Selbstredend selbzweit selbdritt: Serpentine Selves in the Poetry of Roza Domascyna

Canadian Slavonic Papers, Sep-Dec 2003 by Dueck, Cheryl

ABSTRACT:This article introduces the Serbian-German poet, Roza Domascyna. From the three-country corner of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, Domascyna writes primarily in the German language, but seeks to create a triangular space in her poetry and prose, informed by this geographical reality and by the cultural connectiveness of her Serbian and German identities. This is achieved through the playful introduction of Sorbian mythical figures, words, and grammatical features-such as the dualis-into her work, and through the thematic treatment of the existential challenges faced by the Sorbian people. The article provides original English translations of two of Domascyna's poems, addresses the dominant motifs of splitting, doubling and multiplying identities, and reveals the productive cultural hybridization of her texts.

As a poet who works both in the Serbian and German languages, Roza Domascyna inhabits a multi-textured linguistic space, which is revealed in the richly woven dual and treble designs of her poetry. The title of her recent volume, Selfspeaking selfsecond selfthird,1 is a playful reference to the plural forms that exist in the Serbian language, but not in German, and which allow her to explore a dynamic of multiplicity within the self and within her culture(s). Domascyna's texts create a unique and intricate aesthetic space derived from intercultural and interlinguistic experience-a poetic manifestation of "culture's in-between"2 -which has the power to disrupt cultural totalities.

The poet is part of a Sorbian-speaking minority, located in Eastern Germany close to the Polish and Czech borders, which numbers less than 60 000 today. Also called Wends, the Sorbs were among Slavic tribes which migrated to the area between the Oder and Elbe/Saale rivers around the sixth century A.D. Their gradual subjugation by German tribes led to them being completely under German rule by the end of the tenth century. Despite longstanding discrimination against the Serbian population, particularly under National Socialist Germany, the two Serbian languages, Upper and Lower Serbian, have survived to the present day, as have many Serbian cultural practices and institutions. Under the socialist regime in East Germany, the Sorbs were a protected people, and their region had an official bilingual status. There were an estimated 150,000 Serbian speakers towards the end of the nineteenth century, but numbers have fallen steadily.3 The educational and cultural advantages provided to the Sorbs by East Germany were accompanied by expectations that they would assimilate into the social, economic and political institutions of the Socialist Unity Party. For a farming people, this meant giving up their farm land to enter into LPGs, i.e., state farm cooperatives, and for children, this meant participation in the Young Pioneers and an internalization of ideology that excluded, among other things, religious practice. Moreover, from 1945-89, and beyond, open-cast brown coal mining had a profound impact on the area traditionally inhabited by the Sorbs. Dozens of villages were literally plowed over, a practice which affected several more communities after unification, despite massive local protests. Under the new German government, there was initially generous funding-41 million Deutschmarks in 1992-provided by the government to the Foundation for the Serbian People, but this was reduced to 32 million in 1997, and is to be reduced further to just 8 million by the year 2007.4 Enrollment in Serbian classes in the bilingual schools has been fluctuating, but has steadily dropped off at the secondary level.5 Clearly, these statistics bode ill for the future of the Serbian languages.

Roza Domascyna lives in Bautzen, the cultural center of the Lusatian Sorbs, where she is active in the life of the community. Born in 1951 in Zerna/Serjany, she was raised in a traditional Catholic Sorbian family. Her mother is among the last to wear the traditional costume, a visual marker of Sorbian identity, on a daily basis. As a child, Roza was marked early as 'other': "a young pioneer with a holy picture in her hand IT IS BETTER THAT WAY IN case THINGS TAKE A TURN / said father."6 Domascyna studied and became an engineer in a coal mine for many years (Knappenrode 1973-1984) before studying literature at the University of Leipzig (1985-1989). Her own complicity in the destructive coalmining practices would later surface as thematic material in her poetry. When Marhata, a cantankerous protector of nature in Sorbian folk tales, appeared to the narrator of a forceful prose poem, she "tore her eyes from her face and planted them in my forehead" to see the ground, as "motors pumped my blood in streams from the earth."7 Domascyna's first attempts to publish her work in the late 1980s were problematic, as she struggled with the wish to publish in her mother tongue and the conflicting desire to reach a wider audience. Her first volume of poetry, in the Sorbian language, was brought to press in 1990 (wroco ja dopredka du: Bautzen). Since then, she has published several volumes of poetry in both German and Upper Sorbian, along with some short fiction and drama. Since 1991, her German-language work has been published primarily by Gerhard Wolf Janus Press in Berlin, in volumes enriched by the striking graphics of artists such as Angela Hampel, Karla Wosnitza and Birgit Schone. In the Sorbian language, she continues to publish small editions with Domowina in Bautzen. To date, Domascyna has received several awards, including the AnnaSeghers-Prize in 1998, but has received scant attention from literary critics.