I tried reading Olga Tokarczuk Booker International Prize winning novel “Flights” last year. I really tried. But, although I could appreciate what an engaged and intelligent writer Olga Tokarczuk is, I just wasn’t enjoying the book's fragmented nature. So after 60 pages I regretfully shelved it to try again another day. Therefore, I was so delighted when I immediately connected much more easily with the story and protagonist of her most recent translated novel “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”. Here a teacher/caretaker/translator named Mrs Duszejko dwells in a remote Polish village during the dead of winter when most of the community’s inhabitants have left for the season. One snowy day she and her neighbor (who she calls Oddball) discover their only other immediate neighbor (who she calls Big Foot) dead in his home. She soon believes this is part of unusual murder plot orchestrated by the animals of the woods who are motivated by revenge. Mrs Duszejko is wonderfully eccentric. She rigorously consults astrological charts, dresses up as a wolf for the mushroom pickers’ ball and sometimes encounters the ghosts of her mother & grandmother. She surmises that “the best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.”
Unsurprisingly, the surrounding villagers and police force (who she frequently writes to with her ardent conspiracy-theories) don’t take her very seriously and consider her a kook. She’s very aware of this, but is steadfast in her opinions even though she seems to have manic-depressive tendencies. As the title of the novel would suggest, she’s prone to a lot of bleak self-reflection. At one moment she might reflect “one day we shall all be nothing more than corpses” and the next “How great and full of life the world is.” She feels somewhat like a deliciously bleak Jean Rhys character - but less drunk and unconcerned with romance. Mrs Duszejko even goes so far as to postulate “that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.” Through the lens of this idiosyncratic woman’s sensibility, we’re introduced to a way of viewing the natural world, society and human relationships from a refreshing new perspective.
That’s not to say I agree with most of Mrs Duszejko’s cockeyed theories or philosophies and I don’t think we’re meant to buy into her ideas. For instance, she has an odd reverence for angry impulses believing that “Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.” This goes against the common adage that anger can make us blind to the truth. At another point when thinking about her neighbor who is a writer (who she calls the Grey Lady) she suggests: “people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous... such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality - its inexpressibility.” It’s enjoyable how Tokarczuksimultaneously pokes fun at the endeavour of writing and a particularly dour perspective on the literary impulse.
Mrs Duszejko herself is often consumed with literature as she helps her sensitive younger friend (who she calls Dizzy) to translate the letters of William Blake. Each chapter is headed by a quote from a Blake poem and it's interesting how these ideas meld with Mrs Duszejko's thoughts. She seems intent on creating theories through which this community that's dominated by patriarchal rule can exist more harmoniously with nature: “People have a duty towards Animals to lead them - in successive lives - to Liberation. We’re all traveling in the same direction, from dependence to freedom, from ritual to free choice.” Certain words are capitalized in her sentences highlighting when she's defining these terms for her philosophical systems of thought. In this way, she strives towards elaborate theories which no one takes seriously and this prompts her to take alternative action.
I really enjoyed this intriguing story and portrait of an idiosyncratic personality. There’s a dry sense of humour at the heart of it which I really appreciate. It's prompted me to want to go back and try reading “Flights” again because Tokarczuk has such a unique point of view.
