"Darina, the Sweetness"

The following example essay on “Darina, the Sweetness” is an analysis of a literary work by Maria Matios. The essay reveals the plot of a fascinating novel and reveals the images of the main characters of the story.

The Bukovina hmm … what is it exactly? For an answer, many will have to investigate short of us to find out then that this is a traditional, culturally significant region, whose northern half is in Ukraine, while the southern part of Romania. In the West, the huge long Hochgebirgszug the Carpathian passes by.

In this border region, one of the – from our perspective – far corners of Europe, the village Tscheremoschne, the scene of fascinating, harrowing novel “Darina, the sweetness” is.

The has (also politically active) Ukrainian writer Maria Matios published in 2005; he received the two most important literary prizes in their home country and now appeared in a translation by Claudia Dathe at Haymon. The author, born in 1959, puts us in a backward rural community with which we the rough times during the 2 by suffering.

world War II and live through immediately and the brutal arbitrariness of changing rulers.

for dramatic reasons, however, the novel begins at the beginning of the eighties. As the protagonist Darina lives in her little hut with a garden in the village where she was born 1,940th Since childhood, they are called “the sweetness.” All shades of meaning of this melodious epithet defiance is Darina traumatized harshly. She lives alone, want to talk to anyone, but talks to her flowers, the poultry and bees.

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All the time she is suffering from severe headaches, but when you offer someone sweets, they explode too unbearable for days-long attacks as “iron rings, her head pressed together”. Relief she then examined by digging a hole in the garden hüfttiefes, steps into this pit and rises against the black, living earth full of worms and other small animals. While the juices of the soil to penetrate her body from the bottom up to the head, her pain dissolves slowly.

When Darina feels she climbs into the old, almost withered Birnbaum, the planted her late father , it is decorated with ornamental gold stripes and long faded colorful wool threads and enjoy the freshness of the pervading wind in view of such behavior the neighbors tap the forehead and laugh at the supposedly retarded woman. They themselves are stupid – and heartless as Darina place: “They had no brains in the head nor God in the belly.” Should they not rather be happy that Darina can help in their distress yourself?

But everywhere, people tear the mouth about anything and everything, and above all, they are quick with a judgment at hand, if they do not understand something the same. The experienced Darina when one day Ivan Zwytschok stop off at her and for a while remains. The fifty-year-old is just a dingy day laborers, not sedentary, slightly speech impairment and a firmer patron, who drives his fellow fast over their mouths when they come along him too stupid ( “You sudelige Schlunze, you have crooked whore! Can not brought you calluses on your wrinkled thing because after the wedding last Sunday …? “). Darina but he plays in front of the Jew’s harp and worries agitating them. He feels that all their misery have a cause and her someone needs help.

So he drags Darina one day in the county Polio Clinic and the same shall present to the doctor as payment “two jaw drums and a brand new hex file” on the table , The infection doctor and dietitian, however, shows Ivan with unmistakable gesture, what he thinks about the case, and sends the two back away. Under hearty rants and curses ( “Stupid asshole … lousy worm”) takes Ivan the hand of his Darina, and they return home.

Was that gossiping in the village big enough, pulled when Ivan under Darinas roof, wins it bathe a new dimension as the two at night naked in the pond and at times like howling dogs. Which are rapidly transformed into real live wolves and interpreted as dark forces that bring out the unpunished sins of the dead. The haunted mansion next to the “good” people? Never – the menacing stranger must be eradicated, and “no devil has such power as the ordinary people with their envy, with hatred and revenge.” Thus the pernicious activities of these two poor creatures will soon make an end of their modest luck: Ivan summons the council, consultation, detention …

For the first half ending of the novel. It follows the time return and the story of Mychaijlo and Matronka, two lovers whose fate is destroyed by the political perils of World War II in the most cruel way. When you read the tragic story easy to forget that us the author’s, still owes more a statement on Darina, the sweet …

Maria Matios’ novel “Darina, the sweetness,” I can tell you without any restrictions to the heart basket. The haunting, elementary, intense descriptive writing style can not escape you look; you can immerse yourself in a this country completely unknown world and is involved in an incredible story.

The Tratsch- and gossip of the Peasants’, inserted into formal remote passages “verbatim” as reports, making directly from the village square an oppressive The atmosphere. If you read it afterwards again detached from the context, occurs all the more frightening to light what abstruse irrationality can people fall when they convicted from what they observed or have overheard seek piece together a sense.

The author but the villagers do not; Rather, it helps us to understand them. What do we know about the distant Bukovina, over that nation mixture of Germans, Jews, Romanians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, about the dark times in which as resolute as ruthless rulers those uneducated, therefore, often petty, narrow-minded and meek innovative people in their isolated could harass area as they pleased now? Everything the eternal subjects wished was to live their already bone-hard peasant life in peace and quiet.

All strangers meant danger, frightened them. Halt gave these simple people can merge their traditions, their rituals, religion and superstition, the trivial and the existential “Who was born in the light of the Resurrection of Christ, which was a happy life before, it would be another family member to die”; nullity as not high bonded hair makes a married woman quickly a witch, and if such a prejudice is first of all, it’s just a question of saving one’s soul, be it at the price of betrayal.

the people is one side of the black coin. Also carefully Maria Matios deals with the other side – the political powers. First there was the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy (until 1918), then fought Romania and Hungary for supremacy; after the Hitler-Stalin Pact (1939), the Soviets occupied the country, were expelled in 1941 by Romanian troops again returned in 1944 back … While the rulers changed, people were between different groups pushed back and forth naturalized carelessly, resettled in concentration camps deported systematically killed or lost belongings and fled.

Since the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, the region torn between Ukraine’s (then Soviet Union) divided and Romania. No regime was the other after, as regards cruelty and ruthlessness; Maria Matios afraid for anyone to write plain text, such as when Stalin’s secret service agents do their brutal work; their painful, unimaginable brutal torture could survive a victim barely.

Although sad and depressing, this book is a piece of excellent literature. Developed with passion, empathy and literary talent protagonist “Darina, the sweetness” will remain long in the memory.