Paratextual Features of Constructing Autobiographical Modality in Latvian Women s Autobiographical Writing of the 1990s

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1 Paratextual Features of Constructing Autobiographical Modality in Latvian Women s Autobiographical Writing of the 1990s Daugpilio universitetas Latvių literatūros ir kultūros katedra Vienibas g. 13, Daugpilis, LV 5401 sandra.meskova@inbox.lv Paratekstualių parametrų reikšmė autobiografinio modalumo formavimui XX a. devintojo dešimtmečio latvių moterų autobiografinėje literatūroje Summary Autobiographical writing has experienced a dynamic growth in significance and development in recent decades both in the European and especially East European literature. Latvian women s autobiographical writing of the 1990s has been produced by women authors of the generation who directly experienced World War II as the central event of the 20 th century European history, hence their texts provide historical evidence of a very complicated period in contemporary Latvian history. At the same time these texts function as autobiographical accounts of the girl s childhood, interrupted by the war that further determines her life either under the occupational regime or in exile. The modality of these texts is determined by the fact that these authors feel compelled to bear historical evidence of that history, which became also a part of their lives. The present article is focused on Anita Liepa s and Vizma Belševica s texts regarding paratextual features that have an essential role in constructing the modality of autobiographical narrative the construction of the paratextual frame and the use of photographs. Key words: autobiographical writing, autobiographical act, modality, narrative, paratext, paratextual frame, photograph. Santrauka XX a. antrojoje pusėje Europos literatūroje didelio populiarumo sulaukė autobiografinė tradicija. XX a. devintajame dešimtmetyje Latvijoje irgi publikuoti ryškūs autobiografinės pakraipos prozos kūriniai. Jų autorės priklauso kartai, kuri patyrė antrą jį pasaulinį karą, kaip svarbiausią XX a. Europos istorijos įvykį. Savo tekstuose autorės pateikia asmeninius šio komplikuoto Latvijos istorijos periodo liudijimus. Jų tekstai pasakoja apie rašytojų vaikystę, kurią pertraukė karas, vaizduojamas moterų gyvenimas, besitęsiantis arba okupuotoje Latvijoje, arba emigracijoje. Tokių tekstų modalumą lemia autorių noras liudyti tuos istorinius įvykius, kurie formuoja jų gyvenimo dalį. Straipsnyje tirti Anitos Liepos ir Vizmos Belševicos prozos kūriniai, atkreipiant dėmesį į paratekstualių elementų įrėminimo ir fotografijų reikšmę formuojant autobiografinį modalumą. Esminiai žodžiai: autobiografinis pasakojimas, autobiografinis aktas, naratyvumas, paratekstas, parateksto įrėminimas, fotografija. 66

2 žmogus ir žodis 2009 I t ekstas: lingvistika ir poetika Autobiographical writing has experienced a dynamic growth in significance and development in recent decades both in the European and especially East European literature; the same may be said about Latvian literature of the 1990s and further on. It has also aroused much interest on the part of literary criticism and theories. Autobiographical text provides material for considering the issue of referentiality that became rather topical in the light of poststructural and postcolonial debates. Jerome Bruner considers that autobiographical text should be regarded as a tripartite model consisting of the discourse of witness (that may be treated as mimesis, according to the criteria of verisimilitude and/or truthfulness, making the facts seem as if they were ontologically given), discourse of interpretation (that may be treated as diegesis attributing significance to facts, framing them, organizing detailed constituents of witness into larger-scale sequences and placing them into evaluational frames), and the autobiographical writer s stance or diatactics that reveals his or her posture in relation to the world, self, fate (Bruner, 1993, 45). Bruner foregrounds the diatactical level as the one that determines the organization of both others. Similar conclusions are provided by other scholars investigating autobiographical writing. E.g. Shari Benstock uses the term autobiographical act to point out that a life-story in the autobiographical text is constructed and this is determined by the author s intentionality (e.g. selection of events, their emplotment, marking tragic or comic dimensions, etc.). Elizabeth W. Bruss defines autobiographical act as an interpretation of life that invests the past and the self with coherence and meaning that may not have been evident before the act of writing itself (Smith, 1987, 46). In other words, autobiographical act is creating a meaningful life-story and self in the very process of writing; the meaning attributed to this life-story and self depends on the regularities and principles guiding the process of writing, e.g. sequence, causality, temporality, etc. The stance of the author of the autobiographical text towards the remembered and textualized experience is manifested in the autobiographical modality that may be considered as one of the most essential elements of autobiographical narrative. The main problem of analyzing autobiographical modality lies in choosing between the formal approach and referential analysis. Some scholars, e.g. Philip Lejeune, consider that diatactics can be regarded with methods of formal analysis. Hence, Lejeune attributes the decisive role in defining the autobiographical genre to the author s name that is projected on the autobiographical hero/narrator and reveals the author s intention to produce an authentic work based on one s personal history (Lejeune, 1989, 11). Lejeune s formal approach reduces autobiographical modality to the grammatical features of the author s presence in his or her text (the correlation of the author s name with the autobiographical narrator/hero) excluding a wide range of issues from the field of analysis that are active constituents of the autobiographical narrative. Latvian women s autobiographical writing of the 1990s reveals diverse autobiographical acts. It is produced by women authors of the generation who directly experienced World War II as the central event of the 20 th century European history, hence their texts provide historical evidence of a very complicated period in contemporary Latvian history. This entails the pre-soviet decade of the 1930s (coincident with the authors childhood), the beginning of World War II and Soviet-German-Soviet occupation at the beginning of the 1940s, as well as the end of the 50 years long Soviet period in the late 1980s and reconstruction of Latvian statehood at the beginning of the 1990s. At the same time these texts function as autobiographical accounts of the girl s childhood, interrupted by war that further determines her life either under the occupational regime or in exile. Thus, Agate Nesaule in A Woman in Amber (1997) relates the painful experience of a small girl who together with her family is driven out of her homeland into exile, subject to the horror of refugee camps in Germany and the difficulties of gaining political asylum in the USA. A similar experience is related in Margita Gūtmane s Vēstules mātei (Letters to Mother, 1998) where she emphasizes the hardships of living as an exile and returning to homeland to find it foreign as well. Anita Liepa in her autobiographical novels Ekshumācija (Exhumation, 1990), Kumeļa gadi (The Colt Years, 1993), Vējgāze (Windstorm, 1996) presents her life-story under the Soviet regime. Vizma Belševica in her autobiographical trilogy (1995; 1996; 1999) reveals episodes from her childhood of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s with the outbreak of the war. The modality of these texts is determined by the fact that these authors feel compelled to bear historical evidence of that history, which became also a part of their lives. Moreover, their memories fit into the project of rewriting history that Central and East Europe faced during the transition period of the 1990s. Notwithstanding this common point of departure, each author takes a different stance to her recalled life and writes it either as a story of ISSN

3 Paratextual Features of Constructing Autobiographical Modality in Latvian Women s Autobiographical Writing of the 1990s testimonial (Anita Liepa) or a story of healing (Agate Nesaule), or a melancholic story (Margita Gūtmane, Vizma Belševica). The present article is focused on Anita Liepa and Vizma Belševica s texts regarding paratextual features that have an essential role in constructing the modality of autobiographical narrative. Anita Liepa s Exhumation initiated Latvian autobiographical and memory writing on World War II and Soviet occupation becoming a paradigmatic example of the autobiographical tradition of the 1990s. Vizma Belševica s Bille Trilogy manifests an entirely different autobiographical modality that immediately attracted the attention of Latvian critics who noted the dissonance of Bille with the traditionally idyllic depiction of childhood and the positive image of Latvia in the 1930s (Sebre, 1999, 151). Thus, the modality of Belševica s texts may be defined as dissonant memory that produced a rupture with the dominating versions of the interbellum history of Latvia. Paratextual frame The concept of paratext was elaborated by the French narratologist Gerard Genette in his Paratexts (Seuils, 1987). He refers to paratext as a set of literary and publishing conventions mediating the text and its printed version. Paratext entails the title, subtitle(s), forewords, dedications, epigraphs, introductions, notes, epilogues, postscripts, illustrations and epitexts author s letters, diaries, oral commentaries, etc. (Genette, 1997, xviii) Paratext turns the text into a book and functions as an important communicative bond between the text and the reader. It creates a space between the inside and outside of the text determining the whole process of reading (Genette, 1997, 2); the reception of the text actually starts with its paratext. Though paratext might seem a rather simple element, Genette notes that it is constituted by a heterogeneous group of discourses and textual instances. He singles out the spatial, temporal, substantial, pragmatical, and functional features of paratext (Genette, 1997, 4). A paratextual element is defined by its position in relation to the text, the time of its production (it is significant whether the paratextual element has been produced before or after writing the text, or in the process of producing the text, etc.), its mode of existence (verbal, iconic, material, factual, etc.). The pragmatics of paratext is characterized by the communicative bond between the sender and the receiver in the process of communication as well as by the author s intention and the Paratekstualių parametrų reikšmė autobiografinio modalumo formavimui XX a. devintojo dešimtmečio latvių moterų autobiografinėje literatūroje illocutionary force of the author s message in it that may be manifested in a wide range from informative to performative (Genette, 1997, 4 14). As to its functionality, paratext is always multifunctional and dependent on the peritext (the internal text). Paratextual elements play an important role in creating the modality of bearing witness in Liepa and Belševica s autobiographical texts. We will regard two of such elements paratextual frame and photographs that are functional in both authors texts. The paratextual frame of Liepa s Ekshumācija entails the author s dedication to the deported Latvian army officers, living and dead and two author s postscripts. The novel belongs to the tradition called by Susan G. Figge father memoirs entailing two structures the biographical (father s life-story) and the autobiographical one (the son or daughter s inquiry into the origins of the self) (Figge, 1990, 193). Anita Liepa has acknowledged in an interview that the book was first intended as a documentary novel about her foster father and his family s life, and the autobiographical part the last chapter of the book was added at the final stage of work upon the editor s suggestion to make the story more personal. Nevertheless, the life-story of Anatolijs Sondors, Latvian army officer and the commandant of Daugavpils fortress (a major place of dislocation of Latvian infantry and cavalry corps, close to Latvian border with Russia) remains the nucleus of the novel, and the life of Nameda Lapa, his foster daughter and the autobiographical heroine of the novel, is revealed in relation to this story; it is basically a quest for the traces of Sondors who was deported to the Siberia shortly after the entrance of the Soviet army troops into Latvia and his fate was unknown for a long time. Sondors life-story is inscribed into the tragically heroic plot about the victims of the Soviet regime, while Nameda s experience is organized around a dissident figure whose greatest betrayal from the standpoint of the Soviet regime is keeping alive memories of the previous time, continuity with the past, hence the symbolical significance of Nameda s search for foster father, denial of oblivion, resistance to the false memory-image created by the official version about Latvian army officers as criminals and enemies. The first postscript (titled Instead of the postscript ) was added to the novel when it was already in the process of publishing (this is stated at its beginning). It contains two documents received by the author from the archives of the Internal Affairs department of Irkutsk district concerning the conditions of Anatolijs Sondors and his brother s deaths. The novel ends with Nameda and her daughter s trip 68

4 žmogus ir žodis 2009 I t ekstas: lingvistika ir poetika to the Siberia in 1988 during which they find the approximate place of Sondors burial in Zayarsk. The documentary evidence of the diagnosis and the date of his death in the postscript brings Nameda s search to the end. Thus, the paratextual frame of Ekshumācija brings out Anatolijs Sondors lifestory (father s biography) as the central element of the text; besides, the formulation of the addressee of the dedication in plural (deported Latvian army officers, living and dead) points to the idea that Sondors is just one of them and the whole case of Litene officers constitutes an important chapter of the tragic history of Latvia related to World War II and Soviet occupation. It remains to be added that the novel, completed in 1988 and published in 1990, was a burning issue in the context of glasnost and perestroika actually initiating the process of rewriting the 20 th century history in Latvia. The second postscript on the back cover of the book sketches out the history of writing the novel stating that this version of the novel is in fact the fifth one, the materials for which have been gathered for 45 years. Thus, the history of writing the novel goes back to mid-1940s embracing the whole period of the Soviet occupation, constructing the author as a dissident and placing the text within the tradition of dissident memory evidence, resisting the amnesia enforced by the regime. In Latvia the dissident writing was not as distinct and developed as in Russia, so Liepa s novel fills in a very important cultural gap. The paratextual frame of Belševica s Bille Trilogy is also constituted by the author s dedication at the beginning of the first book and postscript at the end of the third one. The dedication has a private character it is addressed to the author s grandchildren mentioning their names, whereas the addressee of the postscript is not determined, thus making it more generalized. The dedication is also an alternative title that mentions the primary addressee or implied reader (grandchildren) and narrattee (grandmother) of the text: Grāmata varētu saukties arī Kad vecāmāte bija maziņa, jo ir stāstīta un veltīta mazbērniem: Matīsam, Ievai un Baibai. [The book might be called also When the grandmother was a small girl because it is told and dedicated to my grandchildren: Matīss, Ieva, and Baiba. (here and henceforth transl. mine S.M.)] These formal features create a link to a wider cultural context, i.e. grandmother s stories about her childhood, that constitute an essential part of Latvian oral culture taking into consideration the significance we attribute to folklore. Framing her story in this way, the author both emphasizes the personal communicative bond in it and, by appealing to the oral culture tradition, attributes greater significance to her personal testimonial concerning her life, time, and family. In the postscript, the author extends the implied reader s figure to the whole younger generation to whom she feels obliged to reveal certain nuances in the history of Latvia witnessed by her, which she perceives differently from the generally accepted version: Stāsts par Billi nav autobiogrāfija tiešā nozīmē. Man bija jāpastāsta par to, kā dzīvoja pilsētas nomalē ļoti trūcīgi cilvēki, kam ulmaņlaiki nebija nekāda paradīze. Arī nekāds īpašs patriotisms pie viņiem nebija manīts, bet nebija manīts arī tas, ka viņi sapņotu iekļauties Padomju Savienībā (Belševica, 1999) [The story about Bille is not autobiography in the direct sense. I had to tell about very poor people who lived in the outskirts of the city, for whom the times of Ulmanis were no Paradise. No particular patriotism was noted among them, but neither was it noticed that they would dream of joining the Soviet Union.] The use of the debitive mood is significant here: the author feels obliged to oppose the myth of the golden times of Ulmanis 1 that was so widespread both during the Soviet period (as an unofficial manifestation of the resistance of the people to the Soviet regime) and during the third Atmoda 2 ; she feels a need to make certain corrections by her story in the newly constructed version of the history of Latvia after regaining independence. This framework, like a funnel, determines the textual dynamic from the private to the public story, from communication with grandchildren to addressing everybody who has not witnessed what is familiar to the author. Her personal memory is the instrument of demythologization that she uses to object to the texts constructing a myth that disagrees with her own experience. Both this myth and its deconstruction by Belševica have ideological features that create a referential bond between Bille Trilogy and the history of Latvia. The presence absence game: name and photographs The autobiographical diatactics is manifested also in the authors relation to their textualized autobiographical selves. First, it is characterized by 1 Kārlis Ulmanis, the President of Latvia from 1934 till The word Atmoda (Engl. awakening) refers to the times of national independence movement in Latvia at the end of the 19th century (first Atmoda), after the proclamation of the Republic of Latvia in 1918 (second Atmoda), and in the late 1980s (third Atmoda). ISSN

5 Paratextual Features of Constructing Autobiographical Modality in Latvian Women s Autobiographical Writing of the 1990s the authors wish to distance themselves from their autobiographical heroines by means of 3 rd person narration. Traditionally, the researchers of autobiographical writing mention the 1 st person narration as the defining feature of autobiographical narrative (Lejeune, 1989). However, Sidonie Smith, Bella Brodzki, etc. point out the recurrent 3 rd person narration in women s autobiographical texts (Smith, 1987; Brodzki, 1988). The distance between the author and her autobiographical heroine is emphasized also by the heroine s name that does not coincide with the name of the author. This is the case both in Liepa and Belševica s texts. The heroine of Ekshumācija is Nameda Lapa (having a certain affinity with the author s name Anita Liepa), Bille in Belševica s texts might be treated either as a diminutive form of the author s first name Vizma, though it is not typical, or a name by which the girl was called by her family members. At the same time the authors use photographs that make it possible to identify them with their heroines. Anita Liepa s Ekshumācija is supplied with 30 photographs showing the members of Sondors family, Anatolijs and his brother as well as some other officers who were also victimized at Litene. Thus, the photographs relate to the collective addressee of the author s dedication bringing out the significance of the novel as a historical evidence. Moreover, the author has specified the genre of the novel as a documentary novel ; hence the photographs function to provide documentary evidence to the narrative. This is also proved by the fact that photographs are supplied with captions mentioning names, places, dates, related facts, as it is usual for memoir and documentary writing. The fictional name of the heroine (Nameda Lapa) is not mentioned; neither is the true name of the author. Instead, she is referred to as the foster daughter (or niece) of Anatolijs Sondors. This reveals the true identity of Nameda Lapa as Anita Liepa; besides, on the back cover of the book there is the author s photograph with her signature beneath it. This leaves no doubt as to the heroine s identity. So why this game at all? The distance between the autobiographical heroine and the author may be accounted for by the ideological emphasis on father s biography as a part of the reconstructed version of history. Thus, the functionality of the heroine is limited, and by refusing a straightforward identification with her, the author clearly situates herself as an actant on a higher level of the structural organization of the novel: the heroine s message (author s story about Nameda s opposition to the regime) is appropriated as a part of Paratekstualių parametrų reikšmė autobiografinio modalumo formavimui XX a. devintojo dešimtmečio latvių moterų autobiografinėje literatūroje the author s message encoding memory as a form of resistance. Liepa has admitted in an interview that writing the novel was motivated by an urge to testify to the historical truth: I became a witness for the defense of my heroes to be rehabilitated. Now there are others who write about those events. I began writing when no one else dared. (Gudriķe, 1998, 99) The very fact of having written this novel is what counts most of all. Even more, both postscripts are signed by the author s name the second one even reproduces the handwritten signature. After playing the game with the heroine s name, signing twice the real name of the author both attributes special emphasis as to the authenticity of her message (the text may be read as a signed evidence of a witness of historical events) and separates the functional zones of the heroine and the author, clearly foregrounding the latter. Photographs in Bille Trilogy are organized in a very particular way. They are placed on the front and back covers of the three books; those on the front cover show the writer as a child (book one), adolescent (book two), and a young woman (book three), while the photo on the back cover is the same for all three books showing the writer at mature age (we may think that this approximately coincides with the time of writing the books). This framework visually marks both the distance and affinity between the author and her autobiographical heroine. Besides, it is significant from the spatial point of view: the photograph on the front cover of book one shows the face of small Bille looking through the window; the cover of book two shows an adolescent girl standing in the doorway, whereas on the front cover of book three we see Bille as a young woman dressed in outdoor clothes standing in the street. This order of photographs tells a story that coincides with the dynamics of the above mentioned paratextual frame from the private to the public, from the closed family space to the social space outside. This is also reflected by the images framing the narrative. Book one starts with an episode of small Bille leafing through the family album, looking at the photos of her parents in their youth, after their marriage, until she comes across her own photo showing an ugly baby that incites basically negative emotions in the girl. Book three ends with an episode where Bille returning from the class at the young writers club (where she has been urged to continue writing) notices her image in the mirror on the façade of a building and for the first time in her life observes herself with interest and smiles. Thus, the development of the heroine from a small girl who is shocked 70

6 žmogus ir žodis 2009 I t ekstas: lingvistika ir poetika by facing the fact of her existence in the photographs to accepting herself as a person reflects the process of the textual self-formation of the author. The figure of Bille that both is and is not the author s self functions as a screen for negative self-projections; hence the space between the author and her autobiographical self formed by the 3 rd person narration assumes an essential psychological and symbolic role. But for it, we would treat Bille first of all as Vizma Belševica in her childhood and youth and the text would be pure autobiography. But as the author intends the text as her testimony of the epoch expanding her private story to a message addressed to a whole generation, we perceive Bille as an autonomous figure whose fate illustrates this message, whereas the autobiographical link that makes it possible to identify her with the author attributes to it greater significance and verisimilitude. Thus the distance between the author and her autobiographical self provides a possibility to overcome the limitations of the autobiographical genre at the same time sustaining its advantages. References Belševica V., 1995, Bille. Rīga: Jumava. Belševica V., 1996, Bille dzīvo tālāk. Rīga: Jumava. Belševica V., 1999, Billes skaistā jaunība. Rīga: Jumava. Brodzki B., Schenk C., 1988, eds. Life / Lines: Theorizing Women s Autobiography. London: Cornell University Press: Ithaca. Bruner J., 1993, The Autobiographical Process. Folkenflik R., ed. The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. De Man P., 1979, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Figge Susan G., 1990, Father Books : Memoirs of the Children of Fascist Fathers. Susan G., Marylin Y., eds. Revealing Lives: Autobiography, Biography, and Gender. State University of New York Press. Genette G., 1997, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge University Press. Lejeune P., 1989, On Autobiography. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Liepa A., 1990, Ekshumācija. Rīga: Liesma. Sebre S., 1999, Māte, māja un es latviešu sieviešu autobiogrāfiskajos darbos. Feministica Lettica Rīga: Zinātne. Smith S., 1987, A Poetics of Women s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-representation. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISSN