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2025, Volume 7
”Mary and the Gun”. Evil and Trauma Imaginary in Irina Nechit's Poetry
Emanuela Ilie, Assoc. Prof.,PhD, ”Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University from Iași
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the imaginary of war, as it is configured in the latest book of verses by the Bessarabian writer Irina Nechit, ”Maria și arma” / ”Mary and the Gun” (2024). At first glance, it seems to prolong certain old poetic obsessions, exploited in all her volumes, from ”Şarpele mă recunoaște”/”The Snake Recognizes me” (1992) to ”Masa de sărbătoare”/”The Festive Dinner” (2020). At the same time, the book marks a visible change in poetic interest and imaginary, for Irina Nechit adds a new thematic source here – moreover, one that is if not entirely unusual, at least atypical in poetry written by women. It is about the war in proximity (the Russian-Ukrainian one), which no longer feeds niche literary perimeters, but is transformed into the main infuser of metaphysical meaning and intersectional direction.
Irina Nechit is concerned with the ethics of scriptural engagement, viewing her poetry as the perfect expression of revolt against aberrant historical realities, in which any trace of decency and normality is overturned, and the limits of human endurance are constantly being pushed. Except for the few texts articulated around different power relations and implicitly different conflicts, the referent in her poems organized around the war imaginary is the Russian-Ukrainian one. As in the poems in which the memories of survivors of older historical conflicts are reproduced (see the section ”Before the New War”), they avoid capitalizing on clichés of representing the theater of war, using the obligatory military images, or verbalizing the suffering of combatants in artificial discursive structures. Moreover, instead of counting the heroic deaths of the sacrificed or describing entire cemeteries of martyrs, the poetess prefers to capture the polyphony of a daily life over which the threatening shadow of the scourge looms.
In the same time, ”Mary and the Gun” activates the memory of past ages, but only to counterbalance the excess of violence in the present (an excess manifested on different levels: socio- political, ideological, communicational, etc.). Guaranteed stylistic effects are obtained especially when the panoply of identity representations is passed through the filter of aggressed femininity, but strong and consequently capable of offering resistance. Including through the scriptural pact, a pact radically committed - from an ethical point of view - to the dissolution of self.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62838/amph-2025-0132
Pages: 49-55
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