To Anatomy
2014; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 88; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2014.0205
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Balkans: History, Politics, Society
ResumoNovember–December 2014 • 51 As the national and transnational success of Purge amply demonstrates, Oksanen’s clean/ dirty, innocent/evil dichotomy is an absolutely winning formula. If there was a naïve aspect to the Estonian reception, it was the surprise expressed by a number of critics that Oksanen had achieved international success and not one of the many Estonian writers who have addressed the question of “Stalinist terror” and recent Estonian history more profoundly and, allegedly, in higher literary form. Such surprise is only possible if one ignores the strong material factors at play. A cursory glance at literary history will show that East European suffering has long had its Western “decoders,” “translators,” and indeed “traffickers ”—Philip Roth, Julian Barnes, and Jonathan Safran Foer among them; not to mention the long string of migrant or hyphenated writers— Aleksandar Hemon, Gary Shteyngart, and Téa Obreht being recent examples, all of whom enjoy much better access to the global publishing industry than writers resident in eastern Europe. In this regard, it is perhaps instructive to remember that in spite of the imposing number of East European films dealing in whole or in part with human trafficking and prostitution, the film that defines the genre is Swedish director Lukas Moodysson’s Lilya 4-Ever. Returning to Oksanen’s 2010 Berlin reading , from the moderator’s line of questioning— not to mention the audience questions—it was exceedingly clear that the interest in Purge was almost exclusively connected to the subject of human trafficking. Oksanen herself appeared to be very comfortable in her designated role— more human rights activist than writer. At question time, I asked Oksanen what she wanted her readers to do with the compassion that reading Purge had aroused in them; her response was that the European Union should “change some laws.” In her role as activist, Oksanen’s deference to the intervention of politics struck me as entirely understandable, but as a writer who had achieved literary stardom on the back of a human trafficking novel, it also struck me as somewhat evasive. If Purge is indeed engaged art, which is certainly how Oksanen was presenting it, why, in that moment, did it seem that she herself had been the main, if not sole, beneficiary of this engagement? To Anatomy Szilárd Borbély Like the details, such are we stitched to the thread of desire. The theater of the body is assembled, then dismantled, every evening. Concealed boxes we are as well, data upon data painted. Held together by memory, by magnetic strips, like the details between the butterfly’s wings as its light body flaps. For that is how it hovers and flits above the water, fluttering. Names written on colored sheets, onto bare musculature, like a butterfly plunging into fire, so as to become a metaphor and cast off the mantle of language. Translation from the Hungarian By Ottilie Mulzet Szilárd Borbély (Fehérgyarmat, HungaryDebrecen , Hungary, 1963– 2014) is widely regarded as one of the most significant Hungarian poets of the early millennium. In his oeuvre, including essays, drama, and short fiction, he pushed language to its utmost extremes in a philosophical vision clearly following the legacy of such figures as János Pilinszky and Vladimír Holan. Ottilie Mulzet’s most recent translation, Seiobo There Below, by László Krasznahorkai (New Directions, 2013), was awarded the Best Translated Book Award. ...
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