In reading Daniel Ionita’s Pentimento for the first time, I was reminded of Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin. In this work, the concept of the carnival ‘celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal’ (Bakhtin 1984, p.10). In a similar way, Ionita’s work seems to make everything topsy-turvy in a feat of absurdist humour, so that through poking a stick at everything, including himself, perhaps offers some relief from the anxieties of our present time.
In the opening poem, ‘Pig’, Ionita admits, ‘I was a pig once… no pretence – just simple, unostentatious piggery’ (p.3). A pig can be seen as a term for a greedy, dirty or unpleasant person just as it is an animal, and the honesty of this admission, that comes with ‘no imagining, / no dreaming,’ and perhaps no deception of good intentions could be seen as a comment on contemporary politics where the call to ‘strike him down’ has not been headed even while the pig rummages ‘through your front yard / backyard too / when you turned the other way’ (3). While this poem was written well before recent developments in USA politics, its continued relevance persists. The political theme continues in ‘I was my own dictator’, where the protagonist, firstly named ‘captain of my own destiny’ by HR, is finally told to ‘buzz off’ with the explanation of ‘We have one inclusive, equitable, and diverse dictatorship here. No space for outliers’ (p.5). While this poem may be taking a swipe at the far left there, with its characterisation of the employee with the ‘self-loathing haircut and two rings in his bottom lip’, there is also a preoccupation with an oppressive force, whether that force comes from without – the ‘diverse dictatorship’ – or from within; ‘I sign and stamp my banishment… I grab my hair / And scream to wake up’ (p.5).
There is the distinct feeling that the world is going to hell in a handbasket throughout this collection, and the poem ‘remembering Radio Yerevan’ talks about a humorous riddle where the protagonist attempts to save the world with only the help of a hedgehog:
So I saved the world. Yes, me.
It wasn’t easy
as humanity dragged us to buggery,
right on the edge of our
festering demise.
The natural voice is strong in this poem, with short sentences – ‘Yes, me’, and exclamation marks capturing the tone of the protagonist and his wife scolding him. She exclaims ‘You are so naïve / to believe this planet can be saved / by you and a hedgehog!’ (p. 7) It’s a funny and absurdist take on a very serious topic, perhaps displaying just how inoculated we have become in these modern times from feeling anything about our imminent demise due to the increasing effects of climate change and other related natural disasters. There is a discontent with the world as it is, as evident in ‘my destinies’, where the protagonist claims:
I sold happiness to tourists,
as if it was fairy floss at a country fair
they would open their mouths,
take one bite and then
throw it into the rubbish bin (p. 8).
In the same poem, keyboards are described as ‘monotonous and deadly’ existing in a ‘happy-screen world where no one / used pens anymore’ (p. 9). The future looks bleak and futile, yet the voice in the poem claims ‘I’d do it all again in a heartbeat’ (p. 9).
The combination of a kind of nihilism with an exuberant enthusiasm for life despite its ridiculousness and futility seems to mark this collection. There are frequent meditations on death and suffering. In the poem ‘seppuku’, the protagonist invites their ‘True love’ to ‘decapitate me in one swipe’, while in the poem ‘short bursts of eternity’, the narrator is ‘being crushed… my belly is sliced open’ (p. 18, 24). In the latter poem, a narrative of pain emerges, which is perhaps a string of different lives, in between a rejoining with source energy, which forms the ‘short bursts of eternity’ that the poem’s title speaks of. In the poem ‘a passing moment’, one of the speakers remarks, ‘Life itself is just a passing moment’, and so perhaps there is some kind of ecstasy in the pain, in the knowledge that we are really living, in the reality that without pain there is no life. But that does not mean we do not mourn for our loves, ‘just as the flake of winter in my heart will reign / yearning for your smile and frozen in lament’ (p. 67).
Bakhtin writes, ‘Fear is the extreme expression of narrow-minded and stupid seriousness, which is defeated by laughter’, and that ‘all that was frightening in ordinary life is turned into amusing or ludicrous monstrosities’ (p.47). And so, it is in Ionita’s Pentimento, that our worst fears are ballooned into absurdist and surreal caricature, which, in a troubling world, takes away some of the sting of everyday existence, while at the same time boldly stating, ‘My demise was blissful’ and that they have no regrets (p.9). Humanity’s famous last words, perhaps?
References
Bakhtin, M., (1984). Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press.
Ionita, D., (2022). Pentimento. Interactive Press.
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