“We are all refugees”
By Jessica Skoog
Review of David Constantine and Pawel Huelle at the
International Anthony Burgess Foundation, October 8, 2012
As I hand my ticket to the event host, I feel an excitement akin to a child going on a carnival ride. There, just beyond the thick black curtain, awaits an experience I’ve never had, and one that I am deeply curious about. I can hear strains of classical music mingling with casual conversation from the room I am about to enter. After thanking the host who took my ticket, I pass through the barrier and go in—my first experience at the Manchester Literature Festival has begun.
Twelve rows of chairs are lined up in rows, facing a makeshift stage with a few more seats, a podium, and a blank projection screen. A festival volunteer takes our picture, while another makes sure that we all have the night’s leaflets. As more people stream into the room, I realize just how intimate of an experience this will be. After all, I did find myself sitting just a few rows away from the two authors meant to speak that night. They, in front of the small room brimming with people, will be speaking their innermost thoughts in the manner that they intended them to be heard. It is, as the representative for the publishing company said, an opportunity to “celebrate great short fiction.”
David Constantine begins his reading first. By way of introduction to his selected story, “Asylum,” he tells us of his experiences visiting a school within a hospital. There, he tells us, he had the opportunity to witness first hand the effects of psychological trauma, such as anorexia and self-harm. It is from this experience that he draws on for this story, and, as such, demonstrates absolute command over both the plot and the character’s development. I was spellbound from the first page; slowly, yet skillfully, Constantine tells the story of Madeline and her relationship with Mr. Cramer. The audience is left to assume that Mr. Cramer is some kind of psychologist, or some similar kind of doctor, and Madeline is his lost, emotionally spent patient. Back and forth they debate the various meaning of prison, asylum, and safety, each time forcing the reader to actively engage with the text. Constantine’s work is captivating, almost melodic in tone and perhaps somewhat ethereal even; the audience gets a sense that, through the big world that Constantine has created, Madeline’s delicacy and fragility is almost impossible. And yet, Madeline spins a fantastical story at Mr. Kramer’s urging about two lost children who tangle with soldiers, pirates, and other loathsome characters to leave their broken lives behind in search of sanctuary—as Constantine so eloquently said, “sanctuary from the land of prisons.” However, is it sanctuary or asylum? And is there a difference? This is one of the central issues of Constantine’s story, and an issue that he leaves open for the audience to decide alone.
As Pawel Huelle takes the stage, he picks up this same thread and pulls the audience in another direction. Whereas Constantine focuses on the opportunities of asylum and sanctuary, Huelle concentrates on exile, and how exile impacts the perception of asylum. Huelle performs his reading in his native Polish, while the English translation is projected onto the screen behind him. Even if he wasn’t speaking English, the audience could still get a very vivid sense of Huelle’s writing style; his sentences are very blunt and direct, leaving very little leeway for the audience to interpret any other meaning than the one Huelle intended. In this fashion, his words become almost haunting—however, just like Constantine, Huelle’s writing casts a spell over the audience such that his haunting reveries become incredibly entrancing. Huelle’s story, as was translated for us before he began, draws inspiration from a number of places. Generally, Huelle finds inspiration in European art and the generalities of life, but more specifically, in this instance, a picture he saw in the newspaper inspired him. It was a picture of a strikingly beautiful woman with her child, hoping to cross into Poland. Her fate, he tells us, was never addressed in the newspaper—with his story, he hoped to create an ending to her tale. She becomes a strong, incredibly dynamic character, interwoven into the lives of the other characters so seamlessly that the audience doesn’t hesitate to accept that, of course, she was let into Poland. Perhaps, in this instance, her asylum was her determination, and perhaps her determination was also her exile.
One of the many common points that both writers spoke to, and a point that very deeply resonated with me, was the idea of travel as a means of self-exploration. Both of these excellent writers discussed their characters on a journey; whether it be a physical journey, as Huelle writes, or a spiritual or psychological, as with Constantine, each story demonstrated the necessity of changing in response to change. In this scope, asylum cannot be any one thing. Rather, it is a fluid entity, changing as we change, in response to our pilgrimages, our exiles, our triumphs, and our shortcomings. As the view of ourselves change, our view of the world changes and, therefore, our view of safety changes. As Huelle so rightly said, “we are all refugees, because the world is a place of exile.” In exile we find our safety, our asylum…but do we leave exile of one kind for exile of another? It is certainly an interesting proposition, and one I’m still trying to come to terms with. I left the reading with these questions battling endlessly in my mind and, through the pure talent and skill of these writers, I am sure I will be debating these questions for a long time to come.
Jessica Skoog is a third year student at the University of Manchester, on exchange for one semester. She is studying literature, and enjoys reading, painting, and travelling in her spare time. This is her first review of a literary event.