![]() ![]() ![]() The past’s tight grip on the present is among Memoirs of a Polar Bear’s central concerns. Trapped by circumstance, Knut longs for escape - from his pen, his zoo, his very bear-being, which, he observes, chains him to his “milky past.” He struggles to find meaning in his own orphan-dom: abandoned by his mother, who refused to nurse him, he is raised in a Berlin zoo by a human zookeeper named Matthias who “made milk flow from his fingers,” and whom Knut loves desperately until the day he, too, disappears. Knut wishes to escape this burden but knows that he cannot. This is one reason, perhaps, why we’re always forced to remember our milky pasts and can never be as free as the birds.įor Knut, the need for a mother’s milk represents dependence on the past. ![]() No other substance than milk can nourish them. ![]() A newborn bird, for example, can survive without his mother if his father brings him tasty worms to eat. What I wondered was why mammals were created in such a way that they cannot survive without their mothers’ milk. In the third and final chapter of Yoko Tawada’s whimsical and wise novel, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, a young bear named Knut ponders mammals’ need for milk: ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |