(Nad)uĹźycia ciaĹa w kulturze

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nia sił kulturowych mających realny wpływ na nasze życie.
To na tym polu rozgrywa się walka o tożsamość jednostek
i społeczeństw i zarazem jest to miejsce wydobywania na jaw
przemocy symbolicznej, kryjącej się za wszelkim porządkiem
i normami. Jestem przekonany, że na podstawie przepro-
wadzonych przeze mnie analiz można pokusić się o wpisa-
nie Lubiewa w nową wizję literatury zaproponowaną przez
Wolfganga Isera. Niech poniższy cytat kończący mój artykuł
Paweł Rams
186
stanie się zarazem początkiem refleksji nad statusem dzieła
literackiego w nowej przestrzeni społeczno-kulturowej.
Literatura z kolei zajmuje się tym, co nieuchronnie stanowi
pozostałość i wymyka się spod panowania systemów. Sposób,
w jaki się to dokonuje, nie jest nieokreślony, lecz jest uwarun-
kowany przez osiągnięcia, dzięki którym różne uporządkowa-
nia rzeczywistości radziłyby sobie z jej przypadkowością
Te rozmaite nieujmowalności można wydobyć, nadając
im wyobrażone kształty. Literatura czyni je pojmowalnymi,
ponieważ opowieści i wyobrażenia wykorzystują techniki po-
strzegania i przedstawiania identyczne z tymi, którymi posłu-
gujemy się w codziennym życiu. Tak więc literatura stwarza
iluzję postrzegania, aby niepojmowalne mogło się uobecnić,
dzięki przedstawieniu w postaci szeregu wyobrażeń39.
39
W. Iser, Zmienne funkcje literatury, tłum. A. Sierszulska, [w:] Od-
krywanie modernizmu, red. R. Nycz, Kraków 2004.
Jarosław Hetman
Control the uncontrollable: the body of the artist
in Paul Auster s fiction
Little did it surprise me to find out that the introduction
to the 1967 edition of Knut Hamsun s Hunger was written
by Paul Auster. Hunger, Hamsun s widely known novel, is
a story of a starving artist walking the streets of Kristiania,
now known as Oslo, and speaking of his experiences. The
story is semi-autobiographical. When one thinks of the way
Auster describes the relation between the human being and
their body, it is very often in the context of hunger. In his
short essay about money ,1 as he calls his autobiography
entitled Hand to Mouth, he devotes much attention to the
role poverty and hunger played in shaping him as an artist.
Much of his own experience can be viewed as an inspiration
to several motifs in his 1989 novel Moon Palace.
In the case of Auster it is hunger that binds the human
body with money, a theme present in the majority of his
novels. The lack of money causes hunger, hunger results in
destructive consequences for the body. All along, my only
ambition was to write 2 confesses Auster in the initial
1
http://www.worldmind.com/Cannon/Culture/Interviews/auster.
html. DOA September, 3. 2009.
2
P. Auster, Hand to Mouth, London 1998, p. 3.
Jarosław Hetman
188
sentences of his autobiography; at the same time he had
a powerful case against materialism ,3 and since at the
beginning of his career as a writer it was impossible for him
to support himself from literature, he began perceiving the
body in the categories of an obstacle, one that could have
been molded to minimize the problems caused by it, but one
that could not be completely removed. Therefore, for Auster
the body is also related to the issue of control.
On June twelfth, I sat down and charted my new regimen.
Powdered milk, instant coffee, small packages of bread those
would be my staples and every day I would eat the same thing:
eggs, the cheapest, most nutritious food known to man. Now
and then I would splurge on an apple or an orange, and if the
craving ever got too strong, I would treat myself to a hamburger
or a can of stew. The food would not spoil, and (theoretically
at any rate), I would not starve.4
The only problem the protagonist of the Moon Palace is
concerned with is avoiding starvation, death here being the
ultimate obstacle. The body is presented not so much as
a commodity, but as a utility. The clear division between the
mind and the body is thus exposed, the mind constituting
the essence of existence, the body being the necessary evil.
I was trying to separate myself from my body, taking the
long road around my dilemma by pretending it did not exist.
Others had traveled this road before me, and all of them had
discovered what I finally discovered for myself: the mind
3
Ibidem, p. 10.
4
P. Auster, Moon Palace, London 2004, p. 28.
Control in uncontrollable: the body of the artist&
189
cannot win over matter, for once the mind is asked too much,
it quickly shows itself to be matter as well. In order to rise
above my circumstances, I had to convince myself that I was
no longer real, and the result was that all reality began to waver
for me.5
Shortly later in the novel, the separation between the mind
and body disappears, not only in the way that one enables
the existence of the other, but also that one has a direct
impact on the functioning of the other. For M.S. Fogg, the
main character in Moon Palace, just like for the protagonist
of Hamsun s Hunger the malfunctioning of the body leads
to delusions, reaching a different state of consciousness,
which brings about the connotation with alcohol or drugs
not only because of hunger s ability to distort reality, but also
because of the pathological nature of the phenomenon. When
brought to the extreme, hunger blocks understanding, but
interestingly, affects only the domain of the mind, the body
is still physically capable of functioning in the surrounding
reality:
The closer I got to the end, however, the more trouble the
books gave me. I could feel my eyes making contact with the
words on the page, but no meaning rose up to me anymore, no
sounds echoed in my head. The Black marsh seemed wholly,
bewildering, an arbitrary collection of lines and curves divulged
nothing but their own muteness.6
5
Ibidem, p. 29.
6
Ibidem, pp. 29 30.
Jarosław Hetman
190
The question remains, though, what use of functioning eyes,
if the ability to interpret is impaired.
The difference between Auster s and Hamsun s character
is that the latter one, as Auster points out in his essay, seeks
out what is most difficult in himself, courting pain and
adversity in the same way other men seek out pleasure. He
goes hungry, not because he has to, but from some inner
compulsion, as if to wage a hunger strike against himself ,7
whereas for the former one it is a mere consequence of the
lack of money, but at the same time it is worth remembering
that he consciously puts himself in such a position in order
to turn his life into a work of fiction, hence the difference
is slight. Fogg is the more interesting character because his
body in his understanding is what a stage property is to
a theater play. In both cases, however, the aspect of control
seems to be crucial. Stating that it is a futile attempt would
be stating the obvious, but experimenting with the extent
to which control is possible is interesting in itself. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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