received much esteem, especially from the American School which appreciated his experimenting with the language. Experimentalism due to the dissatisfaction of English translation to Russian poems that Brodsky criticized because they were not capable to keep the complex morphosyntactic structure of the poetic of Russian language. He wrote about it: «Translation from Russian into English is one of the most horrendous mindbenders. There aren’t all that many minds equal to this. Even a good, talented, brilliant poet who intuitively understands the task is incapable of restoring a Russian poem in English. The English language simply doesn’t have those moves. The translator is tied grammatically, structurally»[6]. Even though his approach which was very little conform to modern translation theories, even though we can blame him to have turned upside-down the English and so we can speak of Englishness in his poems, Brodsky «[…] approached his translation with a fervour verging on the quixotic, squaring the circle of poetic translation, defying the spell of impossibility and bridging single-handedly the linguistic gap with great energy» [7].

Viviana Rizzo

Notes

1. AA.VV., Handbook of Translation Studies, edited by Yves Gambier e Luc van Doorslaer Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010, p. 306

2. «L'Unione degli Scrittori Sovietici rispose che non c'era nessun poeta con quel nome in Russia: era stato depennato dalla lista ufficiale degli scrittori russi», in CONDELLO, Anna, “Iosif Brodskij: una biografia intellettuale”, in Russian Echo, web (http://www.russianecho.net/contributi/speciali/brodskij/bio.html retrieved in 28th May 2021)

3. «Il 10 maggio 1972 mi chiamano e mi dicono: "Approfitti subito di uno dei tanti inviti che le vengono per emigrare in Israele e parta. Le prepariamo il visto in due giorni". "Ma non ho nessuna intenzione di approfittarne". "E allora si prepari al peggio". Non potevo far altro che cedere: sono riuscito al massimo a farmi prolungare i termini fino al 10 giugno ("dopo questa data non ha più carta d’identità , non ha più niente"): volevo almeno passare a Leningrado il mio trentaduesimo compleanno, con i miei genitori, l'ultimo. Quando mi hanno consegnato il visto d'espatrio, mi hanno fatto saltare la fila: c'erano tanti ebrei che aspettavano, che bivaccavano là in anticamera giorni e giorni in attesa del visto e che mi guardavano esterrefatti, con invidia [...]. L'ultima notte in Urss l'ho passata scrivendo una lettera a Breznev. Il giorno dopo ero a Vienna», in CONDELLO, Anna, “Iosif Brodskij: una biografia intellettuale”, in Russian Echo, web (http://www.russianecho.net/contributi/speciali/brodskij/bio.html retrieved in 28th May 2021)

4. BRODSKIJ, Iosif, “The Child of Civilization”, Less than one, London, Penguin, 1986, p. 139, cit. in ISHOV, Zakhar, “Posthorse of Civilisation”: Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky. Towards a New Theory of Russian-English Poetry Translation, Berlin, Freien Universität Berlin, 2008, p. 2

5. ISHOV, Zakhar, “Posthorse of Civilisation”: Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky. Towards a New Theory of Russian-English Poetry Translation, p. 4

6. SOLKOV, Solomon, Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, New York, The Free Press, 1998, p. 86, cit. in ISHOV, Zakhar, “Posthorse of Civilisation”: Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky. Towards a New Theory of Russian-English Poetry Translation, p. 5

7. ISHOV, Zakhar, “Posthorse of Civilisation”: Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky. Towards a New Theory of Russian-English Poetry Translation, p. 3

Sources

1. COCCO, Simona, “Lost in (Self-)Translation? Riflessioni sull’autotraduzione”, in AA.VV. , Lost in Translation. Testi e culture allo specchio, vol. 6 (2009), pp. 103-112

2. GRUTMAN, Rainier, “Beckett and Beyond. Putting Self-Translation in Perspective”, in Orbus Litterarum, n. 68, vol. 3 (2013), pp. 188-2016

3. GRUTMAN Rainier, VAN BOLDEREN Trish, “Self-Translation”, in A Companion to Translation Studies, edited by Sandra Bermann and Catherine Porter, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2014, pp. 323-332

4. ISHOV, Zakhar, “Post-horse of Civilisation”: Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky. Towards a Mew Theory of Russian-English Poetry Translation, Berlin, Freien Universität Berlin, 2008

5. MONTINI, Chiara, “Self-Translation”, in Handbook of Translation Studies, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010, pp. 307-308

If we can still read the Voronezh Notebooks, it’s because the courage and perseverance of Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelshtam (nee Khazina) who, for love, learnt by heart every single lines written by her husband, Osip Emilevich Mandelshtam, in order to transcribe them; who, for love, travelled throughout the whole Russia to run away from being arrested and so saving the few manuscripts left (which many of them were destroyed, got lost, or stolen by the Rudakovs), including during World War Two German invasion in Russia; who, for love, was able to spread Mandelshtamks poetry collections via Samizdat and managed to, after several attempts, make rehabilitate his husbands name. A love that in Nadezhda’s memoir seems imperfect but it’s stronger than Stalin’s regime, than censorship, than hunger; a love that overcame death. Love for Osip and his works, for culture, for freedom. It doesn’t seem a coincidence that her name is Nadezhda, which means “hope” in Russia and, indeed, she had never surrendered to fear because she hoped sooner or later her husband’s books could be published officially again. Nadezhda Yakovlevna collected and saved from war and secret police partly for Mandelshtam’s archive, hiding the manuscripts inside pans or sewing them to pillowcases, learning by heart her husband’s verses in the night of during her night shift in a textile factory (where she worked after Mandelshtam’s death, during her pilgrimage to run way from NKVD, and before getting a job as English language teacher). But Nadezhda didn’t only save the poems, she writes in her memoir: «I am now faced with a new task, and am not quite sure how to go about it. Earlier it was all so simple: my job was to preserve M.'s verse aod tell the story of what happened to us. The events concerned were outside our control»[1]. During Khrushchev’s era, she wrote three memoir books, Vospominaya, Vtoraya kniga e Kniga tretya (further a critical book on Osip’s poems, Kommentarii k stikham), first published in the US, the first under the title of Hope Against Hope in 1970, and the second one as Hope Abandoned, in 1974. In these memoirs she tells about her husband, the poetic work, the last years of Mandelshtam’s life with poignancy and much resolution, the horrible years of Stalinian Terror, nor missing to scold those intellectuals who committed to the socialist realism and bureaucrats but understanding the people, who ere in turn victims of fear and poverty. Her memoirs are «a scream of pain suffered for decades», pages that tell not only Nadezhda and Osip’s life together, but that also enlighten the abyss where they fell into. Those pages is a scream of hope after much silence and the continuation of Osip Mandelshtam’s testimony. Nadezhda moved her lips for him, when he couldn’t do this anymore.

Nadezhda Yakovlevna didn’t limit herself to this: she edited the Samizdat edition of the last Mandelshtam’s works, even though she wanted her husband’s poetry would have been published officially. She realised how huge was the circulation of this clandestine edition and she got surprised, because, despite the education system designed to affirm the socialist realism as the lonely critical canon, despite the censorship, the discrimination against a certain group of intellectuals and the destruction of the intelligentsia, «new readers come into being before our very eyes, but to understand how it happened is quite impossible. All one can say is that it came about against all the odds. The whole educational system was geared to preventing the appearance of such readers»[2]. Poetry can’t die because it’s life itself, because there will be always someone who manages to save and transcribed verses, including during terror, because it’s only in this way we can protect our Ego when everything is divided in indefinite “us” and “them”.

During Khrushchev era, Nadezhda understood something was changing and several names there weren’t published any longer, got rehabilitated. Osip Emileivich Mandelshtam’s name appeared only in samizdat and many didn’t dare to pronounce it yet; his name too should have been rehabilitated because he was arrested and condemned while he didn’t commit a crime, and so Nadezhda Yakovlevna, in the middle of the 50s, tried to get Mandelshtam rehabilitated, meeting Aleksey Surkov several times, poet and prominent figure of the Union of Soviet Writers. In 1956, Osip Mandelshtam will have been cleared from the accuse of “counterrevolutionary activities” of 1938, but only in 1987, during Gorbachëv’s administration, his name was completely rehabilitated and cleared from all the charges. Still through Surkov’s help, in 50s, Nadezhda tried to get published all Mandelshtam’s works officially. If Surkov was optimistic, many times the Party denied this idea, especially after the “Zhivago affaire”; Mandelshtam kept being a controversial name. Official publication of Mandelshtam’s work happened only in 90s. Nadezhda Mandelshtam died in 29th December 1980; after ten years her death, in 1990, the Voronezh Notebooks appeared in a complete and official edition in Moscow. «My odd experience, that as witness to poetic work, tells me it’s impossible to put a foot in the throat, it’s impossible to put a muzzle. It’s one of the most sublime human expression, bringer of universal armonies, and it can’t be anything else»[3].

Viviana Rizzo

Reference:

[1] MANDELSHTAM, N.J., Hope Abandoned, New York, Atheneum, 1974, p. 3

[2] Ivi, p. 9

[3] «La mia strana esperienza, quella di testimone del lavoro poetico, mi dice che è impossibile mettergli un piede sulla gola, impossibile infilargli la museruola. È una delle espressioni più sublimi dell'uomo, portatore di armonie universali, né altro può essere», in MANDEL’ŠTAM, N. J., L’epoca e i lupi. Memorie, with an introduction by Clarence Brown, trans. Ita by Giorgio Kraiski, Milano, Mondadori, 1971, p. 221

Sources:

1. FRISIA, A., “Coraggio e poesia. Osip e Nadežda Mandel’štam” in Gariwo: la foresta dei Giusti, web, 30.10.2014, p. 6, https://it.gariwo.net/dl/201410300557_30%20ottobre%20Osip%20e%20Nadezda.pdf (retrieved 18 November 2020)

2. KUVAKDIN, J.,, “Ulica Mandel’štama. Povest’ o stikakh”, in Bibilioteka Aleksandra Belousenko, web, 16.11.2004, https://web.archive.org/web/20071017204834/http://belolibrary.imwerden.de/books/Kuvaldin/kuvaldin_mandelshtam.htm# (retrieved in 20 November 2020)

3. MANDELSHTAM, N.J., Hope Abandoned, New York, Atheneum, 1974

«Poetry is not a luxury»[1], Audre Lorde said. Poetry is not a game, another amusement to dampen the boredom of a humdrum life but it’s a need, a necessity as instrument to the battle against oppression, to self-determination and to identitary resistance because «poetry is power»[2]. And this is as much true and confirmed when poetry becomes activism, when lyricism expresses, and thus bears witness, a discomfort and makes it universal, fathomable through the poetic language; when writing in verse is the only way to express ideas and makes sure they’re recognised in their own dignity, thus it’s necessary in order to save and let respected the existence of that human being who has thought it, in order to this existence can be recognised as such, can arise from oppression and systematic hate, can give voices to those whose lips were ripped off, such as women, for whom «[…] poetry […] is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we [women] predicate our hopes and dreams towards survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought»[3], so, poetry’s place where they can expresses opinions, needs, dreams, hope, in other words themselves, where the cultural system gives preference to other voices, wherein censorship is not official, i.e. perpetrated by an organisation or a law, but it’s cultural because it’s the culture that systematically chooses (a given social class) what creative expressions are more or less are in line with its own values or strengthen them. That’s why for centuries poetry (but also the whole literature) has been place wherein affirm ourselves and the individuality of our own identity, or express pride for a communitarian identity; as it was for women, who found in poetry an instruments they can express their real self through, getting out of the patriarchal control and out of the role they were bonded to by society and came less to the expectations of this one. In this way, women could so analyse her being woman, dreaming to choose who are and what to do, self-determinising and exploring their femininity beyond believes given by a certain historical moment; as it was for black community, wherein black poets could express the a beauty, the varieties, the complexity of their subculture, their traditions, history and so express the pride of being part of this ethnicity, fighting against racism and networking against the oppression perpetrated by a system that privileges white citizens (and more often men). These two concepts converge into the poetic experience of black women poets, for whom poetry became a place wherein speaking of their experience as women and black citizens, wherein they can exist and affirm their existence, «The white father told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us – the poet – whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom»[4]. Let think of great poets like Maya Angelou, whose poems «often respond to matters like race and sex on a larger social and psychological scale»[5], or like Gwendolyn Brooks, whose poetry, especially the latest, is a political and civil poetry, taking as cultural reference heroes and subjects of the battle for liberation of black people (such as Winnie Mandela, wife to the anti-apartheid activist), but also like Margaret Walker who «through her work, she “[sang] a song for [her] people”, capturing their symbolic quest for liberation. When asked how she viewed her work, she responded, “The body of my work… springs from my interest in a historical point of view that is central to the development of black people as we approach the twenty first century”»[6].

1. Maya Angelou: I know why the caged bird sings

«The poignant beauty of Angelou’s writing enhances rather than masks the candid with which she addresses the racial crisis through which America was passing»[7]. That of Maya Angelou is a lively and melodic voice, her poems can talk even when there’s no human voice to give them sound, they have as mode,s the language of the intense, brave speeches of the great activist of the battle for black people’s rights like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Angelou was able to bring together all temporal planes in her writing: both in her poetry and autobiographies, she managed to give voice to the last, to make it a new present, part of the hic te nunc of the existence in action and not anymore as something disappeared with time, but as something that is still here partly, that is still a being. A past that is personal, her life, her youth, her terrible traumas, the beauty of growing before as a girl than as a woman; a pat that is of her community, the troubled story of afroamericana and who that the lyrical I becomes a We, the collectivity becomes a person. The personal experience is thus an exemplum for the common one and becomes even global. The present meets the past, that of when a given poems was born, that of readers, of the poet, it’s the daily battle which becomes memory, it’s the journey to the self-determination in a place where is hostility but also the future, it’s the caged bird that sings and whose song is heard by the free birds, the future is a song overcoming its own time: «The caged bird sings/with a fearful trill/of things unknown/but longed for still/and his tune is heard/on the distant hill/for the caged bird/sings of freedom»[8]. “The caged bird”, dr, Maya Angelou’s favourite metaphor, taken from Paul Laurence Dunbar, famous afroamerican author, is a symbol for the inner freedom that wins ones the oppression of the external, is an eternal song that’s heard until now and if it’s clearly listened, one can hear the thousand of voice from the past and here we can find the beauty in Maya Angelou’s writing: the ability to speak through not one but a thousand of voices, voices of both the present and the past, giving relevance to the last ones, and consequently she was able to tell the future, to be understood by who’ll be after her.

2. Gwendolyn Brooks: writing poetry that will be meaningful

The poetic voice of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first afroamerican woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, is raw, bitter when the language gets filled with political and cultural meaning, when brings a message without forgetting the sweetness, the beauty of a poised, refined style. Worked, studied poems, perfect verse and rhymes, but also intense, hard, which don’t take away to be tough, to tell the truth on oppression, pain, on the battle to re-humanise her own identity in a culture where it was deprived of its otherness, of being an Other Ego, an Other Truth. This happens especially with the her most famous poem collection, In The Mecca, a turning point for Brooks’s poetics. «I want to write poems that will be non compromising. I don’t want to stop a concern with words doing good jobs, which has always been a concern of mine, but I want to write poems that will be meaningful […]»[9] and this was so. Brooks managed to delineate a world, give multiple meanings to the words she used, to the poems, to speak with the voice of her great gallery of characters. In her poems, there’s her Lyric I, but also her characters. Such a polyphony that only few, even among novelists, can make it in such little verbal marks. «The words, lines, and arrangements have been worked and worked and worked again into poised exactness: the unexpected apt metaphor, the mock-colloquial asides amid jewelled phrases, the half-ironic repetition – she knows it all»[10]. A poetry that can speak to its people, community, that hopes, fights for a future where Gwendolyn Brooks «[…] envisioned “the profound and frequent shaking of hands, which in Africa in so important. The shaking of hands in warmth and strength and union”»[11].

3. Margaret Walker: poetry as hope, poetry for the people

Margaret Walker’s poetics is the voice of a whole people, is culture that becomes creative work of a lonely person for the universality and becomes bringer of values. It’s the song of a choir, a choir for the last, of the story of slavery, of that community that still fights for the right to exist; it’s a choir that still sings and never stops to sing the lines of this wonderful poet.

One of the most loved and praised poem of Margaret Walker is “For My People”, which contains all the characteristics that made unique Walker’s poetry and it’s an excursus through the past and more recent history of US Black community, from the tragedy of slavery, to civil battles still fought nowadays in the heart of the New World; «poems in which the body and spirit of a great group of people are revealed with vigour and undeviating integrity»[12]. She uses as reference cultural elements of her community, recalls heroes, events that form that culture as vast as unheard by those who spit poison to not lose the position of privilege, and if this culture isn’t heard, then Margaret Walker addresses also to the deaf. She speaks to them as well, making universal a history that’s particular. Walker speak to everyone through her rhymes, she speaks to the humanity; her poetry talks about tragedies but is full of hope because she knows there will be always someone who still listen, fight, defend, doesn’t forget, «[…] the power of resilience presented in the poem is a hope Walker holds out not only to black people, but to all people […] “After all, it is the business of all writes to write about the human condition, and all humanity must be involved in both the writing and in the reading”»[13]

Viviana Rizzo

References

[1] LORDE, A., “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”, in Audre Lorde, Sister outsider, Trumansburg N.Y., Crossing Press, 1984, p. 371

[2] TODOROV, L’arte nella tempesta. L’avventura di poeti, scrittori e pittori nella Rivoluzione Russa, trans. ita. by Emanuele Lana, Milano, Garzanti S.r.l., 2017, p. 120 (iBooks)

[3] LORDE, A., “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”, in Audre Lorde, Sister outsider, p. 372

[4] Ibidem

[5] EDITORS, “Maya Angelou”, in Poetry Foundation, web, 2021, (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/maya-angelou, retrieved on 24th February 2021)

[6] EDITORS, “Margaret Walker”, in Poetry Foundation, web, 2021 (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/margaret-walker, retrieved on 24th February 2020).

[7] HOLST, W.A., “Review of A song Flung up to Heaven”, in Christian Century (giugno 2002), pp. 35-36, cit. in EDITORS, “Maya Angelou” in Poetry Foundation

[8] ANGELOU, M., The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, New Work, Random House Inc., 1994, p. 194

[9] EDI TORS, “Gwendolyn Brooks”, Poetry Foundation, web, 2021 (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gwendolyn-brooks consultato il 24 febbraio 2021)

[10] LITTLEJOHN, D., Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes, New York, Grossman, 1966, p. 91, cit. in EDITORS, “Gwendolyn Brooks”, in Poetry Foundation

[11] EDITORS, “Gwendolyn Brooks”, in Poetry Foundation

[12] UNTERMEYER, L. “New Books in Review” in Yake Review, vol. XXXII, n. 2 (inverno 1934), p.371, cit. in EDITORS, “Margaret Walker”, in Poetry Foundation

The pandemic spread last year and occurred ‘till today has scared us, made us all victims of a shared existential vertigo, shaking the foundations of those were our convictions. In other words, it has shown us that values and norms – i.e. the culture –, which political rhetorics tried to preserve, are now problematic, that means they’re not able anymore to answer those questions future asks, to find a solution to the serious issues of the present. Pandemic has shown us, with painful cruelty, that the ways with which we were dealing with the (environmental, economical, financial, social and cultural) crisis weren’t the right ones; on the contrary, they were worsening the already fatal condition the whole world was throwing itself into. However, at the same time, the pandemic has given us time, slowing down our lives (more and more hectic due to the needs of the capitalistic system, whose first value is the consume, so that a production based on quantities), to turn our look onto what’s happening and making a deeper judgement on the events, on problems and issues of our time, and then find solutions, gather energies to make a change in history and courage to take also definitive decisions, to sacrifice our system of ideas and values we, choose which of them to save and which taking from other normative systems, if not even cultural. Like the victory of the democratic Joe Biden against the republicans Donald Trump at the 2020 elections that suggests us a more and more distancing of society from populist ideas and strengthen of minoranze in politics; like Black Lives Matter manifestations as consequences to the murder of George Floyd, an Afro American citizen, committed by two police agents, and an almost global mobilisation in supporting the now famous Movement for the defence of Black people rights and battles against structural racism, developed as emulation of the protest occurred in the US and in some Foreign nations, such as France and Italy. There were environmental actions as well, the total lockdown of the last spring demonstrated how nature can regenerate very quickly when polluting industrial productions and the extensive use of gasoline cars stop; indeed, Countries like Italy has been planning projects for a more sustainable development, such as governmental bonus for the rebuild of housing buildings in order to reduce the impact on the environment, that are also a response to a more and more unrecoverable economic crisis. Surely this is little compared to upheavals provoked by the pandemic, to the getting worse of already serious conditions, to the tragic contingencies that the whole global population is facing. In many Countries, the percentage of people on the verge of poverty increased, many people were fired and many enterprises closed down definitely. In other Countries have been coup-d’état or, like In Italy, occurred serious government crisis.

The election of Joe Biden is due not just to the ability of the new president to grado those that are the current needs of a nation like the US, but also due to the incapacity of populism (the ideology behind Donald Trump’s politics) to read the reality and consequently to plan strategy to solve the most urgent issues, as a worsening economic crisis and improving sanitary facilities in order to deal with Covid-19 pandemic. Incapability hidden with galvanising the gut feelings, that increase the hate against minorities, which are already consider the scapegoat for problems caused actually by an inefficient politics or by issues occurring in every Western society. This hate against minorities that wasn’t prosecuted by institutions and Trump’s administration (and thus justified) brought those minority communities to ally and strengthen each other, and so influencing the election of the last Fall. The culmination of this sensation of insecurity and inadequacy perceived by minorities, especially by the black people, was the great manifestation of June 2020 as consequence to the killing of George Floyd perpetrated by a white policeman, not last, neither the first murderer of this kind; indeed this one was just another in that long list of black American citizen killed by the police. Murders that are rarely prosecuted and seldom the perpetrators are brought in a tribunal. A scary phenomenon that has increased especially during Trump, just because the former president wasn’t able to condemn these action of racist violence, and that has lead a popular indignation, since it’s clear and evident these crimes is provoked by systematic hate, and not as a tragic consequence to the necessity to protect the people. These behaviours aren’t tolerable anymore, especially after years and years of battle for black people’s and other minorities’ rights and this unacceptability leads to Black Lives Matter movement manifestations bursted in biggest cities of the US and the world. Manifestations that were threatened by Donald Trump through the idea to bring the army to stop those that were just pacific riots. Thus, if we suppose these manifestations, along with the distress lived by the other ethnic, sexual and gender minorities because of a governement whcih closed the eyes before these clearly episodes of systematic hate, brought to the victory of Joe Biden, to these we can add the battle of Jacey Abrams, who proved that were racial reasons for exclude people from voting. Her battles helped more people from a minority to vote, who preferred, as polls proved, the democratic candidate because Joe Biden, just taken office, aims to support better the minorities, with the collaboration of Kamala Harris, the first black woman as Vice President , who has always highlited his will to support to the battles for civil rights and create a more equal society during his electoral campaign.

Black lives matter. And much.

The election was also affected by the inefficiency of the past administration to handle the spread of the virus, sharing anti-scientific beliefs and a lack of strategy for strengthening the medical and scientific field while, on the contrary, Joe Biden has already planned.

In other words, this global pandemic revealed the real face of populism, a political and ideological movement that gives voice to the most visceral feeling of the people, capable to convince through a fallacious rhetoric but actually it can’t hold the reins of a nation which is irremediably changing and such ideology doesn’t manage to read the mutation of our societies (so that’s mute and deaf to the new generation). Moreover, the tendency of populism to go against the so-called technicians provoked not few troubles: many government of this kind didn’t follow the suggestions of the scientific community to contain the contagion. A tendency that was followed by tragic consequences, as thousand of deaths and many people who got a permanent damage to lungs, and that teaches us to give more attention, even mediatic, to scientists, researchers and the research for a vaccine shows us the quick progress of medicine and science made, if institutions support them. Institutions that prefer to sacrifice the scientific research, more and more necessary, in order to meet other economic requirements in a world based on epistemological thought and that demands more technical and sanitary innovations. Next to the issue of scientific research, there is that of technology: Countries like Italy and others have noticed they need a more efficient national telecommunication system and give support so that everyone can use and get electronic devices and a good internet to follow lessions and working from home. 2020 and Covid-19 pandemic showed us Greta Thunberg was right: it’s needed to slow down and reduce the environmental impact. The strict lockdown of the last Spring proved how quickly nature can regenerate itself and so that it’s needed little to deviate our path to the irreversible process of deterioration of the planet. This time, it’s the nature itself that gave us a second chance.

Coronavirus pandemic has been having a great impact on our lives, on our society, culture and economy. It has pushed us to reevaluate our values and believes, to reviews our strategies and ideologies. It gave us the time to slow down, give each other a look, observe the world and it’s thousands of societies, think about our era and helped us figure out what would have been dangerous for the development for a more right and equal world, our mistakes and gave a chance to remedy. These were, are and will be painful, tragic, scary moments and we are all victims of a serious existential crisis because we’re aware that we aren’t going to be same as before, that the world is different and in our future this will be evident. We are in a new world and we’re different as well.

Viviana Rizzo @livethinking

«I’m just a mechanic, I don’t know anything, everything I’m able to do is fix car pneumatics. I looked for Jesus Christ in the poor, in the oppressed and in the abandoned, so that was borne story academics and doctors are interested to: they always ask me to tell it». [1]

It’s an extraordinary story, that of Grégoire Ahngbonon, former mechanic, who, after misery, spiritual crisis, grief, he managed to survive, to embrace Christ’s teaching again and go closer to the Other with the whole himself. Grégoire Ahongbonon is a simple man, with a soft gaze (as one can see in pictures), but full of brave and active altruism; a man who won over his own prejudices and fears to welcome the different and save them from those who persists to search the humanity in other ones’ eyes. And Grégoire always managed to do it, even when the mind of who’s before him is haunted with ghosts of mental illness, when words are a verbal codes impossible to decipher, when just a caress is enough to shut up those demons; and this what Grégoire does, saving sick people, he heals them, he givers them dignity and frees them from the chains of prejudice and superstition, and from the real ones.

« But for me the most important thing is not necessarily healing every single person. It’s the dignity of each person. That’s our struggle».[2]

Grégoire Ahongbonon’s life was not easy. He lived difficult moment, tragedies, as he told Valerio Petrarca, an Italian anthropologist. Grégoire was born in 12th March 1952 in a small village near Koutongbé, in Benin, from where he moved to Ivory Coast in 1971, wherein he worked as mechanic, got success and became rich, but moving away from Christian religion, to which he was very close. In a few time, though, he lost everything, he got poor and tried to kill himself, an event that made him get closer to God and Church again. This getting close culminated with a peregrination in Jerusalem, the Holy City. Here, like the prodigal son, he came back to religion, made Christ’s teaching his categorical imperatives, exceeding the limits of fear provoked by not recognise the Other. His gaze became human and now he’s not scared of showing sympathy for who’s victim of the worst indigence, he’s not scared to dig down the abyss and being the light to who’s lost himself.

Thus, the journey stroke a chord in him and, back in Ivory Coast, he proposed to his wife to start a smal prayer group, then to help the poor and the imprisoned, and finally to mental ill people who, in Western Africa, are «the forgotten of the forgotten».[3]

Those harsh lands but full of life, between Benin, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, where voodoo religion has a great control on the society and believes the deviations of thought and behaviour should be treated literally with chains, and Christian religion with prayers.

«Looking for Jesus in the outcast, I started to see what I didn’t see before. And thus the story of the mentally ill begun. It was 1990 or 1991. The mentally ill in Africa are a shame for their own family, a shame for society, a shame for public power. They’re abandoned by everyone. You can see them eating garbage, sleeping outside, on the street. Everyone is scared of them. I too was scared of them. I too was scared of the mentally ill. One day, I see a mentally ill person, naked as usual, who was rummaging through the junk, searching for something to eat. But that day I looked at him in a different way. I stopped myself and spying him, I told myself: but that Jesus I look for in church, that Jesus I look for in prayer groups, that Jesus I look for in sacraments, is he the same Jesus who suffers inside this sick man? And if this is so, why should I be afraid of him? If he’s Jesus, why being scared?».[4]

What Grégoire Ahongbonon will do for the mentally ill is something extraordinary, especially in Western Africa. There it’s believed, according to voodoo belief, the mentally ill are possessed by spirits, so that they are up chained to trees, vexed as long as they confess their sins and free themselves. The same is believed by some Christians. Indeed, there are prayer centre where the mentally ill, still chained, are left outside to pray, until they heal from the disease. Grégoire helped a young man reduced to these conditions and he got disgusted: although they’re sick, are they not still human? Don’t they need dignity? Grégoire decided, with his wife’s support, to help them, first bringing them food and helping them washing, then transforming the hospital church to a rescue centre; finally, he founded the St Camille Association and opened clinics in Benin, Ivory Coast and in Burkina Faso. Every year, several psychiatrists comes from Europe to treat the mentally ill according to modern psychiatric theories, nurses take care of the patients and the association works to give dignity to these people, finding a job and a home for them. And many, many women and men, healed from their disorder, can bear witness of the success of the great work of Grégoire, a symbo, of humanity, true charity, sense of Otherness. And all this happened because of a glance. A sincere glance, a deep and human glance. ««There was a prayer centre here where there were more than 250 sick people. But today, there are no more sick people there, because when we started, the families saw the results, and they went unchained the sick people and brought them to us».[5]

People and the family of the sick people started noticing that Grégoire’s method works. The psychotic crisis are not provoked, as priests say, by spirits, but from disorder of behaviour and thought, real and concrete things. Through Christian mercy, Grégoire Ahongbonon imposed the epistemological sense of the world. The results are evident and many and many prayer centre closed, families don’t ask consults to priests or traditional healers, but to Grégoire and his association volunteers. The sick got really healed and not just that: they found a job, they’re taught a profession and, if they want, reintegrated into their villages or families.

Among the many stories of healing thanks to Grégoire’s association, there is that of Judikael, told by BBC. Judikael has suffered of strong psychotic crisis that often showed up with him getting himself naked and run around the city. His grandmother tried everything, consulting priests or traditional healers (but refusing to chain her grandson) but nothing has been enough. On day, she got to know about the St Camille Association and Grégoire. So that Judikael was hospitalised in one of the clinics of the association, where doctors diagnosed a form of schizophrenia. «[…] Judikael now comes once a month as an out-patient to get his injection. He has been treated at Saint Camille for almost a year, and takes one pill every day to silence the voices in his head.

He still struggles with some of the side-effects of his medication, which makes him sleepy and numb in the jaw and mouth, but he has started training as a tailor» [6] the work his beloved grandmother did.

(Pics from BBC news)

Giving the mental ill the dignity of human beings again: this is Grégoire Ahongbonon’s goal. And this happens only creating a healthy and comfortable environment, heal the sick under the respect of their humanity, teach them a profession and reintegrate them into society. Fighting as long as the forgotten of the forgotten get the right of being recognised, as long as the chains, the real and the metaphorical ones, got broken. «Because as long as there is one man in chains, it is the humanity that is chained. When I see a man tied to wood or in chains, I see my own image. And it’s the image of each and every one of us». [7] So, Grégoire Ahongbonon keeps working today, in a global pandemic, to save these women and these men (indeed, he won the Dr Guislan Award in December 2020), giving the whole humanity a great teaching.

Notes

[1] [PETRARCA, Valerio, I pazzi di Grégoire, Palermo, Sellerio editore, 2008, p. 146

[2] THE NEW YORK TIMES, “The chains of Mental Illness in West Africa”, in YouTube, 10.12.2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKd9MxBzAUc&t=301s retrieved 18th January 2021)

[3] MINISTRI DEGLI INFERMI RELIGIOSI CAMILLANI, “Grégoire Ahongbonon: quello che vivo è più forte di me”, in camillani.org, 02.5.2020, web (https://www.camilliani.org/gregoire-ahongbonon-quello-che-vivo-e-piu-forte-di-me/ retrieved 18th January 2021)

[4] PETRARCA, Valerio, I pazzi di Grégoire, p. 147

[5] THE NEW YORK TIMES, “The chains of Mental Illness in West Africa”, in YouTube, 10.12.2015

[6] ADJOVI, Laeila, “Ahngbonon: freeing people chained for being ill”, in BBC NEWS, 02.17.2016, web (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35586177 retrieved in 18th January 2021)

[7] in THE NEW YORK TIMES, “The chains of Mental Illness in West Africa”, in YouTube, 12.10.2015

Sources

ADJOVI, Laeila, “Ahngbonon: freeing people chained for being ill”, in BBC NEWS, 02.17.2016, web (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35586177 retrieved in 18th January 2021)

MINISTRI DEGLI INFERMI RELIGIOSI CAMILLANI, “Grégoire Ahongbonon: quello che vivo è più forte di me”, in camillani.org, 02.5.2020, web (https://www.camilliani.org/gregoire-ahongbonon-quello-che-vivo-e-piu-forte-di-me/ consultato il 18th January 2021)

PETRARCA, Valerio, I pazzi di Grégoire, 5ª ed., Palermo, Sellerio editore, 2008

THE NEW YORK TIMES, “The chains of Mental Illness in West Africa”, in YouTube, 10.12.2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKd9MxBzAUc&t=301s consultato il 18th January 2021)

It was the night between 9th and 10th November 1989 and something epochal was happening. At 11pm the Wall which had divided Berlin for 28 years fell apart. It was the frontier lieutenant colonel Harald Jäger who, by his own initiative, gave the order to open a passage between East Berlin and West Berlin. It was the 9th November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the world started to change. A country started to be reunited with tears of joy, hugs and presents that German citizens gave each other; a reborn of a whole people and the sign that hoping is still possible.

Sighting history while it’s being made is not always possible, historians are those who individuate what was the events that made an era but in this case it was obvious that an epoch was at an end and one another was beginning. The 1989 was the end, or rather, the begin of the end of “The Short Twentieth Century” (as Eric J, Hobsbawm will have called in 1995 in an essay with the same title). Historians, the witness of the Fall and who participated in the destruction of the Wall had already understood it. All those astonished people who were watching the pictures of that memorable night, broadcasted by tv stations from all around the world had already known it. We’re sure about it today, after thirty years; we who have lived and known the consequences; because who has lived it remember these pictures that one can watch from TV or from YouTube.

Prior events

«[..] I think the Fall of Berlin Wall [...] happended especially due to Mikhail Gorbachëv’s politics of reformation that was announced during the 27th Congress of Comunist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) and, in particular, due to Gorbachëv’s bad relations with German Democratic Republic (DDR)». If we should reconstruct a genealogy of the Fall of Berlin Wall, we could consider the Perestroika, that series of reforms aimed at the reorganisation of politics and social structure and the acceleration of economic development of Russia, wanted by the then General Secretary of the CSPU Mikhail S. Gorbachëv, carried out since the middle of the 80s but which started to fail by the end of the decade. This reforming politics was what made possible the huge manifestation in Leipzig in October 1898, raised after the substitution of the former leader of GDR Erich Honecker with Egon Krenz due to his reluctance to Perestroika, which Gorbachëv wanted to extend to other Satellite States of USSR between 1986-1989. Indeed, it was because of a declaration made by the CSPU leader after he could see himself GDR leader’s perplexities during celebration for the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik that Hocker was ousted.

Leipzig manifestation inflamed due to the substitution of Hocker but, in virtue of Perestroika principles, the USSR didn’t send the army to stifle the riot. Still on the basis of the same principles, which aimed to a relaxation of the control on Soviet Union territories, Hungary could open its frontiers with Austria in 1989. That helped the migration of German citizens from East Berlin to West Berlin: the rise of the Wall, happened between 12th and 13th August 1961, was decided to contain the moving of German people, especially of the most educated and specialised workers, to the more democratic and wealthy West Berlin. That was another reason behind Leipzig manifestation. Thus, on 7th November 1989, SED general secretary, Krenz, and the minister of Foreign Affair, Oskar Fischer, informed the USSR ambassador, Vyakheslov Kakhamosov, about the new expatriation laws which included the creation of a new special checkpoint. Moscow authorities gave their permission on November 9th and Günter Schabowski, an official of the SED, organised a press conference for the same night, whose purpose was to communicate the new norms in terms of expatriation. Therefore, Günter Schabowski didn’t attend the Politubüro council concerning the new law.

The fact

«The fall of the Berlin Wall [...] was one of the few turning points in history that journalists not only witnessed but helped the cause». Indeed, Günter Schabowski was stumped by three journalists in particular, who asked him questions to which he couldn’t know the answers or pull information from that incomplete press communication he was given. Those journalists were Peter Brinkmann from the German Bild, Krzysztof Janowski from the American television network Voice of America, who asked him if the new legislation allowed or not travels between East and West Berlin, from which derived a positive answer from an even more confused Schabowski, and the Italian Riccardo Herman, who asked him from when these new norms were effective and Schabowski answered «as far as I know… effective immediately, without delay».

According to Schabowski’s declaration, it was possible to cross the Walk from that moment: a huge crowd poured out to the border.

Working in service was the lieutenant colonel Harald Jäger. When he saw all these people, he rushed to his supervisors, who gave him the order to let pass only those who had the right documentation. At 20 pm the news broadcast went on the air which delivered the news about the new norms and about the possibility of crossing the border. This news went so viral that further people added to those who were already there waiting; so that Jäger called his supervisors again: the orders were to let pass who were creating disorder but the people there understood what was happening and started to riot. At 11 pm, the situation was disastrous and Lieutenant Colonel’s supervisors didn’t know what to do. Then Jäger gave the order to open a gate on the Wall that divided the German capital and citizens joined the soldiers. The Berlin Wall fell: opened the gate, relatives and friends met for the first time in 30 years. With a great emotion was made the history.

After 25 years that night, Harald Jäger will have told to the British newspaper The Indipendent: «We stood there and watched our citizens leaving en masse. These were our people. We cried. We felt betrayed by our superiors. It was the terrible realisation that not only the system and our leaders had failed. We had too[...] The crowds won us over with their euphoria, we realised that they were overjoyed and our tears of frustration turned to those of joy.»

No one in Russia expected what could have happened that night, Gorbachëv neither, who chose to do nothing to prevent the Fall, nor to do something later. Often, in his memoir and interviews, he remembers that they «had taken every possible step to ensure that the process was peaceful, did not go against our country’s interest or threaten European peace in any way» and to the Russian magazine Russkaya Gazeta, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Fall, he told In the summer of 1989, neither Helmut Kohl nor I anticipated, of course, that everything would happen so fast. [...] This happens in history: it accelerates its progress. It punishes those who are late. But it has an even harsher punishment for those who try to stand in its way. It would have been a big mistake to hold onto the Iron Curtain. That is why we didn’t put any pressure on the government of the GDR When events started to develop at a speed that no one expected, the Soviet leadership unanimously [... ] decided not to interfere in the internal processes that were under way in the GDR, not to let our troops leave their garrisons under any circumstances. I am confident to this day that it was the right decision».

Actually, the then General Secretary of the CPSU wasn’t immediately informed on what was happening in Berlin on the night of 9th November, as his spokesman, Andrey Gartsov, confirmed later, because «As the situation in Berlin was developing chaotically, no one in his circle resolved to wake the General Secretary and inform him of the event, which on the face of it did not present any threat to national security. When he was finally told that a street demonstration had forced the East German authorities to open the border checkpoints with West Berlin during the night, he said, “They did the right thing.”»

The consequences

The Fall of Berlin Wall shook up the assets of European territories of those years: if it was set out towards preserving the identities of Germany and Warsaw Treaty at first, with the support of François Mitterand’s France and Margaret Tatcher’s UK, things went differently and Germany got back to being an united nation. Above all, it was for the contribution of the chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Kohl, that the unifications happened. Kohl managed to persuade the Deutsche Bundesbank to equiparate the value of the Deutsche Mark of East Berlin to that of West Berlin, so that was possible to promulgate a Treaty on Monetary, Economic and Social Union, that came into effect on July 1st: that was the first step to German unification.

Negotiations between the States kept going until the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed by two Germany and by France, UK, USA and USSR. Germany is now a united nation with full independence. The German unification, moreover, became the basis for a new European Union.

On the other side, in Soviet Union, the Fall of Berlin Wall was the exploit of an already saturated system: by the begin of 1989, economic reforms of Perestroika were to fail, since then shortly after the rationing system was introduced and the Congress of People Deputies divided into communists and radical reformists in June, consequently the party-state lost the control on events; crisis intensified in August with the fall of Warsaw Pact: the Fall of Berlin Wall was the exploit and accelerated the process of crisis of the Soviet Union, already begun by the behaviours Gorbachëv kept at the end of his mandatory. At the end of 1991, the USSR fell apart, as well its ideology and cultural schemes that had kept united the Soviet Union since that moment,

If the Fall of Berlin Wall was a starting point for Europe, it started a period of political, social, economic and identity crisis and important transformation in Russia and in the former countries of Soviet Union. A sense of loss and chaos expanded, which swept over the culture as well, already on the way of post-modernism and of the crisis of the central role of literature.

Viviana Rizzo @livethinking

Article in Italian language here

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It’s not about historic or commercial reasons why a given author from the last is well-known to us: an author, a novelist or a poet, indeed, can be famous and loved during his lifetime but lesser known, if not unknown, to posterity. A given author is more known than one another because of the critical work of a literature scholar who, on the basis of aesthetically or ideological reasons (or both), builds his own literary canon, that list of poets and novelists capable of narrating their historical time and, at the same times, make their stories still punctual and successful beyond their times. A literary canon can be built with the purpose of giving a certain imagine of the culture of a Country – it’s the case, e.g., of Ian Watt who built the imaginary of English people as self-made men – or “different” canon, often created on ideological basis than aesthetically with the purpose of including subaltern cultures (as afroamericans or women), many of which born in 60s, years of “Battle of canons”. A literary canon should, in the opinion of who’s writing here, include authors and literary works from different cultures, hegemonic or subaltern; thus, a canon made of various points of view and considering different human experiences.

Literature is, indeed, capable of establish a point of view, it’s intrinsic in the act of telling. In a novel merge feelings, a given author’s experience, still keeping a certain distance from his characters’ ideas: it’s an unconscious process but not only that. Writing what we know, what we’re sentimentally closer, is also the foundation of that literary genre – realism – which imposes a certain grade of plausibility. Nevertheless, to write getting inspired by what are our personal experience answers to a group of authors’s need of speaking about, put in evidence some particular issues or stories, often about subjection, like women or diaspora authors, or writers from colonial or post-colonial experience, or even from subaltern cultures, many times excluded from literary canons because they tell particular conditions or through a language specific to those experiences of discrimination, or because opposed to the ideology that’s foundation of such canon. This is the case of the English author with Caribbean origins, Jean Rhys, not well-known by the general public, yet with her Wide Sargasso Sea, she explores the past of a character from the most famous Charlotte Brontë’s Jean Eyre: Mr Edward Rochester’s wife, Bertha, empathising with her tragic life and merging into that her own past as a Creole woman, with all the difficulties included,

Wide Sargasso Sea tells about the events before those described by Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre, focusing on the past of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, the Creole Antoinette Cosway, known as Bertha or as the «madwoman in the attic» in Brontë’s move, on her unhappy existence, rejected by her mother for her younger brother, by her stepfather and even by the community because she’s Creole (nor black, nor European), and from another island and on complicated marriage with the English gentleman which will have led her to craziness. Rhys’s novel explores the conflictual relation between genders and ethnicities , develops the topics of post-colonialism, such as racism, deportation and assimilation; thus, it’s built as a parody of Jane Eyre when put in evidence the racial characteristic of Brotë’s book, where being Creole like Antoinette is considered the reason behind woman’s madness. With Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys wanted to talk about the condition of those individuals who bring with themselves a cultural multiethnic background through the literary language of the first part of the 20th Century, intensifying and exploring the protagonist’s mind, with a work which has the characteristics of a novel of that time when Jane Eyre’s story was developed, i.e. 19th Century, and racial and gender prejudice from that same age. It doesn’t lack of, as in Jane Eyre, the gender issue and relations between man and woman. What brings together these novels, inter alia, is such topic and it’s what makes similar Jane Eyre and Antoinette Cosway/Berta Rochester. Antoinette fights but she’s suffocated by a strongly patriarchal society, a rough conflict expressed through that prejudice which considers her mad for her behaving, for the events of an unhappy marriage where her husband deprives her even of her identity, changing the woman’s name, as her stepfather did before him with her surname and even through her mother, who prefers her brother; a conflictual relations where she get defeated, objectified; where even her identity was suppressed. And the madness she will suffer at the end might be the only way to express her freedom for one last time.

Different is Jane Eyre’s fate, who managed to get out from Mr. Rochester’s will without allowing to contract marriage with the man because already married. The girl decided to follow her own moral values and so that she’ll be rewarded: Edward Rochester will have to let her go. It’s only the fatal conflagration which killed Bertha Rochester and made Edward blind that will make the marriage between the two protagonists possible. A happy ending for Jane, supported by contingencies, a tragic for Antoinette, who had to deal with a patriarchal society which took every part of her being away from her, with racial prejudices which claims to spot the signs of madness already in her being Other.

Jean Rhys is an unknown author who enlightened topics that the more famous Charlotte Brontë didn’t explore, so that she wrote a new story, yet being a rework of a more known novel, establishing an original point of view through which telling the difficulties that a Creole woman, as the author was, could have met and faced. Consequently, Jean Rhys was able to draw the attention of a bigger group of readers, less specialistic and maybe less interested in reading the characteristic experiences of a more confined community but that can be an example for more common plots, because Jane Eyre and Antoinette Cosway/Bertha Rochester are not so distant, are not two opposing characters, the mad and the healthy, the pure and the sinner, but both are women who fought for themselves, to affirm their own identity and will in a society they’re hindered from. Jean Rhys, like Charlotte Brontë, managed to formulate universals, writing a story everybody could identify with and it’s still painfully actual. «Rhys’s Antoinette (Bertha) [...], who tells Edward (Rochester), “There is always the other side, always” is given a passionate voice to make ‘the other side’ felt»[1]

Viviana Rizzo @ilbiancodellefarfalle @livethinking

1. Micheal Thorpe “The Other Side: Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre”, Ariel, vol. 8/3, 1977, p. 99

Bibliografia

CAPOFERRO, Riccardo, Novel. La genesi del romanzo moderno nell’Inghilterra del Settecento, 1a ed. Roma, Carocck Editore, 2017

BRONTË, Charlotte. Jane Eyre, 1a ed. London, Penguin UK, 2006

PORTER, Dennis. “Of Heroines and Victims: Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre”, The Massachusetts Review, vol. 17/3, (1976), pp. 540–552

RHYS, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea, 1a ed. New York, W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 1999 (a cura di Judith L. Raiskin)