Knight The and the Lady: Performing Gender Identity in Wiersze miosne by Jerzy Harasymowicz
EWA STACZYK UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER iersze miosne [The Love Poems], first published in 1979, belong to the most popular works in the oeuvre of the Polish poet Jerzy Harasymowicz (1933-1999).1 From his debut in 1956 until his death in 1999, he published sixty-one books of poetry.2 Discussing Harasymowiczs work, Czesaw Miosz argues that dream and a fairy-tale world make up his realm, where no sober advice of logic interferes with his liberated imagination (481). In spite of the surreal nature of his work, most of Harasymowiczs poems have their roots in a specific areathe Subcarpathian region in south-eastern Poland. Like other volumes, Wiersze miosne utilize Carpathian, especially Lemko, themes. But this is not the most important feature of the collection. Apart from the regional aspect, critics emphasize the poems remarkable representation of femininity, formed by an amalgamation of the sensual and the spiritual. This unusual fusion of the corporeal and the immaterial has been considered the most significant feature of the volume and is construed not as a trivial profanation of theological senses, but as a spiritualization of the female body that lifts the main character to the level of the divine (Kaliszewski 195-96). Surprisingly, very little attention has been paid to exploring the construction of masculinity in Harasymowiczs love poetry. Nor have the reasons for portraying women through the prism of sanctity been satisfactorily explained. My main aim in this article is to explore the problem of the performance of gender in selected texts by Harasymowicz. Of particular importance is how the conventions of the love poem assign gender roles and, consequently, how this impinges upon the speakers performance of gender identity. Since the works to be analyzed in this study can be classified as examples of travel writing, I will also investigate the impact of travel and space on the way in which the poetic persona represents himself and, consequently, constructs the representation of the poems female character. The poem Jakie to przed-
W
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wionie bdzie [What This Early Spring Will Be Like] will be analyzed in detail, while fragments of other works such as W grach marzec [March in the Mountains], Przyjedzie mj miy [My Beloved Will Come], and Przyjazd w czasie wit wielkanocnych [Easter Arrival] will serve as additional sources, allowing for a discussion of the problem of gender performance.3 I claim that the process of gendering in these works is based on performance and performativity. I borrow both terms from Judith Butlers influential study Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). Here, performativity of gender is considered something that one does, not as a manifestation of what one is (34). Performance, on the other hand, viewed by Butler as a form of theatricality, refers to what Moya Lloyd describes as acts of miming or hyperbolizing existing signifiers (202). In this case, it is original gender identities that are parodied and hyperbolized.4 Moreover, since most of Harasymowiczs love poems are set in the Polish Lemkivshchyna, part of the Subcarpathian region, the formation of gender identity is closely related to the process of travel. Eric J. Leeds discussion of the reciprocality of travel and identity will therefore be an important theoretical component underpinning my argument (217-23). And finally, in order to further explore the role of the region in gender encounter, I will employ Mary Louise Pratts concept of the contact zone (6). Jakie to przedwionie bdzie Jakie to przedwionie bdzie Nie przywitaj nas cerkwi dzwony Gry czarnym popyn abdziem Bez Twej wosw korony Przejdziemy si z zawilcami I Ty powiesz tak si stao Midzy cerkwi wyni i nini Pi lat do mnie jechae Pi lat bye jak ikona wity Jerzy nad mym kiem Teraz przy stole stoj ona Szaf z ykami mam poduszk
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Za wiele gdzie za morze Wyprawiae si w imi sowa Ja w tych gawronach brzozach Czekaam na swego herosa I w ten mj paszcz wosw Zawinito mnie wreszcie ca Tu nikt nie sucha boych gosw I gdzie mnie komu sprzedano I co mi tam barok teraz tarok I nawet cerkiew za gr Wyprowadzono mi z ycia mio skrpowan Sam jestem na wiecie jak piro W przeciwn stron rozchodz si gry Jej suknia nie odzywa si sowem Na wietrze loki jak baranki skacz Niczego niewiadome What This Early Spring Will Be Like What this early spring will be like The bells of cerkiew will not greet us Mountains will flow like a black swan Without the crown of your hair We will walk with the windflowers And youll sayit happened Between the high and the low cerkiew You traveled for five years to me For five years you were like an icon Saint George above my bed And now I stand by the tablea wife I have got a cupboard of cutlery and a pillow Too many times beyond the sea You went away in the name of the word And in these rooksbirches
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I waited for my hero And in this coat of hair I was wrapped whole Here no one listens to the god-like voices And I was sold to someone somewhere I dont need the baroquetarok now Nor the cerkiew behind the mountain My love was taken away from my life, hampered I am all alone like a pen The mountains split in opposite directions Her dress says no word Her locks fly in the wind like little lambs Unaware of anything5 On the most literal level, the poems theme can be described as a possible or imagined meeting between two lovers who have not seen each other for five years, during which time the woman has married. The man is the speaker who relates the events. He also gives voice to the woman and quotes her words. The female character describes the pain of waiting and of long-term separation, as well as her forced marriage to someone else. The male persona closes her narrative with a cry of loneliness and acknowledges the end of the relationship by comparing himself and his lover to splitting mountains. Lemkivshchyna is the setting in which the dramatic situation takes place. The inherent features of its landscape and culturefor example, Greek-Catholic churches, the hills of the Beskid Mountains, and iconsidentify this particular area of Poland. The poet also invokes a specific place. By mentioning the high and low cerkiew (135), he is referring to the Lemko village Mochnaczka, located in the western part of the Beskid Sdecki Mountains. The village consists of two parts: Mochnaczka Wyna and Mochnaczka Nina. Despite this administrative division, however, it has only one cerkiew. Thus, the mention of two churches is a metonymic description of Mochnaczka itself. Some may argue that the phrase does not necessarily refer to this particular place, since there are other hamlets in the Subcarpathian region that replicate this toponymy: for example, Krulowa Nina and Krulowa Wyna, Moszczenica Nina and Moszczenica Wyna, or the former Tarnawa Wyna and Tarnawa
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Nina. Both Krulowa and Moszczenica have, however, always been Roman Catholic villages, whereas Tarnawa, despite its historically large Greek-Catholic population, never appeared in Harasymowiczs Wiersze miosne. Mochnaczka, on the other hand, is the most important village in the topography of this volume. It is the place of anticipation, arrivals, returns, and farewells. Other examples of such uses of its space in Wiersze miosne can be found in the cycle Mochnaczka przyjazd [Mochnaczka. Arrival] and the poem Pejza z Mochnaczki [Mochnaczkas Landscape]. The Spermatic Journey through Lemkivshchyna6 The performativity and performance of the poetic personas identity develop throughout the poem by means of its retrospective narrative. Unlike traditional travel narratives that start with departure and progress towards arrival, the poem begins with an arrival scene and moves backward in time to earlier events. The performativity of the speaker, or the poetic representation of what he does, is based on three distinctive acts: the act of arriving, the act of traveling (jechae), and the act of setting out on a journey (wyprawiae si). The arrival is presented in the first stanza, while the two remaining activities are embedded in the subsequent narration of the woman. The opening stanza not only delivers the first marker of performativity, but is also the point at which the performance of identity commences. Although invoked by negation, the bells of the cerkiew and the crown of the womans hair are the first signs of performance. Along with the black swan of the mountains and the windflowers, they set the scene of arrival and delineate Lemkivshchyna as the theatre of events. A similarly constructed arrival scene appears in the poem W grach marzec. Just as in Jakie to przedwionie bdzie, the importance of the moment of arrival is stressed by the evocation of elements connected to the landscape of Lemkivshchyna. In the case of W grach marzec, the icon is the main marker that defines the region. The lovers sight is compared to the eyes of the icon: I przyjecha patrzyli z ikon si.7 By assigning the iconic look to the man and the woman, the poet alludes to the hypnotic eyes of icons that light the faces of saints and constitute the metaphor of their presence. In this way, the arrival scene becomes a powerful meeting of the lovers who, despite their corporeal form, are attributed with facets of sanctity. Hyperbolism, which is typical of performance, appears as the
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narrative of Jakie to przedwionie bdzie progresses. The personas peregrination between the high and the low cerkiew lasted five years. On the one hand, these five years symbolize the magnitude of separation; on the other, they amplify the mans freedom and mobility. His earlier departure becomes hyperbolized in a similar manner. Not only does this departure begin the journey beyond the sea, but it is undertaken in the name of the word. The journey, thus, can be interpreted either as a religious mission, which aims to spread the word of God, or as the venture of a poet spreading his own word or searching for the word. The implied importance of the journey is matched by the prominence of the poetic persona. The woman describes him with the Polish word heros, which bears the meaning of both hero and Heros. This link is further strengthened by the simile bye jak ikona [you were like an icon] (135) and the reference to Saint George. The icon of Saint George embodies connotations that allow Harasymowicz to construct a versatile image of the lover/traveler. The story of Saint George is so complex that some have argued that such a figure never existed, or that legends about him are Christianized versions of a pagan myth (Attwater and John 219). He was one of the most well-known Christian martyrs and the center of his cult was located in modern-day Lydda in Palestine. It is likely that this is also where he was martyred at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century. Saint George became increasingly popular in medieval times, owing to Jacobus da Varagines Golden Legend (1260). According to one of the legends, the knight slays a dragon that was terrorizing the city of Silene and saves the princess who had been chosen as its next victim. In return, the grateful citizens abandon paganism and convert to Christianity. The legend also influenced Christian iconography, particularly that of the Orthodox Church. Saint George is depicted in icons as a rider on a white horse who slays the dragon and saves the city. The princess usually stands by the city gates while her parents hold the keys to the city and watch the battle from a window or balcony. Meanwhile, the warrior is blessed by Manus Dei, visible in one of the top corners of the icon. The poetic persona in Jakie to przedwionie bdzie is granted all the virtues that the image of Saint George embodies. First, he is associated with knightliness; second, with sanctity; and third, he is credited with more general features, such as masculinity, independence, mobility, and physical strength. This demonstrates that the
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identity of the poetic persona is in fact an artificial and theatrical construct, which consists of elements that, outside a work of art, would be seen as mutually exclusive: the poetic persona is simultaneously a hero and Heros, a traveler, a lover, a saint, and a poet. Above all, the poetic persona is also a performer who acts out his identity and brings to life the identity of the woman. While the latter will be examined in the course of this analysis, I will first place the self-representation of the speaker in the context of the tradition of travel writing since, as stated above, linear the acts of arrival, travel, and departure are important components of the performative dimension of his identity. Leed claims that identity is often forged through the activity of travel. By examining the cultural determinants of travel, he raises questions about the process of gendering in patriarchal cultures. Leed argues that throughout most of history the representative traveler has worn masculine persona (219). Travel was, thus, considered to be mans destiny and an agency imparting eminence and recognition (219-220). The identity of the speaker in the poem Jakie to przedwionie bdzie conveys similar senses and is delineated according to the rules set by phallocratic and phallocentric cultures. The act of traveling allows the poetic persona to acquire a masculine identity that is best expressed by the roles he performsthe role of knight, lover, poet and, paradoxically, also the role of saint. This stereotypical conception of complete masculine identity allows the spermatic journey to continue towards its final aimsowing the seed. Harasymowiczs representation of the lover corresponds with Leeds conclusions about the mobility of men in travel literature, which is powerfully charged by the reigning images of masculinity, whether of the wandering knight or the wandering holy man, the shaman or the actor (220). The poet employs all these powerful associations while constructing the speakers portrait. Moreover, Harasymowicz uses the images of Lemkivshchyna in order to strengthen this representation. This Subcarpathian region of PolandLemkivshchynais the space in which the spermatic journey and the formation of masculinity take place. The five-year-long ride between the high and the low cerkiew and the icon of Saint George are the most important elements of Harasymowiczs imagery, signifying Lemkivshchyna and simultaneously contributing to the process of gendering. The act of setting out beyond the sea that begins the journey, however, also has important implications for the representation of space. It not only forms an important stage in the identity-shaping process, but raises questions
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which she is wrapped by those who sold her, is described as paszcz wosw [the coat of hair]. The imagery, as well as the metaphor the coat of hair, brings with it associations with paszczanica, an iconic representation of Christ, covered in a shroud and placed in the tomb after his death. The paszczanica is unveiled to worshipers on Good Friday. Andrzej Kaliszewski interprets such representations in Harasymowiczs poetry as an attempt to transgress female sexuality. He fails, however, to explain the reasons for such profanation or, as he views it, sacralization of the female body (196). I argue that the womans inability to act independently often results in sublimitya move that can be traced to the traditional patriarchal and Catholic paradigm of Polish culture in which women have rarely been envisaged as independent agents. Instead of action, thus, as a form of sublimation they were associated with sanctity. Such an association would not only exclude them from the decision-making process, but leave activity in the hands of men. Agnieszka Graff demonstrates that such perceptions of femininity have been present also in Polish public life and history. She claims that sublimation often meant the dismissal, and eventually forgetting, of the actual role of women in history (26-27). The analysis of the above stanza reveals the most important pair of binary oppositions used in this poem in order to construct the identity of both the man and the woman. The lover/traveler is free and mobile, whereas the woman is sessile and bound. He travels, she waits; he rides, she is hampered and sold: activity versus passivity, freedom versus enslavement, and presence versus absence. Similar opposites can be found in other love poems by Harasymowicz. In Przyjazd w czasie wit wielkanocnych, for instance, the woman is waiting for the man by the window for the entire winter. She draws her sadness with the stylus of frost, while checking if Saint George is approaching on the horse of blizzard (121). Moreover, the opening of the poem Przyjedzie mj miy portrays a similar scene, in which the female character is saying with hope: przyjedzie mj miy / Jak niegi z mitry ikon zejd (118).12 Another pair of binaries can be recognized in the image of woman as an ordinary wife and its contrast with the portrait of man as the poet on his quest for the word. The wife is rooted in the poetic of the everyday, surrounded by her dowrya cupboard of spoons and a pillowwhile the poet explores new lands and fulfills an important mission. This binary valuates the space to which each of them is as-
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signed. The woman is associated with the local, homely, native, and the natural, while the man is seen as part of the outside, foreign, and intellectual spheres. The binaries of travel and waiting, absence and presence, and nature and civilization are well summarized by Leeds argument of gendering. According to Leed, gendering is a dialectical process that proceeds through the creation of opposites out of differences. There is no free and mobile man without the un-free and sessile female, no knight without the lady, no father without the mother (221). If there were no woman in opposition to whom the speaker could define himself, his performance of masculinity would have no means of existence. It is the othering, therefore, that puts into motion the poetic personas performance of identity. The last two stanzas of Jakie to przedwionie bdzie confirm the above conclusion. Once the binary oppositions have been broken and the illusion built on the cultural scenario of the knight and the lady has been confronted with reality, the carefully performed identity of the knight shatters. The hero has not completed his spermatic journey, since the seed has not been spread. Nor has he prevented his woman from being sold. As a result of being excluded from this exchange of possession, he fails to prove his masculinity. This is indicated by the use of the passive voice, previously characteristic only of the woman. Wyprowadzono mi z ycia mio skrpowan [emphasis mine], he admits (136).13 This statement of hopelessness, followed by the expression of solitude and the image of splitting mountains, signifies a general crisis of identity. For the poetic persona there is no masculinity without femininity, just like baroque, tarok, and cerkiew cease to mean anything when love is taken away.14 Conclusion In this article, I explored the interdependence of identity, travel, and gender, focusing chiefly on one of Harasymowiczs love poems, Jakie to przedwionie bdzie. I argued that the performance of the poetic personas identity is constructed through the process of otheringthe defining of oneself in opposition to another. In the case of this poem, it is the identity of the male persona that is constructed in distinction to the identity of the female character. By drawing on Butlers concepts of performativity and performance, the stereotypical character of such categorizations can be seen as rooted in phallocentric cultural norms. Leeds discussion of travel writing allows for Harasymowiczs interpretations of masculinity and femininity to be
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studied as patriarchal allegories of mobility and sessility, while Pratts concept of the contact zone sheds new light on the intersection of space and gender identity. An analysis of Jakie to przedwionie bdzie reveals that the constructs of the masculine and the feminine, as presented by Harasymowicz, are based on reciprocity and cannot exist separately. Moreover, the spermatic journey, which aims to broadcast the seed, cannot be completed without the woman. Thus, the collapse of the male-female binary at the close of the poem results in a masculinity crisisone that not only reflects the state of the poets gender consciousness, but also the Polish/Catholic heteronormative paradigm in which woman is viewed as a requisite supplement to man.
1. It was followed by two additional editions. The second edition was published in 1982 and the third, revised under the title Wiesz wszystko. Wiersze miosne [You Know it All. The Love Poems] in 1986. This article is based on the last edition. This number includes poems and reprints but not anthologies and translations. The abovementioned poems are part of Wiersze miosne. The performance of identity is mainly associated by Butler with parodies of original gender identities within the cultural practices of drag, crossdressing and butch / femme identities (187). Here I omit the problem of trans-gendered identities and utilize other distinctive features of the term, such as theatricality, imitation, exaggeration, and hyperbolism. All translations are mine. The word tarok, which describes a card game or a set of cards used in fortunetelling, functions in Harasymowiczs poem exclusively as a component of the internal rhyme: I co mi tam barok teraz tarok [emphasis mine] (136). The word cerkiew, meaning an Orthodox or Greek-Catholic church, is kept in its original form. It is one of the most important words in Harasymowiczs Wiersze miosne and a significant element of Lemkivshchynas cultural landscape. The title Spermatic Journey comes from Eric J. Leeds book entitled The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (1991) and refers to the heros patriarchal quest to spread his seed. [and he camethey looked with the strength of icons eyes] Pratt borrows the term contact from linguistics, where the idea of contact language refers to improvised languages that develop among speakers of different native languages who need to communicate with each other consistently (6). [And I was sold to someone somewhere ]
Notes
2. 3. 4.
5.
6. 7. 8.
9.
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10. Moya Lloyd stresses the importance of repetition and re-citation in Butlers concept of performativity: Repetition is central to performativity (197). 11. [And in this coat of hair / I was wrapped whole / Here no-one listens to the god-like voices / And I was sold to someone somewhere] 12. [My beloved will arrive / as soon as the snow comes down off the icons miter] 13. [My love was taken away from my life, hampered] 14. Baroque may be interpreted here as a poetic metonymy. By the 1979, when the first edition of Wiersze miosne came out, Harasymowicz had published several volumes on the Polish seventeenth and eighteenthcentury history and the Sarmatian culture of the Polish gentry. They have been described by critics as the baroque poems. Thus, this autothematic use of the word baroque indicates that not only has the speakers gender identity disintegrated, but his identity as a poet as well.
Attwater, Donald and Catherine R. John. Dykcjonarz witych. Wrocaw: Ossolineum, 1997. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culure. 5th ed. London: Routledge, 2007. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990. de Varagine, Jacobus. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. Trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger. NY: Arno P, 1969. Graff, Agnieszka. wiat bez kobiet. Warszawa: WAB, 2005. Harasymowicz, Jerzy. Jakie to przedwionie bdzie. Wiesz wszystko. Wiersze miosne. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986: 135-136. ---. Mochnaczka przyjazd. Wiesz wszystko. Wiersze miosne. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986: 73-85. ---. Pejza z Mochnaczki. Wiesz wszystko. Wiersze miosne. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986: 132. ---. Przyjedzie mj miy. Wiesz wszystko. Wiersze miosne. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986: 118. ---. Przyjazd w czasie wit wielkanocnych. Wiesz wszystko. Wiersze miosne. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986: 121. ---. W grach marzec. Wiesz wszystko. Wiersze miosne. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1986: 112. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Feminisms. An Antology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. NJ: Rutgers UP, 1993: 350-356. Kaliszewski, Andrzej. Ksi z Kraju agodnoci. (O twrczoci Jerzego Harasymowicza). Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1988. Leed, Eric J. The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism. NY:
Works Cited
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Basic Books, 1991. Lloyd, Moya. Performativity, Parody, Politics. Theory, Culture, Society 16 (1999): 195-213. Miosz, Czesaw. The History of Polish Literature. 2nd ed. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: U of California P, 1983. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. 15th ed. London: Routledge, 2006. Spivak, Gayatri. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2003.