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Jill Magid : Becoming Tarden

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dimanche 15 novembre 2009 [n° 2351]

Kos, Kosinski

En ruthène, sa langue natale, kos signifie oiseau moqueur.

“Né en 1933 à Lodz, dans une famille juive, il est confié à des paysans pour échapper aux persécutions. Les blonds Polonais n’aiment pas beaucoup ce petit gringalet brun à l’œil noir et le maltraitent, le jettent sous la glace d’un lac gelé ou dans une fosse à purin, au point qu’il en devient muet. L’oiseau bariolé est la métaphore de l’autre, de l’original que l’on déteste, et fait allusion à un jeu que les mêmes paysans s’amusaient à pratiquer, consistant à capturer un oiseau, à peindre ses plumes de diverses couleurs criardes et à le relâcher parmi les siens. Lesquels, restés noirs ou gris, ne supportant pas cette différence, tuaient le bariolé à coups de bec. C’est une belle image, par anticipation, de l’hostilité que devait provoquer plus tard Jerzy Kosinski, malgré (ou à cause de) tous ses déguisements, toutes ses ruses. Après la guerre, ses parents le récupérèrent dans un orphelinat et l’enfant retrouvra la parole à la suite d’une chute à skis, à l’âge de quatorze ans.”

ll a fait le récit de son extraordinaire enfance, en 1965, dans “l’Oiseau bariolé”, best-seller mondial.

Jerzy Kosinski /fr.wikipedia.org

L’ENFANT ET LE GÉNOCIDE Témoignages sur l’enfance pendant la Shoah Textes choisis et présentés par Catherine Coquio & Aurélia Kalisky Éditions Robert Laffont, Collection BOUQUINS

Jerzy Kosinski – Negotiating the Monomyth and Other Pertinent Systems April 30, 2008 [the] ENGLISH-BLOG [.com]

De l’oiseau à l’ermite

«Cet ermite s’y connaît plus en déguisements que tous les autres oiseaux de son espèce, bariolés ou non. Cet oiseau prouve qu’il est possible de changer de déguisement même après la mort (…). C’est une grive ermite mais seulement tant qu’elle est en vie. Dès qu’elle meurt, son plumage change à tel point de couleur, et de manière si imprévisible, que personne, pas même ses proches, ne savent qui elle était de son vivant. C’est bien pratique quand on veut disparaître sans laisser la moindre trace, n’est-ce pas ?»

De l’Oiseau à l’Ermite L’Ermite de la 69ème rue, Jerzy Kosinski Plon, Feux Croisés, 566 p. Traduit de l’anglais (Etats-Unis) par Fortunato Israël ISBN 2-259-02606-0

Cockpit (1975)

“Tarden est un ancien membre d’une puissante agence de sécurité des États-Unis qu’il appelle «le Service». Depuis sa désertion, il a réussi à effacer son nom de tous les dossiers et des tables d’écoute. Il peut en toute liberté chercher l’aventure dans le paysage contemporain, se déguiser sous différentes identités (millionnaire et mendiant, vengeur et sauveur, juge et escroc, pilote et passager d’un vol de nuit qui mène au lieu du suspense) pour, au cours de ses vagabondages, intervenir dans l’existence des autres, les rendant par la force complices d’escapades aux actions dynamiques et à l’intrigue complexe, attirer dans ses pièges amis et inconnus, discrètement récompenser ceux qui souffrent en silence et punir sans merci ceux qui sont injustes. Hommes et femmes miroitent dans le monde de l’immanence, et rien n’est prévisible, sauf le hasard.” (…)

Le roman se termine par une citation des ‘’Possédés’’ de Dostoïevski :

Juridiquement, vous êtes à peu près inattaquable. C’est ce qu’on vous fera tout d’abord remarquer, avec ironie. Beaucoup se montreront perplexes. Qui comprendra les véritables motifs de votre confession?

source : André Durand présente Josek Lewinkopf dit Jerzy KOSINSKI (Pologne – États-Unis) (1933-1991) (.doc)

__________________________

Simas Kudirka aka “Tarden”

Cockpit (1975) is a novel by 1969 National Book Award for Fiction winner Jerzy Kosinski.

Cockpit is a debriefing after a long, torturous mission. An agent known only as Tarden is a former operative of the mysterious security agency “the Service”. Now a fugitive, he has erased himself from all dossiers and transcripts, and moves across the landscape free of identity, in search of adventure and intrigue. But Tarden is a man of many disguises, and he is alternately avenger and savior, judge and trickster, as he enters the lives of others, forcing them into the arena of his judgment. In Cockpit Kosinski is at his most startling and powerful, stripping away pretension and illusions of security and revealing the source of real strength within.

The Kosinski quotes by Jill Magid :

I was one of the specially trained groups of agents called ‘the hummingbirds’. The men and women of this group are so valuable that to protect their covers no central file is kept on them and their identities are seldom divulged to other agents. Most hummingbirds remain on assignment as long as they lead active cover lives, usually as high-ranking government officials, military or cultural officials based in foreign countries. Others serve as businessmen, scientists, editors, writers and artists.

But I always used to wonder what would happen if a hummingbird vanished, leaving no proof…’

From Cockpit 1 by Jerzy Kosinski, 1975

Simas Kudirka, the Lithuanian sailor, was initially denied entry to the United States and was summarily handed back to the communists.

“(…) in Kosinski‘s Cockpit, where the hero is involved in liberating a naturalized American who has been illegally detained in his native country. In the course of “pulling strings,” the main character, Tarden, approaches the United Nations ambassador of the unnamed totalitarian state. The ambassador, in turn, accuses the United States government of a callous attitude toward individual liberties, citing a case that is strikingly reminiscent of the Simas Kudirka episode (Originally published in the Not – Summer 2005 edition of Martha’s Vineyard Magazine) . Far from being a condemnation of democracy, this brief allusion to Kudirka is Kosinski’s reaffirmation of faith in the democratic emphasis on the individual’s worth. Just as Tarden, through individual action, succeeds in securing the release of the detainee, so a few concerned individuals asserted themselves over government agencies to bring Kudirka out of captivity. It is no coincidence that Kudirka entered the United States as a citizen in November 1974″ and that Kosinski published Cockpit less than a year later”.

Audio Interview with Jerzy Kosinski

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I write for a certain sphere of readers in the United States who on average watch seven and a half hours of multichannel television per day.
– Jerzy Kosinski

JERZY KOSINSKI Interviewed by Rocco Landesman, The Art of Fiction No. 46 Issue 54, Summer 1972, The Paris Review

Youtube video

LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Volume 18, No.3 – Fall 1972
Editors of this issue: Antanas Klimas, Ignas K. Skrupskelis, Thomas Remeikis
Copyright © 1972 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc.

LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE REFUSAL OF ASYLUM BY U.S. COAST GUARD ON 23 NOVEMBER, 1970 Professor LOUIS F. E. GOLDIE Naval War College

Saved

why would the Soviets comply with Ford’s request to release Kudirka when they had rejected earlier appeals? Because it demonstrated alleged good faith to an American leader just taking office and might counter the claims of dissidents like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose international bestseller “The Gulag Archipelago,” published just a year earlier, described the terror network of the Soviet prison state from the devastating perspective of a literary genius who lived through it first-hand. And to the Soviets, how great is the loss of one man when the goal is to enslave millions?

The Defection of Simas Kudirka (1978)

The man who saved Simas Kudirka

_____________________

Emulating Kozinski’s fictional character : Tarden

Jill Magid, Becoming Tarden 2009 – Tate Gallery

Compelled by the idea of a secret at the heart of The Organization, and intrigued by what it would feel like to surrender her identity to the institution, Magid requested to be vetted, and was granted unprecedented security clearance. In this next stage of the project, she began the transformation from artist to agent. In assuming this new function she took inspiration from a literary character, Tarden, the rogue operative in Jerzy Kosinski’s 1975 novel Cockpit. At the same time, she shifted from data gatherer to author, as her report morphed from an official document into a novel, Becoming Tarden. By emulating both the fictional character and his creator, Magid gestures to the layers of fact, fiction and role playing that make up intelligence operations.

To download The Redacted Manuscript and read Magid’s prologue and epilogue, visit www.becomingtarden.net

Becoming Tarden — Prologue Jill Magid

Living in Amsterdam in the spring of 2004, I received a letter from a senior advisor to the Netherlands’ chief government architect. Enclosed was a job description, translated from Dutch. The Government Buildings Agency was hiring on behalf of the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, or the Dutch secret service. The Organization had doubled in size over recent years due to the new wave of global terrorism and was thus moving to a larger building. As a government building funded with public money, federal law required a percentage of the project’s total budget be used to commission a new onsite artwork. The Agency’s mission was to appoint someone whose work would support the mission of The Organization, as paraphrased below. (…)

Photographies de l’artiste : Becoming Tarden


  1. SIMAS KUDIRKA : A LITERARY SYMBOL OF DEMOCRATIC INDIVIDUALISM IN JERZY KOSINSKI’S COCKPIT

    MARGARET KUP?INSKAS KESHAWARZ Millikin University
    LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
    Volume 25, No.4 – Winter 1979
    Editor of this issue: Antanas Klimas
    ISSN 0024-5089
    Copyright © 1979 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc. [back]

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