Reading Margaret Atwood, Anna Akhmatova, and Lina Kostenko Iryna Tsobrova Doctor of Philosoph

254 Pages·2014·1.42 MB·English

by  Iryna T

Women Poets and National History:
Reading Margaret Atwood, Anna Akhmatova, and Lina Kostenko

by

Iryna Tsobrova

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Comparative Literature
University of Alberta

© Iryna Tsobrova, 2014
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Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the portrayal of historical events in the
works of Margaret Atwood, Anna Akhmatova, and Lina Kostenko. These
Canadian, Russian, and Ukrainian poets present women as participants in
political events, possessing historical agency, and taking part in the creation of a
national past. While acknowledging the epistemological limitations of history
writing (its inherent narrative mode, ideological and political implications, and
other factors), I argue that the three authors uncover the tangible link that unites
two remote points in history and enhances our perception of the current
situation. Atwood’s awareness of the hermeneutic limitations of the writing of
history informs her literary works; however, Akhmatova and Kostenko hold a
more traditional view of generating historical accounts and their validity. What
unites these poets is the belief that past events have an impact on the decision-
making process of future generations.
Adopting a new historical and a postcolonial approach, I demonstrate
how the texts under investigation enter into a complex relationship with
hegemonic ideologies and how their position changes in relation to power
structures. These writers’ poems act as dynamic forces that reflect past events
and simultaneously reshape the discursive field, producing and negotiating new
meanings. These works function at the intersection of the present and the past,
mapping a “third space” that has a discernible connection to the past and offers
the possibility of different futures. Historical poetry offers a unique perspective
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on past events because it describes a specific historical context that resists
homogenizing tendencies. This genre amalgamates the realms of the individual
and the collective, making it a profoundly private and at the same time a
communal experience.
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Acknowledgements

My supervisors, Albert Braz and Irene Sywenky, for your meticulous
guidance and valuable feedback.
My parents, for your love and support.
My supervisory and examining committees: Oleh Ilnytzkyj, Maxim
Tarnawsky, Christine Wiesenthal, and Daniel Fried.
Jillian Skeffington and Pamela Farvolden, for your useful advice and
encouragement.
Maria, Alexander, Katya, Satish, Maria, Vadim, and Gloria, for your
friendship and long conversations about literature and politics.
Laura, for your intellectual support and appreciation of literature.
Shumaila, for our exchange of ideas.
John, Linda, and Judith, for believing in me.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1

Chapter I. History, Memory, and Women’s Poetry: Writing the 21
National Past

Representing Historical Events: Limitations and Possibilities 23
The National Past and Its Uses 34
Poetry as a Site of Memory: Dichotomies and Paradoxes 49
Women and History: Theorizing Agency and Re-Creating the Subject 65

Chapter II. The Historical Poetry of Margaret Atwood: 75
The Politics of Representing, Recreating, and Witnessing
“The Hermeneutic Conundrum” versus the Value of History 78
The Life of Ambivalence: Nineteenth-Century Canadian History in 86
Atwood’s Poetry
“We Are Hostile Nations”: Contemporary Political Events and Archetypal 109
Violence
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Chapter III. The Ethical Dimensions of History: Anna Akhmatova’s 123
Poems of Memory
The Silver Age and the “Real Twentieth Century”: Historical 126
Catastrophes, Disrupted Traditions
Remembrance as a Moral Category 147
Hegemonic and Oppositional Discourses in Akhmatova’s War Poems 159
Poem without a Hero: Re-negotiating the Memory of Her Generation 166

Chapter IV. Revisioning History and Creating a Nation: 177
Lina Kostenko’s Poetry
Contesting Meaning and Realigning Historical Boundaries: Marusia 179
Churai from New Historical and Postcolonial Perspectives
A Symbolic Voice and a National Myth: The Interconnectedness of the 190
Personal, the Generational, and the Collective
Female Poets as Creative Agents: Cultural Memory and the Collective 207
National Consciousness
Conclusion 216
Works Cited 226
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Introduction
Since the second half of the twentieth century, two distinct approaches to the
writing of history have emerged. Relativist scholars view history as a discourse
generated by historians: our ability to represent and interpret historical events is
restricted by many epistemological factors (Gossman 29; Hutcheon, Poetics 89-
90). All historical inquiries function within certain ideological or political
structures, and historians’ analysis is conditioned by the mode they use to
conduct their investigation. At the other end of the spectrum, empiricists
contend that in spite of these hermeneutic limitations, some interpretations
produce more viable claims, are supported by evidence, and lead to different
consequences in the present and the future (Appleby 255; Davis 116-17;
Koselleck 10). These debates in the field of historiography have produced a
significant impact on literary studies, and the value of historical fiction and
poetry has been reconsidered and challenged. In spite of numerous differences in
their perspectives on writing about history, Margaret Atwood, Anna Akhmatova,
and Lina Kostenko have a similar understanding of the poet’s role. They depict
past events and write women into the archive, filling gaps in the historical
record. Atwood and Kostenko focus on the colonial past in Canada and Ukraine
and the importance of overcoming its legacy in order to create a distinct national
identity; Akhmatova explores the issue of moral responsibility before the
victims of Stalin’s repressions and warns against repeating such historical
mistakes.
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One of the main premises of relativism is that history is a contested field
where different ideological and political forces operate. Hayden White asserts,
“Commitment to a particular form of knowledge predetermines the kinds of
generalizations one can make about the present world, the kinds of knowledge
one can have of it, and hence the kinds of projects one can legitimately conceive
for changing that present or for maintaining it in its present form indefinitely”
(21). According to this perspective, historians select past events, organize them
in a certain order, and use narrative elements – inaugural, terminating, and
transitional – to present them as a coherent structure. Evidence is often
insufficient, and scholars inevitably analyze historical circumstances from their
own political, social, and cultural vantage points. Although these concerns are
undoubtedly relevant, such awareness of our epistemological restrictions should
not act as a deterrent to our interpretation of the past and understanding its
significance for the present and the future. To some extent, history is shaped by
contemporary motives, and its boundaries are renegotiated and redrawn. Joyce
Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob state, “Successive generations of
scholars do not so much revise historical knowledge as they reinvest it with
contemporary interest. […] New versions of old narratives are not arbitrary
exercises of historical imagination, but the consequence of the changing interest
from cumulative social experience” (265). A historical account can be defined as
a dialectic relationship between the historian’s interpretation and past events.
Still, these accounts hold intrinsic social and moral value that is emphasized
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both by relativists who warn against “moral agnosticism” (White 433) and
empiricists. Works of history are as important as the events themselves and
become material practices, functions in the field of discourse that acquire
relative autonomy. As Atwood observes, “The words continue their journey”
(Poems 105) and contribute to consolidating or challenging the existing balance
of power.
Producing their works in disparate historical contexts, the Canadian,
Russian, and Ukrainian poets create female protagonists who not only take part
in political events but have the ability to portray them. Atwood, Akhmatova, and
Kostenko assign their characters roles that often transcend the limitations of
their respective time periods and expectations of women writers. The three
authors present historical occurrences from a female perspective, focusing on
the losses brought about by wars and revolutions and the physical and emotional
destruction inflicted on women who lost their family members in the course of
such ruptures in history. Atwood’s protagonist in The Journals of Susanna
Moodie is a nineteenth-century author who could depict her life in the
wilderness due to her privileged social status and education (for example, in
comparison with working class women, particularly those of non-British
background). Akhmatova’s lyrical “I” equates her memories with historical
records, narrating her experience as a grieving mother and writing for those
women whose relatives were executed, imprisoned, or exiled during Stalin’s
reign of terror. Kostenko’s protagonist in her novel in verse Marusia Churai
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writes songs about battles and the wars of liberation belonging to the sphere of
exclusively male interests. The poets foreground the process of representing
historical events and emphasize their characters’ creative gift that allows them to
generate their version of history which occupies various positions in relation to
the official master narrative, disrupting or supporting and legitimizing it.
Each ethical decision depends on particular historical circumstances but
still has a symbolic referent, “the absolute axiom,” which is reapplied and re-
enacted. Derrida writes, “The displaced presentation remains definitively and
implacably postponed” (Margins 20). The idealized sign appears in specific
contexts, never achieving closure; therefore, the transcendental is repeatedly
undone by various empirical conditions, and every moral choice has to be made
as if for the first time. Keith Jenkins states, “So, history, say, is thus at once
constituted both by the transcendental gesture—that promise to deliver a fully
knowable history per se—and the material particularly that denies that promise.
[…] There is no ‘last instance’, no definite history ever” (282). If the sign were
to be reapplied without any shifts in its meaning, individuals would not be
facing moral dilemmas and the historical precedent would have already
determined their choice. They would still have to make their own decisions
based on their unique historical circumstances and live with the consequences.
Both relativists and empiricists agree on the same premise: “a belief can still
regulate action, can still be thought worth dying for, among people who are
quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent historical