A Review of Subhash Jaireth’s To Silence
By Scott Halligan
Subhash Jaireth’s To Silence, published by Puncher & Wattman earlier this year, features ‘fictional autobiographies’—the author’s own description—of three long-dead but very real historical figures: Kabir, a 15th century Indian mystic poet who was a hero to both Hindus and Muslims; Maria Chekhova, sister of Anton Chekhov; and Tommaso Campanella, a 16th century Calabrian scholar, theologian, poet and astrologer. In the back cover blurb, John Hughes describes this little volume as a ‘tardis of a book’, and I’d agree. I intended to write a short review of perhaps four or five hundred words, but by the end of it I found myself with about a dozen pages of notes. In particular, Jaireth’s innovative and brave experimentation with genre and his surprising choice of characters opens up many doors for thought. I’ll try to act as something like a ‘concierge’ here.
Jaireth is not the first to explore the genre of fictional autobiography. The classic I, Claudius by Robert Graves was written in the form of an autobiography penned in secret by the emperor Claudius. To Silence is nothing like I, Claudius, but a comparison with Graves’ approach is a useful way to illuminate Jaireth’s stylistic innovations as well as how difficult it is to neatly categorise the book.
To Silence takes the form of three short monologues, but unlike that of Claudius, they are not chronological accounts. Instead, we find each character in old age, aware they are approaching their death, their narratives flitting in and out between the immediate concerns of their present lives and the memories sparked by that present, via photographs (Chekhova), songs and poems (Kabir), physical pain (Campanella), and so on. There’s even a moment near the end of the third monologue where Campanella, who has agreed to have his biography written by a literary friend named Gabrielle Naude, is given a set of keywords and asked to reflect on an aspect or episode of his life to match each keyword—an autobiographical device inside another one.
Also unlike I, Claudius, these autobiographies are not comprehensive accounts of the lives of Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella. Indeed, if one untied all the autobiographical loose ends given in each account and laid them out in chronological order, one would still end up with a broken, unevenly clustered and quite incomplete outline of a life. But it was never Jaireth’s intention to write comprehensive, chronological autobiographies. This approach would have quickly become unwieldy and imposed an unwanted storytelling voice on the characters.
Instead, the monologues are meditative and confessional, almost taking on the form of soliloquies or journal entries. The writing thus takes on an intimacy and immediacy it would otherwise lack, and the reader is drawn into a very private world. I could quote many examples, but Campanella’s description of the child singer Pietro and the old man’s subsequent guilt under the eyes of an omniscient God gives a strong impression that these thoughts were not intended to be widely read.
There he is, the face a perfect heart-shape; nose straight with a slight upturned curve near the tip, almond-shaped eyes rimmed by arched brows, eyelids heavy, lips succulent of the colour of ripe pomegranate seeds, and chin smooth and soft asking to be touched and kissed …
I confess that I was blinded by the beauty of the innocent boy. I shouldn’t have been, because the beauty was undoubtedly Yours… I know this now but then face to face with Pietro I had somehow lost sight of the most obvious… To expiate myself I confess; to redeem my soul I confess; to remain vigilant of future indiscretions I confess; I confess because I am nothing but human asking for love and compassion. (pp. 89-90)
If the term ‘autobiography’ is problematic, this absence of awareness of the presence of a reader also prevents a neat classification of these monologues as memoirs.
Readers of this book, even just picking it up and reading through the blurb, will find it hard to stop asking: Why these three characters? Why, for instance, did Jaireth choose Maria Chekhova instead of Chekhov? What do the three characters have in common? In my case I also wondered what it meant, aside from conclusions that could be drawn about my ignorance, that I knew next to nothing about these people …
One reason for Jaireth’s choice of characters is that while they may not be familiar names to many readers, they belong to a special category of historical figures: the overall shape of their lives and their character is known, but most of the hard biographical details are either not known (Kabir and Campanella), or not previously considered interesting enough to give much attention (Chekhova). Research on Kabir leads me to dozens of stories about his life, some of them conflicting factually with each other, but scarce biographical information. And since Kabir was illiterate, even his poems and songs have a sense of ephemerality, passed down and written down as they were by others. Similarly, Maria Chekhova devoted her own life to documenting the life of her brother, and her personal life was only considered relevant as it pertained to that of Chekhov. That the three figures are mostly known to history ‘indirectly’ gives Jaireth much room to use his imagination.
Another clue is that these three people found themselves, whether they were aware of it or not, living in unusually close proximity to highly significant historical events, periods or transitions. Kabir and Campanella seemed to be lionised and victimised, respectively, by forces over which they had little control and which appeared to select them out for a life of notoriety.
As for Chekhova—and the question: Why her and not Anton?—she survived her older brother by fifty-seven years. Anton died in 1904, a year before the beginning of the most tumultuous period in Russia’s history. From her vantage point of the Chekhov villa in Yalta in southern Ukraine, where Anton spent his final years as his health faded, Chekhova observed the first Revolution of 1905, the First World War, the February and October Revolutions of 1917 and the ensuing years of bitter civil war, which the Ukraine was also tied up in. In the mid-1930s, when Chekhova was in her mid-seventies, the Stalinist purges began, and after the purges, Chekhova then lived through the Second World War, Nazi Occupation, and the Holocaust.
To use I, Claudius once more, Robert Graves used the miraculous Claudius, considered a harmless, disabled fool by his infamous family and thus left alone to observe them as they fell under the spell of absolute power, to indulge his deep interest and write a detailed account of the Roman Empire. Jaireth uses the ‘strategically ideal’ lives of Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella in the same way. He inhabits them, using their minds and bodies to explore the episodes of human history that fascinate and move him.
Jaireth has likened his approach to writing this book to a stage actor who performs multiple roles throughout the one performance. Jaireth imagines himself to be these people and writes their worlds from inside them, discovering as much as writing their thoughts and feelings, their pain, and what they see and hear and touch. The success of this technique is evident in how well Jaireth is able to conjure up vivid impressions of time and place and still maintain an inward-looking, meditative voice when ‘performing’ the three characters. Although there are passages of detailed description—an epic astrological ritual led by Campanella to ensure the re-emergence of the sun from an eclipse is a highlight—a specific example of this indirect evocativeness is hard to find, the effect achieved incrementally and cumulatively across each monologue.
Another achievement of Jaireth’s stage acting technique is how intensely he is able to convey the emotions felt by those people, particularly their pain. Towards the end of the Chekhova monologue, Chekhova learns the fate of an old friend named Dunya Efros, a woman who was briefly engaged to Anton. Having not seen Dunya for many years, Chekhova can’t stop herself from thinking about Dunya and the place where she died, her head shaven, at the age of eighty-two: the Treblinka death camp. In the final paragraphs, Chekhova becomes overwhelmed by the guilt of the survivor and of the bystander, not just for Dunya but for the millions of others of her countrymen and women who died in the wars, revolutions, purges and the Holocaust.
But do I want to be consoled and comforted? I really don’t know. No, I want to suffer and grieve and carry the grief with me undiminished, until I die. Only death will bring me relief. Redemption I don’t want to think about. I haven’t sinned. My benevolent God, I’m sure, understands that, and the feeling of guilt which troubles my heart is also understood and condoned by Him. But my guilt isn’t strictly mine. I am guilty by association, guilty that I have lived in times unbelievably cruel and inhumane, and that I didn’t have the courage to speak up. I should have. I definitely should have.
Like others, I too was selfish, too concerned to save my own skin.
But—
I hate that word. All excuses begin with this terrible word. (p. 70)
Chekhova’s fortune was to live through all of this, for nearly a century, when so many others died. Her burden was to carry her country’s nightmares with her to the grave.
One aspect that initially seemed a weakness in Jaireth’s writing of To Silence is the similarity in the narrative voices Jaireth employs for Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella—even though each character has their own quirks, such as Campanella’s frequent asides addressed to God, which range from declarations of faith to paranoid apologies for perceived indiscretions. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realised that this consistency of voice is in fact a strength. It emphasises the shared humanity between the three very different characters, encouraging the reader to look past the obvious differences and ask what the three of them might have in common.
I will end this review with a reassurance: it isn’t necessary to know anything about Kabir, Chekhova and Campanella, or be a history aficionado, to get pleasure from this little book. I thoroughly enjoyed discovering the very different worlds of these characters, stumbling my way through them, piecing together the clues and inferring the historical context. I do however strongly recommend doing some elementary research into the lives and myths surrounding the three people, and the places and times in which they lived, and then give the book a second reading. Read in a new light with some background knowledge, it almost becomes a different book.
***
A lot more could be said about Subhash Jaireth’s To Silence; the meaning of the title, the supporting characters, and Jaireth’s personal motivations for writing the book are all equally as interesting as the topics covered in this review. Fortunately, Jaireth recently gave a talk at the IPCF book club on To Silence, which was filmed and uploaded on to YouTube in five parts. In the five videos, Jaireth not only discusses the aspects I’ve mentioned and many more, but also gives emotionally powerful readings from the book. Included below is the first video; the other four can be found here.
Subhash Jaireth lives in Canberra. Between 1969 and 1978 he spent nine years in Moscow. He has published three books of poetry, Yashodhara: Six Seasons, Unfinished Poems for Your Violin, Before the Bullet Hit Me, and he has had stories, essays, and poetry published in Australian and international journals.
