Patrick's Response: Sondra Perl, On Austrian Soil

[Sondra Perl]

#738

So much of On Austrian Soil is about the power of writing, it’s miraculous ability to change both the author and the reader. As we write, we engage with an inherent agency, an ability to construct order and coherency in a chaotic and incoherent world. And I think this process is somehow both active and passive at the same time: as we actively engage in putting text on paper, we are passively changed by the writing process, surfacing on the other side of composition as a different person, a changed person. And this point brings up so many thoughts about what it means to be creative in the face of terrible destruction.

I can think of no better example of this than the epistolary relationship that develops in “On Austrian Soil” between Professor Perl and Margaret. In Chapter 4, the two women “agree to share their writing” (45), exchanging handwritten missives with one another. And it is here, in the neutral, free space of the page, that the two women are able to deepen their connection and understanding, while simultaneously finding the voices necessary to ask more difficult questions of one another. “Will we be able to find a balance” Margaret asks, “between being nurtured—and encountering each other?” (45). As both women work to find Margaret’s balance, they discover a freedom to speak honestly, to articulate the tacit concerns between them. And this brave connection allows both women to “surpass the intimacy [they had] discovered together” (46).

And so, it seems that writing not only generates an experience of change for the self, but it also allows for a deeper intimacy with the other. When Professor Perl writes back to Margaret, she says that Margaret grants her access to “the other side of all I think and feel” (50). It is a revelation that Professor Perl feels is “brave” (50) because it places Margaret in a vulnerable, exposed position. But this vulnerability allows both women to encounter an angle of vision outside of their own, a position that breaks through fear and grief.

I think it’s particularly interesting that the genre in which this writing unfolds is epistolary, because it raises rhetorical questions about the objective and audience of one’s writing. I recently wrote a paper for a professor, and the only way I could enter the imaginative space of the paper was to begin by writing a letter to my professor. This moment of intimacy between the professor and I–created by the rhetorical move of the epistolary genre–de-pressurized the situation for me. I was writing to a specific person, for a specific reason, and I felt safe to posit claims that otherwise I would have shied away from. Audacious, risky claims. The page became a receptive space for me, no longer dominated by an abstract, plural other lurking somewhere in the void.

If writing is an act of both creation and inquiry, then why do these ideas regarding audience and purpose change the way I write? I have never been interested in being right, only engaged; and maybe writing it’s not just about setting up a strong argument, and then defending that argument in the most efficient way possible. As I said recently in class, I’ve become very suspicious of efficiency, because it doesn’t allow the necessary space and freedom in order to raise the more messy questions—a practice that Margaret and Professor Perl develop with moving results. Maybe writing is less about proving that you’re right, and more about finding the ways your thinking has been wrong—where there is flexibility for more change and intimacy? Maybe it’s not about reconsolidating the self, but instead about breaking through the self to reach the other, building connections that were not there before?

For Margaret and Professor Perl, their epistolary relationship seems to culminate in Professor Perl’s paper, a kind of letter that reveals her Jewish identity to Margaret. It is a “momentous” (59) occasion for Professor Perl, one in which she “[reveals] more about [herself] than [she has] until recently” (59). It is a revelation that will lead the entire class toward a tour of Innsbruck with Horst, a tour of the horrors of anti-Semitism and fascism. As difficult as this passage is, it is also a major threshold of revelation for the figures of On Austrian Soil, a moment when they can no longer turn away from the questions their own inquiries have raised—when they can no longer not look into the face of the other.

[Sondra Perl]

#747

Thank you, Patrick, for such a thoughtful response. It is true that Margret and I found our way to each other through writing both in each other’s presence (in class) and then across an ocean through the mail. The writing back and forth in letters did allow us to discover ‘an angle of vision’ not our own. And I agree that so often in school the forms required and taught do not invite messiness or exploration of the self. It is true that our shared inquiries discovered through writing eventually invite us ‘to look into the face of the other’ and that has made all the difference. At the time of the first trip, I could not have imagined what transpired and has continued for close to 20 years.

[Sondra Perl]

#767

Patrick:

I believe that the Professor’s use of writing letters to Margret and other students worked magic. Writing gives us great pause, endless uninterrupted time to think.
Epistolary communication offers a way to bridge topics that would not be broached face-to-fact (think of email/blogs/texting today-granted things do get lost in translation, we only have emoticons to emphasis words/meanings)

Being physically present is hard enough in the most benign of circumstances; with topics that are uncomfortable, it is almost impossible to say what we mean. Our ego gets in the way, we pick up on gestures, of sounds, of sight, and we let our reactions control the conversations.

I wonder to create a less stressful writing class for younger students, if epistolary is a way to jump start writing essays and other forms of writing.

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