Hello
Gentle Reader
The
past is never quiet put to rest. It’s never placed in a bed where it is nestled
in among the sheets and blankets, head framed by the surrounding pillows. No
not quite. The past is more a book, continuously flipping its pages through the
wind of the present. Pages marked with a green bookmark are filled with guilt;
pages marked with a blue bookmark are filled with grief. All the while the book
itself is written in the poignant purple prose of nostalgia. Under a summer
sun, fields of green guilt carpet out; freckled and pimpled with wildflowers
whose perfume is tinted with the pain of past misdeeds; or just the
inadvertently guilt of doing nothing, staying by the sidelines, observing, not
standing up, or worst yet, the guilt of knowing you survived by fates good
graces, and chances own mismanagement of the dice, in which you truly got out
by the bit skin on the bones, and the teeth in your head. Then of course beneath
the hangnail of a crescent moon lies the expansive sea of grief; every droplet
disguises a tear, a memory, a life, an individual; lost now to the pages of
some unrecorded history. Neither famous enough to be taken note of; nor caught
in a grand enough tragedy to become a statistical figure, which calculates and
determines the measurement of grieving required for the devastation. The past
in these circumstances: haunts. The past rattles its chains, and shakes the
cage of its imprisonment. The past gains its spectral form and assaults the
present and the living. No past misdeed shall be left to sink into oblivion.
For some, the past must be kneaded back into place. It must be read over. It
must be chanted and prayed for. One’s grip must not be loosened on one’s own
personal history, as if by loosening one’s grip, it will drift away and never
return, and all those lost, all those teetering on the edge of being completely
lost, will never return or be recognized as victim and martyr; but rather will
be a nameless numeric figure in the page of some history textbook. Those sunken
eyes will stare out from photographs, but will remain nameless, forgotten and
less poignant. Those eyes of a: father, a son, a brother. They were the eyes of
a: grandmother, mother, daughter, a sister. In Maja Haderlap’s debut novel
“Angel of Oblivion,” the tragedy of the twentieth century is discussed,
documented, relived, as it saturates and seeps into the present, but also into
the next generations life, as they attempt to make some order or understanding
of a past that is not their own, but flings itself into their present, into
their lives as it wails, attacks, tantrums about with anger, frustration and
primal rage. In this no one can understand where it bursts forth from.
Maja
Haderlap is a Slovenian-Austrian poet, as well as causal prose writer. Her
novel “Angel of Oblivion,” lacks a clear defined plot or story. Yet in its
place, she has constructed a unique quilt of a novel, in which language,
history, guilt, grief, mesh and mingles; but also where ones peronal identity
is divisive or rather dissents against the national identity. Maja Haderlap is
bilingual in the fact that she speaks both Slovenian and German, in which she
finds herself often on the duality of language; and the novel itself is riddled
with its dual division, between the Carinthian Slovenes and the nation of
Austria and its citizens, as both sat on opposing sides in history.
There
is no denying that Austria, during the Second World War did not openly oppose National
Socialism (or rather: the Nazis), but the Carinthian Slovene’s did. They fought
as a resistance against the Nazi’s and opposed their warped ideology. For this
however, they would suffer and be persecuted by their nation (Austria) and by
the Nazi’s themselves. Those convicted of conspiring with the partisan fighters
would be executed, those who were spared the bullet, would be sent to a
concentration camp. “Angel of Oblivion,” rattles with partisan songs, and long
glimpses of a landscape changed, years after the war. Despite the grass
growing, the cows grazing, the sky still standing overhead; and the sun shining
– they remembered, the fires of burned down farms; the frightful cries of the
children, the soft but sorrowful cooing other mothers; the shots that ended a
life; and the forest riddled with men, ready to die, but also kill in their
opposition of a state gone mad, and their countrymen who had also fallen into a
demented and delirious state, which called for extermination and extreme action
against those who did not identify with their ideology or their perception of a
true society.
“Angel
of Oblivion,” opens with the following line:
“Grandmother
signals with her hand, she wants me to follow.”
As
the narrator obeys the obliging signal, so does the reader. We follow the
Grandmother – an oppressive, determined, rough and mystical woman through the
kitchen and into the larder. Grandmother in “Angel of Oblivion,” is the
gatekeeper to the narrator’s family history. She herself carries the burden of
songs, memories, thoughts, orders and stories within her, and cherishes them
despite their broken contents, enveloped in barbs, and razor edges. Despite
this, Grandmother, with her survival of the war, and the return to her farm,
once again takes charge of the household, as she has little to no faith in her
daughter in law; and her own son is far to broken to run the farm let alone
manage it. The narrator herself is more akin to her grandmother, then either of
her parents. Her mother for instance, is tasked with the chores outsider; where
she milks the cows, feeds the chickens and gardens; but she is prone to fits of
weeping and sadness, as slight resentful take on her life, and how it has
turned out so haplessly against her own dreams and wishes. The narrator’s father
is broken grown up child. He drinks, to escape the brutality of his past; but
then relishes in his own part of his past; and then in a change of disposition
and character, he flings himself into a fit of anger and rage, engulfed by
paranoia that his world is ending as it did once before, and his own family has
turned against him. With this in mind his only way of escape is suicide, which
takes time and coaxing from both his wife and his mother, to finally get him to
relinquish his weapon and the means to his end; which only makes him act far
more bitterly with resentment, that his family has betrayed him further.
Despite
the tension between the household; between Grandmother and her daughter in-law
and the fragile mental state of the Father; the opening of the novel is quiet
sunny, in its depiction of the farm, and idyll countryside childhood of the
narrator. It becomes quiet clear, the narrators mother is quite frantically
religious, and later we learn through her education she was dissuaded from any
academic goals or dreams, in favour of home economics, running a household,
raising children, and the daily chores expected form a goodwife, through her
catholic education and upbringing. Yet,
she still gathers great enjoyment from poetry and reading poetry with her
daughter, one of the few pleasures the two do together as mother and daughter,
which is not yoked upon either as a mundane chore:
“Together
we let the flowers grow. We cow with the roosters and peal with the church
bells. We croak with the frogs and sing with the scarecrows, let soap bubbles
rise like the sun, earth, and moon that turns without wings. We load springtime
with its garlands of flowers onto a boat and sail into the distance. We sit for
hours in meadows of language and speak in the rhythm of rhymes. We realize that
nature must be adorned with verse and the flowers woven into wreathes. With
rhymes we can leap from stanza to stanza like butterflies from one blossom to
another without fear of falling. They bring everything to a good conclusion,
they turn tears into laughter and silence into celebration. What was dried out
will bloom again, what had stiffened will be able to dance again.”
Needless
to say the narrator of the novel will go on to become a poet, much like Maja
Haderlap.
The
idyll of this countryside childhood comes to its evident closure. Grandmother
despite her earthliness her pragmatic use of the catholic religion, such as
protecting the house with ancient known prayers, and making the sign of the
cross on the bread, or on the roof of her tongue – and explaining to her
granddaughter the horrors of her own history – and subsequently her
granddaughters own family history, with its brutalization, its resistance, its
persecution, and death; she too must give in to time, and resolve herself to
the fate of all life. From here the novel begins to change its trajectory.
The
beginning of the novel opens with its rustic calm of countryside childhood; but
as the novel progresses, the narrative changes, as the narrator herself begins
to grow, and is sent off to a nearby city to become better educated – a wish by
her mother, despite the protests of her increasingly resentful and drunken
father who battle his own dreams and demons continuously; and fails miserably
on all accounts, as he continuously looks to a bottle to find his salvation. As
she grows older, she soon sees how others were affected by the war in her rural
community, how damaged and psychologically destroyed they have become. Now all
each of them have or had, was their stories of fighting in the forest, which
was both hell and home; as it offered them both salvation, but also where they
were hunted like game, be it buck or wild boar. As she continues with her own
studies, and grows more and more as an adult, the family dynamics begin to
change. Her father spirals further into a state of disrepair, in which the farm
is left in shambles. Yet in this time of change, and disrepair her mother
begins to find her own voice; though she speaks with vitriolic resentment at
her children, how has abandoned by them. Yet for her the moped gives her the
opportunity to flee the farm, flee the black moods of her husband, and his
damaged spirit, soul and state. She begins to write poetry, and has her
daughter review them. She begins to find her own voice in the ruin of the once
rustic home.
Maja
Haderlap is a poet first. Her novels language is finely crafted with metaphors,
lyricism, and unique anecdotes in which he describes the world of her narrator.
“Angel of Oblivion,” at times is striking in how it comes across as both memoir
and documentary of a unspoken past, of unsung heroes, and victims left to be
forgotten behind the gates of concentration camps like Buchenwald, Auschwitz
and specifically Ravensbrück. These places have fallen into the oblivion of the
past. Partly destroyed by their creators, guards, and accomplices, to hide
their own misdeeds and crimes, as they realized they themselves were caught on
the wrong side of the gate when time had passed, the war was nearing its end,
and their defeat imminent. They are riddled with memorials, names, and
testaments of the crimes and atrocities; and now statements where it says: we
will never do this again. However Maja Haderlap first and foremost being a poet
often put her at odds with the structure of a piece of prose work. At times
“Angel of Oblivion,” appeared fragmented and rushed, doing its best to clearly
state its points and ensure that certainty was reached within it. It appears
lost and muddled in points of the novel, as if it is not completely organized
its delivery. Despite these flaws in organization and delivery, the novel is
striking in its depiction of second guilt and grief, as seen by a generation
which would inherit the suffering of their grandparents and parents.
Maja
Haderlap is a writer in the similar vein of other Eastern European writers
like: Herta Müller, Christa Wolf, Viivi Luik, and Imre Kertész – as she
discusses suffering; but what makes her unique is her discussion of suffering
is second hand, something inherited (much like Müller’s inherited guilt over
her father’s involvement with the Waffen-SS, and her home village’s inability
to separate itself from National Socialism and its pride in its German heritage
and ethnicity). Maja Haderlap also discusses being an outsider by language
itself, never completely identified as German or Slovenian.
Though
“Angel of Oblivion,” begins in an almost bright summer setting, with the rustic
and charming life of a family farm, via the perspective of a child. It begins
to evolve, grow and change in its perspective. Its discussion of second-hand
suffering, inherent guilt and grief, show themselves through the daily
upheavals of those who are scared and battle wounded. The language is stunning
and remarkable, showcasing Haderlap’s origins as a poet. Organization and
delivery were often put aside, leaving the book to seem like a collection of
fragments of memories, stories, dreams, and metaphors. Yet getting past these
issues of organization and delivery, and one is left with a stunning account of
an overlooked part of history. Yet being overlooked and now being brought to
light by this novel, does glorify it with patriotism or a sense of civil or
historical pride. It rather showcases the grotesque pride and horrors of the
resistance, the persecution and the suffering of all those involved; and how
that suffering for those who had survived would be passed on to the next and
future generation, who would in turn become acquainted with a horror and
suffering in which they are not entirely equipped with dealing with or
comprehending as the songs and stories, become diluted further with the salvage
found in a bottle; or are drowned out by the wailing threats of murder or
suicide.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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