Translator: Karolina Zielińska Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
[Maja Zawierzeniec: "On Dreaming and Borders"]
Leonora is not a poet,
she's a walking poem,
which all of a sudden opens an umbrella,
which unexpectedly becomes a bird,
that afterwards turns into a fish
and disappears."
This is how Leonora Carrington,
a Mexican artist of British origin,
was described by one of her friends.
Leonora lived at the border between different worlds:
cultural, linguistic and mental.
This is what I want to talk about today.
About borders,
borders and dreams,
dreams at the border and borders of dreams.
Over the last several years,
I visited the United Mexican States
more than ten times.
Since the year 2001, when my first visit took place,
Mexico came to be my mental homeland.
I feel very well there and perceive some kind of magic,
which I'm not able to feel in Europe, no matter how beautiful it is.
Additionally, due to my work,
and because of my personality,
I also feel myself on the border among different worlds:
academic, student,
formal, informal,
business and cultural.
Borders are usually associated with something negative
with being on the verge of something stressful and dangerous.
But borders also imply something else:
When we are at the edge of some space,
we can "jump" to another one
and get to know new territories.
When we are standing steadily
on whichever space,
it's difficult to "jump" to the new one.
I also think that the ability to cross borders
is even more useful in the private life than in the professional one,
as it lets us look
at some situations
from different points of view
and feel less fear,
when we are stepping out of our comfort zone.
Approaching the border helps us to change the perspective.
There may be a lot of borders:
physical, linguistic,
cultural, intellectual;
we can also have mental borders.
And it is about these borders, in the Mexican context,
that I'd like to talk about.
When we think about Mexico and the border,
we automatically imagine the borderline
between Mexico and the United States,
the area portrayed in the media
as dangerous, destructive, full of violence.
However, this border has another side:
it is a place of a rich cultural
and social exchange.
A place of social symbiosis:
there are a lot of people and families,
who cross and enrich this border every single day.
Also, a lot of Mexicans living in Poland,
or Polish people visiting Mexico,
have told me that in spite of a large geographical distance
between our countries,
we have a lot of common mental features.
It teaches us that physical borders
may be illusory.
If we talk about linguistic and cultural borders,
we intuitively feel that every new language
is a key to unlock a new culture.
But I think that a language is much more:
it enables us to create reality,
and shape the world around us.
I would like to illustrate this with the example of Malinche.
Malinche, or Doña Marina,
was a companion and translator of Hernán Cortés,
who conquered Mexico in the 16th century.
As a very young girl she was sold to the Maya people
by her mother, after her father's death.
She herself came from the Nahua tribe.
This way she learnt another important Mexican language.
She was among several captive women
given as a present to Cortés,
arriving at the Mexican coast.
From the first official translator of Hernán Cortés
she learnt Spanish.
Malinche is seen as a controversial figure in Mexico,
because sometimes she is thought of as a traitor to the nation.
In my view, taking into account the social and the historical context
she was compelled to live in,
this statement is not necessarily true.
Furthermore, we could assume
that her mediation was the reason that
the conquest of Mexico was less bloody.
This way the figure of Malinche,
a woman who lived in the 16th century,
teaches us that a language is not only "a door to another culture,"
but also a means to shape the reality,
and therefore participate more actively
in the social life.
If we talk about intellectual borders,
let's take an example
of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Sor Juana Inés was a Mexican Baroque poet.
She became a nun, since monastic life
a bit more easily than other social contexts
in the 16th century Mexico,
allowed a woman to study.
And Sor Juana was a "child prodigy."
Since her early years, she put a lot of effort in understanding,
learning and personal development.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is famous for saying
that we can learn in every situation.
She also authors another celebrated statement:
"Had Aristotle cooked, he would have written a great deal more."
This figure teaches us
that intellectual borders also can be surpassed.
This is how we approached the last border, probably the most difficult:
the mental, psychological border.
Here our guide will be Rosario Castellanos,
a Mexican writer
concerned with the topic of native people.
She was also a member of the Mexican diplomatic corps,
and an ambassador in Israel.
In her play "The Eternal Feminine"
a peddler visits a Mexican beauty salon
regularly offering technical novelties to the owner.
This time he brings a special device for a hair dryer,
a big one, of the old sort.
What is this invention meant for?
For occupying the heads,
literally and metaphorically,
of the clients.
Some of them go there several times a week.
With their heads under the dryer they get bored,
and boredom, as is well known,
can lead to a socially dangerous activity:
thinking.
This new, wonderful invention is tested
on an ideal client:
a naive young girl,
full of hope, about to get married.
In this Mexican beauty salon
she dreams a socially correct dream,
in which she turns from a young, energetic person
into a frustrated,
sad housewife.
Rosario Castellanos' play
shows us that we can go beyond the mental borders.
And the irony helps us disarm
the negative social schemes,
which we often grow up with.
Cultural, linguistic,
mental borders
were experienced by three Mexican, not completely Mexican women,
three surrealist painters of European origin,
who created their works in Mexico:
Alice Rahon, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington.
Alice Rahon, in her paintings,
mixes the French surrealism
with the color of the Mexican soil.
She portrays herself as Alice in Wonderland,
a literary character drifting between worlds.
In her works, she also pays tribute to Frida Kahlo.
This second painting represents
her vision of the Mexican world.
Towards the knowledge, and the unknown is where Remedios Varo,
of Spanish origin, drifts as well.
Her painting "Exploration of the Sources of the Orinoco River"
portrays a young woman in a small boat,
sailing to the unknown.
We can tell that Remedios Varo herself
was aware of living, being
on the verge of two different worlds,
which can be verified in her self-portrait:
on one side we can see her face,
the connection with the real world,
on other side there is a mask,
symbolizing the belonging to the surrealistic world,
to a different world.
And the last, yet very interesting figure:
Leonora Carrington, of British origin,
to whom the first quotation referred.
Leonora Carrington died only two years ago,
at the age of 94 in Mexico City.
Her paintings show
the connection with the world of magic,
the world of animals, the world of intuition.
I'm the President
of the Polish-Mexican Cultural Association
Bocian&Nopal.
The projects we carry out are meant to familiarize Polish people with Mexico,
and convey certain ideas,
that we can learn from the Mexicans in general
and the Mexican women I mentioned.
That language is the key to unlock other cultures,
that can shape and change the reality.
That we can go beyond intellectual borders,
and that, in fact, we are the ones who limit ourselves.
That mental borders and social "devices"
put by the society
into our personal "hair dryers"
can be disarmed with irony.
In everyday life, when we say that something is surrealistic,
we think that it is unreal, and hard to accomplish.
But maybe freedom and crossing borders
can actually take place
if we feel more at ease,
if nothing is limiting us.
It happens when we sleep and dream.
Lawrence of Arabia once said
that all the people dream, but not in the same way.
Most of the people dream by night.
They wake up and see that their dream is gone.
But he said that there are also these dangerous people,
who may act their dreams with open eyes
in the daylight
to make them possible.
Life is a dream, so let us dream consciously.
Thank you.
(Applause)