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»The Necessity« to Travel, the Found Homeland and Hvar (About the Lyrical Notes of Chester V. Beers)
Helena Peričić
orcid.org/0000-0001-9920-4027
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zadru
Sažetak
In this work, the author deals with a collection of poems called By Express Disorder of the unknown American poet of Croatian roots, Chester V. »Ches« Beers (Beers’ Croat grandparents from his mother’s side immigrated to America in 1913). He is the author who was born in California, and who lived the last years of his life in Oregon, or as he himself wrote: »he was de-californicized in order to become oregonicized«. Since his early youth, Beers was a hundred percent disabled veteran of the Vietnam War; at the age of twenty, in 1967, he was poisoned by inhaling the poisonous herbicide Agent Orange.
His poems selected for this work are taken from Beers’ collection of poems which was the result of »an insatiable desire to travel again«, and which was written after an almost fatal attack of pneumonia in October of 1985, and thus, during the years of 1986 and 1987, Beers travelled through North America, Europe, and Croatia, recording his impressions in lyrical notes. The title of this collection, By Express Disorder, which he finished in 1987, just before he passed away, was taken by Beers – the poet – from the novel of Anne Bronte The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Stanar Wildfell Halla); what Bronte called »by express desire«, Beers modified into »by express disorder.« He also added the subtitle »Iliad of a Disabled Poet« to his collection. This work emphasizes poems like: »Hvar«, »The woman of Hvar Island«, »Dalmatian Sunset«, »Dalmatian Island«, »Diocletian’s Palace«, »Lovely Lady of Lapad«, »Adriatico«, »Zagreb without Rain«, and so forth. Beers’ collection, thematically connected to his own war-time experiences, but undoubtedly, also colored by a fascination (both positive and otherwise) with the homeland of his ancestors, has never been published in the United States of America, nor in Croatia, and poems selected for this occasion (from the granted manuscript of the collection) are presented and interpreted – offered for the first time ever to the public in the dominant translation from the English language, done by Sintija Čuljat.
The lyrical notes of Chester Beers are, in this work, presented to the public for the first time both in the original language, and in Croatian translation, and as such, they are considered to be the author’s manuscript protected by copyrights.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
82219
URI
Datum izdavanja:
4.5.2012.
Posjeta: 986 *