Block Six: Literature and history

There is a significant relationship between literary texts and contemporary reality. The aim of this block is to problematize the relationship between literature and history. The literary texts dealt with in this block address specific historical events such as the "Stalinist tyranny of 1936-1939, the Irish 'troubles', or the rise and fall of the Japanese empire in the Far East." Interest in such literary works come into play especially as there is a constant questioning of "official history," by "oral history, people's history, black history and women's history." There is a difference between the past and history. Interpretations of history are constantly changing. The historical moment in which we write may (or may not) also be assumed to affect how and what we write. How you read what has been written will also depend upon the moment in which you do so. Prose fiction and history Bearing Witness: A sub-genre of literature called 'bearing witness' addresses the need for a kind of literature that communicates to the present about a past that is unthinkable. The witness writer creates an archive which would 'contribute to [his people's] constitution'. What exactly does the genre of bearing witness entail? It is obvious that the past figures prominently in bearing witness as it is focused on a tragic past event that has a clear impact on the present. The poet or writer takes on 'the role of guardian of the society's historical past, its memory'. The witness writer is writing about his people's suffering, documenting it and producing an archive that would prove necessary for a mass witnessing. The renowned Irish poet Seamus Heaney comments on the nature of the witness writer: He represents poetry's solidarity with the doomed, the deprived, the victimized, the underprivileged. The witness is any figure in whom the truth-telling urge and the compulsion to identify with the oppressed become necessarily integral with the art of writing itself.

Two critics: Laurence Lerner: "History and Fiction" Lerner identifies three contexts to any text: 'its ideology, its strategies of writing, and social reality'. To eliminate any of these completely 'is a dogmatic oversimplification'. Hayden White: "Introduction to Metahistory" White argues that while historians believe their narratives to be objective, their narration itself cannot escape the implications of 'textuality': that is, of the medium of language. By analyzing, or 'deconstructing', historians' texts, White claims to show how they are silently organized according to familiar narrative and hence fictive patterns, such as 'plot'. Poetry and history The genre of poetry can both magnify the momentous events of history in this century and revise and challenge our ideas of how history permeates literature. The poetry of Akhmatova, Holub and Heaney bears witness. Akhmatova sees herself as doing this explicitly in 'Requiem' in bearing witness to the Stalinist reign of terror, while Holub's irony works more obliquely, to ridicule the orthodoxy of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia after the abortive uprising of spring 1968 in Prague and the subsequent repression of artistic and intellectual freedom. Heaney demonstrates vividly how a poet not only engages with a particular historical experience, in his case that of the Troubles in Northern Ireland since 1969, but more fundamentally with an Irish literary tradition that has meditated on the uneasy relations between Britain and Ireland over the centuries. Seamus Heaney "Ocean's Love to Ireland" In this poem, Ralegh's victory over Catholic forces sent by Philip II of Spain to assist an Irish revolt against the English is used to represent the finally successful English conquest of Ireland which extended over much of Elizabeth I's reign. Like the conquering Vikings who roamed the seas, Ralegh 'is water, he is ocean'. This is an image that combines the sense of an irresistible natural force with a pertinent allusion to English naval power which was essential to the defeat of the Spanish Armada and, in later years, to the development of English world-imperial power. This poem neither laments the vanquished, nor celebrates the victories; it does not take sides about the issues settled by these contests. Each records them as 'history', as what happened. The theme of poetry is explicit in "Ocean's Love to Ireland'. The poem deals with the English conquest of Ireland as a sexual ravishing. The Irish poets writing in their own language were rendered sterile by the 'iambic drums' of English poetry. (The iambic measure first became widely used by English poets and dramatists during the Elizabethan period.)

Comment on Heaney's poetry: There is no simple taking of sides about the contemporary conflict. Where does Heaney stand? He looks for a "healing alternative in a pagan Neolithic culture, away from conflict torn centuries of Christianity. Pagan culture will heal and pacify tensions on both sides. Pagan culture will alter consciousness. "Casualty" This poem is about two funerals: the first the coffins of Catholics, an actual occasion which gives birth to communal strength, but also severe restriction. The second funeral is of the fisherman who was killed for breaking with the complicity of the tribe. This poem about the fisherman who broke with "our tribe's complicity" speaks for both communal loyalty and for qualities that challenge it. The fisherman nonetheless expresses the best qualities of the community. Anna Akhmatova's "Requiem" The Bolsheviks criticized Akhmatovasee page 27. Also more criticism on page 29 from the Soviet state: Akhmatova's subject is utterly limited: it is the poetry of an overwrought upper-class lady who frantically races back and forth between boudoir (which is a woman's bedroom or private sitting room) and chapel. "Requiem" addresses the predicament of Russia during Stalin's Terror and the responsibilities of the writer at such a time. Lev, Akhmatova's son, was imprisoned for 17 months. In Akhmatova's "Requiem," history and the future are framed within the Christian idea that although mother and child suffer great agony, the resurrection will follow. The strongest image in the poem is the monument of herself, an idea which does not represent hubris on her part, but a genuine acknowledgement of her role as the voice of her people, to emphasize the importance of remembering. The whole poem is committed to this idea. The poem begins: "I stand as witness to the common lot,/survivor of that time, that place" The importance of gender to the representation of history in "Requiem" has already been discussed in terms of the collective suffering of the mothers waiting for their sons outside then prison, and the grief of the biblical women at Christ's crucifixion.