KAJA TERŽAN – Circle

About the author:

Kaja Teržan (1986) is a poet, performer and kindergarten teacher. She has published two books of poetry. Her literary debut Delta (Delta, Center for Slovenian Literature, 2015) was nominated for the Veronika Award. Recently, the same publishing house has issued her second poetry book Krog (Circle, 2018), which delves still deeper into the fundamental questions of life and existence. As Teržan is a former dancer, her poems often return to the body and dance in the broadest sense of the word.

About the book:

Kaja Teržan’s second poetry book Circle symbolises eternal search, remembering and rummaging of the lyrical speaker: of oneself, other people and thus life. This ceaselessly biting ouroboros, a hawk that does not stop pecking, is a dance in a circle, in which the author most times remains by herself – or breaks away, or is somehow pushed out by others. This chase after others and oneself is constant hitting and fighting battles, which the speaker of these poems can never escape.

Circular motion, or well-established motion which is at times stifling, can be found anywhere: in nature, skillfully outlined in details primarily with associative strings of miniature fragments – the four seasons, water and waterdrops resembling leaves which are also changing colours; and in interpersonal relationships; with people who do not need you anymore, neither in their official nor in their personal environment. In the departure of those you love and who died when you were still a child, all of a sudden, against their will. Death, dismissal from work, partings and separations − those concerning family, love and friendship − and losses that deprive you of your favorite things, seem to be – in the poem »You can’t lose what you don’t have, but still« – a reply to the poem One art by Elizabeth Bishop. But the memory remains, a certain nostalgia which leads you back to childhood, to little bits and parts, such as crocodile pegs, chocolate wafer cubes and children’s games back when children could still hold soil in their hands – these gentle images discreetly testify to the author’s skill of depicting totally trivial scenes and turning them into most beautiful memories which surpass commercials that use retro imagery. But there is also a lighter circle, in the cycle Mappings, which quietly praises the beauty of new life: »A squeezed out accordion like a squeezed out summer morning / reverberating with noon across the sea«.

Excerpt:

A view above the lake

Each morning is this immobile beginning

with silence wrapped in cries

for breath, food, water.

He’s been trying since morning, the woodpecker...

or there may be several – I don’t know

how many blows are necessary

for a comfortable hole, a flat of one’s own.

You have no idea how badly I wish

to submerge into this lake,

and finish, for a moment,

my surface existence.

Where I share everything

precisely apportioned.

This is mine, this yours;

my bed and wardrobe,

my shoe compartment and

a massive chest for colder days;

everything mine has been turned over.

Almost as if I don't exist.

I’m a view;

I’ve got an out-of-body experience of the lake.

We are probably noticed when we don’t want to be.

Liquefaction as the call of free will.

Who’s drowning?

Those who want to help see the world

as unresolved.

Aren’t troubles only beings who haven’t arrived yet:

a soul that hasn’t covered itself in the suitable yet.

Fruit

We were seated in a bunch (as in school or theatre), and then she came; quite plump and all red in the face. She looked around the room, she even danced a little, and then she introduced her snake to us. Robust, long, white with pink-purple spots – almost circles. The head and neck and torso and legs – all in one – slithered with extraordinary elegance... I don’t like snakes, I was repeating, in case anyone was interested. It came right up to me, just as I had anticipated, but it didn’t even twitch or flick its tongue out, and neither did it bite me with its stare. It was reading me with the surface of its body and then the tears, which I was in the meantime secretly gathering in my hands, turned into small yellow and orange-red tomatoes. It moved on, while I was saying – I can’t eat them, they’re full of fear.

Settlement

I wanted to see how red existed in yellow – without spilling the colours into each other, and threw a cherry into polenta. As I remembered how the sunset had almost deceived me, how the lenses, my eyes, had misled me, and I had seen the sun-yellow-radiant over everything – the sky, the people; and then, although it had been travelling progressively, it had all of a sudden sunk red... Thoughts inserted themselves and emotions and craters of memories – they are so selfish – they are always kept only for the past. While I wonder how, in the future, my memories will sink into red craters – as given in nature.

Translated by Barbara Jurša

Druga pesniška zbirka Kaje Teržan z naslovom Krog simbolizira večno iskanje, spominjanje in brskanje po lirskem subjektu. Ta oroboros, ki neprestano grize, kragulj, ki ne preneha kljuvati, ples v krogu, v katerem avtorica največkrat ostaja sama – ali izstopi ali jo nekako izrinejo drugi. To lovljenje drugih in samega sebe neprestano tolče in bije boje, ki jim lirski subjekt nikoli ne (z)more ubežati.

Kroženje, utečeno gibanje, ki je na trenutke dušeče, je tako najti povsod: tako v naravi, ki je spretno in v detajlih izrisana predvsem z asociativnim nizanjem miniaturnih drobcev npr. kapljic, ki spominjajo na listje, ki tudi menjava barve, kot tudi v medosebnih odnosih, pri ljudeh, ki te več ne potrebujejo ne v uradnem kot tudi ne osebnem okolju. In v odhajanju tistih, ki jih imaš rad, a so umrli, ko si bila še otrok, kar naenkrat, proti svoji volji. Smrt, odpustitev z delovnega mesta, oddaljitve, razhodi − družinski, ljubezenski, prijateljski − in izgube najljubših reči se v pesmi Ne moreš izgubiti, česar nimaš, a vseeno razkrijejo kot odgovor na pesem Elizabeth Bishop One art (Ena umetnost). A ostane spomin, nostalgija, ki te popelje v otroštvo, med delčke, kot so krokodilje ščipalke, med kocke čokoladnih napolitank in igre, ko so otroci še lahko prijemali zemljo – te nežne scene nevsiljivo pričajo o avtoričini spretnosti prikazovanja povsem banalnih prizorov, ki se spremenijo v najlepše spomine in presežejo reklame za retro dneve. A je tudi svetlejši krogotok, v Preslikavah, ki na tihi način opeva lepoto novega življenja: »Iztisnjen meh kot iztisnjeno poletno jutro / z opoldansko uro zadoni čez morje;«.

Pesmim, ki so najpogosteje pisane v prozi in obsežnih kiticah, je po tematiki skupna predvsem eksistencialna stiska, ki jo avtorica uduši s samosvojo ironijo, ki lahko z enim samim stavkom pretrga sicer še tako pretresljiva dejstva žensk mater samohranilk v pesmi Izročilo: »Ženska, / ki je mati, a ni žena, ker je bila moškemu / všeč ideja, ne pa praksa,« in spregovori o psihičnem nasilju, prevečkrat rečenem kar Verbalni obračun. A še bolj krut je spopad med samimi ženskami v materinskem domu – in zopet se pokaže hierarhija močnejše, ki se pojavlja povsod, tudi še med tako ranljivimi skupinami.

Lirski subjekt je kot pohajkovalka, ki še vedno opazuje ljudi, a v pesmi vse manj vpleta opazke njihovih situacij, kot jih je v prvencu Delta, ki je bil nominiran za Veronikino nagrado, a se od njih vedno bolj distancira, približa se jim le na trenutke. Sedaj je subjekt kot brezdomka, pri presihajočem jezeru, ob slapu, ki se edini ne vrača nazaj, ob obrobju polja, kamor tako kot ona tudi drugi prihajajo bistrit in poglabljat svoje misli. Ta opazovalka sedaj občuduje predvsem lepoto oblakov (včasih to naredi s strahom, da si vzame čas zase in ne za otroka), valovanje resja, razžarenje ruja – ti trenutki razblinjajo tesnobo, ki jo doživlja zaradi ljudi, ki vedno bolj postajo tuji in odljudni.

Avtoričina posebnost je tudi prelamljanje in prenavljanje že znanih rečenic, kot npr. »Dnevi so kratki, želje pa dolge,« in spreminjanje že znanih literarnih naslov: Izkušnja v avgustu, Stari oče v avgustu. Pojavijo se tudi motivi iz likovne umetnosti, kot npr. konji, slikarja Noldeja.

Pesmi bi lahko povzeli z avtoričinim vprašanjem: »Kje se začnem in kje končam?« To samoizpraševanje, ki ni nikdar zaključeno, je polno najrazličnejših lis, ki zaznamujejo in so nenehno gibalo, da subjekt ne pristane v kalupu, v katerega se niti ne želi ukoreniniti.

Tonja Jelen

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