 | W.A.B.
Warsaw 2005
130 x 200
228 pages
hardcover
ISBN 83-7414-069-0
Translation rights: W.A.B.
Rights sold to: Russia (Phantom Press) |
|
Marek SobólThe Fates
Excerpt
Atropos is the goddess who cuts the thread of human life; as a nurse who works in a ward for dying children, from where no one ever goes home, and who is also a lesbian, mourning the sudden death of her lover, she notes in her diary: “When I started to write it, I didn’t know it would be my salvation, my regeneration…. I’ll publish it under a pseudonym, as a man. There will be three women’s stories, three Fates, three goddesses of destiny.” So who is the author of this secret trilogy? It seems to be by life, memory and death.Death is symbolised by the figure of the nurse. Her experience shows that breaking the thread of existence is always accidental (like the unexpected death of the woman she loved) and inevitable (isn’t our life like a hospital ward from which there is no return?)Lachesis is the goddess who guards the thread of life; as a woman of advanced age, a Jewess who survived the horrors of the Holocaust, she is meant to symbolise memory. In one scene, during a performance of Jewish music at Kazimierz in Kraków, in the crowd of young people enjoying themselves the tired Lachesis suddenly sees some shrunken figures emerging from the gates of the former ghetto. So the role of the goddess who is meant to guard our life turns out to be not just caring for us and making sure fate does not cast us too soon into the embrace of her sister Atropos, but also – when it does happen – that we remain in memory, and live on, at least in this way.To put things in order: the story about Lachesis is the first part of the secret trilogy. Atropos comes in second place, and the whole thing closes with the story of Clotho – the one who gives life. She is a prostitute, a tragic figure, and yet paradoxically she is the happiest of the three. Reconciled with what gives her existence, she simply tries to live – distinguishing good from evil, and humbly accepting the challenges thrown at her by fate and, moreover, looking towards the future with hope.Marek Soból has written a lyrical tale about the doubts and expectations that we all experience in life. By giving his heroines the names of the Greek goddesses of fate, he has shown that we live in constant tension between the random nature of what happens to us and the inevitability of what awaits us. And as we have no influence on the vectors of our continued existence, we should accept fate at face value. In other words, we should take as a motto for life a simple and beautiful remark made by Clotho: “And if the weather’s nice, we’ll go for a walk”. And that’s all.
Igor Stokfiszewski
Back |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
|
|
|
|
