I simply couldn't get my hands around this complex, dense, ambitious, playful 1988 novel (translated 1990). So, I decided to look at what some critics and reviewers had to say. Well, I dug into some databases and couldn't get beyond any simple reviews. However, it was interesting that the reviewers didn't all agree on what happens at the end of the book, at what the solution to the crossword, at the center of the book, is.
The story centers around Atanas Svilar and his second wife, Vitacha Razin. A brilliant but failed architect, Svilar searches for where his father was killed in WWII. He finds out he was betrayed in a monastery. While there Svilar also learns that he is not fated to be an architect.
At this point, the book becomes a crossword. The reader can choose to read it across -- straight through in a conventional manner -- or down.
In this section Atanas leaves his wife and children for his first love, Vitacha Razin, and they put down roots in California where Svilar changes his name to Razin and makes millions of dollars selling a toxic defoliant to the government.
What characterizes his prose more than anything else is his magical, agrarian images supporting stories loaded with digressions. One of the most fascinating digressions concerns the monk who actually turned in his father. He frequently wears his clothes backwards.
There is one critical article on this book that I came across. It is by Jasmina Mihalovic and entitled "Landscape Painted With Teas as an Ecological Novel." It is fascinating the way the article sees this book as a call away from alienation and back to "the art of living." It sees the book as cautiously optimistic, I think it would be safe to say, even if it is a highly stylized Satan, in this topsy-turvy world, who ends up as Savior.
"The picture in Landscape Painted with Tea of the upside down world of historical and perverted reality is the reflection of our own selves. The cathartic power of the book as a mirror should prevent the headlong plunge into nothingness and should return to the world its lost essence and internal balance." (The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1988)
It's interesting that this apparently Slavic author of this article believes in such things as "internal balance." It would seem to be the furthest thing from what a Postmodernist would believe. Pavic collage and montage techniques are both Modernist and Postmodernist, but I don't know if his ultimate sensibility is. In an interview with Thanassis Lallas, Pavic describes himself as "always trying to act as an ancient epic poet...To me the best literature is oral...To understand how someboy writes a novel, you must feel the breath of the book." (Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1988)
Could it be translation difficulties that are bringing these seeming incongruities up? I don't think so. Here I point out Pavic's imagery, something that is easy to translate. Yes, it is often magical, but the magical elements are made up of agrarian elements. There is a nostalgia in Pavic's writing, that is sometimes explicitly stated. It's not naive. It's not conservative. It feels as if we need to get back to our own, specific, historical moment when reading him.
I'll repeat that:
It feels as if we need to get back to our own, specific, historical moment when reading him.
I am not entirely sure what that means. But it feels so accurate, I'm going with it. Obviously, we feel many other things when reading him. For me, this is predominate.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Close Read of Passage from Pavic's LANDSCAPE PAINTED WITH TEA
The character of Amalia Riznich is introduced as follows:
"'October has never come as often as this year; every time you turn around, there it is again. At least three times ahead of schedule...'
Thus whispered Miss Amalia Riznich in German into her Sévres cup. For the past one hundred years, her family had spoken German in autumn, Polish or Russian in winter, Greek in Spring and Serbian only in summer, as befits a family of grain merchants. All past and future seasons thus blended in her consciousness into a single eternal season, resembling itself as hunger does hunger. Spring merged with spring, Russian with Russian, winter with winter, and only summer, which was enclosing Miss Riznich now, broke step with this sequence to take for a moment, but only a moment, its temporary calendar place between spring and autumn, between Greek and German."
My overriding response to this passage is perplexity. Why does it befit a family of grain merchants to speak a variety of languages over the course of a year? Why would all seasons blending into one another resemble "itself as hunger does hunger"? Why is it that only when speaking Serbian does she "break step with this sequence"?
There is something magical here, suggesting that the Riznich family traces its origins to the agrarian rhythms of the seasons, and their suborning language to these rhythms. They are grain merchants, and dependent on this agrarian rhythm.
But why aren't they farmers? Aren't they more agrarian than merchants? Yes, but they are not rich. Pavic needed to create a rich family in order to give this, at times, fairy tale-like story the necessary gravitas. These are ancient people from ancient lines coming together fully only in summer, in the Serbian present, when their own language spills from their lips as they live the most carefree season.
This book was published in 1990. Could he have been asking for Yugoslavia to stay together? It broke up a couple years after the publication of the Landscape Painted With Tea. By this time, Pavic was an important voice that people heeded. We learn elsewhere that these notebooks are filled with information about Tito, the Yugoslavian Communist strongman.
I suspect both readings hold up: the magical, fairy tale agrarian one and the political one. I prefer the former because it seems less tethered to a specific time and place.
"'October has never come as often as this year; every time you turn around, there it is again. At least three times ahead of schedule...'
Thus whispered Miss Amalia Riznich in German into her Sévres cup. For the past one hundred years, her family had spoken German in autumn, Polish or Russian in winter, Greek in Spring and Serbian only in summer, as befits a family of grain merchants. All past and future seasons thus blended in her consciousness into a single eternal season, resembling itself as hunger does hunger. Spring merged with spring, Russian with Russian, winter with winter, and only summer, which was enclosing Miss Riznich now, broke step with this sequence to take for a moment, but only a moment, its temporary calendar place between spring and autumn, between Greek and German."
My overriding response to this passage is perplexity. Why does it befit a family of grain merchants to speak a variety of languages over the course of a year? Why would all seasons blending into one another resemble "itself as hunger does hunger"? Why is it that only when speaking Serbian does she "break step with this sequence"?
There is something magical here, suggesting that the Riznich family traces its origins to the agrarian rhythms of the seasons, and their suborning language to these rhythms. They are grain merchants, and dependent on this agrarian rhythm.
But why aren't they farmers? Aren't they more agrarian than merchants? Yes, but they are not rich. Pavic needed to create a rich family in order to give this, at times, fairy tale-like story the necessary gravitas. These are ancient people from ancient lines coming together fully only in summer, in the Serbian present, when their own language spills from their lips as they live the most carefree season.
This book was published in 1990. Could he have been asking for Yugoslavia to stay together? It broke up a couple years after the publication of the Landscape Painted With Tea. By this time, Pavic was an important voice that people heeded. We learn elsewhere that these notebooks are filled with information about Tito, the Yugoslavian Communist strongman.
I suspect both readings hold up: the magical, fairy tale agrarian one and the political one. I prefer the former because it seems less tethered to a specific time and place.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Roscoe Mitchell's THE FAR SIDE
My review of jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell's latest release is up at the Jazz Police website. Mitchell is a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Pavic's LAST LOVE IN CONSTANTINOPLE: A Tarot Novel For Divination
For background on Pavic, see my many entries on him by looking him up in the list of topics to the right or by going to this webpage: Milorad Pavic Homepage.
One of Pavic's last works, this fascinating book can be read one of two ways: straight through from beginning to end or based on various tarot readings. A pack of tarot cards is provided, and as well as models of the various ways of laying out the cards. Every chapter of the book coincides with one of the cards, so it is possible to read the book in the order demanded by the tarots rather than front to back.
I read the book twice: once front to back, and once using the tarot method. I suggest that anyone who wants to tackle the book do as I did because things get confusing if you don't have a overall, global sense of the book. This may, in fact, be a criticism of Pavic because it means that the book is difficult, if not impossible, to be read in a wholly reversible manner. By 'reversible' I refer to Pavic's wanting to write novels that were like sculptures or paintings in that there was no linearity to how viewers work their way around the art object. But this is hardly damning.
The book is about the hostile and friendly interactions between three families, the Opujic's, the Tenecki's, and the Kalopervic's around the turn of the 19th century. The hostile aspect has to do with them fighting on different sides of a war between Serbia (I think), and France. The friendly aspect has to to with intermarriages.
Each chapter is a fairly self-contained story about members of these families. They are replete with magic: a woman growing out of a tail, a man having three deaths, an ability to hear below ground, and so on.
Randomness, of course, is at the structural heart of the book. In a way, it takes the place of the traditional plot. With all the magic and the wild characters it adds up to a book that presents us with a world that is in many ways ordered according to our imaginations. Yes, it is true that the cards we are dealt are random and we have no control over them. But we do have control over how we respond to them and interpret them.
There is a bouyancy and ebullience to this book. It revels in how magical stories can be and, in addition, how magical we can be if we let ourselves.
One of Pavic's last works, this fascinating book can be read one of two ways: straight through from beginning to end or based on various tarot readings. A pack of tarot cards is provided, and as well as models of the various ways of laying out the cards. Every chapter of the book coincides with one of the cards, so it is possible to read the book in the order demanded by the tarots rather than front to back.
I read the book twice: once front to back, and once using the tarot method. I suggest that anyone who wants to tackle the book do as I did because things get confusing if you don't have a overall, global sense of the book. This may, in fact, be a criticism of Pavic because it means that the book is difficult, if not impossible, to be read in a wholly reversible manner. By 'reversible' I refer to Pavic's wanting to write novels that were like sculptures or paintings in that there was no linearity to how viewers work their way around the art object. But this is hardly damning.
The book is about the hostile and friendly interactions between three families, the Opujic's, the Tenecki's, and the Kalopervic's around the turn of the 19th century. The hostile aspect has to do with them fighting on different sides of a war between Serbia (I think), and France. The friendly aspect has to to with intermarriages.
Each chapter is a fairly self-contained story about members of these families. They are replete with magic: a woman growing out of a tail, a man having three deaths, an ability to hear below ground, and so on.
Randomness, of course, is at the structural heart of the book. In a way, it takes the place of the traditional plot. With all the magic and the wild characters it adds up to a book that presents us with a world that is in many ways ordered according to our imaginations. Yes, it is true that the cards we are dealt are random and we have no control over them. But we do have control over how we respond to them and interpret them.
There is a bouyancy and ebullience to this book. It revels in how magical stories can be and, in addition, how magical we can be if we let ourselves.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
A Critique of Milorad Pavic
I am surprised at how many well-informed people remain unfamiliar with Milorad Pavic's brilliant 1984 novel Dictionary of the Khazars, English translation 1988 by Christina Pribcevic-Zoric. The book is about determining the Khazar Polemic, or which of the Abrahamic religions the lost people known as the Khazars ultimately converted to. This provides the platform for Pavic's wildly imaginitivate leaping across centuries, across fact and fantasy, from reality to myth. Charles Fenyvesi actually said that Pavic "writes with such imaginative cultural extension as to make Garcia Marquez seem like James Mitchener."
The book is a cross-referenced dictionary of events and people divided into three parts: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Readers are literally encouraged to read the book in any order they prefer. Pavic wants his novels to be "reversible art," meaning that it does not have a beginning or ending. It is like sculpture or painting: it can be seen from different angles, and the viewer moves about it freely.
What's more, the book comes in two versions, the male and the female. One crucial paragraph is different in the two. Thereby, Pavic forces the book to remain open, to always invite another reversible reading.
A very interesting, although very unconvincing, critique of Pavic is developed by Andrew Wachtel in his article "Postmodernism as Nightmare: Milorad Pavic's Literary Demolition of Yugoslavia" in a 1997 issue of The Slavic and East European Journal. Now I am not interested in writing a boring entry that critiques an obscure academic article. Rather, I find myself challenged by the ideas Wachtel brings forth. He should be heard.
This is his argument in skeletal form:
--He takes his definition of postmodernism from Lyotard, profound skepticism about metanarratives.
--He says that postmodernism developed in stable states in Western Europe and North America where such skepticism would not bring down "the whole house of cards." In Yugoslavia during the 80's it did a lot of harm by being one factor in causing the metanarrative that made Yugoslavia possible become questioned. The result was civil war.
--The Enlightenment inspired meta-narrative proved a necessity for Yugoslavia; it was a luxury for what Wachtel implies are Ivory Tower intellectuals of the West.
--Postmodernism appeared in Yugoslavia just as the country started to disintegrate.
--In Yugoslavia, imaginitave literature was a high-status activity that provided the country with its narratives. In such a cultural milieu, it's not an exaggeration to say that a work of fiction played a role in causing a country to fail.
--Early in Yugoslavia's history, emphasis was placed on the unity of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, not their differences. Intellectuals at the time saw the importance of cultural figures in forming the notion of a Yugoslav and a Yugoslavian state. Conversely, Postmodernism lauds difference over unity.
--By the 60's, ethnic difference was being emphasized more. What kept the country together was supra-national Communism, i.e. ideology, and cultural concerns were secondary.
--A number of novelists began to question and unravel the metanarrative of nationalist unity. This article will look at Pavic's novel.
--The purported structural complexity of Pavic's novel is actually a gimmick. It actually has a conventional plot centering around two questions: What religion did the Khazars convert to in the 9th century and why do representatives of the various religions come together to try to solve the problem?
--When investigating in later centuries, each religion is convinced that their religion was chosen by the Khazars.
--This is Wachtel's crucial point: this is a radically relavitizing vision of history that leaves us with only language games and not unifying narratives.
--Wachtel prefers the novelist Ivo Andric's novel The Bridge over the Drina to Pavic's because it acknowledges the various views of history held by the Muslims, Christians and other groups in Yugoslavia, but then it worked to find, and did find, the truth.
--Pavic's novel was hugely popular and influential in Serbia. It helped to deligitimize any claim for truth, leading to disunity and, Wachtel implies, ultimately a might is right situation.
What I find most intriguing about this argument is that Wachtel is arguing that various cultures can withstand postmodernist critique better than others. I also really appreciate that he takes literature so seriously.
I don't know that Pavic would call himself a Postmodernist. Based on an interview in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, he would seem to be a theist! In addition, by placing the truth, ie what the Khazars converted to, in an impenetrable, agrarian past of myth-like and folkloric stories, his book is a lot more like Genesis than it is like Federman's Double or Nothing.
What makes the novel seem so innovative is its structure. It is innovative, but not as much as it might seem. Essentially, it is an episodic novel put together so that readers can encounter the sections in the order they choose. It's Cervante's gone choose your own adventure.
However, the real reason to read Pavic isn't his structural innovation. It's the magically fertile nature of his mind, that leads to some of the most surprising sentences and passages imaginable. See my March 24 post to see examples of these sentences.
The book is a cross-referenced dictionary of events and people divided into three parts: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Readers are literally encouraged to read the book in any order they prefer. Pavic wants his novels to be "reversible art," meaning that it does not have a beginning or ending. It is like sculpture or painting: it can be seen from different angles, and the viewer moves about it freely.
What's more, the book comes in two versions, the male and the female. One crucial paragraph is different in the two. Thereby, Pavic forces the book to remain open, to always invite another reversible reading.
A very interesting, although very unconvincing, critique of Pavic is developed by Andrew Wachtel in his article "Postmodernism as Nightmare: Milorad Pavic's Literary Demolition of Yugoslavia" in a 1997 issue of The Slavic and East European Journal. Now I am not interested in writing a boring entry that critiques an obscure academic article. Rather, I find myself challenged by the ideas Wachtel brings forth. He should be heard.
This is his argument in skeletal form:
--He takes his definition of postmodernism from Lyotard, profound skepticism about metanarratives.
--He says that postmodernism developed in stable states in Western Europe and North America where such skepticism would not bring down "the whole house of cards." In Yugoslavia during the 80's it did a lot of harm by being one factor in causing the metanarrative that made Yugoslavia possible become questioned. The result was civil war.
--The Enlightenment inspired meta-narrative proved a necessity for Yugoslavia; it was a luxury for what Wachtel implies are Ivory Tower intellectuals of the West.
--Postmodernism appeared in Yugoslavia just as the country started to disintegrate.
--In Yugoslavia, imaginitave literature was a high-status activity that provided the country with its narratives. In such a cultural milieu, it's not an exaggeration to say that a work of fiction played a role in causing a country to fail.
--Early in Yugoslavia's history, emphasis was placed on the unity of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, not their differences. Intellectuals at the time saw the importance of cultural figures in forming the notion of a Yugoslav and a Yugoslavian state. Conversely, Postmodernism lauds difference over unity.
--By the 60's, ethnic difference was being emphasized more. What kept the country together was supra-national Communism, i.e. ideology, and cultural concerns were secondary.
--A number of novelists began to question and unravel the metanarrative of nationalist unity. This article will look at Pavic's novel.
--The purported structural complexity of Pavic's novel is actually a gimmick. It actually has a conventional plot centering around two questions: What religion did the Khazars convert to in the 9th century and why do representatives of the various religions come together to try to solve the problem?
--When investigating in later centuries, each religion is convinced that their religion was chosen by the Khazars.
--This is Wachtel's crucial point: this is a radically relavitizing vision of history that leaves us with only language games and not unifying narratives.
--Wachtel prefers the novelist Ivo Andric's novel The Bridge over the Drina to Pavic's because it acknowledges the various views of history held by the Muslims, Christians and other groups in Yugoslavia, but then it worked to find, and did find, the truth.
--Pavic's novel was hugely popular and influential in Serbia. It helped to deligitimize any claim for truth, leading to disunity and, Wachtel implies, ultimately a might is right situation.
What I find most intriguing about this argument is that Wachtel is arguing that various cultures can withstand postmodernist critique better than others. I also really appreciate that he takes literature so seriously.
I don't know that Pavic would call himself a Postmodernist. Based on an interview in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, he would seem to be a theist! In addition, by placing the truth, ie what the Khazars converted to, in an impenetrable, agrarian past of myth-like and folkloric stories, his book is a lot more like Genesis than it is like Federman's Double or Nothing.
What makes the novel seem so innovative is its structure. It is innovative, but not as much as it might seem. Essentially, it is an episodic novel put together so that readers can encounter the sections in the order they choose. It's Cervante's gone choose your own adventure.
However, the real reason to read Pavic isn't his structural innovation. It's the magically fertile nature of his mind, that leads to some of the most surprising sentences and passages imaginable. See my March 24 post to see examples of these sentences.
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