Political Polar(bear)ization
Etuden im Schnee and the conveyance of identity
Knut the Polar Bear was a cross-cultural mass media phenomenon. In addition to his undisputed cuteness, he became a lightning rod for conversations on the ethics of zoos, the neccessity of environmentalism, and human responsibility for Global Climate Change. In 2014, three years after the real-life death of its most famous character, Yoko Tawada released her novel Etuden in Schnee. While the book failed to recapture the full audience of Knutmania, it was well reviewed in Germany and its English translation was award-winning. Unlike the last German novel we read (See my analysis of Gehen, Ging, Gegangen here: The Migration of A Story), this book was enjoyed by critics in both languages. The book follows three generations of a Polar Bear family and ends with Knut, a zoo-born polar bear who never gets to see the pole. It is contemporary in a very specific way: it is timeless. While the war-torn 2010s saw the greatest movement of people since World War 2 and threat of climate disasters has us at the precipice of yet more mass movements, the novel’s central themes of love, immigration, and the insufficiency of language and memory would be eternally relevant regardless. The sense of timelessness is heightened by the confusing chronography of the story itself, its shifting narrators and lack of distinction between dream and reality.
The German news source DW.Com ran a review by Sabine Peschel in 2018. Peschel appreciates much of the book as a politcal and literary satire. She enjoys how the book pokes fun at Soviet bureaucracy and western excess from a bear’s perspective. The book is also self-aware, even if its unnamed initial narrator is not fully, of its status as part of long tradition of what another German review called “phantastischer Tierliteratur.” Knut’s grandmother examines and interrogates stories from Kafka, Heinrich Henne, Tolstoi and others from what is maybe best described as a peculiar “bear-human” perspective. Peschel celebrates the way it plays with language and meaning as being poetic. However, she strangely states the end result is a “eine neue, traumhafte Welt, in der wir uns als Leser zuhause fühlen.”
“eine neue, traumhafte Welt, in der wir uns als Leser zuhause fühlen.”
A new, dreamlike world, in which we as readers feel at home
I do not believe that accurately reflects the experience or intent of the book. As the longer German analysis by Lina Werry discusses, the bears act like a mirror for the readers. While we are looking at a world in many ways like our own, it is through the reflection of the polar bear’s eye, and the mirror of the polar bear is a fun-house mirror, a product of the circus. Werry’s review also emphasizes how the design of the book and its original German edition cover help to convey how all three of the books' characters share the same dreams of what would be their “natural” home. Her analysis appreciates how the book gives the polar bear “menschliche attributes” without making them human.
English reviews such as those by Ramona Ausubel in the New York Times appreciates similar aspects of the book, but also makes similar errors in analysis as Peschel. Ausubel focuses on how the theme of motherhood and mammality threads through the novel, providing an easily relatable aspect for its human readers. She also argued the scenes between Tosca and Barbara show the universality of us searching for love and connection. While this theme of relatability is undeniably present, this book is not in its entirety an advocate of this sort of “we’re more alike than we are different” style of thought. Instead, as Werry pointed out, the polar bears are clearly still not quite human, and Tawada’s novel highlights how fundamentally different people and peoples can be, and often laments the isolating effect of those differences. Meanwhile, Jane Housham’s review for The Guardian is brief but contains a line I feel most perfectly encapsulates the energy of the novel. What’s truly dreamlike and disorienting about the novel is not the bears ability to interact with humans or read and write, “but that these magical scenarios do not add up to a “world”; rather, we are never allowed to forget that these are the imaginings of a writer who can change direction on a whim.”
In some ways, this book is an obvious award candidate, especially if it were a movie. The book is a “based on a true story” book about the process of writing a book. But it gets even more meta than that, as this book is a book about the process of itself getting written. In that way, it is somewhat reminiscent of the themes of A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man. However, what truly struck me while reading this book is its difference from another Joyce title: Ulysses. That book is fundamentally a book about present consciousness, and reading it feels like what thinking feels like. Etuden is a book about language and communication through time, and reading it feels like what writing feels like. Tawada herself comments on the differences between thinking and writing, saying the human soul is full of broken letters and the shadows of words. While the polar bear in the story can taste the soul through their kiss, for most human relationships, the work of forming those shattered thoughts into writing is a how a record of a soul can best be conveyed.
Ulyssess explores deeply the concepts of nationhood and exile despite all of its action taking place in a single city during a single day. Tawada in her decade and generation spanning epic peruses similar questions from entirely different views. Instead, the polar bears clearly document immigrant experience in new countries and languages, the push-pull factors between their current home and their new one, and the differences that arise as generations grow less connected to their homeland. An interesting tid-bit I noticed in the English reviews, is that they frequently refer to the grandmother as the Matriarch. Yet she never presides over her family and as Knut’s dreams of ururgrosmutters make clear, she was not the first in their line, simply the first to become disconnected from the rest. While shown in whimsical manner, the book touches upon the difficulties of learning a new language and workplace, of facing right-wing backlash based on immutable characteristics of one's background, of being discriminated against, or taken advantage of, or used as a token spokesperson for a minority. Almost every negative aspect of the immigrant experience and the response to to immigrants features prominently. Yet the story goes on. The family goes on for three generations. Which might seem to be the most fantastical part of all, except that is the same experience millions of hopeful migrants undertake every year. The book does not always paint homo sapiens in the best light. It explores our political and identity divides. It shows us as at times as being petty, childlike, and delusional. It shows us (especially many of the men) as being greedy, exploitative. This is the mirror of the polar bear. Yet it also offers room for hope. Part Ulysses, part Phantom Tollbooth, the novel explores what it means to be human, constrained by time, space, or social constraints, and yearning for connection across those forces, from the perspective of a bear.
We also see the caring humanity of Matthias, Markus, and Christian. Barbara’s growing self-confidence through their relationship. Tosca can choose to end her section by recounting the memory of her highlight, the emotional connection of her kiss with Barbara. The grandmother can choose to write about her future and hop into the role of a protagonist. Even if this power is initially only exercised in writing and through dreams, it lays a groundwork for a future. It allows connections and loving relationships to form. Eventually, the dream-like nature of the entire book seems to suggest, dreams can merge into reality.
A better world and a better self may not be guaranteed, but it is possible. And that is worth striving for — and writing for — even when despair or apathy may seem easier.
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/books/review/memoirs-of-a-polar-bear-yoko-tawada.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/21/memoirs-polar-bear-yoko-tawada-review
