Алена Антюшко. Структурно-функциональные аспекты самоидентификации К.В. Дэвис на материале сборника «Between Storms». Другие уровни самоидентификации К. В. Дэвис

Алена Антюшко. Структурно-функциональные аспекты самоидентификации К.В. Дэвис на материале сборника «Between Storms». Другие уровни самоидентификации К. В. Дэвис

  (Бурятский государственный университет, научный руководитель работы канд. филол. наук Е. Баяртуева)

Другие уровни самоидентификации К. В. Дэвис

Религиозный и национальный уровни самоидентификации выражены достаточно ярко и тесно переплетены между собой.

Идентичность К. В. Дэвис неустойчива, снова и снова происходит процесс распознавания себя. Даже после длительного пребывания в России, К. В. Дэвис сохранила в себе ощущение иностранки: «Я не рассматривалась как еврейка, поскольку я была американкой. Я всегда определяла себя еврейкой и женщиной, но после России я определяю себя американкой в большей степени, чем я это делала раньше».

К. Дэвис, несомненно, идентифицирует себя с еврейским народом, который также, в течение практически всей своей истории, вынужден был покидать родной дом и искать лучшей жизни в чужих краях. Эту идею подтверждают слова из стихотворения, где поэтесса прямо сравнивает свою семью с еврейским народом: «Like the itinerant Jews of past generations, we too wandered country to country».

Идентификация себя с еврейским народом и его культурным наследием прослеживается в произведении Say I believe. Это стихотворение исполнено символов, которые явно указывают на принадлежность к еврейской культуре: монахиня-еврейка, раввин, хамса – еврейский амулет, Лилит – злой дух у евреев: «The nun declared as a Jew I cannot Say I believe in any of this still My mother would not allow me to Purchase the stroller ahead of The day my pregnancy was announced The rabbi’s wife brought me a card Two lions and a hamsa to ward Off the evil eye…».

То есть, анализируя произведения автора, следует определенно отметить, что К. Дэвис идентифицирует себя по национальному признаку как еврейка.

Церковные, религиозные мотивы можно обнаружить в стихотворениях  Chocolate and the Afterlife, The Closing, Statue, The Icon Painter.

Этот же уровень можно проследить в произведениях, посвященных размышлениям о смысле жизни, которые раскрываются в стихотворениях Bindweed, «A scattering of stones» и репрезентируется в фразах: a fight for life, suffer, warning signs, we get what we wish for». Примечательно, что в стихотворении Bindweed Кэрол Дэвис указывает на то, что в жизни она противостоит невзгодам подобно вьюнку, вытесняющему остальные растения, поэтому вьюнок – это символ жизненной борьбы. Парадоксально, что в начале стихотворения поэтесса находит в себе сходство с растением, а в следующих строках всеми возможными методами пытается его уничтожить – «…filled with hate, wrestle the bindweed, starve its roots, scream curses, dream of herbicides». Героиня думает о гербицидах, и готова положить кукол вуду у ствола, но не является ли это скрытым самоуничтожением…?

В стихотворении Marshland отображается определенное природное пространство, но это метафора — потусторонний мир, вместилище призраков и воспоминаний. Автор говорит о ребенке, скрытом под водой и о звуках, отличных от звуков природы, о голосах мертвых. При чтении произведение привлекает глубиной своего содержания и образностью. «We all intruders here» с первой фразы, очевидно, что Marshland мрачное и негостеприимное место, оберегающее собственные тайны, сокрытые в темных водах. В тексте это репрезентируется словами the marsh ignites, will-o-the-wisps, sprites, heard voices, a child caught beneath the ceiling of water.

Похожее религиозно-мистическое настроение передает Darkness, в котором речь ведется о наступлении ночи над заливом: «as if a stab of ash the light plunges to extinguish itself, the dark meets the dark». В этом стихотворении, как и в предыдущем, упоминается хор детских голосов, томящихся на дне озера: «a humming drifted toward shore, a chorus of children’s voices». Озеро испытывает «a kind of hunger» и поэтесса умоляет:

Let it die down

Let the voices subside

Let the bruised retreat

В этих стихотворениях образ водного пространства реализует в произведении авторское восприятие загробного мира.

Стихотворение The black of everything отмечено образами воронов определяющих образ смерти: «the crows on the checkerboard lawns, he birds shrill cries, a lash of wings». Вороны отображены как посланники Ангела Смерти: «the must be emissaries of the Angel of Death entombing the sky in their black greatcoats».

Семейный (семейно-родственный) уровень самоидентификации, в основном, проявляется в стихотворениях тематики «Семья и семейные взаимоотношения» и отражен в стихотворениях The Way Light Begins to Fold on Itself, With no Define End, The chair, Say I believe, Lullaby, New math.

В стихотворениях Say I believe и Lullaby самоидентификация поэтессы выражена как категория «я — мать» и, очевидно, отображает собственные материнские тревоги, в этих произведениях иллюстрируется страх матери, что ее ребенка похитят. В одном случае дикие гуси – «be snatched by wild geese», в другом злой дух Лилит – «beware dark-haired Lilith». Оба стихотворения заканчиваются одинаковой фразой «дети вырастают и добровольно оставляют родительский дом навсегда».

Половой (гендерный) уровень самоидентификации проявляется в отношении «женщина – мужчина», «муж — жена», больше всего в произведениях тематики «Семья» при описании личной жизни и взаимоотношений мужа и жены.

Таким образом, тематика семейных взаимоотношений в творчестве поэтессы обусловленная личным опытом персонифицирована.

Возрастной уровень самоидентификации Дэвис прямо не выражен. Возрастная самоидентификация актуализируется в фразах «Why did wechildren need to hear», она размышляет о детстве и обязанностях детей, а строки «I didntknow who Guy Fawkes was or even the meaning of treason. No one had bothered to explain these things to a child» больше относятся ко внутренним переживаниям ребенка, и сравнимы с психологической самоидентификацией.

Профессиональный уровень самоидентификации, также как и идеологический выражен слабо. Отчасти профессиональный уровень отображен в произведениях Bruges и Cobbler from Yerevan.

Стихотворение Between Storms, послужившее названием сборнику, может быть отнесено ко многим из перечисленных тем и мотивов, здесь Кэрол Дэвис являются мертвые – ее отец, мать и брат. Продвигаясь на автомобиле между бурями, на заднем сиденье Кэрол видит своих родных, и они предупреждают ее об опасности во время крутого поворота: «The heavens could open, I could bring back the dead, My father leans forward, cautions me to slow down, to follow closely».

В подтверждение нашим исследованиям мы находим слова из автобиографической статьи Кэрол: «Я всегда писала о своей жизни, семье, отношениях с людьми и природе. Россия была доминантной темой в моей работе в течение долгого времени. Моя последняя книга имела 10-летнюю историю, когда я часто жила там. Многие из стихов были о том, что я называю проживанием в другом языке, это очень походило на то, чтобы быть “другой” (еврейкой, женщиной, иностранкой в России)».

ПРИЛОЖЕНИE

Say I Believe

Once upon a time there lived a king and queen
whose fondest wish had come true: they had been
blessed with a baby girl.
Snatching babies is best
Done after dark is less
Risky if the kidnapper
Masquerades as a woman
Eases entry into the house
Where the cradle ideally beech
Pine when an amulet hangs in the
Corner light illuminates the
Mother of God cannot be extinguished
The nun declared as a Jew I cannot
Say I believe in any of this still
My mother would not allow me to
Purchase the stroller ahead of
The day my pregnancy was announced
The rabbi’s wife brought me a card
Two lions and a hamsa* to ward
Off the evil eye pierce a lemon with nails
Drip olive oil into water beware
Dark-haired Lilith perched on the sill
Waiting for the ideal time to snatch the baby
After she is bathed and fed she is
Happiest now she has turned eighteen and
Has left me, probably
*hamsa – picture(amulet) of a hand

Chocolate and the Afterlife
Chocolate and the Afterlife
She wrote of it as no one had: of the men who picked the pods, dried the
beans, ground the nibs, walked home trailing a scent from the walls of
Hansel and Gretel, all the way to the Aztecs and Mayans. She hovered in kitchens, dipped her fingers in blackened pots, stacked the recipes, shuffled them skillfully as a poker player. Her cookbook was proclaimed the bible of all bibles. It bought her the land, built the house, paid for a redwood deck, polished to the color of cinnamon. But restlessness nipped at her. Travel caught her in its hot air balloon. Chocolate soufflés deflated as she moved on. Next a stampede of wolfhounds with eyes one step from the tundra. She trusted them. Whippets sleek as shadows moved in; she rescued borzois, found homes for the neglected. Any four-legged creature, even as she abandoned friends. I hadn’t seen her for years when I got the call, standing at the counter chopping dill. I’ll rifle my cupboard for bitter chocolate, melt it down, pour it from on high, a dark river to the afterlife.

The Closing

Parishes vanish in PA as laid-off workers go elsewhere. —Los Angeles Times

For years Rose scrubbed the altar
every Tuesday morning, gossiped with the other
women over tea and babka in the church hall.
Pennies hidden at the bottom of her flour bin
for candles on Sunday morning.
Josef, her husband, worked in the mines.
No God in that hellhole, he said as he rubbed
his hands back and forth over his thighs,
to exorcise more than coal dust,
maybe the boss who laughed at his Slovak accent
or standing in line on payday in snow
that was never cleared, except in front
of management offices.
When he got home, after stopping at George s Bar
for one with the boys, there was Rose at the door,
leaning so hard against the frame the paint rubbed off.
She snatched those bills from him,
clutched the coins in her fists, clinked them
into the pocket of the apron she didnt even
bother to pull off before she walked
the three blocks to Holy Trinity Church.
She talks to that statue of Jesus
who’s dying over and over again.
Josef hates this.
A grown womaii believing in angels.
The light streams onto the angel’s sweet faces
through the stained glass windows,
even when the rain slashes in fury.
You should have seen them, she says.
It was beautiful.

Statue

On a corner of Pico Blvd.
stands a statue of Christ
palms facing up in supplication.
He has not stirred
the thirty years I have watched him.
What does he want?
I was taught to be afraid.
My mother s family escaped,
while others not so fortunate.
My father beaten up
by Irish boys in Brooklyn
walking to school.
Why did we children need to hear
these stories at the dinner table
between bowls of borscht I sloshed
to the table and platters of kasha
with spikes of mushrooms.
I hated that food.
I wanted white bread so soft
it stuck to the roof of the mouth
crusts cut off, dignified.
Not what was good for me,
dark grains to put on flesh.
Christ still refuses to move
from that intersection.
His hands must be so tired.
All those years, begging.

The Icon Painter

A man with no religion
fell in love with the curl of gold leaf.
Each morning he laid down its ribbons,
cutting a halo around the oval face of a saint
with almond eyes and a nose severe as a scolding.
As night descended, he d tuck in the figure,
pull up the blanket of color around it,
trace the shape of Slavonic letters,
humming the vespers as he battled the darkness.
I met this man at a Russian church in Canada.
I’d crossed the border to lose myself in the vespers,
pulled in by the chants, the swinging brass censer,
wafts of myrrh and pine incense.
A silver iconostasis with latticed vines
dividing the nave from the divine,
the congregants from the black-robed priests.
No one questioned me.
It’s been decades since then.
I’ve gone in and out of my own religion.
Lured by the possibility of solace, but in the end,
cannot follow the rules for long.
Still each time I crack an egg, I think of him.
He became a monk, so he would never
have to leave those tempera paints behind.
I understand that temptation, those cloistered walls.
Each icon he finishes, a portal to heaven.

Bindweed

Сall it morning glory, Convolvulus arvenis,

and people smile, thinking of purple suns strung across a field.
Standing on my back stairs this summer morning
I am filled with hate toward this choking vine that can live twenty years.
John Dunmire, expert gardener, cautions that bindweed

can send up one thousand plants in a flower bed,

squatters invading a vegetable garden.
I am in such a fight for life as this noxious vine

strangles rose bushes, Australian myrtle, fuchsias.
It loops across the lawn to bind its phylacteries

around orange tree branches.
For months I wrestle the bindweed, pull its tentacles,
smother its outbursts, starve its roots.
I scream curses enough to scare the gods
(as well as the neighbors), but the plant twists tighter.
And though I fed my children only on the breast,

I dream of herbicides to poison the bindweed’s tissue,
brown streaks snaking up its limbs like tetanus.
Its torso shriveling to a gnarled pit.
Let the woody stems be coated, the leafy greens
glimmer with glyphosate. I’ll brush on triclopyr,
paint the offshoots with dicamba, leave voodoo dolls at its feet.
Make the bindweed suffer until it pleads with me

to die and be done with it.

Marshland

We are all intruders here
though we fool ourselves this late winter day,

carving a place on the banks
to anchor our heels.
We stretch over the water, hoping
to slip onto the wings of a great blue heron
but afraid to get caught in the trap of reeds, twisting
in the foul water.
The marsh ignites: will-o’-the-wisps,

sprites, a wisp of flames, torches held aloft by villagers

marching on the manor.
We’ve read too many fairy tales
but this much is true:
I heard voices.
Not the call of a willet or clapper rail

but a child caught beneath the ceiling of water
the thin reed of its voice

using m the brackish light.

Darkness

It is not true on a fist of lake
darkness descends quietly
on a fist of lake
As if a stab of ash
the light plunges
to extinguish itself
before the water rises
to meet it
Later the two remember that night
a humming drifted toward shore
Perhaps a quiver of wings
or a chorus of children’s voices
Beating the water’s surface from below
Trapped beneath the lapping shards of waves
And so the dark
meets the dark
A kind of hunger
in the mixing vat
Let it die down
Let the voices subside
Let the bruised retreat

The Black of Everything
At first it was the crows
on the checkerboard lawns,
while the block slept.
So still the earth had stopped
its spinning under the grip of talons.
The birds’ shrill cries erupted
like a fury of Yemenite tongues
ululating at a funeral.
A lash of wings over the city.
They must be emissaries of the Angel of Death
entombing the sky in their black greatcoats,
then choosing a street to pluck from.
Cancer twice in the odd-numbered houses.
Neighbor children used to be safe here.
Now they cross to the other side
and back again in uncertainty,
as if such a curse were catching,
while today out early to pluck dead petals,
I walk blindly into a smothering of crows.

The Way Light Begins to Fold on Itself

The way light begins to fold on itself,

an accordion of white and gray.
A late morning between storms,
but it could be near dusk.
That was the color of the air.
The hour between one lashing rain and the next.
You could smell the uncertainty,

a bitter nut or bark peeling, saffron or something unnamable.
No one would be surprised if a spouse

walked out the door, clicking it shut and not returning.
Soon a hiss announced the next storms entrance.
You could imagine the lifted bows of a string section

waiting for the conductor: the first measures tentative
before the curtain opens with the hefty soprano rooted in place.
The taunting mockingbirds on the phone wire
dared any other creature to remain outside.

The lamps shuddered in warning,

enough so you knew to be afraid.

With No definite end

Тhen it was over, though there was no definite end.
A man walks away in a movie and
does not him around, even when his fedora
lifts from his head, sailing to the pavement behind him.
A man sends her an elaborate box hinged by two brass butterflies

with painted vines winding drunkenly around the sides.
Their primary colors at odds with the winter of its making.
Her roommate insists she send the gift back.
The world shrinks to a distillation of sound—
the predawn lament of the mourning dove.
A woman shuts the window,
though the cries continue to reach her.
After decades there is much to say, though both parties

are weighted down by too many footnotes.
She has watched many snowfalls from behind glass.
Even on the telephone a father’s words can strangle a son.
The sun hisses at its rapid sinking into the sea.

The Chair

When its leg broke,
my husband said the chair had to go.
Sent from the kitchen table
before the meal was served
like a child banished for bad behavior.
And what of other discarded objects?
An electric fan on the side of the road.
A stove stripped for parts.
If we look hard enough, will we find
remnants of a marriage scattered in the gutter?
As the fire raced down the hillside behind his house,
my friend fled, taking nothing.
Later, back home, lucky—his house was still standing,
though covered now in soot, front windows blown out —
he considered what he should have grabbed:
the briefcase with passports nestled into the side pocket;
the photo of his father leaning against the archway
of their Cairo home with a cigarette in his hand.
He’d always meant to tell his father to quit.

Lullaby
Although the rattler startled in the
bathroom sink that July is hibernating,
last night’s clicking was not the wind
slapping against Big Horn Mountain
but the rattler pulsing its tail, dreaming
of that steel basin warmed by the sun.
You used up one life that day.
The charm not guaranteed to last.
snakes and spiders can still escape
your childhood books to find you.
Who was this Mother Goose?
Queen Bertha, mother of Charlemagne,
with webbed feet? Or the other Bertha,
wife of Robert II of France, whose baby
sprouted the head of a goose?
perhaps the American, Elizabeth Foster Goose,
stepmother to ten, mother to six:
Baby, baby, naughty baby,
Hush you squalling thing I say.
A woman I know put an amulet under
each child s pillow so he would not
be snatched by wild geese.
When she turned her head,
the children grew up,
traveled abroad;
leaving her forever.

New Math

My mother was a math whiz
triple digits, four columns.
Addition slid from her tongue
like a native language.
Division, subtraction,
it made no difference.
Quadruple a number; halve it.
A branch snapping midway
in an ice storm.
No room for dullards who
could not discern the difference
between squared and doubled.
I barricaded behind fairy tales.
The Green Book faded into The
Yellow on my nightstand.
The Red Book filled with blood,
a finger pricked on a spindle,
eyes gouged out by thorns.
She’d pose a question,
I’d close my eyes, reach for a number
believing in its salvation.
It s been a long time since she died.
Even numbers couldn’t save her,
though she survived double digits
past all expectations.
With a calculator I get by;
hiding my defect.
No more smearing the pencil
across squares of graph paper.
My lover asked for one hundred love poems,
but could not wait past ten.
On the seventeenth week, he drew a line
in permanent marker to calculate.
Tallied up the score at ten poems,
threw a couple of singles on the table,
numbers left over from long division.
That will have to do.
He s got to move on.
There s trigonometry, then calculus.
No stopping him now.

Cobbler from Yerevan

We lean on either side of the chipped counter as he rotates my shoes.
Always enough and never he answers, though I’ve yet to ask a question.
He glances at the television, half expecting help.
Scraps of words tumble from his mouth in English and Russian.
I’m limping along, trying to keep up, but when
he lapses into default Armenian, he loses me.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, only that I listen as he pauses
to count his sorrows: the wait each Sunday at the prison,
his oldest son busted for drugs, so many years wasted.
If bed stayed in the old country, he’d be slapping worn-out shoes
with new soles made of salvaged tires.
His wife would prepare pilaf with fresh herbs, a little meat, strong mint tea to wash it down.
She’d squeeze shut her eyes to will her children home for;
Now the cobbler flicks his forehead, frowning
You can only look back for so long

Bruges

An unusually clean city,
buildings historic, quaint.
But my memories are different.
We moved to Europe after the war
opposite the wave of migration
that thrust the lucky ones onto boats
bound for Ellis Island.
Like the itinerant Jews
of past generations, we too
wandered country to country.
Cities shrunk to postage stamp size.
A series of dingy hotel rooms.
A few months in Oslo, long enough
to start preschool, then on to Paris,
where my brother and I, hands held,
flew an inch off the ground
as my mother ran,
dragging us behind her
like a weak kite, ducking corners
as the Algerian riots engulfed the city.
She boiled everything in Athens,
so afraid I would dip again into illness,
no common language to discuss symptoms
with the doctors. I remained the sickly child.
Scum of burnt milk seeped into the mattress,
even the wool sweaters she bundled us in.
What made my father work for the Marshall Plan?
Some kind of strange repayment for survival?
Scars remained: a quiver in Papas chin
whenever the Soviet Union was mentioned,
how he refused to speak Russian, his mother tongue.
And the yahrzeit candles always burning
on the tiny kitchen counters as we moved around,
for my mother s side wasn’t so lucky.
Her grandfather refusing to leave Germany.
America wasn’t religious enough, he said.

Between Storms

My dunker car inches along
like the tail of a rattler trying to whip up its fury.
Ahead of me an orange jeep, a copperhead sunning.
A sweep of clouds darkens the sky.
On either side of the traffic
the canyon walls are growing.
The heavens could open now,
lightning bounce from the cheekbones of rocks.
Scrub acorns sprout from the hillsides,
its stubble of beard sways unsteadily.
I did not believe I could bring back the dead,

though now they slide onto the back seat

as I round a sharp corner.
My brother shifts in the bones of his teenage body,
gazes out the window ignoring the conversation.
My mother in matching pumps and purse,
face bright before the illness that took away its color.

My father leans forward, cautions me to slow down.
A red-tailed hawk loops and dips above.
It urges me to follow closely.
The road widens.

Основные литературные источники раздела

1. Дэвис К.В Автобиография. Моя еврейская вина[Электронный ресурс] // Семь искусств. — Режим доступа URL: http://blogs.7iskusstv.com/?p=12861

2. Кэрол В. Дэвис. О переводе поэзии (из журнала Bridges, volume 16, № 1) [Электронный ресурс] // Семь искусств. – Режим доступа URL: http://blogs.7iskusstv.com/?p=17066

3. Кэрол Дэвис. Представление поэта и ее новой книги «Между штормами» [Электронный ресурс] // Семь искусств. – Режим доступа URL: http://blogs.7iskusstv.com/?p=12803

4. Сара и Кэрол. Из журнала Bridges, volume 16, № 1. Часть 2. Кэрол [Электронный ресурс] // Семь искусств. – Режим доступа URL: http://blogs.7iskusstv.com/?p=7934