In the previous post, I started examining some of the themes in Tanja Maljartschuk’s Forgottenness. Today, I want to continue that exploration by looking at two specific passages in the novel that detail the passage of time and why we need to think about history and the ways it impacts our present. One of these moments occurs when Lypynskyi decides to give a history lecture in 1905 and the other takes place when the unnamed narrator describes looking at centuries old paintings and the accumulation of materials that gather on the canvas.

When thinking about history and those who have come before, I always think about specific metaphors, for various reasons. One of these metaphors includes thinking about the past and the impact of atrocities of the past on the present as trees and roots. We can prune the tree, remove branches, and even cut it at various points down to the base, but the roots remain underground, still acquiring nourishment from the soil. The taproot remains, deep within the soil, allowing smaller roots to burrow deeper into the soil around it. To remove the sin, one must remove the entire structure, roots and all.

Another way to consider this metaphor is to think about it as the removal of a person from a place. Ernest Gaines’ uses it in one of my favorite literary passages in a section of his short story “Just Like a Tree” where Aunt Clo compares Aunt Fe, the woman at the center of the story whose family is moving her away from the quarters to the city, to a tree being jerked out of the ground, leaving the taproot in the soil. After the above ground parts of the tree fall, Aunt Clo says, a “piece of the taproot still way down in it — a piece you won’t never get out no matter if you dig till doomsday.” The taproot is Aunt Fe’s connection to the place where she lived and loved. It’s her link to the soil.

Each of these metaphors appear in the passage where Lypynskyi thinks about the history lecture. He attended school to study agriculture, but as he becomes more and more interested in history and involved in activism he begins to think about the connections between history and agriculture, notably through “a common object of study — roots.” Roots provide an insightful way to think about the past, and for Lypynskyi, history serves as “the theoretical preparation for the practical utilization of the earth.” Lypynskyi goes further, bringing the theoretical to the practical because for him one must “know who had walked upon [the land] and what they yearned for” in order to work the land. The narrator does this when she visits Lypynskyi’s hometown and the villager tells her his grave has been razed and covered with earth.

History dives deep into the soil “to trace the earth’s roots to their smallest offshoots and to investigate the particularities of their growth, the causes of their decay, and the miracle of their rebirth. The dying off of one root and the triumph of another.” The roots, like the ensconced little grain, keep moving through time, getting longer and longer and stronger and stronger, dying in parts and growing on others. Once Lypynskyi sees these roots, the people who tread the land before him, he can ultimately “pay tribute to the land, in order to then be able to utilize that land.” The land contains those who came before and also the problems that arose, especially when one root supplanted another for dominance.

While Lypynskyi thinks theoretically about the roots of history and their tangible connection to the earth, the narrator things about time when looking at the accumulation of materials on paintings, much like the material accumulating over time on the little grain. The narrator points out that scholars say that that “the great Renaissance paintings looked quite different than they do now” because soot from candles made its way onto the canvases, altering the original painting. Like the paintings, the narrator continues, we will never know the original, actual past because “[t]he past is nothing but a conjecture of the past. The soot that so densely coats lengthy intervals of time is a historical circumstance, while reality is that which, in defiance of everything, emerges through it nonetheless.”

The soot covering the past comes, partly, from the narrative that the usurping root presents of the past. The narrative that privileges itself and its positions while leaving the root it conquered to wither and decay. While Lypynskyi presents these thoughts in relation to history as a whole, the narrator turns to look at herself, noting that the soot covers the principal moments of her own past while she recalls, in vivid clearness, the “secondary details” like glances and smells and landscapes. I feel the same, especially when I think about my own past and stories from it, notably ones that I was too young to remember. I have images in my mind of what I did, but those images come not just from the event but from the accumulated material on the moment, the stories others told me about what I did. These moments appear in my head in third person. I’m detached from the original, thus causing me to carry a simulacrum of what I did and experienced, not the original.

For the narrator, she “wanted to experience everything firsthand,” but time and memory don’t allow that to happen. Even if we were there, we may not recall the event due to age or other factors. The story of the event gets told through others and ourselves, creating a painting that looks like reality but is in fact a representation of reality and that representation then gets covered over with soot and other items.

When I look at paintings, I always get up close and look at the canvas, if I can, to see the globs of paint covering the image and the brushstrokes. These are remnants from the painter themselves, and while I may never interact, directly, with the painter just as the narrator never interacted with Lypynskyi, I feel connected to them through time and space. I first started thinking about this when I saw Edvard Munch’s Ungdom in Norway. I observed Munch’s painting 110 years after he completed it, and I could see his hands at work. I gazed upon a piece connected with Munch, and my mind travelled backwards along the network of roots to him in his studio, formulating an image of him painting as I stared. I felt connected with him in a tangible way across time and space.

Time moves forward, and as it progresses, the past gets covered up, thus changing it from the original. Even though this happens, the roots remain, stretching backwards and striving for someone to come along and unearth them in order to allow them new life to grow upwards. We connect with those who came before through these things, the roots we walk upon and the soot-covered images we gaze upon. These link us to those who came before and link us to those who will come after, making us part of the lengthy chain of time that proceeds backwards and forewords as we travel along its length.

What are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.