ADSactly Poetry - The submission of the muses

in #adsactly6 years ago (edited)


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The submission of the muses


Hello, dear readers. These days, about the recommendations made by @honeydue in one of the posts of @adsactly, I have reviewed some books that I wanted to start reading or rereading this January that is already moving fast. That's why I've taken some classics out of my library, others more recent, but I've stopped at a poetic anthology that I haven't read for a while and that's super cool and interesting.

Let's remember that an anthology is a collection of texts, narratives, essays or poems that revolve around a theme, author or literary genre. This anthology is called The Thread of the Voice and is a collection of poems, stories, essays, plays written by Venezuelan women in the twentieth century. This selection is made in turn by two of the best Venezuelan writers of the last century and this century: the novelist and psychoanalyst Ana Teresa Torres and one of my favorite poets, the award-winning Yolanda Pantin.


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In reviewing some poems, my favorite literary genre, I have dwelt on a central theme that remains and breathes in almost all of the selected texts. This axis is that of the feminine vision of the world, the particular way of looking at things and ordering them, of being. A woman is not only a woman, she is a mother, daughter, sister, wife, girlfriend, lover. In its multiplicity it is many women and at the same time only one. In that kaleidoscope of colors that can be the woman, can go from white to black, from red to pink or simply be gray, only be gray, the complex and insipid gray that kills.

Although examples of Venezuelan feminine poetry date back to the end of the 19th century, it is certainly from the last century that their voices begin to sound most insistently. That is why today I have decided to share with you some poems by different Venezuelan poets, where women are shown from different perspectives, but with a submissive, docile attitude towards men, children, family and society. A crouched feminine self, according to its environment of fidelity and subordination to the loved one.


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I want to begin this search with a poem by Luz Machado, in which the role of mother is evident, the maternal attitude of the woman. Here is the first stanza of the poem:

Here I am. Don't cry anymore.
I don't want anything again, nothing.
Nothing more than what you want.
I'll make you a beautiful story.
Here's another lamb in jail
And this new landscape of debris in your hands.
Both are sad. But it doesn't matter.
I play with them, son.

In this first stanza, we find the voice of a mother who addresses her son and asks him to stop crying. It is a mother who subordinates her desires to those of her son, who lives and breathes for and through him. In the same way, she accepts the conditions that are given to her by her side: she will tell her wonderful stories, even if the reality is different. It is evident, then, the capacity that the woman has, as a mother, to create parallel worlds that save the child. A creativity that is demonstrated in the feminine life in the narration of stories to sleep the son, in the lullaby, in the improvised games. The mother creates the world so that the child stops crying, does not fear, is happy, in spite of his own feelings.

Reina Varela also brings us a text where we can evidence this reverent and ductile attitude of some women. No longer as a mother, but as a lover, a woman in love. The poem is called Self-sufficient:

I

My own maid

Cook
Secretary
Seamstress
Manicurist
Quiropedist
And a hairdresser.

Today
I would give half my kingdom
To be ironed
The whitest
Your shirts.


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This poem, transcribed almost in its entirety, shows us, as its title indicates, a self-sufficient woman, able to fend for herself. An independent woman who does, works, resolves. But she lets us glimpse, in those last verses, that she lacks and wants something: a man by her side. That's why he expresses the desire to change, part of all his freedoms, for "ironing the whitest of your shirts". Let us observe with this expression, which does not speak of being in bed or in his arms, but of serving man, who would give anything to serve the desired or beloved man. Domestic work as a way of pleasing, but also of intimacy with the other, of showing love.


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If there is a famous poem that plays with the idea of the surrender or subordination of the woman, it is the long and famous Poem of Patricia Guzmán's husband, where irony, certainty and an air of resignation water the words of the lyrical speaker. Because of the length of the poem, let's just say a few verses:

I don't mind pleasing and serving
I don't mind being good at keeping

I don't mind having a husband.

When the husband sits at the table, one asks him to eat well.
When the husband sits at the table, one asks him not to cry.
When the husband says goodbye, you give him the blessing.
(it's always good to pray a little for them)

The husband never knows he's your husband.
Either you have a husband or you are a wife (you can't both)
If you're a wife, you get distracted.

The exaltation of the husband comes from the very title of the poem. The husband as a central figure in the life of the woman, worthy of compliments and apologies. Notice how the lyrical voice expresses without cover its surrender to marriage. She says that it "does not bother her" to have a husband or to serve, and with this statement she renounces rebelliousness. It is she who assumes, after marriage, the maternal figure towards the husband; hence, as in the first poem, the woman seeks that the other does not cry, that he eats, as she does with children, even blesses him. Interesting are the last verses in which the lyrical voice announces that acting as wife "distracts". We do not assume this word as fun, but when a woman plays the role of wife, she stops assuming the other roles that seem to be more fundamental in the relationship.


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It has taken a lot of sweat, blood and tears for a woman to obtain the same freedoms as a man. What she has done, she has done for the sake of equality. Everything to be able to go out into the street and demand the same rights that men had: vote, smoke, drink, work, and earn a living as they please. So why this ancestral submission, why this surrender to the other?


In my ignorance and perhaps naivety, I believe I understand that for some women love is unconditional surrender, it is service and sacrifice. The one who loves, as a woman loves a man or a mother loves her child, feels that the good of the other is above his own, that there is no greater happiness than the happiness of the loved person. Thus she does not see his behavior as submission, but as an act done from the heart. It is not obligation or burden, it is love. Because when a woman loves, as Henry D. Thorea said, for her "Love is not only a flame, but a light".


I hope you enjoyed the reading and the poems. Remember to vote for @adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. Until a next smile. ;)

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE:

El hilo de la voz. Anthology (2003) Caracas: Polar Foundation. Compilation by Yolanda Pantin and Ana Teresa Torres

WRITTEN BY: @nancybriti

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I feel great satisfaction to read your essay The submission of the muses where you present us the interwoven voice, in different literary genres, of some Venezuelan writers of the last century who gather around El hilo de la voz, that wonderful anthology work carried out by two great figures of Venezuelan femininity and poetry: Yolanda Pantin and Ana Teresa Torres.
I agree with you, @nancybriti, when you say that women have such an intense way of surrendering themselves to what they often want to be confused with submission and, moreover, I add, on many occasions overflow the thin lines that separate love from madness.
Thank you, @nancybriti, for giving us the voice of the muses in the flow of your lyrical pen.

That thin thread that separates human and inhuman sacrifice from love to submission is what can sometimes be questioned. The woman as the center that can do everything and that is ordered around her: the great mother and martyr. Pleased and grateful for your comment, @oacevedo.

This series that you announce, @nancybriti, is extremely interesting, already from the first article. The attitude of the woman (who as you say can be girlfriend, wife, mother, daughter, etc.) towards the other is a complex issue. Sometimes what can be thought simply as submission, can be love, surrender, in the good sense. I think it will depend a lot on her psychological and psychic disposition. Now, I think I sense in most of the voices (the speakers) of the poets quoted, in their verses, an ironic sense, in some more marked than in others. Pending your other posts. Thank you and greetings.

Indeed, @josemalavem. Irony is a resource that can be observed in almost all the poems cited, especially that of Patricia Guzmán. I feel, for example, that in this husband's poem there is a questioning of the masculine role, but also the feminine one, which places the man in the center of the table, of the universe, even knowing that the navel of the world is she. Excellent and sharp comment. Thank you for your reading always.

Enlightening Post


Poems which inspired by women, create beautiful work. From the content, rhyme and diction we can understand about the writer thought.
Your post remind all the women in the world, to struggle and do everything we need.
Women are the pillars of a family. if the husband is the head then the wife is the brain and heart of the family. How the family will run is very closely related to how the wife, the woman regulates it. The big role of women will also determine the course of a country. Because the state is a family in a very large form. Thanks to women, great leaders will also be born. Thanks to women children grow up to be independent and successful.
Women's rebellion which denies equality as equal to men is something that cannot be denied.
Thank you @ nancybriti
Thank you @adsactly
Thank you steemit
Warm regard from Indonesia

I do not believe in equality driven by feminism. The man and the woman must have equal rights and equal duties, in a legal manner. However, as the author of this publication says, "there is a vision, a way of seeing, of being and ordering things" that starts on chromosome 22 xx. Greetings @rokhani, very important your contribution and reflection

The woman as a whole! They speak of mother nature for a reason. The woman as a center that begets, feeds, raises, educates, loves. Thank you for always commenting, @rokhani

A simply wonderful essay @nancybriti. You have the ability to say, describe and present in a simple way a literary ocean. I am really struck by its beginning "the particular way of looking at things and ordering them, of being" ... I think it is an indisputable truth !! There is no feminism in her affirmation, there is a woman who is reflected in the mirror of another woman's literature. I see that there lies his great success in this essay. And it goes further, in the interpretation of Reina Varela's poem "Domestic work as a way of pleasing, but also of intimacy with the other, of showing love" ... here goes back to that vision of the beginning of this post.
When I read the final paragraph then I reread the poems that you published and I realize that possibly "being a woman" is a very complex entity that when you love (no matter whom: father, son, husband) simply surrenders. It is a matter of action or act of the heart rather than of gender or reason.
Best regards @nancybriti and thanks for the reference of the Anthology. Thanks for sharing @adsactly.
Congratulations to @honeydue who inspired this publication through a reference from him

Good thing you liked it, @marcybetancourt. One of the interesting things about poetry is that it is as intimate and unique as a feeling. And poetry is woman. I like to think of the woman as a complex poem, but interesting; simple but touching; of verses and prose; of perfect rhymes, but also of free verses. Women, like poetry, should not be pigeonholed or created formulas, because she gives herself only to the most sensitive. Thank you for your valuable comment. I appreciate it.

Always I read about the struggle of women against submission, I think of four people: my mother, Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, and Marie Shelley (I do think of many others as well, like my sisters, Tony Morrison or Phillis Wheatley, but that is just too long a story).
The first one, my mom, taught me not to think of myself as inferior (nor superior) to any man (or person in general); the second one, Woolf, opened a new world of ideas about women’s being deprived for so long of a proper education, money and a room (...of One’s Own), and she has also made me consider the pros and cons of actually developing an androgynous mind. The third one, Lessing made clear for me that space had to be physical and not just a psychic instance—we women need real space to exist—. The fourth and last one, young writer Marie Shelley, specifically through her Frankenstein, has taught me a most valuable lesson: if you get to have your book published, please don’t let your husband write the prologue. A woman should not need a man to represent her. If you ask me, Marie Shelley would’ve been better off without such undeserving presentation.
We women have the capacity to love deeply and altruistically. We are mothers, even those who are childless. However, we are also the dark womb where heroes come to die. The world begins and ends in its Mother. We are the most powerful archetype; C’mon! If that doesn’t scare men, what does! This is why this Man’s World has lacerated our genitals, made us wear neck rings, use high heels and corsets, develop bound feet and a submissive attitude. We must be indeed terrible, my dear friend, @nancybriti.

These poems you comment on so aptly remind of Anne Bradstreet's "To My Dear and Loving Husband," which I never got to love but which I will reread with different eyes after reading your great post, my brilliant friend. So thank you for that ☻♥

Complete and excellent comment, my dear @marlyncabrera. Yes, the examples of women who have served to get us out of the darkness and the little corner of the house where we were, abound. Not only in literature or in times past, even today there are women who must fight, in all areas, against societies that try to castrate and silence them. Grateful for your comment and I hope to have the pleasure of always counting on them. Greetings

Always I can, my dear @nancybrity. By the way, ita has been a nice experience to see Y. Pantin's name there, after I've known her only as a children's lit writer (I still have her Vampiro y Ratón series).

Wow, a long blog post... Looking forward to reading it all through. :-)

a side question I have though, is... Do you(Or anyone else reading this comment) also find an interest in personal or just generally spiritual development books?

I have a book lying around that I purchased on Amzon.co.uk or .com a little year ago, called "Psychic development" by a, WIlliam W. Hewitt I think was the name... I have yet to getting around to it. Thoughts?

Some books deserve a chance and a reading! Read it and see if it was worth not only buying it, but also reading it. Greetings

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That's good! Thank you.

I am a big fan of poetry
continued success with @adsactly

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Good to know that! Enjoy the poetry. Thank you.

Best poetry of the day @adsactly with very beautiful art @adsactly. Amazing Talent is filled in you. I think I come to your post for the first time. See you Top. I would like to wish god that this year is good for you @adsactly

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Same to you!

Are you wife of adsactly

Lol. No. @adsactly is a team. ;)

Very nice Post