River ¿Oods and Tides of Memory in Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces

/LTXHIDFWLRQV5LYHU¿RRGVDQGWLGHVRI memory in Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces CATALINA BOTEZ ,QP\DUWLFOHRQ$QQH0LFKDHOVµ¾FWLRQDOZRUN)XJLWLYH3LHFHV ,LQWURGXFHWKHFULWLFDOFRQFHSW of liquefaction as thematic leitmotiv that connects psychological, transgenerational trauma to largescale environmental catastrophes liNe ¿ooGs anG hurricanes across time anG place, and across international, national and domestic spaces. Through this central trope, I show how psychological post-traumatic healing in Holocaust survivors and geologic post-traumatic healing operate in tandem in the novel, more precisely how the ¾gurative unearthing and worNing through of traumatic memory across generations parallels the literal unearthing and re-situating of archaeological artefacts across geologic time. The interconnectedness of psychological wounds with geological wounds demonstrates the ethics of nature – a kind of co-healing of persons and places across generations and landscapes (both transgenerational and transhistorical). I also point out the restitutive ethics of nature and maintain that ¿oods manifest themselves as counter- historic agents able to reveal and restore historic truth through obscuration and disclosure. ‘Redemption through cataclysms; what had once years, I dwell on comparisons between psychological been transformed might be transformed again.’ trauma and geological cataclysms: while both seem (Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces) to occur suddenly and unexpectedly, their aftermath always involves slow gradualness. That is to say, post- ‘He who controls the past controls the future. catastrophic healing (human and geological alike) is He who controls the present controls the past.’ possible, albeit conditioned by the slow tidal movements (George Orwell, 1984) and speci¾cities of personal traumas, on the one hand, and of the aggressed natural landscape, on the other. Introduction his article engages with the notions of historical I speci¾cally argue that the historical-epistemological Tand natural catastrophe as interwoven occurrences disaster approached in Michaels’ novel, namely in the context of Canadian writer Anne Michaels’ work the Holocaust, is quintessentially rendered through Fugitive Pieces. I advance the concept of liquefaction to liquefaction, that is the transformative liquid imagery depict cataclysmic metamorphoses of landscape which of meteorological disasters, equivalent to instances of involve ¿oodwater, perceived alternatively as a medium psychological upheaval and gradual, post-traumatic that obscures and subsequently reveals the historical changeover. 1atural calamities such as river ¿oods, truth across generations and continents. By emphasising storms, hurricanes and earthquakes, and their the dramatic liquefactive impact of ¿oods onto layered archetypal, transhistorical impact on the geological urbanscapes, I lay stress on the relativity of time and landscape resemble the assault of Holocaust trauma historicity in the novel, as well as on the restorative on an individual’s psychological balance. Much like ethics of nature involved in the periodic obscuration and environmental aggression involving ¿oods, I argue, revelation of truth. psychological aggression consists in a type of liquid, transformative evolution sometimes conducive to I further argue that there is an intrinsic connection in healing. I call it liquid trauma, a term by which I denote the Michaels’ work between the gradual development of liquefactive factor involved in the ability to continuously global environmental forces and the psychological change the shape of trauma in order to accept loss, to disruptions caused by war and Holocaust trauma. I mourn and potentially (and eventually) recover from it. interpret this connection in terms of the rich liquefactive imagery deployed in Michaels’ work, which opens up Anne Michaels’ novel features Jakob Beer, a Polish possibilities for similar geological and psychological child survivor from the so-called ‘1.5 generation’ healing. Since the instances of liquefaction addressed (Suleiman 2002: 277)1, whose family falls victim to Nazi here involve both fast, violent aquatic motion, as well as persecution. He escapes death by hiding in a closet and prolonged liquid stasis, spanning across minutes or even taking shelter in the moorlands of Biskupin, where the 23 Cambridge geology scholar Athos Roussos ¾nds and solidity and ¿uidity in order to master one’s sense of self rescues him. They ¿ee the archaeological site of this when confronted with trauma. Ben’s ¾nal trip to Greece, ¿ooded city in Poland and travel down to Greece. 'uring as illuminating as it is to him, remains inconclusive in the German occupation of the island of Zakynthos, the terms of settling his emotional life. In that regard, as Kelly two live in hiding, and subsequently move to Toronto argues, ‘the speaking of the trauma’, far from determining after the war following an invitation addressed to Athos meaning and closing a ‘familial, cultural, or historical to teach at a Canadian university. Years after Athos’s chapter’ ‘opens meaning, is productive of meaning, death, Jakob – now a poet, translator and writer – with and necessitates a willingness […] to bear witness to his young second wife Michaela moves back to Greece to the catastrophic event […] which takes precedence the island of Idhra, only to die tragically in a car accident over any desire for ¾nality’ (Kelly 2010: 102). That is to in Athens. say, lingering in liquid trauma, in the (self-)exploration of the development of personal and environmental The second half of the novel is dedicated to Ben, the trauma, helps towards understanding catastrophic son of Polish-Jewish émigré Holocaust survivors from occurrences and prospective self-restoration. By acting Toronto. Ben carries his parents’ traumatic burden as Jakob’s proxy witness, Ben ¾lters and re-evaluates long after their death. An academic by profession, he ¾rst generational trauma through the lens of the second researches the interconnection between biography, generation, which reassesses catastrophe and healing history and meteorology. He undergoes a terrible crisis through empathy. after discovering that his parents had taken to the grave the secret of their wrenching loss, namely the death On both chief characters, the Holocaust as an historical of both of his younger siblings during the Shoah. This cataclysm leaves, directly or indirectly, an indelible mark. prompts him to leave Canada and travel to Idhra in Etymologically speaking, the notion of ‘catastrophe’ is search of the late Jakob Beer’s journals and presumably central to ‘Shoah’ (the Hebrew term for ‘catastrophe’), the meaning of Holocaust survival. At the distance of one while the Yiddish name for it denotes ‘destruction’, and generation, loss and grief unite these two ¾ctional ¾gures the Greek term ‘Holocaust’ suggests ‘complete burning’. through their sustained efforts to comprehend calamities As Shoshana Felman indicates, the word ‘Shoah’ used of war, (individual) history and nature. without a de¾nite article points to ‘the very foreignness of languages, the very namelessness of a catastrophe Ben and Jakob are featured in the novel as Polish- which cannot be possessed by any native tongue and Canadian male identities marked by ¾rst- and second- which, within the language of translation, can only generation Holocaust trauma. They tell parallel, yet be named as the untranslatable’ (Felman and Laub, similar, stories of psychological harm carried across 1992: 213-14). In my interpretation, the term ‘Shoah’ continents, both their life stories being rendered more defamiliarises an event that is impossible to be owned, eloquent by explorations of geologic and meteorological comprehended and clari¾ed. Its cataclysmic impact disasters across time that are so relevant to the notion that spans across generations requires, therefore, a of liquefaction proposed here. As dialogic characters, necessary distance. their damaged lives touch upon each other both directly and indirectly. Even though they meet only once and The same dilemma of incommunicability is addressed do not interact, their destinies seem to communicate by Derrida in Of Grammatology, where he refers to the deeply with each other via the written word. I argue that writing about the Holocaust as ‘the place of unease this strengthens the idea of intergenerational exchange (lieu de malaise), of the regulated incoherence within through empathic channels among Holocaust survivors conceptuality’ (1976: 237-38). This horrendous event who are equally confronted with the liquefactive energy brings logical understanding to a halt. Beyond the world of their personal traumas. of theory, literature is the medium where facts ‘encounter strangeness’ and where the reader is compelled to But what is the result of Jakob and Ben’s struggles to meditate on the relationship between history and overcome psychological distress in the aftermath of narrative by ‘bearing literary witness to the Holocaust’ atrocity" Anne Michaels’ ¾ne-tuned study of characters (Felman and Laub 1992: 7, 95). This is, I argue, precisely conveys the impression that Ben and Jakob’s choice the role intended and played by Michaels’ narrative. of professions re¿ects the way each of them works through trauma, which entails an engagement with Jakob’s Drowned City: Biskupin in Poland either steady solidity or ¿uxing liquefaction. As Paul Malone points out, ‘where Jakob’s ongoing passion In Fugitive Pieces, Biskupin is the site of a drowned city for archaeology and geology

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