Latgalistikys kongresu materiali, III. 2011. - Latvijas Universitāte

On the other hand, the novel is embedded into a wider context exploding
the world of the novel into a thick fabric of postmodernist cultural
awareness. The narration is framed by a reference to 12 October which is
the date of discovering America. The narration begins in April stating that
there are six months until 12 October when the narrator will see the new
land towards which he is setting out. However, at the end of the novel
when this date comes, nothing changes. The narrator returns from work
and performs the same weird actions that at the beginning of the novel he
observes as performed by one of the numerous anonymous characters: he
makes tea, drinks it up from a glass, then smashes the glass against the
wall, goes to the bathroom to wash his socks, pours glass chippings into
the socks and pegs them onto the clothes-line, then turns on the radio,
starts thinking and returns to the bathroom to pour the chippings from his
socks into the pockets of his pants, at night he climbs onto the roof, sits on
the parapet and counts the blue and then the red lights, after getting to the
yellow ones, he jumps down, picks up the parts of his flesh that have come
off and buries them under the doorstep, in the morning he drinks aperitif
from a half-litre jar, etc. (Seiksts, Lukaševičs 1996: 22, 181).
Quest for the New World actually turns out to be a cyclical journey
leading in all directions and nowhere; the intersection of motion and stillness
is symbolized by the bus-station as the central topos of the novel
where the narrator with three other guys (who form the collective 1 st person
‘we’ narrator) are hanging around boozing and watching people come
and go. Their own position is rather Buddhist-like (thus introducing Buddhism
and Daoism as significant intertexts of the novel):
MYUSIM NIKAS NABEJA JUODORA, I VYSS PATS IZADAREJA
MYUSU VĪTĀ. NIKUR NAGUOJOM, I VYSS ATGUOJA PATS. 49
(Seiksts, Lukaševičs 1996: 8)
VYSYS NALAIMIS NU TUO, KA PUORUOK DAUDZI GRIBI. A
VYSS IR VIŅ TE I ITE, NAV VYS TĪ, KUR, KAI I CIK GRIBI, LAI
BYUTU.
TĪ, KUR MES ASAM, VYSS TYS JAU IR. I CYTIM IR. PI TUO, KA
JIM KUO NAVĪN TRYUKST, VAINEIGI TIKAI JĪ POŠI. EISTINEIBĀ
JIM TUO NIMOZ NAVAJAG. KA LABI PADŪMOJ. 50
(Seiksts, Lukaševičs 1996: 100)
49 ‘We had nothing to do and everything got to be done by itself for us. We went nowhere
and everything came itself’ (here and henceforth translation mine — S. M.).
50 ‘All misfortunes come of wishing too much. But all is just here and now, not there
where you want it to be. Everything is where we are. And everyone else has it. If
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