Postmemory in ThirdGeneration Fiction on WWII and the Holocaust The Contrapuntal Cases of Piotr Paziński and Erwin Mortier A fter Memory Conflicting Claims to WWII ID: 654963
Download Presentation The PPT/PDF document "Transnational Aspects of" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Slide1
Transnational
Aspects of
Postmemory
in
Third-Generation Fiction
on
WWII and the
Holocaust
The
(Contrapuntal) Cases of
Piotr
Paziński
and Erwin
Mortier
A
fter
Memory.
Conflicting
Claims
to
WWII
in
Contemporary
Eastern
European
Literatures
B
erlin, ZFL,
6-8
Nov 2015
kris@vanheuckelom.beSlide2Slide3
Warsaw 2010Slide4
Amsterdam 1999Slide5
° 1973, Poland °1965, Belgiu
mSlide6
“Schulz-
derivative
literature
” - Bruno Schulz (1892-1942)Slide7
“Schulz-
derivative
literature
” - Bruno Schulz (1892-1942)Slide8Slide9Slide10
° 1973, Poland °1965, Belgiu
mSlide11Slide12
Mortier
“That boy
[Marcel]
,” she said, “has been lying there all alone for so many years now. I remember him in my prayers every day. He saved us from Bolshevism.” I thought she was referring to yet another mysterious disease.
(M 16
)Slide13
Pa
ziński
She
[Mrs.
Marysia
]
was
not
ashamed
of
the
number
, but
she
did
not
allow
to
touch
it
,
although
it
tempted
me. I was
curious
how
it
was
done
. Dark
dots
somewhere
in
the
skin, or
what
?
(P 41
)Slide14
Pa
ziński / Mortier
I once snuck into the men’s bathroom to see this secret world.
(
P
40)
I
slunk to the corner between the wardrobe and the wall, sank to my knees and vanished under the sewing table.
(
M
31)Slide15
Pa
ziński
Through
the
crack I
can
see
Mr. Leon , or
perhaps
Mr. Chaim , in a robe of
coarse
material
in
white
and
grey
stripes
. A
striped
pyjamas
[
pasiak
]
. Do
not
say
that
,
it
is a
very
bad word , Mr. Chaim
would
be
sorry
if
he
heard
! A
forbidden
place
.
Not
for
small
children
.
(
P
39
)Slide16
Mortier
“They picked on
Maurice
[a convicted collaborator]
just to make themselves look better. Every single textile firm made money of the Germans. Good money, too.” [the grandmother said.]
“All those little men in the camps on television,” Stella blurted, “where
d’you
suppose the material for all those striped
pyjamas
came from? Am I right, Andrea?”
“Whenever I see those old films,” the grandmother said, “I think: there goes the Flanders rag trade. And who gets the blame? Maurice. Or me.”
(
M
32
)Slide17
Mortier
Mondays were devoted to pattern drawing, design adjustments and the strategic deployment of pins so as to hide
unwanted folds of the body
. “A good garment,” she [the grandmother] affirmed with deeply held conviction, “both conceals and reveals.”
(M 24)Slide18
Mortier
At the end of each working day the snippets of dress material and tangled threads lying in frivolous anarchy on the floor were swept into a heap for the rag-and-bone man.
(M 21)Slide19
Pa
ziński
They
collected everything that remained after the war.
(
P
23)
One
more collector. In this house everyone collects and hoards something for eternal times.
(
P
86)Slide20
Pa
ziński
Mrs.
Tecia
stood in the middle of her kingdom. (...) A domestic archive, dusty piles of yellowed papers,
stor
ed
wherever possible. Important articles! An entire life of gathering. Porcelain tableware. Treasures never used.
(
P
19)Slide21
Pa
ziński
Rags in bags, sorted: flax and cotton,
various types of nylon.
For sewing, and the inferior materials for carding. (…) And yarn for sweaters, the habitat of moles which silently flew out of these multicolored clusters, made some nervous circles above the storage room and immediately returned to their woolen headquarters, deterred by the stench of mothballs and twigs of swamp. Objects more alive than people. Now abandoned. Who will bury them, so they will not wind up on some garbage heap?
(
P
19
)Slide22Slide23
Pa
ziński
I sat there probably an hour, while ignoring Mrs.
Tecia
and trying to decipher the contents of the subsequent packages. The room was getting darker, and I did not want to get up and switch on the chandelier. The letters in these letters, which were anyhow almost illegible, melted into the darkness.
(
P
24)Slide24
Pa
ziński
In
any case, only single words remained, scattered here and there. It is hard to read anything, as if it was written not with ink but with onion juice.
(
P
23)Slide25
Pa
ziński
Mrs
Tecia’s
package was very heavy, as if I was not carrying old photographs, but stones. I was not even curious about my room, I just quickly dumped the contents of the bundles on the table and began to arrange some kind of solitaire.
(
P
43
)Slide26
לדור
ודור
l
l’dor vadorSlide27
Pa
ziński
I wanted to run away, but I felt some power holding me back, drawing me to the place and not allowing me to
move (...).
“I am coming to you!” I cried
.
“No, no, why do you say that, where did you get that idea from
?”
“It’s our forest and we don’t need anyone here!”
“It’s
Bronka’s
grandson. Where will he go now
?” (...) The
last of the generational links, attached to the very end.
It was deep night, when I got to the station.
(
P
134-135)Slide28
Pa
ziński
“No, no, why do you say that, where did you get that idea from? He’s gone mad, simply gone mad! What nonsense he’s talking!”
“It’s our forest and we don’t need anyone here!”
“It’s
Bronka’s
grandson. Where will he go now?”
“And where was he back then? Or maybe he was not there at all?
The last of the generational links, attached to the very end.
It was deep night, when I got to the station.
(
P
134-135
)Slide29
I considered my options: count up to ten thousand, say, or do some more praying, or pretend that fairies really existed and I could make any wish I pleased. What if it worked? What if all the stuff that fell off the table were to band together? A strip of suede. A tuft of fur. What if all the snippets of serge joined forces with a couple of buttons? They could enlist the tangle of basting threads on the floor, and bribe a dozen thimbles while they were at it.
MortierSlide30
They could invade the table drawer and conspire with the lame zippers. Murder in reverse. A new perspective. A more bearable tomb. So he [Marcel] would stop roaming the house in his stockinged feet, all the way from attic to basement, pausing at my door, deathly quiet (...).
(M 77-78)
MortierSlide31
I
stuffed the bundle into the tin and pressed down the lid. (…) I had no time to lose. I set the biscuit tin at the foot of the rowan tree and seized the trowel.
(...)
I started digging furiously. Rooms aplenty in the earth.
(
P
118-119
)
MortierSlide32
„
About
that letter. You keep it to yourself, mind. It’s not for anyone else’s eyes. Do you hear
?
”
(
M
115
)
„
MortierSlide33
Pa
ziński
Is there nothing more to see? (...) I knew this would happen. (...) It has been lying here for such a long time! And that’s the whole story of the family! And your grandmother’s too. And your uncle’s. Adam, my nephew, was supposed to make copies, but he never has time to do it. It is worth bringing it to the archive, but there it will certainly get lost, it is better that here ...
(
P
23
)Slide34
Pa
ziński
Familiar figures looked up from the photographs scattered on the table. (...) I put them back into piles. The grandmothers, the uncle Simons, granddaddy, relatives and in-laws, friends of the family. Maybe it was time to leave them here? The best place they will ever have. When I will be gone too, the figures on these paper prints will become nothing but a distant, unknown crowd, a collection of strange, indistinct faces, like those portraits sold for a penny on an antique fair. Slide35
Pa
ziński
Or
I’d better bury them in the ground, at the bottom of the ravine where Mr. Leon and I went to look for dinosaurs, which were supposed to bring us fame. There certainly no one will find them, the fluffy sand will cover them and put them to sleep. That is where I will take them.
(
P
126
)Slide36
Bereishis...
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.
(Genesis 1: 1)
“
In the beginning were train tracks. In the greenery, between heaven and earth
.”
(P 5)Slide37
„In the beginning was the war.” (3)
“In the beginning were train
tracks.”
(P 5)Slide38Slide39
McGlothlin 2006
The metaphor of sewing is particularly apt for the project of second-generation writing, not only because (…) it defers the drive toward totality with its inherent incompleteness, its gaps between the stitches, but because the act of sewing is itself also a form of marking, a repair that, with the stitch, leaves visible traces.
(11-12)Slide40
Transnational
Aspects of
Postmemory
in
Third-Generation Fiction
on
WWII and the
Holocaust
The
(Contrapuntal) Cases of
Piotr
Paziński
and Erwin
Mortier
A
fter
Memory.
Conflicting
Claims
to
WWII
in
Contemporary
Eastern
European
Literatures
B
erlin, ZFL,
6-8
Nov 2015
kris@vanheuckelom.be