Hello
Gentle Reader
Emily
Dickinson, the hermetic American poet, wrote in a letter to her correspondent
Elizabeth Holland:
“It
is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sunsets sterner, and
Gibraltar lights make the village foreign. November always seemed to me the
Norway of the year.”
Emily
Dickinson is somewhat a more preferable poet in the intimacy of her work. She
eschews the pomp favoured by others poets. This being said, reading Emily
Dickinson is not necessarily easy. Yet, she leaves the calls of grandeur
behind. The poetry of Emily Dickinson is akin to entering a warm small quiet
room—a private sanctum—whereby one is left to contemplate the ephemeral, and
one’s existential place within it. Whereas
poets like William Blake, always strike me as grand monolithic being, whose
granite voice echoes and booms through the marble corridors, confronting the
natural and the divine, among other grand themes of poetry of the time.
The
days in November are still and sterile. The sky quilted in greys and whites.
The peripherals a cataract blue. The sunrises are understated. The twilight
blue lingers longer. The sun doesn’t burst forth in a brilliant unapologetic
glaring ceremony. Rather it just rises at measured self-conscious, an almost
shy pace. Its passage throughout the day is equally unremarkable. Before long
the street lights blink alive and shine, while the sun sets with underwhelming
enthusiasm. The days don’t end in brilliance; there is no smoldering ember
reds, or streaks of blushing pinks, no golden glows. Instead the west turns
jaundice yellow, and the sun is soon out of sight; once again that twilight
blue lingers longer. Now in the end of November, the arched venomous tail of
Scorpio finds itself being bowed back, while its stinger in its potency takes
on a new form. As the final drop of venom drips down the black stinger of the
once small but imposing creature, it becomes an arrow. Though it no longer
carries the venom of its former self, it possesses the scorpion’s virtues in
accuracy, and perspective on preservation. The tail is now the bow which will
cradle this arrow. Scorpio has now scuttled away; the dark violent emotional
waters of the scorpion are now settled and clear. Now in the forest of
Sagittarius the arrow finds its mark without hesitation. Why it’s fired varies;
on one hand the brutal bestial anger; on the other with guiding wisdom. For
now, the archer strolls and stalks in a forest of frost, under grey skies, and
prolonged twilights; the evening fires warding off the creeping nights of its
predecessor.
Astrology
is a mere conversation starter, or ender. At best it’s a parlor trick, no
different than tarot card readings or palm readings. At worst it is perhaps
taken a bit too seriously, whereby one begins to plan their life, finances, and
romantic inclinations to align with the unknowable, unapproachable, and
indifferent nothingness of the cosmos. Despite the groan inducing, the gripes,
and the countless eye rolls, astrology orbits and cycles in and out of daily
life—though always in the peripheral. Astrology is no more a serious matter
then people believing in stones granting spiritual powers. There is no
empirical evidence to support the notion that the celestial cycle of the
Astrological Zodiac, and the respective position of the planets, has any impact
on an individual. In the world of newly inducted Nobel Laureate in Literature, Olga
Tokarczuk, the cosmic heavens are vast, unexplored, unknowable, but they are
not necessarily empty; they provide objective attributes and qualities on
mankind. Their influential touch is neither altruistic nor is it punitive, but
indifferently objective—or at least that is how Janina Duszejko views the
stars, as she charts them in the perspective of astrology in: “Drive Your Plow
Over the Bones of the Dead.”
Janina
Duszejko is an eccentric busy body, with an unwavering conviction towards
respecting nature, especially the sanctity of life—all life. In her isolative
little cottage, in the Polish countryside near the border of Czechia, Duszejko
keeps watch over the other cottages that are left empty in the winters, their
resident’s home in the city and return in the following summer. She also
maintains a careful eye on the natural world, coming in direct confrontations
with local hunters, police, priests and any other flagrant miscreant who
trespasses on the inviolability of life—all life. Despite her thwarting best
efforts prey falls to predators. When she finds the hunted, poached, and discarded
remains of animals, Janina Duszejko honours them in her garden, whereby their
remains are buried and marked. Beyond being an ecological warrior and amateur
conservationist, Janina Duszejko is a casual teacher at a local school; a
sporadic translator with her former student and friend ‘Dizzy,’; and is
unquestionably and unapologetically a devote astrologer. She views the orbiting
planets like marbles, which must be mapped out accordingly as they transition
in and out of the zodiac houses. Their orbiting whims, alignments, and nadir
positioning’s provide blessings and havoc on the unknown strangers beneath
them. Beyond charting the heavens above, Duszejko baptizes and christens the
residents of the area with her own epithets such as: ‘Good News,’ ‘Oddball,’ ‘Black
Coat,’ ‘Grey Lady,’ or ‘Big Foot.’
‘Big
Foots,’ death is the starting point of “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the
Dead,” which has been deemed as a loose murder mystery, and perhaps to a degree
it is, but in Olga Tokarczuk’s hands, the notion of murder mystery is quickly
contorted into another form; much like Patrick Modiano’s entire oeuvre, or
Orhan Pamuk in “The Black Book.” Residents of the isolative community do die,
and frequently. Their deaths are peculiar, gruesome, and anything but natural.
‘Big Foot,’ for example is found dead in his kitchen by his neighbour ‘Oddball,’
who in turns seeks out Duszejko to help him in contacting the authorities as
well as cleaning and dressing the body. It is there, they find a bone
forcefully lodged in ‘Big Foots,’ throat. The authorities collect ‘Big Foot,’
and begin their investigation. There is plenty of bad blood between Duszejko
and the recently deceased ‘Big Foot.’ ‘Big Foot,’ was an unapologetic hunter
who had no love or respect for the natural world, including his own mongrel dog
he locked in the shed. In his kitchen sat the dismembered head of a hunted
buck. After a while, further murders happen within the community. Ever
eccentric Janina Duszejko proclaims that it is the animals taking their revenge
on the hunters of the community.
“Drive
Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” doesn’t stumble from murder or
inconspicuous corpse, to the next murder or sporadic death. Instead, Olga
Tokarczuk allows for long passages of the novel to be dedicated to Janina
Duszejko and her eccentricities, her ruminations, and her often strange proclamations.
It is also spent observing the other characters in and around the community;
from the seasoned permanent residents, to the summer vacationers. Of course
these observations are always reflected through Duszejko’s narration. She
provides the commentary, the thoughts, the observations, and the notations on
the happenings in and around the community. It is through this narrator that
Olga Tokarczuk is able to provide a philosophical contemplation with regards to
life, and the notion of what life is sanctified, while others in turn are dispensable.
In the same fashion is nature but a reminder of the human races primordial
heritage? A place of shadow and leaves; where human beings are as much prey as
they are predator, their supremacy in question, bruising an otherwise fragile
ego.
Of
all of Olga Tokarczuk’s novels currently published in English, “Drive Your Plow
Over the Bones of the Dead,” takes a different path then her novels: “Primeval
and Other Times,” “House of Day, House of Night,” or “Flights.” Where the other
three novels are loose, fragmented, with pages dedicated towards digressions,
secondary and tertiary thoughts, and peripheral glances; “Drive Your Plow Over
the Bones of the Dead,” remains consistent with Janina Duszejko remaining the
focal point of the novel. All aspects of the novel are distilled through her.
Ever comment, note, thought, observation comes from Janina Duszejko. Thankfully
Duszejko, much like Galip from Pamuk’s “The Black Book,” is a reasonable
literary companion. Her unique ruminations are eccentric fitting her
personality, but also poetic when they reach the right tone:
“it
is in the feet that all knowledge of mankind lies hidden; the body sends them a
weighty sense of who we really are and how we relate to the earth. It’s in the
touch of the earth, at it’s point of contact with the body that the whole
mystery is located – the fact that we’re built of elements of matter, while
also being alien to it, separated from it.”
Despite
this, “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” most progress on its
fatalistic course. It’s apparent early on who is and has committed the murders,
and of course why. This unfortunately makes the narrative rather underwhelming
as it reaches its conclusion. Thin plot aside, the enjoyable aspects of “Drive
Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” is the soliloquies of Duszejko, her
rationale crafted by astrology and its act as a “cosmic correspondence,” to
make sense of the world around her. The novel is not by any means the best of
Olga Tokarczuk, and perhaps would even measure up as a lesser novel. Still it
is still a fine novel being able to showcase Tokarczuk as a masterful
storyteller, with an acute sense of the mystical and magical, even in the most
realistic of worlds. Her philosophical and psychological eye is deft and
potent, but never overbearing or authoritarian.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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