Homes Away From Home
at Manchester Literature Festival Event: David Constantine & Pawel Huelle, 8th October, 6:00pm, International Anthony Burgess Foundation
To the mild stupefaction of the staff in the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, I arrive to this—the second event of the first day of the Manchester Literature Festival, and, incidentally, the first event of this kind I’ve attended—forty-five minutes early. Admittedly, I’m a little tense, and the milieu doesn’t particularly help: the empty-chaired room I inch into is silent but for what I imagine tempered Balkan folk music to be, of which waltzes restlessly around bare Mancunian-red brickwork. In fact, it all looks a bit like a last-minute relocation of an antiques auction, since the room’s furnished with solemn dark-wood cupboards, cabinets, drawers, and, fittingly, a eight-foot bookshelf.
For all my disquiet, however, the venue’s spot-on thematically. Evoked is the tension of culture and place—the salient subject of the event. Here, bucolic and urban Eastern Europe juxtaposes industrial Western Europe complementary. And indeed, it’s the ideal venue to entertain a dialogue between two writers—Salford born, David Constantine, and Gdansk native, Pawel Huelle—whose work is preoccupied with origins, history, exile, and national and cultural identity. Two of Europe’s most esteemed short story practitioners, Constantine and Huelle (pronounced, I’ve read, hioola—like hula, the Hawaiian dance, but with an I) are currently launching new collections on Comma, Asylum and Cold Sea Stories respectively.
After a succinct but generous introduction, Constantine’s up first. He begins by commending Comma for its sincere commitment to the promotion of quality short fiction in the face of financial and commercial pressures to focus on more lucrative genres—namely, the novel. To the visible assent of Huelle, his translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and the Comma crew, Constantine divulges the kind of tricks mainstream publishing houses sometimes employ to attract readers (which I won’t divulge myself). Then he swiftly introduces his new collection and the eponymous story he’s about to read, ‘Asylum’.
It’s the story of Madeline, a mistrustful patient in a psychiatric institution, and Mr Kramer, her solicitous visitor. Contradictory connotations of ‘asylum’ are explored: on the one hand (Madeline’s), ‘asylum’ is synonymous with ‘prison’ and ‘detainment’; on the other hand (Mr Kramer’s), ‘asylum’ means ‘sanctuary’ and ‘salvation’. The phrase that resonates, though, is the ‘warzones at home’, and the story stresses the importance of pilgrimage and exploration as an escape from such private turmoil.
Following applause, Huelle, accompanied by Lloyd-Jones, approaches the microphone. It’s merely ceremonial, however, since I take the majority of the audience to be unfamiliar with Polish. Lloyd-Jones translates Huelle’s reading live, and the English-version text is projected on the screen on stage. (A hard copy’s handed to short-sighted audience members.) At first, the arrangement is frankly disorienting: Huelle’s machinegun tenor is at times difficult to ignore, especially when trying to focus on the text and Lloyd-Jones’ often sporadic translating. The experience could be altogether frustrating if you happened to read slowly (or you’re trying to write notes for a review…); but the senses inevitably adapt, and what unravels is a richly allusive tale of remarkable poignancy, in which an artist tries to befriend a beautiful young woman and her distrustful husband.
Now for the discussion section of the event. The host, an editor of Comma, asks challenging questions about the nature of asylum, exile, and what it is to call somewhere ‘home’. Huelle approaches the subject metaphorically, and, echoing the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, suggests that we’re all refugees, all exiled from one place or another, seeking sanctuary, seeking salvation in ‘elsewhere’. Constantine, in his own way, agrees by saying that the idea of ‘home’ is essential, but fundamentally elusive. Reiterating the phrase, ‘warzones at home’, he discusses the possible paradox of ‘home’ itself, in which physical and mental warzones both pose threat to the individual: ‘home’, in this case, can be destroyed and also destructive.
‘Elsewhere’, for both writers, is an essentially mythic concept. Utopia, the promised land, or what you will, is a place of perfection—but it’s inherently fictitious. Indeed, the etymology of ‘utopia’ describes its original Greek components ou (‘not’) and topos (‘place’): it literally means ‘no place’. A place of perfection, in a nutshell, is unattainable: warzones abound. But Constantine’s quick to raise optimism: he comments on how fiction is itself utopian—a place in which hopes are contained and sanctuary is timelessly offered. For Huelle, moreover, the power of fiction lies in its capacity to manifest historical truth, to tap in to that which goes beyond historical fact. In fiction, both public and private history is not observed, nor interpreted, but rather intuited, and an abstract ‘higher knowledge’ is attained. The reader, and all of us here in the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, are encouraged to escape the ‘warzones at home’ through fiction.
So, as far as first experiences go, it’s been a total success. No—I’d go so far to say (unashamedly!), it’s been inspirational. And after the final applause, the audience and I drip out onto the wet roads of Manchester—my home away from home.
Nathaniel Ogle