Some Provocations from a Nobel Prize Winning Polish Novel
Polish author Olga Tokarczuk rose to literary fame after winning the Nobel Prize for literature for this novel in 2018. The book blurb is as follows:
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?
As any astute reader quickly notices however, this book is a “philosophical lament, disguised as a whodunit.”1 Between the author’s own pen and quotes from the enigmatic English poet William Blake that litter the pages and serve as epigraphs for each chapter, there is much food for thought. I have excerpted some of the best passages for your consideration here:
On the human psyche’s defense mechanism:
“The human psyche evolved in order to defend itself against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible for us to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.”
On prayer:
“Perhaps that’s the whole point of prayer – to think to yourself in peace, to want nothing, to ask for nothing, but simply to sort out your own mind. That should be enough.”
On existence:
“I see everything as if in a dark mirror, as if through smoked glass. I view the world in the same way as others look at the Sun in eclipse. Thus I see the Earth in eclipse. I see us moving about blindly in eternal Gloom, like the May bugs trapped in a box by a cruel child. It's easy to harm and injure us, to smash up our intricately assembled, bizarre existence. I interpret everything as abnormal, terrible and threatening. I see nothing but Catastrophes. But as the Fall is the beginning, can we possibly fall even lower?”
“On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.”
On sorrow:
“I realized that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundation of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.”
On feet (yes, feet):
“I have always regarded the feet as the most intimate and personal part of our bodies, and not the genitals, not the heart, or even the brain, organs of no great significance that are too highly valued. It is in the feet that all knowledge of Mankind lies hidden; the body sends them a weighty sense of who we really are and how we relate to the earth. It's in the touch of the earth, at its point of contact with the body that the whole mystery is located - the fact that we're built of elements of matter, while also being alien to it, separated from it. The feet - those are our plugs into the socket.”
On understanding each other:
“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves . . . And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”
On anger:
“Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.”
“Sometimes, when a Person feels Anger, everything seems simple and obvious. Anger puts things in order and shows you the world in a nutshell; Anger restores the gift of Clarity of Vision, which it’s hard to attain in any other state.”
On usefulness:
“But why should we have to be useful and for what reason Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about the Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who is worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profits to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.”
William Blake on one of the most unanswerable questions:
Every Night and every Morn,
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.
William Blake on truth:
“Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.”
William Blake on the treatment of living creatures (for the full poem, click here):
A Robin Red Breast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
…
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
And lastly, a rather gorgeous bit of wordsmithing on the astrological worldview by the author. If you recall from the blurb, the main character is a devout astrologist, for which she is scorned and ill-understood:
“Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness—so say the oldest legends. When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of outer space, then through galaxies, and finally, before it falls here, to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties, while it darkens and fades. First Pluto draws the frame for this cosmic experiment and reveals its basic principles—life is a fleeting incident, followed by death, which will one day let the spark escape from the trap; there’s no other way out. Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterward, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works. As it continues to fall, the spark crosses Neptune’s belt and is lost in its foggy vapors. As consolation Neptune gives it all sorts of illusions, a sleepy memory of its exodus, dreams about flying, fantasy, narcotics and books. Uranus equips it with the capacity for rebellion; from now on that will be proof of the memory of where the spark is from. As the spark passes the rings of Saturn, it becomes clear that waiting for it at the bottom is a prison. A labor camp, a hospital, rules and forms, a sickly body, fatal illness, the death of a loved one. But Jupiter gives it consolation, dignity and optimism, a splendid gift: things-will-work-out. Mars adds strength and aggression, which are sure to be of use. As it flies past the Sun, it is blinded, and all that it has left of its former, far-reaching consciousness is a small, stunted Self, separated from the rest, and so it will remain. I imagine it like this: a small torso, a crippled being with its wings torn off, a Fly tormented by cruel children; who knows how it will survive in the Gloom. Praise the Goddesses, now Venus stands in the way of its Fall. From her the spark gains the gift of love, the purest sympathy, the only thing that can save it and other sparks; thanks to the gifts of Venus they will be able to unite and support each other. Just before the Fall it catches on a small, strange planet that resembles a hypnotized Rabbit, and doesn’t turn on its own axis, but moves rapidly, staring at the Sun. This is Mercury, who gives it language, the capacity to communicate. As it passes the Moon, it gains something as intangible as the soul. Only then does it fall to Earth, and is immediately clothed in a body. Human, animal or vegetable. That’s the way it is.”
This same author more recently wrote a nearly 1,000 page novel on a “mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe,” that I have heard raving reviews of, and will read in time. Let me know if you would like to join me in that.
END
Ahsan, Kamal. Rev. “Drive Your Plow” is Philosophical Lament, Disguised as a Whodunit.” 16 Aug. 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/08/16/751323423/drive-your-plow-is-philosophical-lament-disguised-as-a-whodunit