Reading Louise Greck's poem is like walking into a room full of glass fragments, and you will be stinged at any time. The pain is not strong, but it is very long. Trauma, desire, death, family, nature, mythology constitutes the keywords of her work, creating a mysterious and melancholy beauty.
People pay attention to her special experience in her early years, the identity tags of "female" and "Jewish", and the poetic pain in her works. For most readers, she is a poet who has yet to be discovered. Under the minimalist words, there is a deep poetic world, quietly waiting for the visitor to explore.
Beijing News·Cultural Living Room Series Activities, we joined hands with Century Wenjing Publishing House to invite Ni Zhange, a writer, poet, religious and literary scholar, to get close to Greck with you and explore her poetic aesthetics.
voice sharing | Ni Zhange
compiled and written by | Sun Jiayan
Ni Zhange, writer, poet, cultural scholar, bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature, Peking University, master's degree in the Theology Department of Fordham University, doctoral degree in religion and literature at the University of Chicago Theology, and associate professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at the University of Chicago, Virginia Tech Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and Culture. He has written the collections of essays "Meeting in the Dark" and "Deep River on Earth", the novel "The Different Traveler", and the poetry collection "Vacuum Hometown".
Stoic pain aesthetics
Birth, not death, is an unbearable loss.
I know. I also left a layer of skin there.
——"The Country of Cotton-mouthed Snake"
This poem comes from Greck's collection of virgin poems "The First Born of a Son". This collection of poems was written when Greck was twenty-five years old. "Life" and "Death" are the words that frequently flashed, conveying waves of real pain.
People often associate this pain with her traumatic experience: her sister died prematurely before she was born, so she fell into the guilt of a "survivor" and suffered from anorexia at the age of 16 and received seven years of psychological treatment. After adulthood, she encountered two broken marriages, and the dark background was fixed and continued in her poems.
In the 1960s when Greck officially began his creation, the "confessionalism" was the main genre in the American poetry world, mostly describing the pain and trauma of individual poets. Greck was deeply influenced by this faction and regarded poetry as a way to self-oriented and digging, revealing the wounds of his soul without hesitation, especially those painful moments in family life and intimate relationships.
American poet and scholar Elizabeth Caroline Dodd once defined Grick as a "post-confessional" poet, believing that her writing style has classical characteristics. Unlike the overflowing and cathartic pain presentation of typical confessionist poets, Greck's writing is "Stoic" and is accustomed to using a lot of blank space, blurred scene details and extremely calm brushstrokes to create a silent, implicit and lasting painful experience.
cat hides there, rolls in the dust,
roses, cosmos, and, in the dark, golden
Capitol dome
converted into moonlight alloy.
——"Love in the Moonlight"
Cover of Greck's poem "Night of Faithfulness and Virtue".
Greck is also a natural poet. She regards flowers, birds, plants and trees as projections of the inner world, forming a complex interaction and connection. Ni Zhange believes that compared with other natural poets, Greck's creations are more experimental. For example, in the writing of the famous contemporary American naturalist poet , Mary Oliver , the lyrical subject is often a person who is a natural observer, while Greck's poems give the subject status of emotions to non-human living bodies, and such subjects are dynamically generated during the writing or reading of poetry. In this sense, Grick is not a 6 person in the traditional sense of lyric poetry. Her works greatly expand the creative boundaries of lyric poetry.
The nature described by Greck is not a noble nature in the wilderness, but more of a garden plant, rich in feminine beauty but never gentle.In the past, male-centered literary creations gave nature more sublime and masculine qualities. Ni Zhange believed that nature itself transcends the gender construction centered on humans, and gender itself is constantly changing. Greck's writing helps us see the richness of nature.
One dollar "entry fee" and exquisite multi-song
When perceptual
is buried in the dark soil,
survive is also terrifying.
——"Wild Iris"
A poet once commented in an interview with Greck that if reading different poets' works requires different entrance fees, then reading Greck's poems only costs one dollar. Greck's language is easy to understand, and he often uses simple words and smooth short sentences. Although some people commented that her works lacked the beauty of imagery and rhythm, the concise, accuracy and power of her language give her unique charm.
In an interview in 2006, scholar Joanne Feit Diehl asked Grick that her early style was rated as "grim" and "austere" (cold, solemn). How did she personally view this evaluation?
Joanne Fetter Deer "Louise Greck: Change What You See"
Greck replied that she was not satisfied with these two words. In comparison, "austere" (cold and stern) may be relatively appropriate. In her understanding, this word has the meaning of Puritan : it is full of doubts and rejection of the flashy and chaotic state, and also vigilantly keeping distance from unformed and overly mysterious things. In a certain dimension, Greck's poems do have a Puritan beauty.
Greck believes that every word written during creation should be very critical and there is no need to add unnecessary modifications. When she was a reader, she was never moved by the so-called pleasant rhythm, beautiful images and rhetoric, so in the process of writing, she also tried her best to pursue the concise and direct power of the words. Ni Zhange believes that this aesthetic has a certain oriental style.
Grick doesn't like the word "grim" because it's too dark and has no spiritual dimension. She believes that when the poet tear opens the painful wounds of the soul, he should also provide hope and comfort. An important task of writing is to rebuild the meaning of life in this chaotic world.
and the concise words and sentences form a contrast between the complexity and exquisiteness of the layout of her poetry collection. Since the fifth collection of poems, "Aleshan", she has begun to try to create a collection of poems into a holistic writing of growing poems or group poems. "Wild Iris" and "Village Life" represent the maturity of this way of creation. One or more clues are connected between poems, so that the images and emotions of the work continue to expand and extend, forming an exquisite texture.
Grek in the "Wild Iris" period
Rewrite the myth: Top of the World and the Gate of Hell
How can I know you love me
Unless I see you sad for me?
——"Farewell"
Mythological stories and characters are common creative materials in Greck's poems. She rejects biographical or speculative writing, and prefers the mysterious color of poetry.
Poetry critic Helen Wendler believes that this is Greck's third path to creation between the autobiographical life experience of the confessionist school and the transcendent thinking of the intellectual school. The mythical structure just finds a balance between the two: extracting the "prototype" of myths from daily life and giving individual life universality.
"My tendency—which is obvious—is to establish mythical structure very quickly and find the echo between the moment and this prototype." Greck once said.
Ni Zhange called the process of refining the prototype a rewrite of myth. Greek myths, " Bible " myths and folk legends can all become her rewritten materials. The names of her two collections of poems, Mount Al and Avrno, are taken from myths: the former is the top of the world in the Hebrew Bible, and the latter is the gate of hell in Roman mythology.
Karen Armstrong "A Brief History of Myth"
After divorce, Greck rewrites a series of Odyssey stories around family and marriage, such as the short poem "Farewell" in "The Alloy of Moonlight". When Greck unfolds the love entanglement of family life in the form of myths, she will regard herself as a projection of this prototype in the world of experience, and this prototype will also project into similar and different experiences of other individuals, thus having universal value.
In ancient Greece, myths have already had gender differentiation in terms of their content and ways of dissemination: one is told by male poets in public, and the other is passed down by female members in family spaces. Unfortunately, the mythological tradition of women has not been passed down. Myths in the modern sense have been given ideological functions such as shaping national character, which is a continuation and deformation of the ancient male writing tradition. The female image and female psychology are marginalized and become supporting roles and supplements. Corresponding to this tradition, a series of attempts to reconstruct myths based on female experiences, and Grick's creations fall into this category.
There is a famous character in the Hebrew Bible, King David. He was old and had lost his sexual ability, but he also had a warm-up maid, Abisha, so that he could feel the heat of his young body. After King David's death, his son wanted to marry Abisha, but died under Solomon's knife in the battle for the throne. After the court struggle began, Abisha disappeared completely into the story, and no one knew her subsequent fate. This is a typical patriarchal center story where female characters are completely sexualized and instrumentalized. In "Abisha" rewritten by Greck, she is a girl who lives with her father, yearning for a beautiful future and love in her heart, and her image is complete, full and vivid.
King David and Abisha
Greck's other collection of poems, "Avrno", also portrays the struggles of women under patriarchal suppression. This collection of poems rewrites Persephone's mythology. Persephone is the daughter of the Earth Goddess of Spring. He was abducted by the Underworld Pluto and could only return to the world every spring. What kind of experiences and emotions did Persephone have in the underworld? The original mythology is not mentioned at all. In "Avrno", Greck delicately shows her psychological activities, writing about her lying on the cold bed of the underworld, missing the world that is increasingly slaughtered and desolate due to her departure, recalling the era of innocence that never returns, and then introducing the heavy ultimate propositions of existence, destruction, love, and death. Politics of
Reading: Should identity tags be rejected?
She has long been a prisoner
Since she was born as a daughter.
——"Persephone the Wavering Persephone"
mentions Grick, "female" and " Jewish " seem to become two inaccessible identity tags. There is a view circulating in the Chinese world that Greek himself rejects labels such as feminism and Jewish identity. Ni Zhange believes that this contains some misunderstandings. In fact, these two identity traits are crucial to understanding her poems.
Ni Zhange believes that Grick's rejection needs to be understood in a specific context. She rejected the label of feminism because she wanted to draw a line with the confessionist, because the female poet of the confessionist was once called a feminist in the poetry world. When she says “I’m not a feminist,” the subtext and real meaning is “I’m not a confessor.” Her poems themselves have a distinct feminist perspective.
Similarly, her denial of the Jewish poet's label is related to the inherent complexity of Jewish identity. Gret's ancestors had long immigrated to the United States and were not affected by the Holocaust. Therefore, the historical traditions of Jewish and the ethnic difficulties after immigrating to various places do not constitute her personal experience and experience, but this does not mean that she did not invoke Jewish cultural resources in her creation. Greck researcher Daniel Morris pointed out that her polyphonic writing has a deep connection with the Judaism's explanatory tradition of "Midrash" - in the practice of "Midrash", scholars' different interpretations of controversial fragments in the scriptures are displayed on the same piece of paper.Morris believes that this tradition may be a source of inspiration for Greck.
Daniel Morris's "Greek Poetry: An Introduction to a Theme"
Ni Zhange believes that this year's Nobel Prize award to Greek reflects the continuity of his judgment criteria. Greck breaks through individual narratives and pursues the universality of lyric poetry, which is in line with the consistent aesthetic style of the Nobel Prize. And her award may also have some intrinsic connection with this special time node in 2020. 2020 is the year of plague, turbulent, and reorganization of the pattern, and what Greck's poetry pursues is the repair and redemption in darkness and pain.
Ni Zhange quoted the views of scientific and technological research scholar Donna J. Haraway and neomaterialist scholar Jane Bennett, saying that the discourses about individuals and universals in the Nobel Prize speech are outdated and outdated. The issues we need to care about are the redefinition of individuals. Individuals are not pre-given, isolated beings, but are constructed in various intricate and changing relationships between the self and the others. Instead of assuming the clear boundary between the self and the others, the binary opposition between uniqueness and universality should be broken. Lyric poetry, especially the new type of lyric poetry written by Greck, is actually a kind of relationship poetry, an extension and maintenance of the relationship between people and people and things.
Ni Zhange believes that the Nobel Prize in Literature is very Western-centered, European-centered, and male-centered in a sense, and some of its discourses still remain in the 20th century. This time it awarded the award to a female poet, which is actually a manifestation of its desire to break through itself, but there is still a long way to go before it truly breaks out of the rut.
"I think better readers are more scarce than poets. Readers are actually the soil for poets to grow." Ni Zhange finally concluded, "It is our top priority to establish a group of females who write and read poetry. Perhaps such groups have existed for a long time. We must work hard to let more people hear their voices, that is, our own voices."
"The Alloy of Moonlight"
Louise Greck by
Liu Xiangyang Translation
Century Wenjing Publishing House April 2016 edition
"Until the World Reflects the Deepest Needs of the Soul"
Louise Greck by
Liu Xiangyang Fan Jingye Translated by
Century Wenjing Publishing House April 2016 edition
voice sharing | Ni Zhange
compiled and written by articles | Sun Jiayan
edited by | Lu Wanting; Wang Qing
proofreading | Wang Xin
