N. Scott Momaday
4. LESLIE MARMON SILKO
4.4. The Turquoise Ledge
Il memoir62 copre un arco temporale apparentemente ampio, dato che vi sono inclusi anche alcuni eventi dell’infanzia dell’autrice. In realtà, però, Silko si concentra soprattutto sugli ultimi anni della sua vita e divide l’opera in cinque parti, rispettivamente: “Ancestors”, “Rattlesnakes”, “Star Beings”, “Turquoise” e “Lord Chapulin”. Questi titoli si riferiscono esplicitamente ai temi affrontati nelle singole sezioni, i quali, tuttavia, si intersecano a tal punto nella narrazione globale che è impossibile riassumerli in maniera coerente.
I sessanta brevi capitoli che costituiscono l’intero volume, dandogli una caratterizzazione per così dire “episodica”, sono preceduti dai ringraziamenti della scrittrice e da una prefazione molto concisa (neanche una pagina), dove Silko cita l’amica poet and astrologer Joy Harjo63
, presentandosi al lettore64 con un riferimento all’oroscopo: “1948 is the Year of the Rat. We rats seldom make lasting friendships. We let the correspondence lapse and don’t return phone consapevole: volevo procedere in maniera “acronologica” e lasciare che l’opera si definisse da sé, con la mediazione della mia analisi, piuttosto che imbrigliarla da subito sotto una definizione che comunque non può renderle completamente giustizia.
62Questo testo è ancora troppo recente (2010) perché si trovi un apparato critico a riguardo. È stato
possibile reperire solo un articolo e diverse recensioni. Si veda la bibliografia finale su Silko.
63Harjo è menzionata anche a p. 101 di TTL.
64“I make myself a fictional character so I can write about myself. Only a few proper names are
included because it wasn’t my intention to write about others but instead to construct a self-portrait.” TTL, p.1.
92 calls” (TTL, p.1). Quest’affermazione è confermata in ogni singola sezione di The Turquoise Ledge, come nel passo seguente:
From my earliest days, animals and beings of the natural world occupied as much of my consciousness as human beings did. Around humans often I sensed an uncomfortable feeling below the surface, one that left me with unease and anxiety to please everyone. So early on I preferred to play alone, or to be with cats, dogs or horses for companionship, not human beings (TTL, p. 22).
Ancora oggi l’autrice preferisce trascorrere un’esistenza estremamente solitaria, nel suo ranch vicino Tucson65, ed è in questa condizione di “solitudine privilegiata”, tra la natura e gli animali tanto cari a Silko, che “bits and pieces of memories are recalled vividly, with the involvement of imagination66”. Come evidenzia Catherine Rainwater, le lunghe passeggiate della scrittrice diventano in un certo senso il principio organizzativo delle riflessioni presentate attraverso la narrazione: “Readers of The Turquoise Ledge are invited to walk the paths the author tracks, not stick to their own familiar ones. […] ‘walking’ becomes the overarching organizational trope [...] Silko understands how walking leads to mental focus and clarity67”. I sentieri percorsi quotidianamente permettono di relazionarsi con gli antenati, i protagonisti delle storie mitiche, oltre che di
65“The city of Tucson was a minor mecca for writers in the ‘70s, populated, at least part-time, by
Edward Abbey, Larry McMurtry, Joy Williams, Scott Momaday and Richard Russo, among many other well-known authors, but it was also remote enough that a person could get away quickly, bolt from downtonwn to desert in 15 minutes. Silko found a place as far out on the edge of town as it was possible to get, a landscape of wild horses and towering saguaro cacti, and made herself at home in a desert that is demanding on even the best of days”. Cfr. Gregory McNamee, Leslie
Marmon Silko’s Memoir: “The Turquoise Ledge”, “The Washington Post” (December 16, 2010).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/12/16/AR2010121605708.html.
66 Ivi.
67Cfr. Rainwater, Catherine, “Bohmian Order in Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Turquoise Ledge: a Memoir and Ocean Story”, Literature Interpretation Theory, 24, 1, Feb. 2013, p. 13. E Alan
Cheuse afferma: “[…] Silko herself becomes a sort of Thoreau of the Southwest.” Alan Cheuse,
Book Review: “The Turquoise Ledge”, “National Public Radio”, (October 27, 2010).
93 raccogliere pietre di ogni varietà colore, in particolare esemplari di turchese, minerale che dà appunto il titolo all’opera68
. Nel primo capitolo, si spiegano l’origine di questa bellissima pietra, la sua composizione e l’importanza della medesima presso i gli indiani pueblo:
Turquoise doesn’t originate deep in the Earth as many precious minerals and gems do. It forms when certain chemical reactions take place during the weathering of surface minerals. Water is a necessary component of the formation of turquoise – no wonder indigenous people of the deserts connected turquoise with water and rain – it wasn’t just the color of blue or green – turquoise meant water had been there. […] Turquoise comes from the sixteenth century French word for “Turkish” (TTL, pp. 6-7).
È opportuno sottolineare la sacralità dell’acqua69, il cui valore, essendo universale, riguarda tutta l’umanità, ma risulta molto più importante se si vive nel deserto70, descritto più volte nel memoir: “The dry heat of the desert is sensuous. There is a perfect exchange between the dry air and the human body’s moisture so there is no end or beginning of skin or air” (TTL, p. 111)71
. Anche lo scandire del tempo e delle stagioni è regolato dai ritmi della natura e dell’acqua: “Here the seasons are rain and no rain” (TTL, p. 112).
68“As I walked along, I began to imagine a great ledge of turquoise temporarily buried under the
sand and rocks.” TTL, p. 8. Ancora: “It crossed my mind that I might live on top of a turquoise ledge […]”. Ibidem, p. 201.
69Si è già parlato di Sacred Water, il cui titolo rimanda appunto a questo concetto.
70“[…] writer Joy Williams calls The Turquoise Ledge ‘a classic of desert writing’ […] This is a
deeply personal contemplation of the enormous spiritual power of the natural world.” Lakota Harden and Gregg McVicar, An Evening With Leslie Marmon Silko: Presenting “The Turquoise
Ledge”, “KPFA Radio” (October 22, 2010). http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/125499. 71Il deserto è un ecosistema perfetto, i cui ritmi riguardano anche la vita e la morte: “[…] the desert
has its ways to work out death and life.” TTL, p. 154. E ancora: “In the desert one seldom dies without quickly becoming a meal for another; thus we aren’t dead for long before we become part of the living creatures and plants.” Ibidem, p. 166.
94 A proposito della pioggia, le nuvole rappresentano un elemento davvero significativo nel mondo di Silko72. Il ventitreesimo capitolo offre una descrizione dettagliata di tutte le tipologie di nuvole: cirri, cirrostrati, stratocumuli, cumuli, … È soprattutto rilevante l’associazione con gli spiriti degli antenati, i cloud beings o shi-wah nah, che manifestano la loro presenza proprio attraverso le nuvole: “Beloved family members and the ancestors show their love for us when they return as clouds that bring precious precipitations73”. Questa convinzione è talmente forte da essere ribadita a più riprese nel memoir: “Our beloved ancestors return to us as rain” (ST, p. 171).
Gli avi e la famiglia74 trovano spazio nel memoir, ma sono ancora una volta le donne l’argomento prediletto della scrittrice.
Come è raccontato in Storyteller, la bisnonna A’mooh e la zia Susie sono il tramite principale tra la piccola Leslie e le storie:
Making up stories was second nature to me. […] At Laguna the notion of a “story” covers the widest possible range: historical accounts, village gossip, sacred migration stories, hummah-hah stories that included Coyote and the other animals and supernatural beings, deer hunting stories, even car wreck stories, were all included in the oral narrative tradition. Stories are valuable repositories for details and information of use to future generations; details and information are easier to remember when there is a story associated with them. […] My great grandma A’mooh, Aunt Susie and Aunt Alice, the women who spent the most time answering my questions and telling me stories, were also women who pored over books on their kitchen tables after their
72Si ricordino anche i seguenti racconti: “The Hills and Mesas Around Laguna” e “The Man to
Send Rain Clouds”, rispettivamente in ST, pp.151-9 e 174-7.
73Ibidem, p. 13. Nella stessa pagina, Silko ricorda un episodio: “Once when the rain clouds were
hurrying east over the Tucson Mountains, I watched them from my front yard. […] the clouds were very lovely – I could smell their sweet moisture and felt the coolness as I watched them move past. […] ‘Ah what a beauty you are,’ I said out loud, ‘just look at you!’.”
74Silko rivela qui un particolare molto privato quando riferisce delle tensioni all’interno della sua
famiglia: “I was moved by the undercurrents of tension I sensed between the Pueblo and non- Pueblo members of my extended family. […] By the fifth grade I began to understand how the inequalities and injustice generated an impersonal anger, which sometimes got aimed at me because my paternal great grandfather was a white man.” TTL, p. 25.
95 families were fed. They were proud to be women of the book as well as women of the spoken word (TTL, p. 27-8).
In questo caso, viene presa in considerazione anche la figura della madre della scrittrice, assente nei lavori autobiografici precedenti. Mary Virginia Leslie viene presentata come una donna complessa, forte e fragile nel contempo: “My mother was a bright well-educated woman, and a great teacher, but she was also an alcoholic” (TTL, p. 38). L’alcol, vietato ancora oggi dalla legge in tutte le riserve, è una piaga molto diffusa nelle varie realtà native americane. Nel caso specifico, Silko lascia intendere che la dipendenza della madre sia determinata da un segreto custodito per moltissimi anni, ossia la nascita di un bambino, poi dato in adozione, prima del matrimonio con Lee Marmon: “Sometimes I think about him, the boy, my half brother. He haunted my mother, and by extension, he haunted my sisters and me”75
. Al di là di queste considerazioni e delle difficoltà con il marito, il legame con la figura materna è in linea di massima positivo, oltre che istruttivo e stimolante76. È grazie a lei che Silko impara a rispettare e amare i serpenti, creature mitiche degne di riverenza77.
75Ancora più dettagliatamente: “Grandma Jessie said my mother gave away a baby and
immediately conceived me, perhaps as a way to try to forget the baby boy she couldn’t keep. Of course she never forgot the baby boy and grieved all her life”. Ibidem, pp. 22-3.
76“My mother was the more dependable and practical of my parents, even if she kept her coffee
cup full of whiskey all morning. She graduated from the University of New Mexico and always made more money than my father; […] My mother paid the bills, and my father spent the money she earned on cameras and darkroom equipment and supplies; so there were tensions in the house over money.” Ibidem, p. 59. Le tensioni saranno tali da determinare il divorzio dei coniugi Marmon, come accennato a p. 61 del memoir.
77“The Cherokees revered snakes before Christianity arrived. So my mother taught me to respect
but not to fear snakes”, Ibidem, p. 37. Si ricordi che la madre di Silko ha per l’appunto anche radici Cherokee: “My mother’s maternal great grandfather, Grandpa Wood, was born in what is now Kentucky during one of the violent removals of the Cherokees from their homelands in North Carolina and Georgia.” Ivi.
96 Un insegnamento che comincia sin dall’infanzia:
From the time we could walk she taught my sisters and me not to fear or harm snakes. Her respect for snakes was part of her strength. My mother was the one who taught me to appreciate all snakes, even rattlesnakes; she married my father who was a snake- killer, but she persisted in her appreciation of snakes (TTL, p. 59).
I serpenti non sono soltanto creature di Mother Earth da rispettare, bensì “divine messengers” (TTL, p. 110)78
. Questa visione è agli antipodi rispetto a quella cui il mondo occidentale è abituato, essendo influenzato dalla religione cristiana, che vede nel serpente l’incarnazione del male supremo, del diavolo tentatore che ha causato la cacciata di Adamo ed Eva dal Paradiso terrestre. Non è assolutamente un caso il fatto che Silko dia nel testo particolare spazio, tra tutti i rettili presenti nel racconto, al serpente a sonagli “domestico” chiamato ironicamente Evo79.
Non è l’unico esempio di sarcasmo nei confronti della cultura occidentale. Infatti, Silko non tralascia di parlare dei suoi rapporti non proprio idilliaci con la medicina angloeuropea:
Then I became a patient of Dr. Roberto Zamudio Millán who immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the 1960s. On my first visit I wanted him to know that I wasn’t impressed with Western European medicine so I told him that my great grandmother had survived an appendicitis without doctors, hospitals or penicillin. To my delight, Dr. Zamudio Millán responded to my story with another story. 80 […] Dr.
78Non è la prima volta che Silko scrive di queste divinità. Per esempio, in Almanac of the Dead, il
personaggio di Sterling, appartiene al pueblo Laguna, che venera tra i propri “esteemed and beloved ancestors” due serpenti di pietra, chiamati “the little grandparents”. Le disgrazie a Laguna, incluso l’esilio forzato di Sterling, cominciano col furto di questi due “stone idols”, finiti per vie traverse in un museo gestito da bianchi (cfr. AOTD, pp. 31-3). Alla fine del romanzo, Sterling tornerà a Laguna e prima di tutto farà visita al “giant snake” tornato a proteggere il pueblo: “Sterling knew why the giant snake had returned now; he knew what the snake’s message was to the people. The snake was looking south, in the direction from which the twin brothers and the people would come”, AOTD, p. 763.
79
TTL, pp. 92-3.
80Ecco la storia: “When he was in medical school he found a book written by a doctor […] in
97 Zamudio Millán said that in extremely rare cases, before the appendix ruptured, the body formed a membrane around the infected matter inside the appendix so it was encapsulated and then the large intestine passed it harmlessly. […] He completely won me over with that story so I see him on those rare occasions when acupuncture and herbs don’t work (TTL, pp. 74-5).
La scrittrice è scettica e vive una sorta di “pregiudizio rovesciato” che l’ha perfino portata a curarsi da sola un piede rotto81. Una scelta di questo tipo appare insensata, se non folle, a noi, in quanto non nativi, perché lontana da quelle che sono le coordinate del nostro sistema di riferimento.
Allo stesso modo è difficile accettare le affermazioni relative alla visita degli Star Beings e a Lord Chapulin. Silko dice di aver preso una “exciting, illicit holiday from writing” (TTL, p. 172) fra il 2005 e il 2006, per poter fare i ritratti di queste creature e tornare così a dedicarsi alle arti visive, il suo “primo amore82”. I
contatti con gli Star Beings sono frequenti, intensi (tutta la terza parte ha come protagonisti queste “divinità”) e coinvolgono ben presto tutti i sensi e le espressioni artistiche, non limitandosi alla pittura dato che le richiedono, anzi esigono, perfino la scrittura di poesia nella loro lingua, l’idioma Nahuatl. 83
ill. So a family brought the doctor to their modest home in an Indian village high in the mountains to take a look at their old granny who was feverish and quite ill. The doctor told the old woman’s family they had to get her down to the clinic hospital in town at once for surgery or she would die of a burst appendix. The old woman refused to go to the hospital. […] A week or two went by and the doctor […] thought she was dead by now. […] A few weeks later the doctor went to the village. When the old woman saw the doctor she yelled at him, ‘You don’t know anything! See, I’m still alive. I didn’t need your hospital!’.” Ibidem, pp. 74-5.
81“I broke my foot on July 11, 2007, the sixth anniversary of my mother’s death. […] I decided I
would take care of my foot myself.” Ibidem, p. 172.
82“I originally wanted to be a visual artist, not a writer. But at the University of New Mexico I
discovered the fine arts college was blind to all but European art with its fetish for ‘realism’ and ‘perspective’.” Ibidem, p. 129.
83“[…] now the Star Beings expected me to write poetry in Nahuatl although I have no knowledge
at all of the language.” Ibidem, p. 138. Silko è molto seria a riguardo, tanto da avere acquistato ben due dizionari English-Nahuatl (e viceversa).
98 Di seguito:
[…] as I painted the portraits of the Star Beings I began to receive thought communications from them, often while I was sketching or painting one of them. I found myself jotting down short notes and messages that I later incorporated into this account. […] The portraits of the Star Beings are a great success for me. I feel a close relationship with them because of the process of painting – each stroke of the paintbrush brought the form of the being a bit closer to its emergence in the world. Sometimes I felt the canvas on the frame shiver as I painted. I began to record conversations I had with them as I painted (TTL, pp. 134-5).
La stessa situazione si verifica per quanto riguarda Lord Chapulin, the grasshopper (la cavalletta): “As I sketched him, I realized he wanted a portrait in the manner of the Star Being portraits I’d painted” (TTL, p. 183).
L’analisi finora delineata non può trascurare in ultima istanza la tipica vena critica di Silko che, nonostante i buoni propositi, non riesce a evitare alcuni political issues84. I danni arrecati alla natura circostante da un suo vicino di casa privo di scrupoli indignano Silko, che interviene, anche dietro suggerimento degli Star Beings:
I carried a small pack with the paint, a jar of clean water, a rag and a paintbrush. I was on a mission for the Star Beings so I didn’t take along my camera. […] I worked for more than an hour to paint the small white crosses on the boulders and the rocks the man had already started to excavate. Then I went to work on the others nearby. There were a lot of boulders and rocks to paint star symbols on. […] If others mistook them for Christian crosses, it would be fitting, because Jesus Christ was also known as the Morning Star or Venus among indigenous worshippers in the Americas (TTL, p. 309). Questa piccola azione sovversiva, volta a spaventare chi offende e danneggia la terra, quale che sia il suo “credo”, ha risvolti quasi parodici, farseschi. Il messaggio non viene recepito e il gesto di Silko verrà erroneamente etichettato come atto di vandalismo.
84“I had decided before I started the memoir that I wanted as much as possible to avoid
99 We continued up the big arroyo homeward. We met a woman with her two dogs. She asked if we’d seen the “gang graffiti” [who] painted on the rocks. The woman said she’d had a break-in and sent the sheriff’s deputies who were investigating to see the “gang graffiti” on the rocks (TTL, p. 309).
Come si sarà intuito, The Turquoise Ledge presenta una trama fitta, complessa, che sfugge a schemi ordinativi rigidi, in linea con l’apparato cronotopico e con lo stile nativo. È per questa ragione, ossia l’assenza di una struttura cronologica, che alcune recensioni sono abbastanza critiche:
[…] the book is called a memoir but reveals little about her life [Silko’s] and even less of her literary activity. […] Here we would have hoped for tighter editing along with a more concrete and fluid framework than we have been given in “The Turquoise Ledge”. 85
O ancora: “‘The Turquoise Ledge’ has the loose feel of a journal. Though sometimes evocative, Silko’s writing can also be repetitive and flat, as if she’s giving us notes instead of a narrative.” 86
Si potrebbe ribattere citando direttamente le parole usate da Silko durante due interviste:
Linear time is itself a fiction which I find tedious and simpleminded. […] It was in my