Published in Zehra Çirak’s third book of poetry, Fremde Flügel auf eigener Schulter (Alien Wings on Your Own Shoulder, 1994), “Frauen—Porträt I” is part of a versatile ekphrastic cycle in which a series of photographs or paintings (or ironically framed perceptions) is inventively described. Elizabeth Ann Oehlkers has produced an exceptionally precise and beautiful translation of this poem.

An anonymous woman whose ethnic background is not defined (it would therefore be precipitate to read this poem as a contribution to multiethnic conversations) is described as using her hair as a protective “screen” or “wall of shame.” The German neologism that Çirak invents here, Schamwand (literally “shame wall”), reminds the reader of the German language’s intrinsic sexist vocabulary, especially for the female anatomy (for example, the German word for “labia” is Schamlippen, “shame lips,” which led the feminist linguist Luise Pusch to suggest Schamstange, “shame stick,” as an equivalent new word for the male genital).

The lyrical observer interprets the nameless woman’s gestures as symptoms of fearful helplessness. For a moment a glimpse of her possible autonomy is reported as being caught, but it remains an instant of hyper-reflexive speculation.

While at first glance this poem might be read as a testament to feminist solidarity and a gentle call for self-liberation, the seemingly sympathetically observed woman remains an object of distanced spectatorship throughout the text. Exposed to an inquisitive yet ultimately non-dialogic and omniscient gaze, the anonymous woman, whose physical and psychological contours seem to be sympathetically judged, becomes an object of compassionate voyeurism.

The poem’s fruitful, disquieting lack of dialogic exchange alerts the reader to the possibility that even (or especially) what presents itself as straightforward benevolence can be a subtle form of erotic subjection or epistemic appropriation, a mere exhibition of self-interested violence.

Bibliography
Oehlkers, Elizabeth Ann. “Where Germany Begins: Translations from the German of the poetry and prose of Zehra Çirak, Zafer Senocak, and Yoko Tawada.” MFA thesis, University of Arkansas, 1996, 64–65.

Categories: Literature, Turkish Literature, World Literature

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