The Child Poet

Hello Gentle Reader

Grandmother used to say: life is merely the custard between birth and grave. Despite the deceptive simplicity of a straight forwarded chronological order in how one views a life; how one describes s a life is anything but a streamlined timeline. Life is composed by experiences and perceptions, which become memories—though memories themselves are finicky in how they are recalled. It’s a sight, or a scent, or meeting someone again, or being in a familiar place; sometimes they are evoked just by lying in bed.  They come with firefly flashes of brilliance and inspiration, or with the haunting flicker of a moth’s dance to prick with poignancy and regret. Despite an individual’s existence moving through a predetermined course through time, their life itself is reduced to experience, perception and memories. These experiences and perceptions, however, vary and include numerous events; from the mundane, myopic and micro, to the profound, politic, and macro. When drafting a biography or autobiography, one often needs to ask themselves what they include. What events need to be taken in consideration when composing the complete story of an individual’s life? Of course there are the usual facts to include in a biography: when they are born, where they are born, to who they are born to? The biographer may offer a brief detour into the lives of the parents; which may offer an inclination or idea of the early home life of their chosen subject. Take for example the parents of Doris Lessing and Herta Müller.

Doris Lessing’s parents, immortalized in her final published work: “Alfred & Emily,” were often noted by the author as being an ill-suited match, and both destroyed by the Great War (World War I). Lessing’s father would lose his leg while fighting in the war, and would recuperate at a hospital, where Lessing’s mother worked as a nurse, continuously under the strain and screams of debilitated soldier’s withering in pain, with no prescription aid to assist or relieve them of their suffering. The wounded solider and the exhausted nurse would marry though, and so would begin their unhappy life together, which started in Persia (now Iran), where Alfred worked in the Imperial Persian Bank, before selling everything and moving to South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to farm. The farm performed poorly; and the family was always short money. Emily was a woman who wanted to live and lead a typical Edwardian life, but the financial hardship of the farm and their situation made that impossible. The young Doris Lessing observed her parents with pity: her mother starving and craving intellectual stimulation would have been better off in London, while her father was a near invalid man struck with diabetes. Lessing would later admit in her autobiography that she would never grow up to be like these two sick and crazy people; she would actively avoid becoming either shadow or form of her parents; and for the most part, she did. She went on to become one of the most controversial and headstrong writers of the twentieth century, she was self-taught, read v ferociously, and had an opinion on politics and social concerns.—though she made obvious blunders. Yet, she despised her early life. It was well known and even documented, that she found her mother suffocating, as she doted and smothered her children, due to a lack of purpose; which would eventually force the author out of the house at the early age of fifteen. She was resilient but not necessarily forgiving; but she made peace with her parents in her final book where she attempted to envision and offer them a better life more suited to them then their reality.

The case of Herta Müller is familiar. Her childhood was overshadowed by political situations which preceded her birth and would oppress the first part of her life. Her father fought in the Second World War—heralding as a Romanian-German, from the Banat region, he idealistically enrolls and joins the Waffen-SS of the Nazi German army; the failed ideals of the fatherland land, along with the defeat of the Nazis soured the man. The war haunts the house; but it is never spoken of. The fact that he joined the Waffen-SS and fought alongside the Nazis (a terrible evil the world has ever seen) is never mentioned in the house—the subject is taboo; even though he doesn’t distance himself from ‘national socialism.’ The mother suffers from a tragedy of heritage and language, as well as circumstance and age. In nineteen-forty five at the age of seventeen, she is selected to be sent away to a forced Soviet Labour Camp; where she spends five years in deplorable and arbitrary conditions. There she meets another prisoner whose name is: Herta; and she promises this prison mate: if she gets out, she will name her daughter after her. The two parents do meet, though their marriage would not be described as happy. Her father is an alcoholic, and he dies at a young age. Her mother is scarred by the experience in the Gulag, but works to maintain a household under the circumstances with her husband as well as the communist climate of the time. The oppression of her parents, secrets and lies, hidden pasts, oppression, authoritarianism, and tyranny—these are but a few themes of Herta Müller’s work, which have been taken from her childhood, her home life, the political atmosphere of the time.

Homero Aridjis has an impressive resume: he’s a poet, novelist, journalist, environmental activist, as well as diplomat for the Mexican government. He is more famous for his writings then his diplomatic missions and activities; specifically speaking his poetry, which is noted for its rich imagination, lyrical quality, beautiful imagery, and preoccupation with themes such as the environment, ethical independence, and dealing with the primeval themes of life and death, in the context of memory. “The Child Poet,” is liberally described as an autobiography, narrated through memory and dreams. This is slightly true to a degree. “The Child Poet,” is comprised of lyrical vignettes which detail both dream and memory (imagined and real), and offers a unique self-portrait of the poets childhood. The quality of the writing is expert and grand, with the grace and lightness lyricism of a poet, with the subtle surreal nature of the subconscious. Throughout the entire memoir, Homero Aridjis probes the catacombs of his memories now tainted by the subconscious and redefined by his imagination, presenting a unique portrait of his home village, its inhabitants and the unique life, folktales, and stories to be found there. The unique characters who drift throughout the fragmentary narratives; such as the merciless cacique (or local boss—much like a gangster), peasant farmers (campesinos) attempting to make a living or make make a buck by selling corn, his blind aunt Inés, whose body was racked with age, but whose heart was virginal in purity, writes personal ads where she depicts herself as youthful, beautiful, in order to gather some interest; then there is the deftly comedic teacher who reminds his students that when they draft their winter compositions (I presume essays over the winter break), that they should not forget snow. Ever keen on the environment, Homero Aridjis can describe the landscape and environment with unique flare; from harsh brutalism to the welcoming stark wastes of home.

Through this fragmentary narrative Homero Aridjis traces the defining moments of his life presented in his childhood. The first moment being the physical brith, in which he came into the world screaming and wailing—and as Emily Dickinson states the situation best: “Life is starting/it leaves little for anything else.” Then comes’ the second spiritual birth, when the young child accidently shoots himself with a loaded shotgun. From there the poet is born. The young Homero Aridjis had retreated slightly from the material world, favoring intellectual and cultural pursuits, as well as introverted interests, such as reading the classics of literature, and sitting at the kitchen table writing poetry and stories. He no longer was out running with his siblings or playing soccer; he had reserved himself to a more unique world—a quieter world. These contrary and polar opposites plays with the ideas of light and shadow, as does most of the memories as it explores the world through this dichotomous scale.

“The Child Poet,” is lovingly translated by Chloe Aridjis, who in her introduction to her father’s book, recounts how it was thanks to her, the collected memories came into existence. As an expecting father Homero Aridjis, dreamed vivid dreams of his childhood spent growing up in Contepec, as well as memories now informed by imagination. It is then Homero Aridjis begun to document these dreams and memories, before finally publishing them as “The Child Poet.” Despite it being a dream journal and hazy recollections of partial dreams, “The Child Poet,” is perhaps the most adequate and most honest autobiography and memoir that I have read. The lyrical language itself was a treat and almost decadent as confectionary delights; the unique blend of realistic characters—relatives and villagers; often gives the impression the memories collected are as much a novel as they are realistic people reimagined or remembered with a lightness of fictional embellishment and touch. “The Child Poet,” is a family affair for both Homero Aridjis and Chloe Aridjis; as the novel is filled with poetic details, and is riddled with sentimental value, and family legends.

 Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary