It was a colleague of mine who had me at hello when she mentioned what Bruce Chatwin's Songlines was about. The idea that Aboriginal tribes navigate the entire continent of Australia finding their way around by means of a song in my mind defied belief. How is it possible to use music as a map? Who would even bother to go to such great lengths about something as mundance as land? Are all indigenous people of Australia such big musical talents? Questions didn't want to stop coming, building up the sense of being intrigued, until I sat down with this classic of travel writing.
Bruce Chatwin, one of Britain's finest globetrotters and adventurers, got immediately linked in my mind with the Polish-born author Ryszard Kapuściński. Their prose is marked by a fair share of fictionalizing, bending and mixing the rules of such literary forms as a novel, reportage or an essay into a genre of its own. Both were also intent on infusing their stories with broader reflection on the human condition. As it turned out upon closer inspection, it is not only in their writing style where these two personalities overlap. After death, Chatwin and Kapuścinski were lambasted for making up details in their books to heighten their literary effect, in a way undermining the credibility of travel writing. In private life, they were considered excellent company, even if a bit ego-centric and constantly reinventing themselves. Their wives had been immensly important figures for both Chatwin and Kapuściński, having borne the burden of a husband forever on the go in great style. Incidentially, Bruce, a declared bisexual, was one of the first high-profile victims of AIDS (the illness he denied) and Ryszard is rumoured in his latest biography to have had an illicit affair.
A songline is a term coined by Chatwin to refer to what Aboriginals call the Dreaming track or simply the Dreaming. A bit elusive for an outsider to the Aboriginal culture and never really fully captured in the book, it describes the ritual of nomadic tribes that has to do with turning land into song. The relationship between the two is complex, practically mystic for a Westerner. First, singing is meant to reflect the geographical features so that whoever knows the song can tell his or her bearings too, the story serving as a sort of a map. Second, as land for indigenous peoples of Australia is sacred, songs are a powerful bond with it. It has to be constantly reestablished though, especially that every single person has been entrusted with guarding the flame of a section of this network. Third, the Dreaming tracks have been accumulating since time immemorial, mirroring the story of creation, so they have become a vehicle for culture and history.
Beyond trying to put his hand on the songlines, Chatwin delves deep into his deliberations on a pet topic - nomadism. He brings together bits and pieces from his past travels, jotted down in his trademark moleskin, juggles several scientific theories and finally comes up with his bold conclusion that being on the move might have been the original state for mankind, possibly prompted by the fear of the original opponent of man, now extinct. He heaps one quotation that glorifies movement and detracts stillness upon another, seeking confirmation from different authors and eras for his intuitions. Characterized by erudition and well worth remembering, they nonetheless fall short of giving full credance to this claim and end up being something of a reflection of his own restlessness. On a few occasions though, he manages to comment very aptly on the human condition and bring about rare depth that many keep looking for in good writers.
However, venturing into anecdotes, quotations and science hypotheses, which takes up a substantial part of the book, can be blamed for causing some reading fatigue, too. Instead of following up on the idea of the songlines to the bottom of it, Chatwin veers away into intellectual bric-a-brac, papering over the shortcomings of his Australian experience.
Plenty of vocab to do with Australia:
. a parakeet is a general term for long-tailed parrots
. marsupials (= torbacze) are common in Australia
. spinifex is a type of grass found commonly in Australia
. ochre (= yellowy) is a frequent color in outback Australia
. the Pintupi are an Aboriginal group
. a tjurniga is an object of religions significance for Aboriginals
. a perenty (= waran) is an species of reptiles common in Australia
And other things:
. a harpsichord is a musical instrument similar to a piano = klawesyn
. I didn't know you could have a great-aunt. Another good family-related term is maternal grandparents
. you lay a wreath (= wieniec) on a grave
. you can yell into a deaf-aid
. whn you vanish into the blue, you vanish without a trace
. don't mix with a rapid dog (+ affected by rabies)
. here is a crack handle
. a felt (= filcowy) hat
. grubs = wormlike larva
. pernickety = fussy, extremely attentive to detail
. heathen (= niewierni) are the unconverted
. a snooper is somebody who snoops into your private affairs
. title deed = dowód własności
. a full five minutes
. hit on the idea
. you can use a roof-rack to transport things with your car
. when you take to the bottle, you start drinking a lot
. the Arctic tern is the most migratory bird in nature, travelling from Antarctica to the Arctic and back
. Bedouin (= Arab nomads) proverb:
I against my brother
I and my brother against my cousin
I, my brother and my cousin against my neighbour
I, my brother, my cousin and my neighbour against a stranger
. fastidious = with great attention to detail
. have a flat, get out the jack and change the wheel
. Chinese Book of Odes is the earliest collection of Chinese poems
. you're a co-signer (= żyrant) when you guarantee to repay somebody else's debt
. brokerage = dom maklerski
. do a spring purge = robić wiosenne porządki
. a pack rat = kleptoman
. a mountain hut
. a Phyrrhic victory
. a swallow = jaskółka
. Ariadne's thread
. a cloudburst = oberwanie chmury
. How much did I advance (= zaliczka) you?
. stand up = get to your feet
. I did my own asking around
. to come to the end = to finish
. Good on you!
. I can let you in on the plot
No comments:
Post a Comment