Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Aaron's Leap by Magdaléna Platzov´

2014; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 88; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2014.0144

1945-8134

Michaela Burilkovova,

Irish and British Studies

Harry Clifton The Holding Centre: Selected Poems, 1974–2004 Wake Forest University Press Thirty years of trials, travels, and tribulations have been poured into The Holding Center. Clifton pilots us from Ireland to Thailand and many places in between, exploring the interaction of sacred and secular and telling tales of love, loss, God, and beer. Clifton’s crisp, clean, melancholy tone resonates with poetic sensibility as well as accessibility. Ava Chin Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal Simon & Schuster Ava Chin attempts to find meaning in her life by beginning an emotional journey to find selfreliance . She turns to the practice of foraging for food in the local wilderness and begins to find solace and sustenance in the local flora, fauna, and fungi (see excerpt on page 82). Nota Bene with the ghosts of Olga, the recently deceased mother of her first partner, whose funeral she had just missed, and Bruno, a friend of her second husband. There are a couple of other “shades,” or phantoms, whom she talks to—including an unforgettable, magisterial appearance by Erich and Margot Honecker—and the result is a set of fairly fresh, imaginative, and unsentimental reflections on dying, on guilt, and on pity and regret. Even the stray dog, a feature in (too) many of Maron’s works, fits comfortably into the scene. The dog actually forms an important link between this world, which Ruth is apparently getting ready to leave or at least begin experiencing from some abstracted, purgatory -like state, and the next. The cemetery is sending its denizens into the park as visitors, and the space of that park provides the setting for the cosmic interlude of the title that allows people of this world to benefit from the wisdom of people from the other world. Early on the protagonist asks herself how many different people she had been, or different personalities she had had, in her life. When wondering at, in essence, “wie viele Ichs” (how many I’s) she had felt in her mind and heart, she considers the tremendous quotient of change she has both caused and had to process in her life. When life is a moving target in this way, the reader might reason, the only way to see it for what it really is, to get our feet onto a stable spot of ground, is to let ourselves go in interludes of what Maron calls “dreams,” which encompass sun-blinded reveries, imaginary conversations, and, in the old days, hashish highs. It is in these altered states that we can touch something permanent and objective, or at least some space for more disinterested ethical considerations, beyond our emotion- and event-filled daily lives. As a reflection on dying and death, the book relies on a short, simple plot and the willingness of the narrator to take a hard look at herself. Maron’s creativity and crisp diction elevate these reflections far above the commonplace and shepherd the plot into an enjoyable rhythm. An openness to looking into the other world, including to the more sinister realizations that accompany it— epitomized by a tableau vivant of a scene from a Goya painting to which Ruth is drawn at dusk in the park— invites Ruth and, arguably, the reader to dilute our fear of death with the realization that ethical solidarity is possible with the centuries’ worth of seekers who have also tried to make sense of passing. John K. Cox North Dakota State University Magdaléna Platzová. Aaron’s Leap. Craig Cravens, tr. New York. Bellevue Literary Press. 2014. isbn 9781934137703 Czech author Magdaléna Platzová has written poems, two collections of short stories, three well-received plays, a book for children, and three novels. Aaron’s Leap is her first novel to be translated into English. Platzov á grew up in Prague and has an MA in philosophy from Charles University , having studied also in England and Washington, DC. The novel traces the life of Berta Altmann, born at the turn of the twentieth century in Vienna, inspired by the real-life story of the artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Berta dreams of painting and design; art is central in her life. The...