On Walcott On Farah	STUDENT COMMENTS [ENG. 117 HOMEPAGE] [ENG. 117 COURSE SCHEDULE]	On al-Shaykh On Makine

 

On Derek Walcott:

From Elizabeth Hamshaw -

I have both hot and cold reactions to Derek Walcott's work. On one hand, I am interested in his imagery and language – it seems highly intelligent and skillful. I am amazed by the brilliance of such images as, "Above us, no stallions paw the sky's pavement to strike stars from the stone..." (Omeros, XXXVII.III), or, "...I remember a gecko pressed against the hotel glass with white palms, concentrating head" ("Fortunate Traveller"). Yet, at the same time, I feel slightly pushed back, or even annoyed, by his air, his tone of voice. We touched briefly on this in class, how he seems to associate people (Africans) with animalistic imagery ("Kikuyu, quick as flies..."). Many times, he seems to place himself in such a superior, detached position, that his struggle to identify with his culture, to understand the people of the West Indies, feels artificial. Although he states, over and over again, how hard he tries to give back to his people through poetry, something about the way he depicts this struggle does not seem genuine. Perhaps I am also influenced to feel this way due to his character at the reading. When I went to have a book signed at the end, I was with one of my friends from Belize, a country he has written much about, and figured he might be interested to talk to her. When she told him her first name and said she was from Belize, he just yelled, rather rudely, "Last name, please!" When I said to him, "So, you have been to Sweet Briar before?" his only reply was, "Have I?" I knew he was tired from signing so many books, but this behavior seemed unusually inappropriate and condescending.

Walcott's poem, "Love after Love," seems much different than other works we have been reading. The tone is more open and inviting. I enjoy the way he addresses the poem to everyone – there is no racial or social tension woven in. It can be seen as a celebration of life, a poem that belongs to all beings. This work reminds me as well of Langston Hughes, in that it promotes self-love and acceptance. I noticed that the form of this poem resembles a mirror, or a cycle. The lines start out short and then become increasingly long with each new line. About half way through the poem, the lines then begin to decrease, arriving finally to the length of the first line. This form seems fitting, since Walcott creates the image of seeing yourself in a mirror, or coming full circle in you life, as he says, "...peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on you life."

 

From Kristin Hamaker -

I have mixed feelings about Derek Walcott. My first impressions of the poet were from the reading of his works and I felt (and still feel) that his writing and his lines are beautiful and exceptional. I began to understand his conflicts with duality that he has emphasized in most of his pieces. I began to understand that he had and has great desire to articulate the West Indian culture and people and experience. I began to understand that his writing has been driven by questions of how to side between two poles and how this position makes him feel. And I have admired the attempts at articulation and his conscious questioning. But I have also felt slightly disappointed in his efforts to answer the questions that are raised in his works or to emphasize why this conscious questioning is important. To be honest, I can't say I see much progress in his coming to terms with raised issues. Not that poetry has to resolve issues it raises, but has to at least, in my opinion, offer the reader some sort of means to resolution over time.

Another concern of mine was Walcott's margin of universality in his poems. I've felt that his work is a bit exclusive and certainly felt this distance from his Browsing Room sessions with students. He belittled, at one point, critics of his work for misunderstanding him, particularly of his writing of Omeros. That Omeros was not a rewrite of the classical epic, or a transformation or pattern like many have suggested who misread (italics mine) his work. He went on further to emphasize that the classical Odyssey does not confirm the writing of Omeros and that those of uncolonized places haven't a way of understanding that. And this may be true that we are at a distance from this type of experience, but I see little in Walcott that assists in our understanding of these ideas. The question I continue to raise for myself is: how do his poems relate to my experience and to the universal experience? And this seems dangerous when a reader has to ask such a question, or is finding gaps.

What I did find particularly interesting in the Browsing Room session was his discussion of how his divided experience is also the poet's experience. I raised my head to this because he was now speaking universally. He claimed that the poet is ultimately a part of two worlds: the world in which s/he was raised and conditioned and a world that is other, that is sort of a visionary world. I believe this but wished he would have gone further into how this idea relates to his work and his philosophy. It certainly adds another dimension to his duality–that he is a poet living between two cultures.

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From Elizabeth Hamshaw -

Although Sardines is Farah's only work I have read thus far, I find I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for him. It seems amazing to me that a male writer can be so genuine and real in his depictions of women's suffering (more so, I believe, than several women writers I have read do). I certainly would not have known, as many critics have stated, that the narrator of this book is male, unless of course I was told. In fact, it was even difficult for me to connect the man in Dasenbrock and Jussawalla's interview with the writer of this novel, perhaps because the (male) presence that I clearly felt in the interview is altogether absent in the book. It is quite possible, actually, that Farah's ability to remove his narrative presence from the novel is why I find his work so real. It feels as though I am directly listening to the character's thoughts, and observing their lives immediately. Nothing seems concealed from me, or manipulated. But, rather, all the problems and emotions, all the complexities of their lives, are there for me to see and imagine. Yet, then I wonder how it is possible for a writer to be so sincere, so non-interfering (for lack of a better word) in his writing, as Farah fully appears to be.

Another aspect of Farah's work that interests me is his use of metaphor, particularly the passages in the beginning of each chapter. Although there are exceptions, it seems that a metaphor is used to introduce each chapter, and to strengthen the overall tone of the novel, one of suffocation and struggle. For example, chapter 9 begins with the image of several birds in flight. As birds are usually associated with freedom, I noticed that these birds are instead hindered and blinded in their flight. Two of them, ascending upwards, painfully collide into each other, lose their souls, and are forced to "return to the earth of the living-dead"(181). The earth's atmosphere is described as smoky, cloudy, and full of fire, "the inner stomach of the heavens," where "the tongue would rip all that came its way into slices thinner than a drizzle." Images such as these seem to symbolize the emotional and physical strain that exists under a dictatorship. In addition, I thought these more abstract, introductory passages might serve as an expressional device, a way for Farah to include his own voice in a work that contains such real, independent characters.

The final passage of this novel seems especially moving to me. I'm not exactly sure why. Throughout the book, I was confused as to how I should perceive the love between Medina and Samater, and how I should feel towards Samater's character. In the beginning, there are several examples of Samater's attempt to uphold the traditional Somali beliefs, yet, slowly, it appears that he only does this for his mother, and that, if tested, he would never deliberately harm Ubax or Medina. Furthermore, Medina never conveys the idea that Samater should be held in contempt, or scorned. By the time I was far enough into the book, I felt fairly convinced that Medina still loved Samater, and that they both cared deeply for one another. Thus, I wonder if Farah is not trying to leave us with a hopeful image of family life in this last passage, one that challenges and contradicts the current standards of the Somali family.

 

From Elinor Stebbins -

It is possible to make a comparison between Farah's Sardines and Hanan al-Shaykh's book, I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops, but this thought didn't come to me until I was well along in my reading. Farah is both narrator and protagonist, but his novel is a polemic, not a memoir. He is Medina, and briefly at the beginning, Nasser, although only in the long two-paragraph letter. In less skillful hands, the novel would be tedious, but the author's brilliant use of metaphor and simile is unequalled in my opinion, unless perhaps by Dostoyevski or Dickens.

The word "guest" is used figuratively throughout the book–Medina as a guest in her own house as she tries to avoid her mother-in-law, Idil. Medina, a guest in Italy. "You've never understood Italy," Sandra, tells Medina, p215, and again on p 216, "You don't understand Italy, so let's keep it out of our discussions." On p 217 Sandra phones Medina to tell her that she will be an honorary guest at a celebration of the Revolution.. "I am a guest in my own land, [Somalia] Medina told herself that day" (p 217).

Atta, the Afro-American woman, is a "guest" in Somalia and a rude and crude one at that (pp193-96). At Medina's dinner table, conversation turns to "the dominant and the dominated culture" (p 195). Atta's theme is "my race remembers." Medina tells her as she insists on repeating the phrase, "One remembers what one has forgotten" (p 195). Medina says, and adds, "Our race is still suffering today, in Africa, in America, in the Caribbean. One doesn't remember the pain one is suffering; one lives it." She points out that Atta's argument is similar to dreams. "There aren't any collective dreams," she says p 196. "You suffer because you are a human being, not because you are who you are, not because you are black....It's not racial. Suffering is human.."

Farah's sensitivity to the pain and humiliation of women is woven throughout this novel. He describes the "inhumane subjugation of circumcision" (p 196), and at the beginning, the power of the general (p 48). "As for Medina: 'The General's power and I are like two lizards engaged in a varanian dance of death....The General is primitive (to use another aggressive, violent term) in thinking that women are not worth taking seriously, which all the more proves that he is backward and fascist and worse still, an uneducated imbecile.'" But Medina knows she must be cautious. She knew "...that in Somali politics there was no room for women and that in a set-up such as the General's there was no hope for them. Women had to fight for their rights as in other societies, women had to inform the misinformed public about important issues such as female infibulation....We mutilate our women when we circumcise them in Somalia. In the Middle East, they exclude them from partaking in the hubbub of living" (p 76).

Medina's mother expressed inequality of men and women by quoting her father, "Her doubts about everything were deep and dark like the pupils of her eyes. 'A woman, mustn't be sure of anything ever....A woman, like any other inferior being, must be kept guessing, mustn't be given reason to believe that she is certain about anything.'..."The light of life, sure as a star in a cloudless sky, would flicker every now and again and then die out" (p 144).

Metaphors and similes abound: "A pause longer than the sun's shadow" (p 145). Farah's description of mothers-in-law, Fatima bint Thabit, Medina's mother, and Samater's mother, Idil, is right on the mark. Medina's mother "...lived as though inside of a whale which hardly came ashore: she was Yemeni, a woman weighed down with the contradictions of tradition; she was chained ankle and wrist and foot to the permanence of the homestead. She seldom went out of her house unless it was absolutely necessary....Idil's background was nomadic...less rigid than the Arabic tradition of institutionalized mannerisms...Idil moved with the lightness of a tree without roots"( p 8). Medina wants "A room of one's own. A life of one's own" (p 10).

One of the most interesting points in Sardines was Farah's reference to the nomadic life. "Another thing worth noting," he writes, "was that even among the Somalis there were more malnourished children in the urban areas than among the nomads" (p 142). He also notes that the "river people" although among the poorest, were not as malnourished as those living in urban areas. Why is this? Crops do not grow in the deserts; the green belt of our globe is narrow. A people survive where there is water, where they can grow food, where their cattle can feed on grass. The nomadic peoples moved from watering hole to watering hole. In my cultural anthropology class we studied the Nuer who moved from place to place with their cattle. Cattle were their means of exchange, of barter, of currency. Cattle were were the sacred livelihood of the Nuer who moved with the grass.

One could write pages about Sardines. An amazing book by an author of unusual skill. There are so many characters, most of them important to the story. We have already discussed in class the roles of Ubax, Sagal and Amina, and their significance. We discussed also the reason why the dictator is referred to only as "the General." He is not mentioned by name, which makes him seem more ubiquitous, all-powerful. Another point worth mentioning is Farah's anger with the interference of world powers in places where they have little trustworthy information, and where they don't belong.

The unhappiness of exile from one's own country must galling. I think it is really marvelous that Naruddin Farah has not let his spirit be eroded. In his own words when he says that a "room is a world....A room of one's own. A country of one's own. A century in which one was not a guest. A room in which one was not a guest."

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From Elinor Stebbins -

The flowing musical language in Andrei Makine's autobiographical novel is haunting. Dreams of a lost Atlantis–a France evoked in memory–le souvenir du temps perdu–old and retold by the grandmother. Like impressionist paintings or like islands these fables drift through the first half of this lovely book. I say lovely–the loveliness fades when France with its ghosts fades and is banished from the author's memory. I believe that friendly, influential ghosts of the past should not be so summarily dismissed.

Perhaps if one could read the book both in Russian or French–preferably French–the effect would be different. I could not shake the impression that the author of the book was a woman must be a woman, because the response to La Belle Époche seemed to be from a feminine perspective. Perhaps it is because so many women are part of the story–the. grandmother who is the story teller, her mother; and the narrator's mother and sister. A friend suggested that perhaps the translator was a woman, an interesting thought but I checked, and the translator is a man–Geoffrey Strachan–who translated the book from the French, which may be significant. There are some things you can say or write that would be too flowery if said or written in English. The Irish poet, Padraic Collum maintained that, in French theater, when the players spoke they should, out of common decency, turn their backs to the audience.

Imagery from the very beginning, is of women–the petite pomme of a smile in a photograph, which itself becomes memory the instant it taken(Chapter 1.1). But the entire book is a story of a young man's maturation, and some images appear at the beginning and later, too, like the coupling hawkmoths with the death's head that pay him no notice when he is a child (1.6) and again when he is maturing and recognizes in himself a growing sensual response to women's bodies (125). There is also the repeated image of the little Verdun stone (7, 12, and again when it is slipped into the child-narrator's hand. "France-Atlantis was revealing itself in a whole gamut of sounds, colors, and smells. As we followed our guides, we were discovering the different elements that made up this mysterious French essence" (28).

It is "this mysterious French essence" that seems such a pity to relinquish, in addition to half of one's heritage. There seems to be a necessity for the author to divide his life into sections, and perhaps the same is true for everyone–to close a door on the past before opening the next door. "Yes, I had lived out a part of my life. Childhood" (121). Or perhaps it is simply a useful literary device in telling a story. Time to put away the "Siberian Suitcase," but that suitcase with its contents is part of his inheritance.

As the author reaches manhood, the romance and magic that brightened his early years is gone, that is the magic that is La Belle France translated for him by his grandmother. He must step back for perspective. "'I am Russian,'" he says "softly, all of a sudden" (149). He must step back and forward at the same time, and in so doing he rediscovers his grandmother–her beauty, true beauty refined by time–and her isolation, and he resolves that she will not die; he cannot let her die but will immortalize her in his writing, and with her words and memories.

Makine himself describes my response to his book when he writes of "hearing Charlotte speak of Baudelaire" and how he "thought it was mere coincidence when in the first stanza of his sonnet, this feminine presence was sketched:  

When, with closed eyes on some warm autumn night I breathe your bosom's sultry fragrances, Enchanted shores unfold their promontories, Dazed by a sun monotonously bright.

'You see,' my grandmother continued, in a mixture of Russian and French, for she had to quote the texts of the translations: 'In Bryussov the first line is rendered as: On an autumn evening, with eyes closed... In Balmont: When, closing my eyes, on a stifling summer's night... In my opinion both of them are simplifying Baudelaire. In his sonnet, you see, the warm summer night is a very particular moment, yes, in mid-autumn, suddenly, like a blessing, this warm night, unique, a parenthesis of light amid the rains and miseries of life. In their translations they have traduced Baudelaire's idea: an autumn evening, a summer's night, is flat. It has no soul. While in his text this moment makes magic possible, you know, a bit like those warm days just before winter'" (197-98).