Buket Uzuner's Hava/Air (2018 original; 2020: English translation)
Jeannette Winterson's Passion/Tutku (1987 original; 1997: Turkish translation)
Singing
Story, Healing Drum: Shamans and Storytellers of Turkic Siberia
By Kira Van
Dausen. 2004. Montreal: McGill University Press.
The experiences,
worldviews, and practices of shamans and other spiritual practitioners in
Turkic Siberia unfold as narratives in this study based on ethnographic
fieldwork. In her first meeting with a Siberian healer, Kira Van Deusen was
cured of the symptoms of sunstroke. This initial excursion led to many years of
research among shamans in the former Soviet states of Tuva and Khakassia, where
shamanism is now reviving. These two states have similar indigenous cultures,
but historic circumstances have led to many differences in contemporary social
and cultural structures. (…) The local religions are animistic in nature, with
shamans as mediators between people and spirits of nature, places, epic heroes,
and ancestors. Shamans, both male and female, use singing and storytelling to
the beat of drums as the main vehicles for their ritual practice. The
first chapter is dedicated to a review of the main historical
features of the region. Mongolian, Chinese, and Russian colonialism brought
Christian and Buddhist religious influences. When independent states
were founded in the 1990s, Siberian shamanism, which had suffered
many years of persecution, persisted mainly as stories of bygone days. The
second chapter tells favorite narratives including stories about shamanic help
in retrieving stolen horses, mysterious visions that led shamans to find ritual
objects, and power contests between shamans. The third chapter unfolds
characteristics of shamanic cosmologies in Turkic Siberia: many worlds are
arranged vertically and horizontally and are inhabited by different entities;
artists are viewed as people with a spiritual gift; caves, lakes and mountain
peaks are considered sacred places to encounter supernatural entities; bad spirits
try to lure people and destroy them; and sacred animals are not sacrificed but
kept alive as lucky charms. The fourth chapter tells of storytellers whose
initiation and arts are viewed in terms of spiritual invocation. Both
shamans and story tellers serve the spirits and are considered to be directly
connected to the sacred. Words are perceived as means to create worlds
of spiritual geography, and storytelling can be used for healing. The fifth
chapter adds the dimension of music to processes of healing, entering inner
worlds, and connecting people with nature and with the spiritual. Much
of the music is produced by shamans drums and costumes that include bells
and other noise-producing materials. Music had not been generally viewed as a
public performance until modern influences increased. Thus, many throat singers
and musicians used to play alone in the wilderness as part of their
personal communications with other worlds. Musical instruments have often been
considered sacred and there is an abundance of stories about mystical
events related to the instruments and materials used for their preparation. The
sixth chapter tells of the powers words and language carry, their potential
danger, and the ways they can be harnessed for healing purposes. Poetry is
an important dimension of shamanic practice in Turkic Siberia. Van Dausen
includes several full versions of translated shamanic poems called Algysh.
(…) The seventh/last chapter tells how contemporary shamanic practice is
adapting to urban conditions, post-Soviet social hierarchies, international
exposure, global flow of knowledge, and modern secular education systems. Van
Dausen views Tuvan and Khakassian arts of healing, divination, and
communicating with spiritual entities as vital and living traditions in which
most practitioners earnestly adhere to the powers they feel within
themselves and nature.
Last but not
least, I just finished Jeannette Winterson’s Passion. It was a
revisit, a second reading which felt like a first to be honest since the date
on the book was 1997!
Plot: Napoleonic Wars intertwine the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meets their unique destiny. For me, the novel is an early evidence of JW’s fascinating imagination, heartbreaking at times, and reminds me of García Márquez (try imagining his feminist version!)
A complex lesson in the Passion involves freedom: reclaiming of Villanelle's heart represents reclaiming her freedom, but even so she wants to gamble it again! Then, at the end, when V arranges to rescue Henri from the asylum, he chooses to remain and becomes the 'sane' madman, the wise fool. He says freedom is the ability to love, and forgetting oneself in that love, "we are lukewarm people, and our longing for freedom is our longing for love" (154). He decides to grow roses on a rock island, asking seeds from Napoleon's Josephine, so metaphorically speaking, despite the barrenness of human heart, love is still possible and doesn't matter if the owner of the heart is an asylum. Henri feels free. "We fear it [passion]. We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much. And still we long to feel" (155).
I remember being struck by a postmodern genre, namely, historiographic metafiction during my college years at Bogazici. One book after another… One course after another, exploring works of A.S. Byatt and Graham Swift among dozens of others. Through its playfulness, humor and challenging grand narratives, historical metafiction easily stole my heart and matched my worldview then. My taste and ideas might have changed in two decades, but I still can’t help the loud and fast heartbeats, and picture myself in black and with combat boots and earphones. [+Passion pulping in every cell of my being.]
The day I composed this entry, I received a box full with freshly picked lemons from Samandag/Hatay. The box originally had cheap snacks called Tutku(!) meaning Passion in Turkish. It made me laugh out loud. After such a powerful reading experience on passion, the cheesiness of naming an unhealthy snack (a fast food item) as tutku was surely the joke of the day!
Below is the sad-looking box whose content matter made me passionately happy (I even kept the seeds and the peels, and will continue to do so until I use the very last one in the coming weeks). Yes, I can get very passionate about fresh lemons, green olives and freshly baked simit.
Plot: Napoleonic Wars intertwine the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meets their unique destiny. For me, the novel is an early evidence of JW’s fascinating imagination, heartbreaking at times, and reminds me of García Márquez (try imagining his feminist version!)
A complex lesson in the Passion involves freedom: reclaiming of Villanelle's heart represents reclaiming her freedom, but even so she wants to gamble it again! Then, at the end, when V arranges to rescue Henri from the asylum, he chooses to remain and becomes the 'sane' madman, the wise fool. He says freedom is the ability to love, and forgetting oneself in that love, "we are lukewarm people, and our longing for freedom is our longing for love" (154). He decides to grow roses on a rock island, asking seeds from Napoleon's Josephine, so metaphorically speaking, despite the barrenness of human heart, love is still possible and doesn't matter if the owner of the heart is an asylum. Henri feels free. "We fear it [passion]. We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much. And still we long to feel" (155).
I remember being struck by a postmodern genre, namely, historiographic metafiction during my college years at Bogazici. One book after another… One course after another, exploring works of A.S. Byatt and Graham Swift among dozens of others. Through its playfulness, humor and challenging grand narratives, historical metafiction easily stole my heart and matched my worldview then. My taste and ideas might have changed in two decades, but I still can’t help the loud and fast heartbeats, and picture myself in black and with combat boots and earphones. [+Passion pulping in every cell of my being.]
The day I composed this entry, I received a box full with freshly picked lemons from Samandag/Hatay. The box originally had cheap snacks called Tutku(!) meaning Passion in Turkish. It made me laugh out loud. After such a powerful reading experience on passion, the cheesiness of naming an unhealthy snack (a fast food item) as tutku was surely the joke of the day!
Below is the sad-looking box whose content matter made me passionately happy (I even kept the seeds and the peels, and will continue to do so until I use the very last one in the coming weeks). Yes, I can get very passionate about fresh lemons, green olives and freshly baked simit.
 |
| Should I send this to Jeannette Winterson who certainly has a good sense of British humor? |
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