Friday 29 April 2022

Olalla's recommendation: The Awakening

 Olalla Manteiga, a C2 student in Sar, recommends a timeless classic; an eye-opener for anyone dissatisfied with what society expects from us:

I would like to share one of my favourite novels, The Awakening, written by the American author Kate Chopin and published in 1899. 

I came across her work when I had to read it for my literature class at University. Set in the American South, the story revolves around Edna Pontellier and her struggle to overcome social conventions about femininity and motherhood. Solitude and sexuality are also recurrent topics in the novel. The protagonist feels detached from the society she lives in because she feels she cannot be her true self, so she starts a journey to find freedom and autonomy.

It was a controversial novel at the time, both because of the topics discussed and the way Chopin depicts Victorian society. I think it is a masterpiece ahead of its time and a very brave attempt to denounce the social and gender roles that reduced women to mothers and wives. It is considered a symbol of early feminism and a precursor of American modernist literature that was later followed by other American authors such as William Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor. I strongly recommend this novel as well as Chopin's short stories. To conclude, I would like to share one of my favourite quotes from The Awakening: "The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings."

 


Saturday 23 April 2022

World Book Day

Wondering what book to read next? Looking for a book to motivate you? Keen to try a new author in English? We’d like to celebrate World Book Day by creating a new section in this blog that will help you discover your next read: Students recommend books to students.


Yolanda Ferro is a C2 student in Sar and also a member of our book club. In order to inspire you, Yolanda has chosen the work of a wonderful writer, Polish poetess Wislawa Szymborska:

I happened to learn about the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska back in 2002, when I was living in Krakow, Poland, the very same town she inhabited at that time and where she died in 2012, aged 88. Some years earlier, in 1996, she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."


Surfing the net I came through this excerpt that I reckon perfectly expresses her uniqueness:

“Szymborska frequently employed literary devices such as ironic precision, paradox, contradiction and understatement, to illuminate philosophical themes and obsessions. (…). It is, however, important to note the ambiguity of her poetry. Although her poetry was influenced by her experiences, it is relevant across time and culture. She wrote from unusual points of view, such as a cat in the newly empty apartment of its dead owner. Her reputation rests on a relatively small body of work, fewer than 350 poems. When asked why she had published so few poems, she said: I have a trash can in my home.” 

Source

The two poems below will allow you to have a taste of what I find to be her profound and serene vision of existence, her joyful wisdom concerning life. When living in Poland, I spent many consecutive hours in her poems´ company. So, it is from my own experience that I can tell that her words have a very powerful "healing" effect:

"The Three Oddest Words"

 When I pronounce the word Future,

the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,

I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,

I make something no non-being can hold.

 

"Possibilities"

I prefer movies.

I prefer cats.

I prefer the oaks along the Warta.

I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.

I prefer myself liking people

to myself loving mankind.

I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.

I prefer the color green.

I prefer not to maintain

that reason is to blame for everything.

I prefer exceptions.

I prefer to leave early.

I prefer talking to doctors about something else.

I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems

to the absurdity of not writing poems.

I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries

that can be celebrated every day.

I prefer moralists

who promise me nothing.

I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.

I prefer the earth in civvies.

I prefer conquered to conquering countries.

I prefer having some reservations.

I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.

I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.

I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.

I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.

I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.

I prefer desk drawers.

I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here

to many things I’ve also left unsaid.

I prefer zeroes on the loose

to those lined up behind a cipher.

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.

I prefer to knock on wood.

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility

that existence has its own reason for being.

Thanks, Yolanda, for sharing the exquisite work of such an exceptional poetress. We're really moved by how wonderfully both poems capture the greatness of ordinary life.


 

Friday 8 April 2022

Tales of the Unexpected Book Club Worksheet

 Our next book club meeting is the first Friday after the Easter break so here you can download a worksheet with some quotes and questions related to the five tales we will be discussing:

Click on the image below. 


Hope to see you on Friday 22nd at 18:30.

Happy Easter!