 | Ha!art
Kraków 2008
110x180
232 pages
paperback
ISBN 978-83-89911-99-5
Translation rights: Sylwia Chutnik |
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Sylwia ChutnikA Pocket Book of Women
Excerpt
Each of the chapters from "Pocket Female Atlas" (‘From the Marketplace,’ ‘Liaison Officers,’ ‘Rip-Offs,’ ‘Princesses’) begins with a panoramic take, portraying nameless female types and sketches of the conditions in which they live. Next the author zooms in and focuses exclusively on the chosen representative of the ‘species’ she has carved out herself. The foursome of main characters, representing different generations—one of them an effeminate man—is connected by the fact that they all live in the same building. Their separate worlds come together, then, into a single reality. If we treat this as the reality of Opaczewska Street in Warsaw, then to use the biologically inspired determiners of Sylwia Chutnik, we may speak of it as an ecosystem and of its residents as representatives of an autochthonous species that determines the relationships within the system.
If we connect the author’s two angles, they bring to mind a nature documentary. And yet the chosen types are not representative, they do not reflect any particular model of life, but instead are psychologically intriguing. The author does not approach them as a behaviorist, opting rather for an inspection of the souls of those portrayed. Or even for the creation of these souls. Trying to get at why Maryśka has gone mad, why Maria decides to die, why Marian is incapable of having a relationship with a woman, why the teenage Marysia is transformed into a terrorist at night-time. The author investigates, then, not the societal, but rather the individual conditions for each of their life choices.
As an example, Maria still can’t quite recover from her war-time trauma. She was a brave liaison officer in the Warsaw Uprising, spared by some miracle, and yet she has ended up in absolute solitude. Ailing and helpless, she musters up the courage for her last act of protest, realizing, however, that her suicidal demonstration will go unnoticed. The case of Maria reflects the fate of bygone heroes who at the ends of their lives are doomed to oblivion and a kind of terrible, hand-to-mouth existence.
The other fates in the book are equally moving, although Chutnik describes them in a tragic-comic tone.
The distance with which she relates to her characters and which is required of a filmmaker focusing on nature do not detract from her enormous sensitivity. It is this sensitivity, alongside the deliberate conception of this collection of stories and her ability to construct a narrative at the same time, that sets apart this young author. She has not quite come into her own yet, as she is only beginning to find her own voice, but Chutnik is extremely promising and certainly the most fascinating of the twenty-somethings debuting this year.
Marta Mizuro
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