surviving the artillery of snow (original) (raw)
1973
thry are growing restle ss. Powerful searchlights sweep across the drirting ice to the .-\ig:hanista n side, probing fo r us. A. car mo\•es slowly back and forth along the fa r bank. Ou r o•.rn vehicle groans and whines..in a sandbank: despite its four-wheel dn\•e, '. Ve cannot br~ak it free. The noise t1pseG ~-\b d~.d '.\' aki!. He draws and loads his _ e•;o l\•er. r1e son of a [.irg;-iiz chieftain, 0•1r stocky guide \\" Ot.dd be more comfort1bie or: !.he b. 2c~ .. : 1)f ~ h1) :-.e. m (J!"e ~t hr;rr:e :)~ ~~.e '.'":ir;~ treeicss piD.ieau of the Little Pan1ir 1 the r:.1~ge near th e Chinese border far to the east. h.e is nen •ous not only abo ut the Russians across the river. Who can say that bandits no longer prc:, wt th is bleak., impo\•erished corner of :Vghanistan) It is better, he fee ls. th at we do not call attentio n to ourseh•es; he will set out on foot to see k help .. .\bd ul \Yak il takes our flashlight and vanishes into the night. :\'ow we 1re alone with our ssranded ca r , Roland a r.d I, on watch in the darkness somewcere on the. .\fghan bank oi the Pan ja Ri\ •er-::ie Ox us Ri\•er of the ancient ,.vorld. The
The essay follows a discontinuous, perforated path through 150 years of poetry in English written in or about the North American Arctic.
Poetry about the Arctic and in particular the prospects of finding a northwest passage through the archipelago of arctic North America is a line of aft that has developed with many perforations from the type of Thomas James's expedition under Charles I in the early 1630s up to the end of the twentieth century and the onset of environmental apocalypse. This paper brings under discussion for the first time the poetry written by explorers and by Canadian poets in order to study responses to remote landscapes and events in them.
snowSongs, article by vivienne spiteri
snowSongs the institute of canadian music newsletter, january 2008: vol 6 number 1 the story begins many moons past in a faraway land, when one who sailed from « the silver » 1 to the white land, told tales of an ancient people of elemental existence. ramon pelinski, ethnomusicologist and musician, was speaking of the inuit 2 of northern canada whose essential element, snow, goes by many names. 3 at once life-line and death-trap, the inuit's ability to identify snows through naming could be for them, a matter of life and death.
A Complete Study Guide to the Poem Dust of Snow
This is a complete study guide that provides a comprehensive literary and thematic analysis of the popular poem - "Dust of Snow" by the American poet - Robert Frost. The poem is part of many schools and college curricula and therefore for the benefit of students, I have included a general introduction to the poem and the poet, a stanza by stanza explanation, and a structural analysis of the poem. I have also covered the poetic devices used with examples and the significance of the powerful symbolism employed by Frost. In a nutshell, I have endeavored to give you a complete and comprehensive analysis of this beautiful and succinct poem in my best literary capacities. I hope you get something of worth from it. Happy reading!
Sacrificial Fire and Salutary Ice: Exposure, Starvation, and the Onset of Word in Canada’s Arctic
It is a common theme of contemplative and travel writing about the extreme North that those who travel its land and icescapes experience a profound inarticulateness: the North resists comprehension and description in language. Writers often refer to this quality as a kind of inscrutable, mystical blankness—not a void or a blackness—but a wide-opening and altering of sight that paradoxically invites inscription of both experience and language. Essayist John Moss sees further a kinship between the experience of the Arctic and experiences of suffering or near-death, and the journals of adventurers and explorers in the sub-Arctic and the Arctic confirm the connection. Drawing on this phenomenon, and on the journals of the men directly involved, Rudy Wiebe’s A Discovery of Strangers figures the death by exposure and starvation of Robert Hood and the failure of the first Franklin Overland Expedition to map the northwestern territories of Canada as just such an experience, articulating beautifully the paradox of blankness and word as both landscape and man become unreadable texts. My paper reads Wiebe’s novel against a handful of expeditionary journals and essays, and concludes that this special need to write the weird blankness of the North, and further to give meaning in language to suffering or death in that place, is not just a yearning for word, but a yearning for the Word. Fire and ice figure as volatile symbols—essential elements in and of austerity, and media and sites of revelation—in the grammar of Northern suffering and salvation.
"Introduction" to the book From the Tundra to the Trenches by Eddy Weetaltuk
Edited and with a foreword by Thibault Martin. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, First Voices, First Texts Series. xxvii-xlviii. “My name is Weetaltuk; Eddy Weetaltuk. My Eskimo tag name is E9-422.” So begins From the Tundra to the Trenches. Weetaltuk means “innocent eyes” in Inuktitut, but to the Canadian government, he was known as E9-422: E for Eskimo, 9 for his community, 422 to identify Eddy. In 1951, Eddy decided to leave James Bay. Because Inuit weren’t allowed to leave the North, he changed his name and used this new identity to enlist in the Canadian Forces: Edward Weetaltuk, E9-422, became Eddy Vital, SC-17515, and headed off to fight in the Korean War. In 1967, after fifteen years in the Canadian Forces, Eddy returned home. He worked with Inuit youth struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, and, in 1974, started writing his life’s story. This compelling memoir traces an Inuk’s experiences of world travel and military service. Looking back on his life, Weetaltuk wanted to show young Inuit that they can do and be what they choose. From the Tundra to the Trenches is the fourth book in the First Voices, First Texts series, which publishes lost or underappreciated texts by Indigenous writers. This new English edition of Eddy Weetaltuk’s memoir includes a foreword and appendix by Thibault Martin and an introduction by Isabelle St-Amand.
Snow as an Opening to Hidden realities-Hoeg, Chifu.pdf
Discourse as a Form of Multiculturalism in Language and Literature (Proceedings), coordinated by Iulian Boldea, 2015
Abstract: The present paper analyzes two contemporary novels where the theme of snow is contrasted with the theme of evil:”Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow” by Peter Høeg (1992), irrespectively ”Visul copilului care pășește pe zăpadă fără să lase urme” by Gabriel Chifu (2004). The two little boys, Isaiah, irrespectively Veniamin, who leave traces irrespectively non-traces on the snow, are dead from the very onset of the plot as if they could not witness more of the evil conquering bit by bit the worlds in which they used to live. Their deaths threaten the survival of innocence in the world. Treachery is put into practice in both novels in its most insidious forms. Yet the very existence of the two little boys casts hope on those who keep on loving (them). The snow is both a revealer of past crimes (or future crimes in the latter novel) but also an opening to other dimensions of reality. In Peter Høeg’ s novel snow means the continuity of Smilla’s perceived self, the quest for truth and the quest for love. In Gabriel Chifu’s novel snow is the opening to the realm of invisibleness and to a supernatural dimension of reality.
Memories of Snow: Nostalgia, Amnesia, Re-Reading
Memory in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Perspectives from the Arts, Humanities and Sciences, 2016
'One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.' Drawing on personal memories of listening to Dylan Thomas's 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', the article reflects on certain ironies of climatic memory and representation.
Leaving Comrades to Die: Shahadat, Soldiering and Accidental Death on the Siachen Glacier
The Siachen glacier, one of the longest non-polar glaciers in the world, turned into the world's highest battlefield in 1984, when both the neighbouring countries, India and Pakistan, deployed their troops for control over the glacier. The nature of warfare since then has changed from active operations to one of lowintensity warfare. In this changing nature of warfare, the article explores how meanings of death are reconfigured in personal recollections and public representations, when the terrain continues to inflict injuries, high-altitude illnesses and death in the absence of any direct enemy confrontation. The article compares personal experiences of death with media representations. While personal experiences of soldiers and officers who have served on the glacier show their grievances about having left comrades to die after they fell into deadly crevasses, media representations reinsert the Indian soldier and depict death in the company of comrades and family to justify the expensive and extremely difficult war over the glacier.
Tahoma West Literary Arts Magazine, 2013
What is good appears bad, In Imp's mirror, now broken, Its glass shards pierce the eye of young Kay. Spinning light into dark, Ice glazing his heart. 'Ere the Snow Queen steals him away. Concerned for her playmate, Gerda, faithful and stalwart, Her undying commitment decrees That she leave all to follow, Throughout the long seasons 'Til at last, Kay is found and set free. ~One~ "Perhaps the river will carry me to little Kay," thought Gerda. Then she became more cheerful, and stood up, and for many hours she watched the pretty green banks. 1
Through the Fog and Snow: War Experience of the Battle of Caporetto in the Region of Bovec
The Great War brought major changes along the valley of Isonzo river, as the Italian announcement of war meant new problems for the Austro-Hungarian army. During the period from 1915 to 1917 Italian army tried eleven times to break through the opponents front line with just some minor successes. But after the 11. Isonzo battle Austro-Hungarian army knew, that this was the last attack they could withstand. In cooperation with the German army a battle was planed, to push the Italian units back to the Italian hinterland. On 24 October 1917 an attack was launched towards the Italian units in the area of towns Tolmin (Tolmein) and Bovec (Flitsch), that turned out to be a success, in Slovenian historiography known as “the miracle at Caporetto”. In my paper I will focus on the region of Bovec, where a part of the Austro-Hungarian-German units - in particular “Gruppe Krauß” - were attacking towards the Italian front line. Through the diaries, memoirs, letters, official reports and other sources I would like to present the experience of the Great War - which is still quite unresearched field - as it was seen through the eyes of the attackers, who had to fight in the hard conditions of the mountains. I will try to show how the soldiers experienced the weeks of preparation for the battle; what was their “D-Day” like, as the weather in the mountains was cold, foggy, and snowy on the day of the attack; and how they experienced the success of this battle in the upcoming days and weeks - was it a genuine boost of moral for the troops or just a heat of the moment that faded away with a hangover.