Strangers in the Country of the Poet

Abstract

illustration by parée erica ( www . flickr . com / photos / pareeerica / 3561553883 ) 44 WLT JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 The Puterbaugh essay “One Foot Wrong” by Parée Erica WORLDLIT.ORG 45 1 “Women are strangers in the country of man,” wrote Laura Riding in the 1930s, as militant, nationalistic sentiments intensified across Europe. I read that sentence, along with Riding’s other writings on womanhood , as a graduate student toiling slowly on a dissertation about this remarkable poet’s work. In the context of turn-of-the century feminist theories’ tendency to complicate the notion of femininity, Riding’s pronouncement sounded a little archaic, if not downright mystical. After all, many women felt perfectly at home in that “country ,” and many men did not. And who were those women, anyway, women in the plural, as opposed to the singularity of “man”? Fifteen years later, in the fall of 2016, as I am sitting down to write this essay, a wave of protests moves across my country in reaction to a proposed new law under discussion in the Polish parliament that would effectively ban abortion. Women of various backgrounds and outlooks experience a powerful moment of solidarity. Even though the sense of female fellowship soon begins to fade as the protests evolve and diversify, with some women formulating more radical demands that other women find impossible to support, feminism, after years of dormancy in the ivory towers of academia, is back in the streets. Women rediscover the shared aspects of their experiences , often connected with humiliation, objectification, and silencing, all linked with male domination, represented in the present situation by the combined forces of right-wing government and the Catholic Church. In spite of all the differences, many women experience a similar sense of alienation in the world where massive antifeminist backlash accompanies a resurgence of aggressive nationalistic feelings. Since the nation-state is by its very nature militant, it must idealize violence. As much of our public discourse, and even some of our highbrow literature, extolls mythologized images of men with guns, women are pushed back to the niches of traditional femininity—to strangeness. Whether this collective experience will form the basis for a sustained and effective twenty-firstcentury women’s movement still remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: something happened in the past few months that caused many of us to (re)awaken. With these turbulent events in the background, I would like to reflect on a particular aspect of women’s strangeness in contemporary Poland, namely, their alienation from highbrow literary culture. This estrangement is especially conspicuous in the case of poetry. European poetry, as the domain of genius, has traditionally been dominated by men, reserving for women, at best, the roles of muses. While the identification of genius with male virility is universal, in the Polish tradition it is combined with an exceptional status of poets as the creators and keepers of national identity or, alternately, as rebels/ revolutionaries. As pointed out by Czesław Miłosz, poetry’s high standing in our corner of Europe is due to the fact that it bears witness to “the extraordinary and lethal events that have been occurring there, comparable only to violent earthquakes” (The Witness of Poetry). Male witnessing is valued more highly than whatever might be reported by women, in keeping with the assumption that the battlefield is more important than the home. Genius, national Strangers in the Country of the Poet by Julia Fiedorczuk Against the background of the Polish parliament’s consideration of a law that would effectively ban abortion and the ensuing protests, Julia Fiedorczuk reflects on a particular aspect of women’s strangeness in contemporary Poland—their alienation from highbrow literary culture— which she finds especially conspicuous in the case of poetry. bard, witness, revolutionary: all these are traditionally masculine roles. In this context the products of female creativity are viewed, a priori, as trivial. As long as they stay within the range of triviality, women writers are free to do what they want and can even become very successful. But only a very few will gain recognition as serious artists and thinkers, as intellectuals and poets whose work makes a real impact...