When poets speak of the homeland...
There are two ways of looking at and perceiving a country: being inside and outside it. Sometimes, because we are inside, we don't value many things, nor are we moved by others. Homeland can become a hollow word without much echo in us. Only those who are far from their country can miss it, love it, even be sincere in their gaze and see all the defects. It's as if the distance allows you to be more objective, critical, but at the same time be more proud of where you come from. That's why many foreigners live in new countries with customs of their countries of origin, it's as if they never finish leaving. Being out of the country brings out the melancholy of the homeland, the desire for a speedy return, and this becomes fuel for writing.
The renowned Chilean writer, Gabriela Mistral, who led an itinerant life has a beautiful poem, of which I would like to write a stanza:
I was born of things
that are not a country:
of homelands
that I had and I lost
of the creatures
that I saw die
of what was mine and left me.
In this stanza we perceive a lyrical voice that speaks to us of losses, of what was and no longer is. It is as if when we leave the country in which we were born, we begin to break our roots; the country is blurring, it is no longer in the memory and the memories when we live the tragedy and the sadness. It is a country that no longer belongs to us because everything that united us to it has died. We say that the homeland is the piece of land where we feel safe, protected; it is the national house where we are proudly and to which we belong. But when the feeling is one of sadness and anguish, when we feel that every day the country attacks us and forces us to leave it, then there is nothing to unite us to the earth. We are trees without roots.
Another of the writers who was outside his country, in this case exiled by a military dictatorship, was Juan Gelman, Argentine writer, who lived many years in Rome, Paris, Mexico, and who made poetry of his life in exile. Here is a poem written in prose:
People should not be uprooted from their land or country, not by force. People are hurt, the earth is hurt.
We are born and our umbilical cord is cut. They banish us and nobody cuts off our memory, our tongue, our heat. We have to learn to live like the carnation of the air, properly of the air.
I am a monstrous word. My roots are thousands of kilometres away from me and we are not tied by a stem, two seas and an ocean separate us. The sun looks at me when they breathe at night, they hurt at night under the sun.
In this beautiful and heartfelt poem we find a voice that thinks of exile, of separating from a country still carrying it in its veins. The poetic voice affirms that when we leave the country of origin we should cut off everything that belongs to the country, leave it behind, forget it. But no. We carry it with us and it's a memory that hurts. Learning becomes the most used verb: we learn another language, we learn another culture, we learn another history and we must learn to forget. We learn not only to speak another language, but also to feel in another language, which is like opening our eyes in the dark. Then we become birds that once lost their nest and must rebuild another, even if the memory persists the memory of the previous one.
José Emilio Pacheco, a Mexican writer, who not only wrote poetry, but also narrative and essay texts, also addressed the theme of the homeland in some of his poems:
I don't love my homeland.
His abstract brilliance
is ungraspable.
But (even if it sounds bad)
I would give my life
for ten places of his,
certain people,
ports, forests, deserts, fortresses,
a broken-down, gray, monstrous city,
several figures in its history,
mountains
and three or four rivers.
This poem is quite ironic. The first verse is a statement that is denied by the following verses. The lyrical voice says that he does not love his country, but we see how he says that he would give his life for some things in it: its nature, its history, its people. In short, he would give his life for everything. It is not strange that at some point this feeling of love-hate for who we are as a nation can be presented. As we said at the beginning: it is normal that we recognize the imperfections, the evils of the land in which we were born and yet we do not change it for anything in the world.
I would like to close with another woman, the Uruguayan poet and political activist Cristina Peri Rossi, who has been in exile in Spain since 1972, but who has left in her work her opinion on the sense of homeland. Here I leave you one of his famous poems:
They dream of returning to a country that no longer exists
and that they would only recognize on maps
of memory.
Maps that they make every night
in the fog of dreams
and that they roam in white ships
in perpetual motion.
…
If they came back
they wouldn't recognize the place
the street, the house.
They would hesitate in the corners,
they'd think they were somewhere else.
But they come back every night
in the white ships of dreams
on a safe course.
There's nothing like distance for nostalgia. From the outside we remember and long for the place where we were born, grew up, the place of childhood and memories. It is to that place that we return: to the country that remained in the memory, but that is no longer there. Like us, the homeland also changes and no matter how much we want to go back to the past, it will never be the same again. If the one who has gone returns sometime, he will realize that the country that was in his memory and that he remembered, no longer exists. Sometimes it changes not only the country, but also us: we change the way we see, think and perceive things.
It is said that during his exile in England, the thinker and writer Elias Canetti locked himself every day in a room to write single words in German, one after the other, for fear of losing his language, trying to maintain it and with it to maintain ties with the homeland. It is true that there are many writers who stopped writing in their language, only for the simple fact of going out and not knowing their country of origin. But this is the exception, not the rule. In writers, their status as exiles, rather than desensitizing them, makes them defenders and spokespersons of their country in the distance. There is no loss: the place where your best memories live, your childhood years, where you were happy: don't doubt that this is your country, your home, your homeland.
I hope you enjoyed these poems as much as I did. I remind you that you can vote for @adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. Until the next smile. ;)
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriela_Mistral
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Gelman
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Emilio_Pacheco
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Peri_Rossi
Written by: @nancybriti
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Great post @nancibriti. We will surely see a lot of exile literature by the so many Venezuelan writers who have left the country in the last years.
Even with the possibility we are getting now of putting an end to our nightmare, I'm sure it will take some time formost to return, if at all.
The nostalgia for the lost land and the lost friends, times, and memories will be ameliorated by the improved living conditions most people have found.
And, as you have pointed out, the land of our imagination is only that, an imagined community that will not match what we find after the separation.
There is already a lot of writing, narrative, poetry and essay, which talks about the Venezuelan diaspora. There is even a post-Chávez line in our literature, which speaks precisely of all that the Bolivarian revolution has meant for our country. Hopefully we will soon get out of this red trap of a thousand years and the children will return, and the writers will write about this nightmare but already awake. It is always a pleasure to read your comments so accurately and intelligently, dear friend. Hugs.
These days my thoughts are with you Venezuelans. I hope this uncertain and fragile situation will not last long...
Leaving one's home country also has some positive effects as we get a much bigger picture of the world and even learn to see that it is actually the home of all of us. Then we see any population suffering as if we are hurt ourself
Thank you for your words and for your solidarity, @johano. Living this kind of experience makes you more sensitive to many. It is as if having a wound makes you aware of all the wounds in the world. Thank you for commenting
A beautiful post, @nancybriti, with excellent poems and attractive illustrations. The poem I like the most is the one by Cristina Peri Rossi; it has a great nostalgic force and resolves in a very suggestive way that sensation of "return". I think that one of the strongest emotions before the homeland is that of loss. Once the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges wrote a sonnet to his friend, also writer Manuel Mujica Láinez, in which appear two verses (the endings) that resonate in me always. I allow myself to copy the poem (unfortunately when it is translated into English the rhyme is lost):
We Venezuelans have not yet reached that limit, and there is already beginning to be a effort certain of recovery.
Thank you for your post, and @adsactly for allowing us to access it.
May your words come true, @josemalavem and may we once again have the country we had! But we would have to ask those who left if they still keep that country inside, if they still keep something of it or on the contrary, in one of the streets of the world, they lost it. Thank you for sharing such a beautiful poem by Borges and for your heartfelt words. Hugs
enlightening and educating post
Peeling poetry is a form of glory by understanding and interpreting it. And this time you explore the poems related to the homeland. for domestic poets can be an inspiration when writing. The beauty of words is certainly a gamble and the important thing is to interpret the homeland with the beauty of the word and the depth of meaning.
and you managed to peel it well.
when I read your post I imagined my homeland. homeland can mean very much. for some people the homeland is only interpreted as a place of birth and growth. He will feel the homeland as a place of birth that must be defended until the last drops of darh.
However, for some people who live far from their homeland it will become a problem. Being far from the place of origin will require good adaptation of culture, different values, associating with strangers and of course needing great energy to unite with them.
Will it shadow and become an unforgettable memory while he lives in the land of people. Or become a new individual who loves a new life and makes it where he is, who has given water and juice to his land as his homeland?
Yeah and you managed to explore the perspective of the homeland according to the writers.
Thank you @nancybriti
Thank you @adsactly
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Warm regard from Indonesia
Yes, there are different ways of looking at that homeland from afar. Sometimes you don't yearn to return to it; indeed, some are afraid to do so because their lives are in danger! But this is not normal. It would be normal to live at home and want to be there. Even animals, when wandering, always look for a place to rest. Thank you very much for always commenting, @rokhani. Greetings from Venezuela.
I love finding your letters that describe with such passion and precision the topics that you expose in this blog for us, your followers, @nancybriti. The selection of poems that you have made on this occasion seems very illustrative because it allows us to see the homeland from different instances, both physically and sentimentally.
I think that the most nostalgic expatriation is that which occurs within our own walls, as is the specific case of present-day Venezuela - a sinister example - where that oppressive and malignant self-styled "21st century socialism" has I have left without space within the home. It has pushed us into the streets of exile, weather and hunger (as Julio Cortázar narrates in that wonderful tale that is Casa Taken, metaphor of tyrannical governments) and has finally forced hundreds of thousands, millions of Venezuelans to flee from the despair towards the uncertain territories of exile.
Hopefully very soon in the country we can get out of this nightmare and return to the democratic path to walk with joy the paths for freedom.
Thank you, @nancybriti, for your noble work and @adsactly for publishing it.
Have no doubt, @oacevedo! That day will come. And we will celebrate when our brothers, sons, friends, return to our country. This history will be commented by the books, made poems and stories, as a history that we must never repeat, as a sad chapter but that has come to an end. It is a pleasure to always read your comments, poet. Thank you.
To love your country is to be proud of it and to feel that it is wonderful, it is to love it as one loves his family and to try to do good for it. It is to show kindness and to feel part of a people of companions and friends. In love, one gives in hope in return, the love of the fatherland is to give in one direction because it is to express what we are and to act in agreement with that. In his famous investiture speech in 1961, John F. Kennedy uttered the phrase, "Do not ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," a phrase that made Americans euphoric which was transmitted as a shockwave to the whole earth and has since become historical.
I love Gabriela Mistral work!
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That's good!
Changing the perspective often change our way of thinking. That's way people on exile appreciate every aspects of their previous home, motherland.
Unfortunately it's like this: we only miss being outside! Thank you for your comment, @azmac
very nice
Thank you very much for commenting
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My thoughts go out to you and your country Venezuela. I hope you heal and become the proud country again as it was before.