Gabriela Mistral and Wislawa Szymborska: War, Peace, and Politics - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Gabriela Mistral and Wislawa Szymborska: War, Peace, and Politics

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In the sealed cars of freight trains. across the country travels names, ... between Pearl Harbor and Hastings, Szymborska's 'Reality Demands' So much keeps happening, ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Gabriela Mistral and Wislawa Szymborska: War, Peace, and Politics


1
Gabriela Mistral and Wislawa SzymborskaWar,
Peace, and Politics
  • Dolores Lehr
  • La Salle University
  • PCEA, April 9, 2005

2
Gabriela Mistral
  • Born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga April 7, 1889 in
    Vicuna, Chile
  • Died January 10, 1957
  • Long Island, New York

3
Gabriela Mistral
  • Educator
  • Poet
  • Diplomat
  • Recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1945

4
Wislawa Szymborska
  • Born July 2, 1923 in Kornik, Poland
  • Lives in Krakow, Poland

5
Wislawa Szymborska
  • Literary Editor
  • Poet
  • Recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1996

6
Mistrals The Fall of Europe
  • Come, brother, come tonight
  • to pray with our sister who has
  • no child or mother or people here.
  • Its bitter to pray and hear the echo
  • sent back by wall and empty air.. .
  • She burns, the Old Mother who sheltered us
  • In her olive orchard and her vineyard.
  • We are the children calling to their Mother
  • Not knowing in this hour if she is the same
  • and will answer to the name we call her,

7
Mistrals Fall of Europe
  • or if shot through with flames and metal
  • her limbs called Sicily, Flanders,
  • Normandy, Campagna, are all ablaze.
  • A handful or two of grass and air
  • is enough for prayer and compassion.
  • Put away the loaf, the wine, the fruit,
  • Until the day of rejoicing and dancing
  • and arms wildly waving branches.
  • On this night, no table
  • Bright with Falernian wine and poppies
  • And no weeping and no sleep..

8
Mistrals The Footprint
  • Of the fleeing man I have
  • only the footprint,
  • The weight of his body,
  • And the wind that blows him.
  • No signs, no name,
  • no country or town, . . .
  • Only the anguish
  • that hurries his flight
  • hammering pulse,
  • gasping breath,
  • glistening sweat,
  • teeth on edge,
  • and the hard dry wind
  • that hits his back.
  • . . . . .

9
Mistrals The Footprint
  • I see, I count
  • The two thousand footprints
  • I go running, running
  • across old Earth,
  • mixing up his
  • poor tracks with mine,
  • or I stop and erase them
  • with my wild hair,
  • or facedown I lick
  • away the footprints.

10
Mistrals The Footprint
  • But the white Earth
  • turns eternal,
  • stretches endless
  • as a chain,
  • lengthens out into a snake,
  • and the Lord God does not break its back.
  • And the footprints go on
  • To the end of the world.

11
Mistrals Jewish Refugee Woman
  • Farther than the west wind I go,
  • farther than the stormy petrel.
  • I stop, I ask the way, I walk,
  • and walk, and get no sleep.
  • They cut my Earth away from me,
  • all theyre left me is the sea.
  • Home, habits, household gods
  • Are back there in the village.
  • Linden trees go by and beds of reeds
  • And the Rhine that taught me speech.
  • I havent brought a sprig of mint,
  • The scent would make me weep.
  • All Im bringing is my breath,
  • My blood, my anxious heart.. . .

12
Mistrals Jewish Refugee Woman
  • At every turn of the road
  • I leave some of my wealth behind,
  • a wave of pine resin,
  • a tower of grove of oaks.
  • My hand loses its gestures
  • of making cider and bread.
  • Winnowed clean of memories,
  • I will be naked when I reach the sea.

13
Szymborskas Still
  • In the sealed cars of freight trains
  • across the country travels names,
  • but where are they going to go,
  • and will they ever get out,
  • dont ask, cant say, dont know.
  • Nathans name bangs his fits on the wall.
  • Isaacs name sings in a maddened thrall.
  • Sarahs names cries that the water go first
  • To Aarons name which is dying of thirst.
  • . . . . .

14
Szymborskas Still
  • A cloud made of people passed over the land.
  • From a large cloud a small rain, a sole tear was
    shed,
  • a small rain, a sole tear, a season of lack.
  • Into a forest of black veer the tracks.
  • Thats so thats so, go the wheels.
  • These woods have no clearing.
  • Thats so thats so.
  • A cargo of cries disappearing.
  • Thats so thats so.
  • Awakened in deep night on hearing
  • thats so thats so,
  • the clatter of silence on silence.

15
Szymborskas Starvation Camp at Jasko
  • Write this down. Write it. In ordinary ink
  • on ordinary paper they were given on food,
  • all died of hunger. All. How many?
  • Its a large meadow. How much grass
  • was there per person.? Write it down I dont
    know.
  • History rounds off skeletons to the nearest zero.
  • . . . . .
  • This is the meadow where it became flesh.
  • But the meadow is silent as a bribed witness.
  • In the sunlight. Green. Over there is a forest
  • for chewing wood, for drinking form under the
    bark
  • a daily helping of landscape,
  • until one goes blind. Up there a bird,

16
Szymborskas Starvation Camp at Jasko
  • that moves across lips as a shadow
  • of its nutritious wings. Jaws opened,
  • teeth would chomp . . . . .
  • On a spit of barbed wire
  • a man was swaying.
  • They were singing with soil in their mouths.
  • A lovely song
  • about the way war hits you right in the heart.
  • Write about the silence here.
  • Yes.

17
Mistrals My Social Beliefs
  • Position as a pacifist
  • the normal reaction that war provokes in a
    woman particularly in a former teacher and a
    Spanish-American woman who knows about the
    paucity of our resources.
  • a woman without a political party

18
Szymborskas The End and the Beginning
  • After every war
  • someone has to clean up.
  • Things wont
  • Straighten themselves up, after all.
  • Someone has to push the rubble
  • to the side of the road,
  • so the corpse-filled wagons
  • can pass.. . .
  • Someone has to drag in a girder
  • to prop up a wall,
  • Someone has to glaze a window,
  • rehang a door.

19
Szymborskas The End and the Beginning
  • Photogenic its not,
  • and takes years.
  • All the cameras have left
  • for another war.
  • . . . . .
  • Those who knew
  • what was going on her
  • must make way for
  • those who know little.
  • And less than little
  • And finally as little as nothing.
  • . . . . .
  • In the grass that has overgrown
  • causes and effects,
  • Someone must be stretched out
  • blade of grass in his mouth
  • gazing at the clouds.

20
Szymborskas Reality Demands
  • Reality demands
  • we also state the following
  • life goes on.
  • AT Cannae and Borodino,
  • At Kosovo Polje and in Guernica.
  • There is a gas station
  • in a small plaza in Jericho
  • and freshly painted
  • Benches near Bila Hora.
  • Letters travel
  • between Pearl Harbor and Hastings,
  • . . . . .

21
Szymborskas Reality Demands
  • So much keeps happening,
  • that it must be happening everywhere.
  • Where not a stone is left standing,
  • there is an ice-cream truck
  • Besieged by children.
  • . . . . .
  • What moral flows from this? Probably none.
  • But what really flows is quickly drying blood,
  • And as always, some rivers and clouds.
  • On the tragic mountain passes
  • The wind blows hats off heads
  • and we cannot help
  • but laugh.

22
Szymborskas Children of an Era
23
Mistrals The Forbidden Word
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