Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Dorfman: Women as Earth

This is another striking extract of something I read during my more innocent days. The metaphor of the 'woman as the earth' and Dorfman's interpretation of the subsequent levels of being rooted, embedded itself in my impressionable mind. I saw my relationship with women precisely through this device. The sense of 'exile' (unactualized as yet for me) and the exploding chemical reactions within fit me into Dorfman's paradigm like a perfect glove.



Ariel Dorfman, "September 1973" in Unbelievable,Granta 60.

...Experience love with the metaphors available to males-the woman as the earth and earth godess to be excavated, a territory to be explored by a pioneer, a land in which to root your manhood like a tree...

...Making mine something more than an individual woman, that I was making love to a community inside her, and that through her body and her life I was binding myself to a permanent place on this planet.

You can read the entire piece here.

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Granta is a quarterly journal, I discovered in the dusty shelves of my college library about ten years ago. It, "publishes new writing—fiction, personal history, reportage and inquiring journalism—four times a year. It also publishes documentary photography". The high page quality, superior design and the sheer pleasure of its brilliant pieces had me enthralled and I am yet to grow out of that first love. It is published from London and was founded in 1889 before it was resurrected out of a financial and apathetic 1970's to be reborn as its website informs. I would recommend it strongly, its spine gleams on book shelves, its design making it a book you could blunder into judging by its cover and the wide variety of writing will help you rediscover a fascinating view of bits of life in all parts of the world. The website has a number of pieces from old issues which are available for free, read them, you will want more.


1 comment:

svety said...

Reminds me of my LSR days....thnk u