Forgetful Recollections: Images of Central and Eastern Europe in Canadian Literature ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY IN POZNAŃ SERIA FILOLOGIA ANGIELSKA NR 44 DAGMARA DREWNIAK Forgetful Recollections: Images of Central and Eastern Europe in Canadian Literature POZNAŃ 2014 ABSTRACT: Drewniak Dagmara, Forgetful Recollections: Images of Central and Eastern Europe in Canadian Literature [Przypominając zapomniane: Obrazy Europy Środkowo- Wschodniej w literaturze kanadyjskiej]. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Poznań 2014. Seria Filologia Angielska nr 44. Pp. 221. ISBN 978-83-232-2777-9. ISSN 0554-8144. Text in English with a summary in Polish. The present study is an attempt to explore the position of the memory and postmemory of Central and Eastern Europe in contemporary Canadian literature. The analysis is inspired by Simona Škrabec’s concept of the 20thcentury Central Europe seen as diverse and evolving “space of dispersion.” In this context, the book situates the novels and memoirs, published in Canada at the turn of the 20th and 21st century and written by immigrants and their descendants from Central and Eastern Europe, as the texts which try to recreate the images of “Old Places” filtered through the experience of living in transcultural Canada. The analyses of the selected texts by Janice Kulyk Keefer, Lisa Appignanesi, Irena F. Karafilly, Anne Michaels, Norman Ravvin, and Eva Stachniak are predominantly based on Marianne Hirsch’s idea of “postmemory” and Pierre Nora’s “lieux de mémoire”. These two concepts capture the broad spectrum of attitudes to the past, remembering and forgetting, and sites of memory as exemplified in the discussed texts. While all of the chosen novels and memoirs explore the problem of post/memory and un/belonging caused by immigration, poverty, and the trauma of World War II, they try to address the question of identity of immigrants (or their descendants) created on the border between the memory and postmemory of the past and the contemporary reality of transcultural Canada. As a result of this, the post/memory and the recreated after/images of Central and Eastern Europe offer both therapy and consolation as well as testimony to the past and its sites of memory. KEY WORDS: Canadian literature, immigrant literature, memory in literature, postmemory, lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, Central and Eastern European immigrant writing, transculturalism, immigrant novel, Canadian life-writing, memoir Dagmara Drewniak, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, al. Niepodległości 4, 61-678 Poznań, Poland; email: [email protected] Reviewer/Recenzent: dr hab. Anna Branach-Kallas, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń © Dagmara Drewniak 2014 This edition © Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznań 2014 Cover design/Projekt okładki: Agnieszka Frydrychewicz, WA UAM Cover photo by/Fotografia na okładce: Dagmara Drewniak Typsetting and formatting/Skład i formatowanie: Pracownia Wydawnicza, WA UAM ISBN 978-83-232-2777-9 ISSN 0554-8144 We do not descend, but rise from our histories. If cut open, memory would resemble a cross-section of the earth,s core, a table of geographical time. ,, ,, Anne Michaels“ Lake of Two Rivers ” Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................. 9 Introduction .......................................................................................... 11 Chapter One Writing Memory: Central and Eastern European Immigration to Canada. Multiplicity of Images/Diversity of Literary Voices ....... 33 Chapter Two Post/Memory of the ‘Old Place’: Janice Kulyk Keefer’s Honey and Ashes and Lisa Appignanesi’s Losing the Dead ......... 75 Chapter Three Memory Lost/Memory Retrieved: Irena F. Karafilly’s The Stranger in the Plumed Hat and Lisa Appignanesi’s The Memory Man ........................................................................ 127 Chapter Four Novelistic After/Images: Rediscovery of Home through the Canadian Experience: Norman Ravvin’s Café des Westens, Eva Stachniak’s Necessary Lies, and Anne Michaels’s The Winter Vault ......................................................................... 157 Conclusions ......................................................................................... 197 Bibliography ....................................................................................... 205 Przypominając zapomniane: Obrazy Europy Środkowo- Wschodniej w literaturze kanadyjskiej (Streszczenie) ................... 219 Acknowledgments This book is an outcome of many years of research in the fields of migrant literatures as well as Canadian literature. Yet, apart from the scholarly reflection which has kept a grip over my research for the past few years, the more I became involved in the reading and writing, the more spiritually possessive the topic started to be for my personal inquiry. The question of our identity as human beings of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries together with the experience of the two World Wars, Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, mass migration, globalization and many other quandaries have inspired me to consider how we construct our identities and how much of the past we carry in ourselves. All the writers and works discussed in this book have tried to respond to these dilemmas. The form they have chosen is important, especially nowadays when the non- fictional genres, particularly the ones labeled under ‘life-writing,’ have been enjoying growing popularity and scholarly attention. At the same time there is an urge, which is particularly rewarding, to go beyond the genre. As Janice Kulyk Keefer pointed out, in her Honey and Ashes, family stories “[b]y being stories (…) were the truest things I knew” (1998a: 299). Gathering my thoughts, strength and courage to write this book would not have been possible without the help and support of the Polish Association for Canadian Studies whose community of scholars has offered me support and advice for many years. The countless discussions on Canada and literature, as well as a few friendships I have made, have been an invaluable treasure I would like to express my gratitude for. I would like to thank Professor Liliana Sikorska, the Head of Department of English Literature and Literary Linguistics, at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, who many years ago assured me I was not ‘an obsessive immersed in books’ but a member of a vibrant community of scholars “chained to books.”1 I am also indebted to Professor ––––––––– 1 This term has been used by Professor Sikorska herself on a number of occasions, for example see a dedication to her students in A Short History of English Literature (2011). 10 Acknowledgments Agnieszka Rzepa, the head of the Center for Canadian Literature at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, which I am part of, for inviting me to work with her and for providing space and atmosphere necessary to conduct research. I am also very thankful for all the discussions we have had, numerous questions she has answered as well as for her being both my boss and friend. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Aleksandra Jankowska, my former boss, who despite her professional interests and duties, has never stopped supporting my passion for literature and has helped me on many occasions, both professional and personal. My thanks go to Professor Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, the head of the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, for providing institutional space and support for my research. I also wish to thank Dr. Alex Ramon from the University of Reading for his careful proof-reading of the book and insightful remarks and commentaries. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, and especially to my late father, who first inspired my reading, and to my husband, Tomasz and our two wonderful sons, Mateusz and Tymoteusz, for sharing my love for books, searching the abandoned cemeteries and orchards of Central and Eastern Europe with me and embracing the fact that reading and studying literature has always been our third, omnipresent daughter and sister for all these years. Introduction The history of Central and Eastern Europe has always been a complicated issue. The territories which constitute today’s Poland, the Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia and many other countries of the region have changed their affiliations in the course of history many times. It is not only the phenomenon of the previous and long-forgotten epochs but a matter of the 20th century conflicts, too. In particular the period of the Partitions (which mainly affected Poland but influenced the shapes of other countries as well) and the two World Wars have exerted certain effects on the region, which are visible on the political, linguistic and cultural map of Central and Eastern Europe. Some of the historical processes have made the concept of Central and Eastern Europe evolve into an image beyond a strictly geographical denomination of a certain physical area. Despite the new divisions in the region, being a post-World War II status quo, peoples of Central and Eastern Europe have shared a number of common experiences, of which Communism and its disintegration are but one example. The notion of Central and Eastern Europe is, however, not an easy one to grasp. It is very difficult to define once and for all the geographical and historical dimension of the area. It is even preferable to refer to it as a region and conceptualization rather than as a territory with strictly