Bouncing on the Trampoline of Fantasy in Reality

When Dadaism first came into existence, people were shocked. Soon after, there was another group of artists and activists emerging in the field of art and creative writing: the surrealist. While the Dadaists embrace the idea of the anti-art movement, the surrealists provide an alternative way to see reality by evoking unconsciousness, forming paths between the real and the unreal worlds, rational and irrational. This essay will begin with a brief retrospection of surrealism, specifically environmental surrealism in the Soviet Union era, and how writers back then embraced the idea of creating the irrational world and facilitated political, social, and philosophical conversations.

Surrealism was created in 1924 when the pioneer surrealist André Breton published The Manifesto of Surrealism. It was a way artists and activists responded to the social upheavals and the war. During WW1, countries in Europe lost their previous prosperity within just a few years. In response to the vulnerable nature of the seemingly perfect reality, the surrealists appeared and started to alter the definition of truth. Inspired by Freud's ideas of unconsciousness, the surrealists believed that there is a gray zone in our mind that would only appear in dreams or at the edge of consciousness and unconsciousness. They altered the way people view the world through irrationalities and absurd artistic expressions, trying to evoke social awareness and facilitate political revolutions. After WW2, surrealism gradually traveled to other parts of the world, and when it caught Ana Blandiana's attention, surrealism adapted to a new kind of political and social climate.

Ana Blandiana's writing style is constantly shifting throughout her life. She published her first wring at the age of 17, when her father was imprisoned, and soon her first writing piece was banned because of her father. In the early years of her life, Ana's writing was mainly about the joy of life and communication with nature. Living in the era of Romanian political upheavals and social changes, Ana gradually changed her writing style into something else: she began to show resistance to society. Being a writer within a strictly governed world, Ana is aware of the limitations she faces. Instead of dealing with the social issues through her writing directly, Ana incorporates her political and social ideas into her fictional stories.

In The Phantom Church, Blandiana reveals the possibility for ambiguity to exist between the real and the unreal. She starts by defining the ambiguous boundaries between reality and fantasy. Although the real and the imaginary exist in parallel worlds, they sometimes intersect or approach at a tangent, creating the realm of irrationality and idealistic reality. With this background idea in mind, she reveals the "verifiable story" of the Phantom Church. The story itself is constantly shifting from one side to the other, from reality to fantasy, and from fiction back to reality.

Blandiana expressed the heavily polarized nature of our society, and how deep this idea has been entrenched into our mind. In order to avoid uncertainties, people identify facts that partially reflect the reality and believe in what they see to be the absolute truth. To them, the margin between the real and the unreal world is so clear that some of them deny the possibility for their counterpart to exist. The surrealists, aware of the polarized human nature, try to smear the line between realities and miracles. Blandiana expressed the difficulties of embracing the ambiguity of her ever-changing ideas and the world when she writes in The Phantom Church "The less I could tell the difference between fantasy and reality, the greater my guilt became." (100) She had been stuck in between two worlds, one in which people only believe in the fact under human control, while in the other a human lives in a world of pure fantasies, and view the outside world as absurd. Blandiana explained the first kind of society on page 100. She wrote: "as long as everything had been unquestionably real, the outcome of their work, they had considered it fantastic, but the moment things went out of control and took a turn for the fantastic, they analyzed them as if suspecting a fraud." (100) While the first kind of world relies on identifiable and controllable facts, the second kind lives side by side with natural fantasies as if the miracles are, in fact, the truth. Blandiana explained the second kind of world on page 102. She writes, "When it was all over, the peasants of Subpiatra, the few that were left, returned in silence as if awakened from a dream they have taken for reality and continued to believe in while choosing to view reality as a harsh and incomprehensible slumber." (102) On page 103, she then writes "..some of the shock of unquestionably accepting the miracle as part of their existence——everyday reality thus becoming a mere deviation, a secondary projection, easy to ignore——-has transformed the very core of being." (103) Through the author's perspective, I realize that there is definitely a common ground between reality and fantasy. While reality is supported by identifiable facts, fantasy is fed by fictional stories and surreal ideas. The only difference between being a realist or a surrealist is the fundamental bricks that we choose to build up our belief systems.

Neither of the worlds accepts the existence of its counterpart, yet they simultaneously exist and rely on each other. The first kind of reality, created by humans, is marked by political and social orders, elegant manners of individuals, and civilized citizens. The second, on the other hand, it not confined to human control, but influenced by the power of nature and the invisible forces. Back in ancient China, Laozi stated in his Dao De Jing that the best state of being is to be nothing at all, and the best form of existence is to follow the flow, which is guided by the ultimate force: nature.

In The phantom Church, Blandiana combined nature into surrealism, creating a supernatural reality that defies the information that we are constantly exposed to. In the backstory, nature is continuously mentioned and acts as a string that threads the whole story together. The story starts with an impossible idea: the serfs of Subpiantra decided to haul a wooden church ten kilometers from another village into their village. The wooden church itself exemplifies the overlap between human worship and nature: the material of the church came from the environment while the church existed because of human ideas and beliefs. When hauling the church through the wood, they cut down trees as they moved forward, and eventually create a path in the forest. Later the villagers decide to wait for the river to freeze up and move the church through the ice and end up losing the church in the water. The incidents that happen around the church all take place somewhere in nature as if the destiny of the wooden church is entirely under nature's control, and the villagers are merely the participant of the journey. The few times when people tried to save the church also represent their combat with natural power. Unlike the traditional surrealists who find inspirations from the subconsciousness within, Blandiana approached surrealism from the outside sacred force———nature.

Both human unconsciousness and natural power are hardly ever touched or even mentioned by the manipulative forces of society. When the sense of superiority over nature has gone too far, we will bring detrimental effects to ourselves eventually. Fantasy acts like a trampoline: it bounces up the reality, gives the reality a new dimension of possibilities, and facilitates innovative ideas.

However, considering how the predominant society is structured, it is challenging to even find the way into the fantasy world. The human brain, although the same biologically, is developed by information, social structures, political system, and predominant ideas. Those steel-like factors confine us in a bubble that makes it hard to escape and peek into alternative realities, which are fantasies. Luckily in Blandiana's story, she provides ample inspiration for people to adjust to the mindset of fantasies. In the part where she describes herself seeing the miracle in the village, she described the villagers: "Their faces were more than half covered by untrimmed beards, and matted hard grazed their bushy eyebrows, but their eyes burned from beneath the rebellious mass of hair with a brightness that stood out against the dull thatch. The expression in the men's eyes, as they strained to see what they could only hear, was one of intense expectancy, as if they knew what was about to happen yet did not fear it in the least." (107) The author described the fishermen's reaction as if they had deemed the fantasy as their reality. The line between the real world and the imagination is so blurry that the villagers could easily transport from one world to the other, acknowledging their interconnected relationship with the river and other natural powers, and let ambiguities to construct their comprehension of the world.

Approaching surrealism from an environmental aspect, although not as recognizable and easily definable as other art forms, evokes humans' instinctual connection with nature, and through that, our unconsciousness. Blandiana provides us with not only a fantasy story but also a new perspective to enter social and political conversations. She inspires us to look underneath what we naturally deem as the truth and accept the alternative realities without disturbing what has already existed.

References

Fârnoagă Georgiana, and Sharon King. The Phantom Church and Other Stories from Romania. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.