To The Spring By Night

Hello Gentle Reader

Reading books from different countries, continents, border states, parts of the world; is akin to me, the experiencing of traveling. The difference being is one is not physically there, at these unknown locations, or noted or even well known locations. The trips are not all inclusive. There are no resorts, or spa days. No real sightseeing. What there is however, is one begins to see parts of the world that are lost or have been forgotten. One experiences events, not through their own; but through the writer and the fictional means in which they disclose the experience they are writing about. Some writers are great landscape depicters. They know just how to form a landscape just from ink and paper, and words. These writers describe the lesser known parts of their cities, or their part of the world. They show the realities behind the window dressing. The small apartments or the daily shared family meals. They describe, how the rain can be heard gushing out old down spouts, or how it seeps into the brick. How the roof leaks and the ping and the pang, become lullabies at night. They tell of secret childhood getaways. Places where there first kisses were shared. Where friends were made, and games were played. It is amazing, to see how the experiences can at times be so similar, despite the sense and perspective of being worlds apart, from one another. This is however the writers specialty, be it poetry or prose. The writer writes of the shared experience of all human beings. The loves that are experienced; the unforeseeable break ups, and the love that is renewed time and time again. From childhood to adulthood, to memory and age; the world is filled with different experiences. Their landscapes and their scenery maybe different, but it is general human experiences of longing, of lusting, or desiring, repentance, and the penance each of us confesses to ourselves. “To The Spring By Night,” by a Kurdish poet turned prose writer, is one such novel that takes a foreign landscape, and showcases how experience – in the form of childhood; transcends language and countries. Despite its setting and location, the different customs and hardships that are experienced, the experiences of growing up, the wonder and the awe of the world, that is both known and unknown.

Seyhmus Dagtekin is a Kurdish poet, who has written eight collections of poetry; and is renowned for his poetry. He writes in Kurdish, Turkish and French. He is a leading figure in revitalizing French poetry. “To The Spring By Night,” is a, homage to Dagtekin’s roots and his home in his village, located in eastern Turkey. Despite the lack of a defined homeland for the Kurdish people, their roots and their identity is strong where they have settled and continue to inhabit. Seyhmus Dagtekin writes of the alienation and isolation of the Kurdish people in his home village. He discusses their severance from the rest of the world, which is filtered through the tales of smugglers and the men who have done their military service. The world beyond the mountains that surround, the village shield it from the unknown world beyond their borders; but it also ensures that the villages stays stagnant, and is left to its own beliefs, folk tales and oral traditions to understand the world around them. As time passes through the rest of the world, this small pocket appears to have been left untouched.

“I was small. And my village was small; I came to know that in time. But when I was small it was big for me, so big that when I had to cross it from one end to the other, I was afraid.”

It’s funny, that no matter how small the village, the town or the hamlet – I grew up in a hamlet of barely six hundred people; that when you are smaller then it, it appears big and foreboding. I remember how afraid I was the first time I walked home on a sunny winter day, all by myself. The trip itself had been done, a hundred times or more, with my mother, taking me to preschool. But now it was my turn to do it by myself. The familiar had become unfamiliar. Everything was safer before, hand in hand when we crossed the road, or casually walked down the sidewalk. But without that other presence, fear lurked in my mind. Apprehension was a pit in my stomach, and yet I had to make the journey myself. It only took five minutes, and when I entered our home, I was happy and relieved. My mother was proud of my first journey home by myself. I was proud too; but more thankful to have made it home. When I had read that first passage, in this book, I realized that despite the foreign lands in which both of us had grown up, and had become accustomed too, that this was a book that would resonate with experiences already felt and still lingering in the back of my mind, waiting to evoked and excavated.

“To The Spring By Night,” is a lyrical novel. It is a novel made up of experiences both personal and shared. The inclusiveness of the pronouns “us,” and “we,” is used often throughout this spare novel. The experiences of our narrator – a young boy; is often interlaid with the shared experiences of others. Each one is fascinated by the world that surrounds them. Every star and stone has a name and a story with it. Yet what truly keeps the novel going, is its tales that are within it, wrapping up each experience with a tale already told; tales of sorrow, stories of remorse; legends that inspire wonder, and fear; anecdotes that reveal the nature of things, and their purposes both divine, and earthly. The oral stories that are recounted along with personal experience make up this book. They discuss fear, hope, love, and the hardships of life. They fill the natural world, both known and unknown with hope and trepidation:

“Like the spring that were spread around the village in three directions, encircling it and becoming the lairs of djinns, dragons and monsters thanks to the grownups’ tales, these rocks and caverns surrounded our village and became, depending on the circumstances, hideaways where our hopes could prosper, or fountainheads for our fear.”

The world of “To The Spring By Night,” is its own world. It is a world where animism is still, quite clear in the personification and legends of objects, and natural wonders. Where the people of the citadel (I presume the dead of the ‘infidels,’) could capture the moon, and cut it into smaller shards and fragments, to disperse into the night sky, to form new stars. This was a place where a rock, became a reminder and symbol of bloodshed, slaughter, of raids and invading armies. It is a land of tortoises who lived for ages upon ages, because of their slower pace, and proximity to the earth. Yet despite their lives being a steady flame, in comparison to the dwindling match spark of a humans life; they were murdered and disposed of. More often than not blamed for vandalism to a grape crop. In this land the seasons would come and they would go. Yet their passing’s brought greenery and life; heat and work; orange and harvest; and white and hunger.

Seyhmus Dagtekin is not a magical realist. He is just a writer of magical talent. “To The Spring By Night,” is a novel that is interwoven with years upon years of oral traditions of storytelling. Superstitions still reign supreme. Suras and prayers become incantations; in a world of personified objects. This is not a novel about ghosts inhabit homes. It is not a place where demons are seen firsthand; but rather only heard of. Yet it is also a place where the hardships of lives, take their own. This is a world that still suffers from the broken heart, and changing hearts; it is a world that is human even if it is protected from the outside world. Places of tragedy are both foreboding and fascinating and at the same time, completely incomprehensible in a child’s eyes:

“From the two sides, east and west, the village and our house opened on to the unknown world of the trees and the earth. The world of the people and the village, the stream once crossed, was for the children, and there was the obscure world of the hangings and their swaying one way, and then another.”

It is a lyrical novel. What is lacking in a unified traditional story, of plot, rising action, falling action and conclusion, survives on the lyrical prose, and the experiences and the stories within the experiences that are told. Fear and hope are two sides of the same sword; and throughout the novel the sword swings both, ways, offering hope and delivering fear. The book itself sums it up best, itself with the following passage:

“Fears are a bit like fog, as are memories. On the one hand, one dreads to go forward and plunge into a future without end, and on the other, one is afraid to retreat into the past and lose oneself in a plethora of events and tales.”

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary