An Essay) Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Creative Arts, in July 2019
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SAUNTER Saunter (a novella) and Girl on the City Streets (an essay) submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Arts, in July 2019. Dr Angela Argent School of Communications Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Technology Sydney CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP I, Angela Argent, declare that this st hesiand novella is su bmitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Creative Arts in the School of Communication, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. This work is wholly my own unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated within the essay. This document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. This research is supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program. Production Note: Signature removed prior to publication. Angela Argent 22/07/2019 2 Acknowledgements I would not have been able to complete this novella without the assistance of many people. I would especially like to thank Tony Macris for his generous encouragement and enthusiasm for this project and my literary education. Tony’s supervision has been inspired and has provided the discipline I’ve needed. Thanks to Debra Adelaide for her careful reading and attentive feedback and to the many wonderful people in the writing program at UTS. Thanks to countless friends in Prague, especially Viola Parente-Čapková and Zdena and Michael Doležal(ová) for keeping Prague just around the corner once I returned to Australia. All errors of understanding and translation from Czech are my own. Thanks to my reading group, especially James Worner, Tess Pearson and Annarosa Berman and my brother, Frank Argent, for making the time to read drafts while flitting between countries and busy lives. Thanks to Chris Marcatili for proofreading the final draft. Thanks too to my three awesome teenagers who have recently provided me with the time to write. If this were ever to be published, I’d dedicate it to them. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract p. 5 Saunter (novella) p. 7 Girl on the City Streets (essay) p. 135 Bibliography p. 179 4 ABSTRACT Saunter (a novella) and Girl on The City Streets (an essay) Pavla moves uncertainly through Prague, a city on the brink of revolution in 1989. On November 17, she is on the streets with her lover Charlie and best friend Milena, along with tens of thousands of students, demanding freedom. That night, as the protest reaches fever pitch, Pavla and Charlie are cornered in a narrow side street and truncheoned. Pavla is taken to hospital where she gives birth to a baby daughter and sleeps for weeks. When she wakes, she has missed seeing the revolution unfold and Charlie has disappeared. Eleven years later, Pavla returns to Prague and needs to relearn how to move through the city in order to make sense of it. The theoretical essay mirrors the novella by examining questions of mobility and flânerie/flâneuserie, understood as a ‘way of reading the street.’ Flâneuserie is invoked as a literary metaphor for the mobile urban observer that is also connected with the influence of surrealism and questions of gender difference. The term has been used in a range of literatures to signify issues of changing city life, irrespective of time and place. Together, the novella and essay suggest that the protagonist/flâneuse, while sauntering through the flux of bodies, encountering the vitality of the city, as well as the exclusionary and disorienting practices enacted within it, grows and accumulates the power to transgress and re/write her own city narrative. 5 6 SAUNTER 7 ‘…Beauty, neither static nor dynamic. The human heart, beautiful as a seismograph…’ André Breton, Nadja ‘The ones we love are enemies of the State…’ Socrates, Antigone 8 Prague, November 17, 2000 Pavla jostled her way over the teeming embankment, following close at the heels of a man with a mane of chocolate shoulder-length hair. Was it Charlie? He cut a seam through the crowds, striding more nimbly over slushy cobblestones than she was expecting. Tourists and stragglers ricocheted out of his way. With each step his corkscrew curls flew at her face, bouncing closer and closer. She reached out with one hand, wanting to knot her fingers through them. But she fought off the urge by wedging her fingertips into the seams of her pockets, down to where the stitching was giving way. I don’t have time for this, she scolded herself. The cold was biting and her London jacket too thin. In a couple of hours she had a lecture to give; she needed to teach if they intended to eat. But even doing her job amounted to just more time wasted. Her semester would involve eccentric meanderings, useless things, with no one intending to listen, not ever, irrespective of what gems she might find to talk about. Reticence, that old new feeling, accompanied by the soundtrack of her empty stomach churning. Was this Charlie obsession just today’s mode of procrastination? He couldn’t be Charlie, not after all this time. It was utterly pointless, she had no excuse to be here at all and less reason still to be following him. Then why did she feel she was coming undone? This man was no stranger. He moved through her every dream. Apparition. Shade. Wraith. Walking just inches from her. He was unforgotten. She could reach up and touch the nape of his neck. Warm her hands, bury them deep within that snake’s nest of tangles. Keeping up with him through the lurching crowd was a challenge, but the effort let her stamp out the misery of the rain stained day. She had so many questions, smouldering coals, only he could extinguish. She needed to ask him: Where did you end up, day one, Black Friday, post-massacre, Charlie? Eleven years ago, exactly. That day, our last together. Which parts of ‘forever’ collapsed for you then? A future for us? Is that where your dreaming ended? 9 Pavla had missed it all. She needed Charlie to fill in the detail. Haste? Chaos? Improvisation? Euphoria? Theatre? How would he describe it to her? A carnival, with not a single window broken? He would need to render images carefully for her. His word pictures, she needed them, those missing shards of jagged fragments. Charlie, Charlie? How long after did you stick around? What was it about the revolution that failed your test? Almost, but not quite the cover version you spin-doctored? Not the blueprint for the better world that you demanded? I just don’t understand. Why, when, how? Your vanishing act needs explaining. His gait was Charlie’s, his form lanky, legs bowed. He slowed, then stopped suddenly at the curb. Pavla stopped quickly too. It all boiled down to just one question really; Charlie, what the fuck happened to you? They waited, together but not, for a tram to shunt by. His fingerless gloves only inches away. His bitten fingernails, raw to the quick. Long neck, broad shoulders, a blue denim jacket. Was it the one she remembered? She willed him to turn back to face her. Could she make him feel the weight of her stare? Just turn around, Charlie. Look at me! For fucks sake, look at me, will you? He carried his head tilted to the left, like he was thinking hard. He’d always spent his days looking pensive and defiant. That contemplative tilt. The perfect father for her child. A waft of scent. It smelled of Charlie, citrus, the bitter tang of orange rind. She hated this untethered feeling; speeding thoughts, chaos, the seedy blur of memory taking flight. Sun-tanned skin hidden beneath jacket and jumper. Fresh oranges. An artist’s palette for springtime. A tree on an island, growing sideways like a hammock for them to lie against together. She painted on broad shoulders, imposing, outlined in dappled light. The tram took forever. Finally, it lurched forward, leaving sparks in its wake. The man stopped at the curb. It was Charlie. It wasn’t not him. So it had to be. 10 Part i 11 ONE December 1988 Pavla swung on her chair, frittering away another lunchtime, half-listening to an insufferable bunch of fellow students rambling on and on, as they did most days, in a room stuffed full with thieves of oxygen. It was much too hot in the university canteen. She felt contained, like she’d been bottled. A layer of grease covered her table, tacky, like the film lining the roof of her mouth. The potted plants by the window were far too many. They were limp and should have been binned. But like the wilted students around her, they stayed in situ. Only the air had gone missing. She was pressed up against colleagues, not friends. Their game was odious. Their bravado, like hers, transparent and thin. They had each taken their turn in the stupid game. Everyone but her. She was next and there was no way out of it. Each of the students who had proceeded her had added their jibe, cataloguing the obstacles that thwarted their daily existence. Their veiled grievances listed the ways in which the state ‘protected’ them, preventing daylight, real or metaphorical, from ever reaching them. Their reticence made them the antithesis of the rebels she hoped they might be. Letting the conversation limp forward conferred no freedom. Her turn had come around. The thoughts in her head were spiralling fast. Too late now, there was no leaving.