Certainly, here is the space most adapted to speak about BL
Tchocolatl wrote: ...then without warning... well I can not tell and spoil the experience of people who had not read it yet.
I do not want to spoil Dylan's experience telling what he had not read it yet or creating prejudices that harm his own interpretation. But, you do not know how I want to share a couple of opinions with you of this book.
Since a good work of art must remain opened the understanding of the receiver. The author offers us situations, prominent figures, tells us a history and we receive an impact, probably only emotionally, or he will induce us to reflections. Today, from the Cohen's work, I dare to think and judge, because we are in a forum.Tchocolatl wrote: I see the historical aspect on the novel. But not the jugdment of any event. And I think that you saw it also, 'cause you are mentioning it, but where "lost" because Mr. Cohen does not put a label "good" or "bad" on all the bloody story. He is just a witness. This is how it was. No judgment. Of course, we are used to take side, to identify good guys, bad guys. Not him. He is a reporter.
Yes, Edith is one of the last members of a tribe who always has lost and who has to disappear. Raped, humiliated, she decides to flee definitively with a gesture of protest. In this way, cultures like that have been conquered by colonizers who have massacred, violated, stolen their territories and have confined them in reservations, have exhibit to them in the triumphal parade and have chained and dressed in orange clothes. The worst thing, they have destroyed their culture, their values and they have turned them into poor beings, humiliated and ridiculous: it is necessary to show them this way to be able to say: "it is what is deserved, they are low".Tchocolatl wrote: The rape of Edith (I take this example among many others 'cause we previously wrote about it in another thread) is an image which describes what happened to the First Nations by Europeans during the colonization. Rough times, those times. If you go one day to Château Ramzay museum you'll see few interesting artefacts, paintings by a Sioux Chief. He was well aware that soon his traditonal ways of living will disapear and he was painting as much as he can about Sioux's ordinary ways of life to let the world know who they were.
...
For me Edith is a metaphor of what happened to the First Nations.
And Catherine Tekakwitha? Is she really another victim? Catherine belonged to the tribe Algonkin, Ottawa River Valley conquered by the Iroquois was captured and married to a chief Mohawk.She embraced the Christianity. Because of her faith she flee to a Christian village. She took vote of chastity and an exemplary lifestyle to the eyes of the Jesuits. Victim of the corporal punishments was weakening up to dying.
Cohen gives us this information across the documentation that a historian works. We see as the desire of this man towards this being of God, the Beautiful Catherine - in spite of her scarred face marked by an epidemic-, and how the obsession grows.
I want to be rigorous; a history very well relied on this perfectly constructed personage tormented by all these feelings. Also the Cohen's wonderful humor is present. To this point I can make responsible to the author.
But, he has presented the history. And the teenager who almost thirty years ago read this book was getting angry as the reading was advancing. Was Leonard's purpose this?
In my infancy, before Holy Week, they were forcing us to study dreadful "exemplary histories" of martyrs and I knew well the Christian Mystics, theirs desires to emulate Jesus' Calvary, methods of mortification and defeat the demon and the meat (sexual impulses). (I have to say that all this was generating in the children a great curiosity and insane morbidity.) This way, for my culture I could not surprise Catherine's narration.
I know that we must not judge with our eyes olds times. "Rough times, those times", Thoco says to us. But I cannot avoid point with my accusing tremulous finger of anger the attitude of these Jesuits who had under his guidance Cathrine and they did not avoid her cruel sacrifice. They attended it and gave to her the information to do it. The description of the element used to torturer - I do not know the English word - it's the same one used for some fanatic Catholics still today. And once died they exploited her without shame to advance with his Mission and his power.
Religious fanaticism. Volunteer? For love? I cannot accept this sacrifice.
) "dead lines" to respect over here, first.
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. (I do not know the Mrs Chow incident.)
One feminist says how pornography is offensive to her: " I can't look up on newstand and see all those naked, opressed woman, as I go to buy my cigarettes every morning". So much about political correct behaviour. She could know that the smoking isn't good for her health, and she's anyhow posioning all people around her, and pornography is used in your own room, if you get what I mean.