A book a day: Witold Szablowski: The Dancing Bears

Original language: English

Original title: Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny

Translation: Catherine Molonievich, Abel Murcia

Year of publication: 2019

Valuation: highly recommended

Sorry for being a little vindictive before reviewing. The dancing bears. Since it is obvious that, just as when the words are mentioned Chilean novelist It is impossible not to evoke Bolaño, the simple mention of journalist (the chronicler) Polish should, for a few decades, remind us of Kapuscinski. In fact, a prize with his name was awarded to the author of this book by a Press Association and, I will continue to get annoying (and a little nostalgic), we must often remember the genius, not only for his unquestionable literary value. , also for its enormous influence on a profession (the journalist, the chronicler, the correspondent) that is not only the unjust victim in the conflicts that proliferate, but also the indirect source of much literary pleasure and much induction to reflection. Kapuscinski defined the disadvantaged as the first to be damaged by conflicts. His influence on books like the one in question is unquestionable.

Witold Szablowski presents this book in two parts, each one taking up half. First part, a study composed of testimonies about a slow-burning consequence of the fall of the wall. How this affected a series of Bulgarian citizens, most of them Roma, who began losing their jobs when the factories they worked for began to be evaluated on the dynamics of capitalism (profitability, productivity) instead of justifying their existence for social purposes. and community. But the second blow was worse: many of them sought a grotesque professional retraining as bear trainers, practically a desperate solution but one that provided them with a precarious means of subsistence. That second blow: at the beginning of the 21st century, The pressure from animal defense organizations illegalizes the possession of animals and their use, prior to training phases that can only be classified as torture, in circuses and fairs as an attraction. The owners of the bears were contacted by Cuatro Patas, an organization promoting a park where the recovered animals could be reinserted. Szablowski contacts the former owners, they talk about their present, delves into the curious negotiation processes (they were offered an amount as compensation to hand over the animal that, in another context, could be confiscated), their reactions, its difficult second adaptation that is usually attributed to cultural issues (the classic dialectic that certain cultures are not ready for democracy), in his daily life after separating from the bears that provided his precarious livelihood.

In the second, using fragments of the first as initial quotes, Szablowski undertakes a less localized exercise, the scenarios are more varied and we take a walk through the world after the fall of the Wall. It represents a kind of global projection of that local panorama of change, of adaptation that has been impossible to execute without claiming victims. Szablowski manages to place himself in the difficult position of the omniscient narrator and the testimonies parade, from Cuba, Albania, from some of the old republics Soviet or territories of the former Yugoslavia, more heterogeneous testimonies about the world after the fall of the Wall. A narrative that takes on a strange tone, a mixture of nostalgia, dignity, resignation and hope.