I've noticed that many critics say that this is more so the memoir of Osip Mandelstam written by his wife. For instance, Harrison E. Salisbury's blurb on the back of the book: "No work on Russia which I have recently read has given me so sensitive and searing insight into the hellhouse which Russia became under Stalin as this dedicated and brilliant work on poet Mandelstam by his devoted wife." But I do not believe this view is right, in any sense of the word. Of course she wanted to preserve her husband's work; she loved him, so obviously she would work to preserve his life's work and his good name. But this is her story, her memoir, recounting the life she lived, and her marriage to the famous poet doesn't diminish her life.
In the book, it is no coincidence that she talks about tough women right after the chapter 64, "Cow or Poetry Reading?" M.'s poetry plan went nowhere, and could have basically backfired on them entirely if it turned out to be a trap. Nadezhda explains that M. "wanted to attract attention to himself," but this neither seems like the right time or place, an idea that she touches upon elsewhere in the book. Had they bought the cow (they always seem to fall into money, one way or another, as seen in the very same chapter when M. finds 300 roubles in his pocket), they would've had a change to regroup, recover, and regain their strength, which could only serve them well in the long run.
In the very next chapter, Nadezhda writes that they are now beggars. M.'s words are telling in that he sees this as the only step available and therefore takes announces it with a hint of resigned humor: "'We are beggars now,' M. declared, and he proposed we make a trip to Leningrad." The very next paragraph states: "It was noteworthy that in this last year M. and I no longer conversed as we had always done earlier, when I had often remembered things he said and the exact words he used. Now we exchanged inarticulate phrases or short interjections..." Again, had they found a way to provide for their basic sustenance, surely their words would not have become so listless.
It may be subtle on her part, but I believe that by juxtaposing these ideas, Nadezhda makes a point that her story and her actions are equally as important as her husband's. She even states that "At the beginning it was the women who were affected most, but in the long run they were the tougher and the more likely to survive." Where would M. be without Nadezhda? Not only would there be no memory of his work, but he probably would have died after jumping out of that window.
So while one can say that she is devoted to her husband, this certainly doesn't define her life or her memoir.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Mandelstam: A Cornucopia of Quotes
One of the most striking achievements Nadezhda Mandelstam carries off in "Hope Against Hope," is to make real the idea of remembering a person so thoroughly that the person described lives again in the mind of the reader. While Nadezhda argues that the poetry will be the true embodiment of the eternal Osip Mandelstam, she does such an incredible job that the reader can see the man in their mind by the time the last page is read. This accomplishment is made largely -- despite her argument -- without poetry.
There is so much to this book that I'm sure the class will be fascinating and thought-provoking. For me, I was struck by the sheer number of quotes I took from the work. I would like to share many of them. Each, in their own way, is a worthy topic of conversation.
"Poetry only really lives in the poet's own voice, which is preserved forever." (190)
"Virtually excluded from the life of the country, how could he imagine that his voice would sound forth in the cities? It can only be explained by that sense of being right that wihtout which it is impossible to be a poet." (198)
"How could we stand in awe before the forces of nature and the eternal laws of existence if terror of a mundane kind was felt so tangibly in everyday life? In a strange way, despite the horror of it, this also gave a certain richness to our lives." (263)
"Everybody is a victim -- not only those who die, but also all the killers, ideologists, accomplices and sycophants who close their eyes or wash their hands -- even if they are secretly consumed with remorse at night." (300)
"But the champions of terror invariably leave one thing out of account -- namely, that they can't kill everyone, and among their cowed, half-demented subjects there are always witnesses who survive to tell the tale." (320)
"Life is hideous and intolerable, but one must go on living nevertheless, because life is life." (329)
"We have seen the triumph of evil after the values of humanism have been vilified and trampled upon. The reason these values succumbed was probably that they were based on nothing except boundless confidence in the human intellect." (332)
"Man's first duty is to live." (342)
"He told us that songbirds always learned to sing from certain older birds that were particularly good at it. In the Kursk region, once famous for it's nightingales, the best songbirds had all been caught, and young birds had no way of learning anymore." (351)
"When I see books by the Aragons of this world, who are so keen to induce their fellow countrymen to live as they do, I feel I have a duty to tell about my own experience...M. always said that they always knew what they were doing: the aim was to destroy not only people, but the intellect itself." (366)
There is so much to this book that I'm sure the class will be fascinating and thought-provoking. For me, I was struck by the sheer number of quotes I took from the work. I would like to share many of them. Each, in their own way, is a worthy topic of conversation.
"Poetry only really lives in the poet's own voice, which is preserved forever." (190)
"Virtually excluded from the life of the country, how could he imagine that his voice would sound forth in the cities? It can only be explained by that sense of being right that wihtout which it is impossible to be a poet." (198)
"How could we stand in awe before the forces of nature and the eternal laws of existence if terror of a mundane kind was felt so tangibly in everyday life? In a strange way, despite the horror of it, this also gave a certain richness to our lives." (263)
"Everybody is a victim -- not only those who die, but also all the killers, ideologists, accomplices and sycophants who close their eyes or wash their hands -- even if they are secretly consumed with remorse at night." (300)
"But the champions of terror invariably leave one thing out of account -- namely, that they can't kill everyone, and among their cowed, half-demented subjects there are always witnesses who survive to tell the tale." (320)
"Life is hideous and intolerable, but one must go on living nevertheless, because life is life." (329)
"We have seen the triumph of evil after the values of humanism have been vilified and trampled upon. The reason these values succumbed was probably that they were based on nothing except boundless confidence in the human intellect." (332)
"Man's first duty is to live." (342)
"He told us that songbirds always learned to sing from certain older birds that were particularly good at it. In the Kursk region, once famous for it's nightingales, the best songbirds had all been caught, and young birds had no way of learning anymore." (351)
"When I see books by the Aragons of this world, who are so keen to induce their fellow countrymen to live as they do, I feel I have a duty to tell about my own experience...M. always said that they always knew what they were doing: the aim was to destroy not only people, but the intellect itself." (366)
We should be watching True Detective for this class
"I don't want to know anything anymore.This is a world where nothing is solved. Someone once told me time is a flat circle. Everything we've ever done or will do we're gonna do over and over and over again."
- Rust Cohle, True Detective
(that's a link to Matthew McConaughey's performance of that scene)
If you haven't seen the show True Detective, it is an HBO mini series about two cops who, over the course of 20 years, attempt to unravel a deep seeded organized crime ring in and around Louisiana. It presents itself as a typical crime thriller about two partners, but quickly subverts expectations of the genre by breaking the way time is presented through the narrative unfolding. Everything that happens to these two men is filtered through a present tense lens, building towards the last episode where the past finally catches up to the future; the men, disconnected from the justice system they proclaim is compromised, attempt to close a case they never could finish. Rust and Marty are supposed to be beacons of hope, realistic characters who are caught between the mechanisms of their own demons and the ones that pervade the culture at large, but without any great supernatural or structural power can make a dent in those demons. The question I struggle with, and has been raised many times over, is whether that dent does enough to inspire real change.
In a way, I feel the show resonates with many things we are talking about in this class. For one, it's storytelling framework is operating "like" a memoir, but I think what is more explicitly related is the question the show raises about the repetition of history, of violence, and it's suggestion we might, ultimately, be unable to break these circles, even when two people take on impossible odds.
Of course, Rust Cohle, the detective in the video and the one who speaks those now famous lines at the top of the post, is a traumatized man who has seen some of the worst humanity has to offer. His investigation into a ring of men who use children for sacrifices was the last breaking point in a chain of events in which he was manipulated by the very system he worked for. In this way, the majority of what we see in Rust Cohle is Nihilism in its most Nietzsche-ian fashion.
It's easy to see write off someone like Rust as a man who has lost hope, who has lost his resilience, or who has given up. And yet, in this class, we have been reading nothing but accounts of systematic tragedy, war, violence, manipulation, and corruption. True Detective consistently frames Rust as the prototypical "crazy guy" who thinks everything is a conspiracy. The world around him, and eventually Marty, continually tells them that things are different now, better; that the memories Rust and Marty recount are in the past and the case is closed.
War, social injustice, economic inequality; these are things that happened in the 20th century, the past. This is the 21st century where things aren't like they used to be:
Right...?
We want to believe all these things are relegated to history and died with the 20th century. We see all these things coming back around again as the clock resets, just under different names and labels.
"Time is a flat circle"
In the season finale, Rust has a revelation while looking up at the stars.
When a character like Rust, who has seemingly lost all hope, finds faith and justice through the verification in a binary system of good versus evil, it feels like the show regresses from presenting the nuanced reality of history and instead suggests a hopeful outlook on the future; that change really can start from within. As Rust wheels away from the hospital, and he smokes his Camel cigarette for the last time, I wonder if he really believes it, just like I wonder if we really believe things are changing for the better.
I wonder if these hopeful narratives of men combating darkness are obscuring the underlying connections between power, violence, and oppression on a systemic level, and wonder if these cycles will keep resetting because of them. Of course I believe feeling the spiritual, cosmic force of human connection through the words and lived experienced of those who survive, those who show perseverance and strength through horrible darkness, is inspiring and hopeful. There is no doubt about that. I only wonder if it is enough.
Maybe I am having a Rust Cohle crisis of my own and maybe I feel like Nadezhda feels the same.
Someone once told me time is a flat circle, and despite that person changing his mind, I'm failing in my attempts to forget it.
I also realize I spent this whole post talking about True Detective. But you know...interdisciplinary studies is important...right? That's my excuse. :)
- Rust Cohle, True Detective
(that's a link to Matthew McConaughey's performance of that scene)
If you haven't seen the show True Detective, it is an HBO mini series about two cops who, over the course of 20 years, attempt to unravel a deep seeded organized crime ring in and around Louisiana. It presents itself as a typical crime thriller about two partners, but quickly subverts expectations of the genre by breaking the way time is presented through the narrative unfolding. Everything that happens to these two men is filtered through a present tense lens, building towards the last episode where the past finally catches up to the future; the men, disconnected from the justice system they proclaim is compromised, attempt to close a case they never could finish. Rust and Marty are supposed to be beacons of hope, realistic characters who are caught between the mechanisms of their own demons and the ones that pervade the culture at large, but without any great supernatural or structural power can make a dent in those demons. The question I struggle with, and has been raised many times over, is whether that dent does enough to inspire real change.
In a way, I feel the show resonates with many things we are talking about in this class. For one, it's storytelling framework is operating "like" a memoir, but I think what is more explicitly related is the question the show raises about the repetition of history, of violence, and it's suggestion we might, ultimately, be unable to break these circles, even when two people take on impossible odds.
Of course, Rust Cohle, the detective in the video and the one who speaks those now famous lines at the top of the post, is a traumatized man who has seen some of the worst humanity has to offer. His investigation into a ring of men who use children for sacrifices was the last breaking point in a chain of events in which he was manipulated by the very system he worked for. In this way, the majority of what we see in Rust Cohle is Nihilism in its most Nietzsche-ian fashion.
It's easy to see write off someone like Rust as a man who has lost hope, who has lost his resilience, or who has given up. And yet, in this class, we have been reading nothing but accounts of systematic tragedy, war, violence, manipulation, and corruption. True Detective consistently frames Rust as the prototypical "crazy guy" who thinks everything is a conspiracy. The world around him, and eventually Marty, continually tells them that things are different now, better; that the memories Rust and Marty recount are in the past and the case is closed.
War, social injustice, economic inequality; these are things that happened in the 20th century, the past. This is the 21st century where things aren't like they used to be:
- Manipulation of the minds of citizens for governmental subservience no longer happens.
- There is no longer any large scale warfare without clear justification.
- The inability to speak openly without fear of prosecution died with Stalin.
Right...?
We want to believe all these things are relegated to history and died with the 20th century. We see all these things coming back around again as the clock resets, just under different names and labels.
"Time is a flat circle"
In the season finale, Rust has a revelation while looking up at the stars.
Cohle: I've been up in that room looking out those windows every night here, thinking...it's just one story. The oldest... light versus dark.
Marty: It seems to me, that the dark has a lot more territory.
Cohle: Yeah, you're right about that. But, you know I think you are looking at it wrong. Once there was only dark, but if you ask me, the light's winning.
When a character like Rust, who has seemingly lost all hope, finds faith and justice through the verification in a binary system of good versus evil, it feels like the show regresses from presenting the nuanced reality of history and instead suggests a hopeful outlook on the future; that change really can start from within. As Rust wheels away from the hospital, and he smokes his Camel cigarette for the last time, I wonder if he really believes it, just like I wonder if we really believe things are changing for the better.
I wonder if these hopeful narratives of men combating darkness are obscuring the underlying connections between power, violence, and oppression on a systemic level, and wonder if these cycles will keep resetting because of them. Of course I believe feeling the spiritual, cosmic force of human connection through the words and lived experienced of those who survive, those who show perseverance and strength through horrible darkness, is inspiring and hopeful. There is no doubt about that. I only wonder if it is enough.
Maybe I am having a Rust Cohle crisis of my own and maybe I feel like Nadezhda feels the same.
Someone once told me time is a flat circle, and despite that person changing his mind, I'm failing in my attempts to forget it.
I also realize I spent this whole post talking about True Detective. But you know...interdisciplinary studies is important...right? That's my excuse. :)
Mandelstam
One of the ideas that kept coming up for me when reading (as seems to be the case for the other books we've read this semester) is the urgency and necessity to speak up. The poem that Osip wrote on Stalin, for example, is at the center of Nadezhda's book. Targeted for its criticism of Stalin and its anti-totalitarian notion, the poem led to Osip's arrest in 1933. When Nadezhda considers Osip's (or M.) motives for the poem, the first she cites is "a feeling that he could no longer be silent" (139).
The idea of silence appears often throughout the book. Particularly, I noticed, in connection with generations and truth. A few moments/lines that stood out to me:
"But how will historians ever get at the truth if every minute grain of it is buried under huge layers of monstrous falsehoods? By this I mean not just the prejudices and misconceptions of any age, but deliberate and premeditated lies" (24). These lines arrive just a couple of pages after Nadezhda talks aout the necessity of lying in order to survive under the Stalin regime. Truth and lies are a key theme of this book--as part of the oppression during the times, everyone was forced to lie, trust no one, withdraw. So although these were key to her survival, I think Nadezhda also understands the distinction between them and the necessity of ultimately exposing truth (the way M. did in his writing and in the way she does in this book).
"We are all exceedingly well 'prison-trained'--whether or not we have actually been in jail--and we know how to seize 'the last chance of being heard'" (31). That urgency, she says, comes naturally to those who lived in those times and lived that "sort of life." I wonder, also, if this idea can also be attributed to her feelings of obligation to preserve M.'s manuscripts.
This quotation falls moreso on the side of generations than it does speaking out/up. "In periods of violence and terror people retreat into themselves and hide their feelings, but their feelings are ineradicable...Even if they are wiped out in one generation...they will burst forth again in the next one...The idea of good seems really to be inborn, and those who sin against the laws of humanity always see their error in the end--or their children do" (39). It seems that in this instance, Nadezhda is speaking on the idea of how influential events are on the next generation. It is not enough to say that such-and-such happened in the past, because its effects will linger and drift into the following generation. And I suppose, to take it a step further, it might be the responsibility of that next generation to acknowledge those lingering effects--either because the previous generation remained silent or if only to build on to its story.
"I decied that it is better to scream. This pitiful sound...is a concentrated expression of the last vestige of human dignity. It is a man's way of leaving a trace, of telling people how he lived and died. By his screams he asserts his right to live, sends a message to the outside world demanding help and calling for resistance...Silence is the real crime against humanity" (43). One of the more explicit commentaries on silence in this book, Nadezhda finds that screaming, although it might seem like an abandonment of pride, actually symbolizes one's humanity. Throughout the book, she shows the ways in which Stalinist oppression stifled these screams or actually eliminated the power for people to scream. In this way, I think Nadezhda's ideas about screaming, if one can, are important not only to those who are under oppression or are suffering, but also for those in subsequent generations, to scream for those who could not.
I'm afraid I may be getting a bit too detailed here, combing through the book too meticulously and pulling out quotations. This post could go on for quite a bit.
One more idea about silence--a little bit different from the others--is that of being guilty and/or complicit in the oppression through silence. This comes up throughout the book. One of the first places I noted it was on page 109: "We all took the easy way out by keeping silent in the hope that not we but our neighbors would be killed. It is even difficult to tell which among us were accomplices to murder, and which were just saving their skins by silence."
I'll end: "What will our grandchildren make of it if we all leave the scene in silence?" (161).
The idea of silence appears often throughout the book. Particularly, I noticed, in connection with generations and truth. A few moments/lines that stood out to me:
"But how will historians ever get at the truth if every minute grain of it is buried under huge layers of monstrous falsehoods? By this I mean not just the prejudices and misconceptions of any age, but deliberate and premeditated lies" (24). These lines arrive just a couple of pages after Nadezhda talks aout the necessity of lying in order to survive under the Stalin regime. Truth and lies are a key theme of this book--as part of the oppression during the times, everyone was forced to lie, trust no one, withdraw. So although these were key to her survival, I think Nadezhda also understands the distinction between them and the necessity of ultimately exposing truth (the way M. did in his writing and in the way she does in this book).
"We are all exceedingly well 'prison-trained'--whether or not we have actually been in jail--and we know how to seize 'the last chance of being heard'" (31). That urgency, she says, comes naturally to those who lived in those times and lived that "sort of life." I wonder, also, if this idea can also be attributed to her feelings of obligation to preserve M.'s manuscripts.
This quotation falls moreso on the side of generations than it does speaking out/up. "In periods of violence and terror people retreat into themselves and hide their feelings, but their feelings are ineradicable...Even if they are wiped out in one generation...they will burst forth again in the next one...The idea of good seems really to be inborn, and those who sin against the laws of humanity always see their error in the end--or their children do" (39). It seems that in this instance, Nadezhda is speaking on the idea of how influential events are on the next generation. It is not enough to say that such-and-such happened in the past, because its effects will linger and drift into the following generation. And I suppose, to take it a step further, it might be the responsibility of that next generation to acknowledge those lingering effects--either because the previous generation remained silent or if only to build on to its story.
"I decied that it is better to scream. This pitiful sound...is a concentrated expression of the last vestige of human dignity. It is a man's way of leaving a trace, of telling people how he lived and died. By his screams he asserts his right to live, sends a message to the outside world demanding help and calling for resistance...Silence is the real crime against humanity" (43). One of the more explicit commentaries on silence in this book, Nadezhda finds that screaming, although it might seem like an abandonment of pride, actually symbolizes one's humanity. Throughout the book, she shows the ways in which Stalinist oppression stifled these screams or actually eliminated the power for people to scream. In this way, I think Nadezhda's ideas about screaming, if one can, are important not only to those who are under oppression or are suffering, but also for those in subsequent generations, to scream for those who could not.
I'm afraid I may be getting a bit too detailed here, combing through the book too meticulously and pulling out quotations. This post could go on for quite a bit.
One more idea about silence--a little bit different from the others--is that of being guilty and/or complicit in the oppression through silence. This comes up throughout the book. One of the first places I noted it was on page 109: "We all took the easy way out by keeping silent in the hope that not we but our neighbors would be killed. It is even difficult to tell which among us were accomplices to murder, and which were just saving their skins by silence."
I'll end: "What will our grandchildren make of it if we all leave the scene in silence?" (161).
Hope Against Hope -- Surviving Documents
There's a famous line from Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, spoken to a writer who has tried to burn his work (just as Bulgakov did with an earlier version of his novel) only to find it reappear: "Manuscripts don't burn."
For all the immense crack-downs on writers and their work during the Stalinist era, I'm fascinated by any documents that still managed to live on past the terror. Some of Osip Mandelstam's work of course exists today, and his poems are still read and well-regarded (by students of Russian literature in America at the very least). The victims of the era, like Bulgakov, and those locked away to vanish in prisons, like the absurdist writer Daniil Kharms, still survive through works that are still printed in Russia and regarded as classics. Akhmatova even managed to outlive Stalin.
This memoir really portrays the extent of Stalinist oppression, and with all the accounts of the ways that artist are not only stamped out but disappeared, I find some consolation in the resilience of literature (even though plenty more works probably did vanish). Still whenever we read one of these surviving works, we are doing so against the best efforts of the Stalinist system.
For all the immense crack-downs on writers and their work during the Stalinist era, I'm fascinated by any documents that still managed to live on past the terror. Some of Osip Mandelstam's work of course exists today, and his poems are still read and well-regarded (by students of Russian literature in America at the very least). The victims of the era, like Bulgakov, and those locked away to vanish in prisons, like the absurdist writer Daniil Kharms, still survive through works that are still printed in Russia and regarded as classics. Akhmatova even managed to outlive Stalin.
This memoir really portrays the extent of Stalinist oppression, and with all the accounts of the ways that artist are not only stamped out but disappeared, I find some consolation in the resilience of literature (even though plenty more works probably did vanish). Still whenever we read one of these surviving works, we are doing so against the best efforts of the Stalinist system.
Notion of Power
As with Primo Levi's book, and really all the other books we've read this semester in one way or another, the notion of power is brought up. It is unbelievable to think that one man with one mindset and one goal can take over vast amounts of individuals with opposing goals..and yet, time and time again we see that this is somehow possible. Regardless of the opposition, an oppression reigns over a people. The government becomes a weapon. People are no longer people, but pawns and threats and empty promises. As David pointed out in his entry, the idea of trust is completely lost. Nobody is trustworthy because anybody is susceptible to shifting to the other side.
This is a terrifying thought to me. While I like to think that times have changed, and I would stand up for myself and remain a trustworthy person and maintain my ideals and perseverance of what is right and just...I've learned from memoir after memoir that this is a lot easier to say from afar. Nadezhda couldn't even trust pieces of paper; she took to memorizing her husbands words, and then dedicated her life to reciting them. Keeping hope alive.
The idea of keeping hope alive and in turn, keeping yourself alive is also explored in the reading selections for this course. If you give up hope, you literally have nothing left. That said, the brink to which say Mandelstam or Levi are driven is rather hopeless. Once they have nothing, then they can be free. In a sense.
This is a terrible example and I slightly regret that I'm about to say it, but I can't stop thinking about the scene in V for Vendetta when the woman who has had her head shaved, thrown in a cell with nothing but a tiny window in the door, and led to believe there was no end to this.
Her captor, who *SPOILER ALERT* is actually helping her, explains, "That's it! See, at first I thought it was hate, too. Hate was all I knew, it built my world, it imprisoned me, taught me how to eat, how to drink, how to breathe. I thought I'd die with all my hate in my veins. But then something happened. It happened to me... just as it happened to you...Your own father said that artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself...What was true in that cell is just as true now. What you felt in there has nothing to do with me." She cries, "I can't feel *anything* anymore!"
He says, "Don't run from it, Evey. You've been running all your life. Listen to me, Evey. This may be the most important moment of your life. Commit to it. They took your parents from you. They took your brother from you. They put you in a cell and took everything they could take except your life. And you believed that was all there was, didn't you? The only thing you had left was your life, but it wasn't, was it? You found something else. In that cell you found something that mattered more to you than life. It was when they threatened to kill you unless you gave them what they wanted... you told them you'd rather die. You faced your death, Evey. You were calm. You were still.
Try to feel now what you felt then."
The idea of WHO is in control becomes just as large of a question as WHAT is in control. It is a terrifying thought.
This is a terrifying thought to me. While I like to think that times have changed, and I would stand up for myself and remain a trustworthy person and maintain my ideals and perseverance of what is right and just...I've learned from memoir after memoir that this is a lot easier to say from afar. Nadezhda couldn't even trust pieces of paper; she took to memorizing her husbands words, and then dedicated her life to reciting them. Keeping hope alive.
The idea of keeping hope alive and in turn, keeping yourself alive is also explored in the reading selections for this course. If you give up hope, you literally have nothing left. That said, the brink to which say Mandelstam or Levi are driven is rather hopeless. Once they have nothing, then they can be free. In a sense.
This is a terrible example and I slightly regret that I'm about to say it, but I can't stop thinking about the scene in V for Vendetta when the woman who has had her head shaved, thrown in a cell with nothing but a tiny window in the door, and led to believe there was no end to this.
Her captor, who *SPOILER ALERT* is actually helping her, explains, "That's it! See, at first I thought it was hate, too. Hate was all I knew, it built my world, it imprisoned me, taught me how to eat, how to drink, how to breathe. I thought I'd die with all my hate in my veins. But then something happened. It happened to me... just as it happened to you...Your own father said that artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself...What was true in that cell is just as true now. What you felt in there has nothing to do with me." She cries, "I can't feel *anything* anymore!"
He says, "Don't run from it, Evey. You've been running all your life. Listen to me, Evey. This may be the most important moment of your life. Commit to it. They took your parents from you. They took your brother from you. They put you in a cell and took everything they could take except your life. And you believed that was all there was, didn't you? The only thing you had left was your life, but it wasn't, was it? You found something else. In that cell you found something that mattered more to you than life. It was when they threatened to kill you unless you gave them what they wanted... you told them you'd rather die. You faced your death, Evey. You were calm. You were still.
Try to feel now what you felt then."
The idea of WHO is in control becomes just as large of a question as WHAT is in control. It is a terrifying thought.
Counter-Witnessing Techniques
So systematic was the Stalinist domination of history that they sent appointed "Witnesses" on police raids. It was a job, a specific role, like a freelance gig. The two witnesses assigned to the first raid on M. and Nadezdha fell asleep on-site, but would still act as if they were providing the accused with their due legal protection. Nadezdha often frames her book as a thing to counter the official story, which makes it an extremely rare thing for its time. The notions of "writer" "witness" and "reasons" got so upheaved in such a short time it's remarkable that anybody stayed oriented the way Nadezdha, Akhmatova, and the others. Still, they found themselves in the position of being better off destroying parts of their own narratives, like M.'s poem about the Canal.
Nadezdha says something about enduring an environment of total torment and what a witness can do in those situations:
Later I often wondered whether it is right to scream when you are being beaten and trampled underfoot. Isn't it better to face one's tormentors in a stance of satanic pride, answering them with contemptuous silence? I decided that it is better to scream. This pitiful sound, which sometimes, goodness knows how, reaches into the remotest prison cell, is a concentrated expression of the last vestige of human dignity. It is a man's way of leaving a trace, of telling people how he lived and died. By his screams he asserts his right to live, sends a message to the outside world demanding help and calling for resistance. If nothing else is left, one must scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity. (43)But I wonder if she means to pit Screaming vs. Silence in the moment of torment, or afterwards if you survive, Testifying At All vs. Letting The Past Be The Past. She herself says she came to this decision "Later." Is there a grace period before we label silence a crime?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)