{"id":263,"date":"2020-12-10T10:54:43","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T10:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=263"},"modified":"2020-12-10T10:54:43","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T10:54:43","slug":"stammered-songbook-a-mothers-book-of-hours-by-erwin-mortier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2020\/12\/10\/stammered-songbook-a-mothers-book-of-hours-by-erwin-mortier\/","title":{"rendered":"“Stammered Songbook; A Mother\u2019s Book of Hours” by Erwin Mortier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first came across Dutch writer, Erwin Mortier\u2019s, Stammered Songbook<\/em>, a number of years ago and was almost instantly captivated by its use of language, it\u2019s honesty and originality. It has remained one of my favourite pieces of writing about Dementia ever since. Mortier begins documenting his mother\u2019s descent into Dementia as he notices her becoming confused. He continues to write about her and the development of her condition until she is close to death. In beautiful, lyrical language he weaves the story of his mother\u2019s life around her journey with Dementia so time becomes a fleeting, nebulous thing. Past is present and present is past. This confused notion of the temporal allows the reader to explore the confusion which Mortier\u2019s mother is experiencing and how it\u2019s affecting her family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrative is written in first person throughout. Mortier\u2019s account of his mother\u2019s Dementia is largely told through his relationship with her. We see his mother through his eyes and we also see how he imagines her seeing the world, including himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday my mother gave me a thorough dusting, thinking I was a piece of furniture.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mortier also records his father\u2019s responses to his mother\u2019s decline. There are dozens of tiny poignant snapshots of what a marriage looks like when placed under the strain of a Dementia diagnosis. His father tries to care for his wife at home and eventually, succumbing to the strain this causes, makes the decision to place her in a care facility. Both father and mother share Mortier\u2019s sympathy and also his frustration. He loves them. He feels sorry for them. But he also subtly acknowledges that the situation they\u2019re facing isn\u2019t easy on either of them, or on him. The reader can sense the honest frustration implied within interactions like the following conversation with his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI say: no one expects you to be strong. No one expects you to be able to handle this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s quite something, he says, leaving someone behind whom you\u2019ve known for fifty years.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Mortier\u2019s mother, the relationship is even more complex. He talks of her helplessness and her dependence upon others, including himself, for the most basic kinds of care and provisions. He is very honest about the particularities of physically caring for an elderly person\u2019s bodily needs though most of the narrative focuses in on his mother\u2019s mental decline. He makes a point early on of acknowledging a gradual erosion of his mother\u2019s self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer \u201cI\u201d is becoming lost. That \u201csomething\u201d that makes people so recognizably themselves.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking after his mother not only involves practical care, but also -as the person chronicling the end of her life- a kind of representation. Mortier is speaking on behalf of his mother, voicing the experiences she can no longer explain and filling in gaps in the narrative where her memory has eroded. There is a responsibility inherent within this role to admit the points at which his own ability to accurately convey her experience runs out. At times the structure of Stammered Songbook<\/em> is most reminiscent of prose poetry: small blocks of text which explore an idea or a theme using lyrical, resonant language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWill a day come when no one<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

remembers the right mistakes, no one still<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

knows what speech impediment<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

exactly to feed?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will anyone bore through your sandcastle<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of semantics with<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

firebreaks and understanding?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mortier leaves so much white space in his writing. He has a poet\u2019s sensibility when it comes to allowing his word\u2019s to resonate and be interpreted by the reader. For me, this makes Stammered Songbook<\/em> a particularly effective Dementia narrative. Little is fixed or concrete within this text. Everything\u2019s up for interpretation and misrepresentation, as is often the case for those living with Dementia like Mortier\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stammered Songbook was published by Pushkin Press in 2015<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent I first came across Dutch writer, Erwin Mortier\u2019s, Stammered Songbook, a number of years ago and was almost instantly captivated by its use of language, it\u2019s honesty and originality. It has remained one of my favourite pieces of writing about Dementia ever since. Mortier begins documenting his mother\u2019s descent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,16,10,6,51,17,14],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-carers","tag-dutch","tag-elderly","tag-family","tag-memoir","tag-residential-care-facility","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}