The fact that Latvian (and, of course, not only Latvian) poets write prose and prose writers – poetry, should no longer be a surprise to anyone. However, there always comes a moment when the question arises: how is there more in the creative handwriting of one author – prose or poetry. Naturally, this question concerns only those for whom the classification of the personality in certain parameters is important, and yet, reading the information in the press that the poet Inga Gaile has already published her sixth full-length prose work, it is clear that the proportion of prose and poetry in the biography of the author is actually in balance.
This factor would have only biographical significance, unless the presence of poetry in Inga Gaile’s prose was so important that this fact simply had to be mentioned. Author’s historical novels Glasses and Beautifulas well as in the work dedicated to Ivande Kaija The writer it is the lyrical (not lyrical) footnote that keeps the texts dedicated to dramatic historical events as well as to a whole stormy life within the enjoyable limits of expressiveness. But with the new novel Cutie pie Inga Gaile seems to be returning to that prose territory, which she already playfully poked (as a swimmer pokes the water with her foot before jumping) in a detective novel the invisible ones, in which the classical formulas of the genre were cleverly played, placing so much crime as a solution within the boundaries of space-time and cultural environment that are well known to many Latvian readers.
A novel Cutie pie takes a big step further in the direction of openness – and it is no wonder that in interviews the author is asked questions regarding the possible autobiographical nature of the text, which the writer herself denies. But the reader will draw unconscious parallels anyway. And, though Cutie pie is not an autobiography, it is definitely a very personal text.
Latvia’s first feminist
The center of the novel is the forty-year-old Sarma (“Only thirty-nine!” she herself would remind) – a woman with talent, self-confidence, but also, from the outside, a very unenviable fate. Left alone with two children, the youngest of whom is still very small and nursing, we meet Sarma right in the middle of a long and unpleasant divorce process. Chapters of the novel, all named following Sarma and some thing or phenomenon attributed to a woman (Frost and man, Frost and madness, Frost and piano), harshly candid and bitterly self-ironic tells a story that seems to have been heard so often – regarding how the self-fulfillment abilities of a woman who longs for independence are unfortunately tied up by domestic issues, the need to juggle work and payments, buying food and taking care of children at the same time as with a swarm of countless balls , daily coordination and the desire to create fully.
Sarma is a multi-artist who simultaneously writes (she has published several novels, like the author), translates, and creates the first women’s billboard in Latvia (like the author), and yet, even though the woman seems to be running with all her might, she only manages to stay put with effort, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice. Longing for a relationship with a man, she gets involved in an affair, which is not destined to last long, because, as Sarma bitterly concludes, a man always has the opportunity to jump in the car and drive away, slam the door behind him, not be able to, and not want to take responsibility, including for his own children , whereas a woman does not have such an opportunity. And being called Latvia’s first feminist, Sarma is both aware of how unequal the desired equality is made by the division of biological sex roles accepted in society, and is able to laugh at it – that’s why references to stand-up performances with Sarma’s participation are essential in the text.
The women in the hall laugh not at “bearded” anecdotes, but at Sherpa’s apt and sometimes bone-piercingly accurate formulations of Sarma, what it means to be a woman today – in a developed, prosperous country – and what price we pay for being born with a certain set of chromosomes . It seems that this resonates most vividly in Sarma’s reflections from the stage regarding why social network advertisements on the Internet constantly offer her all kinds of opportunities to lose weight. “Why is it that all women want is to be thin? And why was it necessary to tell them that they will be more beautiful that way? Fragile and airy. That’s because then they are easier to rape.” It is this level of breath-taking openness that masks something unimaginably heavy with a joke, the poet’s ability to hit the solar plexus with the means of language is Cuteness the real trump card.
Sarma chooses not to pose
The writer, as they say, explodes, doing without flowers and pictures and calling everything by its proper name. Yes, also sexuality. Yes, violence too. Yes, failure and failure too. And the circle of readers, who are most likely well-acquainted with the modern phenomenon – the tendency of women (but of course not only them) to show their ideal life in all social roles on social networks, gets the idea that Inga Gaile is tearing away the false idealized images with rough sandpaper glitz and glamour.
No, the role of a mother is not just bright pictures with neatly dressed babies by the Christmas tree. Yes, women crave tenderness, which can also be annoying, hypocritical, fake, stolen. Yes, women also want to make love – often and a lot! Yes, shame, insecurity regarding your decisions, fear and anger, anger, ANGER! regarding the ongoing injustice are real. Yes, sometimes everything is too much for women too and they want to get out. Poses can be endlessly aesthetic, but Sarma deliberately chooses not to pose. And that’s exactly what captivates, keeps, deliberately shocks, takes the reader by the nose, because it’s real. As real as a shirt soaked in breast milk, the breath of men who have been drunk for three days on the bus, the hot steam of boiled potatoes once morest laryngitis, blue blooming flowers in the graves.
Sarma is not alone in her thoughts and actions. The author herself points out that the text often overflows from the field of realism into a kind of magical realism space, and there Sarma is accompanied by the almost always present Jaukumiņš – not quite an alter ego, but a split part of her personality, an observer, neither identical to Sarma nor completely different. It is possible that Jaukumiņš illustrates one of the feminist theorists quoted in the novel, John Berger: “To be born as a woman, one must be born in a closed and limited space, which is kept under the auspices of men. The social presence of women in this space has developed thanks to their ingenuity and ability to survive under such auspices in such a limited space. However, as a result of this situation, the woman’s “I” – the woman’s essence – has split into two parts. A woman has to watch herself all the time. She is almost constantly accompanied by her own image.”
Expanding this magical space, which Sarma calls the Gentle Land, we meet other characters from both history and literature – Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, the medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen, the outstanding feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir and others, including… bears . Why bears? What are the characters from the most famous lullaby in Latvia doing there, which Sarma is forced to sing to her youngest daughter no less than twenty times, before little Lība is willing to fall asleep? But maybe they are not the friendly bears of folklore that carry a honey pot and a bunch of berries “for a peaceful sleep”, but others – dangerous predators? The author does not completely decipher this metaphor, and it’s good that she is.
One of the companions of Sarma’s spirit (but maybe none, maybe several), moreover, constantly supplements the text with footnotes that are at times informative, at times coyly commenting, the number of which is two hundred and seventy-three in the entire novel and which expand the idea of a woman’s internal division – whatever it may be, who comments on Sarma’s actions, such commenting does take place, and thus – the thought is at least dual.
An arsenal of expressions
Sarma’s relationship with God is also peculiarly dual – at the same time, the woman rages once morest the patriarchal version of the Bible regarding the Creator and the male Savior, regarding the norms of the Old Testament, which still so often echoes the gospel of love, but elsewhere, as if in comfortingly warm sand, she sinks into the realization that in fact we only know the masculine narrative of theology, but true he-ness and trans-being might be much broader, more inclusive, more loving categories. And this is also a confirmation of what both Sarma and the feminist message of several generations sigh regarding – how difficult it is to communicate regarding the world of women in a language created by men. The arsenal of expression is insufficient. Inevitably, something will be left unsaid.
Although, as already mentioned, the author denies complete autobiography in the text, it can be found both in the form of real, well-known cultural figures in Latvia and, as it seems, in an absolutely documentary diary, the fragments of which conclude the narrative. Whether Sarma’s story has a resolution is up to the reader to decide for himself. A proper “rogue” novel would have the solution, but it seems that we have already agreed that this is no rouge novel. Thanks to the existence of such texts, the time of docile and obedient women seems to have passed, at least for the moment, thank God.
