MARIA KUYUMTSI
Forever
editor Kastaniotis, p. 192

“He thinks her face belongs more to poetry than to prose.” I fully agree with the heroine of the story, although the topic of our report, of course, is different. I mean her letter Maria Kuyumtsiin which lyricism is combined with sharp motifs. This collection is dominated by carnal allegory, a paroxysm of pleasure, flesh in superlatives. The characters in the stories become the fruit of a morbid, sadomasochistic sexuality. Overwhelmed by an unconscious body, they utter the “black poem of pleasure” with heart-rending spasms. While having sex, the characters plunge “into the dark light of existence. The light that came out of the depths of our body, illuminating its unknown forces. Sex for them is “a kind of death and resurrection.”

Even going to the pharmacy can be very sexy. While the woman is waiting for the pharmacist to give her an injection, she becomes delirious with the anticipation of penetration. After losing consciousness, she begins to wander through the labyrinths of rooms where dark pleasures lurk. Another woman recalls a night when her lover lured her into a creepy place strewn with red-lit screens. Behind the sail shadows dazzlingly intertwined. Alli is imprisoned in a miserable room with an iron bed, where animal people, although with their tails cut off, constantly devoured her. Another, equally spoiled by the cruelty of her sometimes animal-like lover, daydreams at night that “he tore my clothes with a sharp knife and raped me like an animal, with the knife bleeding around my neck.”

Probably this “Forever” The title does not refer to the teenage “Love Forever” but to the terrible, indefinable and invincible that always and forever overwhelms existence. Sexual ferocity is one aspect of awesomeness. The heroes live in a gloomy Luciferian reality, the fruit of their worst fears, where ferocious monsters and bottomless pits await them. Bloodshed, carnage and monsters are relentless in this day-to-day haunted by nightmares and visions. The narrator says, “The pain gripped me to the point of shock.”

Hallucination, no matter how carnivorous and vile it may be, remains a method of eliminating pain. Hallucination removes the unbearable weight of the terrible, like “a drug that immerses you in the melodies of chaos.” Kuyumtsi’s stories tell a fragmentary story. A more general theme might be unexpected, hedonistic and painful ways of defiling existence. However, writing overcomes even the blinding darkness of fiction. Kuyumci’s tongue shines with a “black light”.

It feeds on the wildest impulses of the unconscious, but seeks in extremes the underlying aesthetics. Hence the poetry of her speech. Of course, sometimes the obsession with the grotesque leads to fanciful extremes and extravagant results that even the most carefully crafted discourse cannot support. Either way, Kuyumci’s mastery at capturing the deepest traumas and most paralyzing horrors of existence is undeniable. The stories give the impression that they originate from the eloquent images of wounded, bleeding heroes.

However, through extreme horror, they reveal stunningly beautiful images. Evil is not adorned, but tamed by illusions and fantasies. Only the poetic imagination can trace the aesthetics of darkness. And Kuyumci’s writing does just that, it turns darkness into speech.