SEEING THE CITY THROUGH MASKS OF GLASS – CULTURAL

DIALOGUES: LIFE ON A TRAIN STATION PLATFORM BY

OCTAVIAN PALER AND THE BELL JAR BY SYLVIA PLATH

By Hristo Boev

ABSTRACT:

The unlikely meeting of the main characters of Life on a Train Station Platform (1981)
(Viață pe un peron) and The Bell Jar (1963) essentially constitutes an encounter in which
East meets West. As representatives of the city, however, they do share a number of common
traits, one of them being the fact that they both experience city alienation manifested itself in
the fact that they feel that everyone around them wears a mask of glass. This mask of glass
becomes a central symbol in the two novels of the impossibility for the city resident, whether
in the socialist or capitalist city, to develop his/ her own personality. Their meeting then is
an attempt on part of both parties, to see the world without this mask on a dystopian ground
unhampered by the restrictions imposed by the metropolis, a projection of their desire to
reach out to the world without.

KEY WORDS:

metropolis, love, mask of glass, bell jar, platform, Eleonora, Esther, cobra tamers,
desert, death, train station

1
 Unde dragoste nu e, nimic nu e.
Marin Preda

He was lying on the bench dozing off. He was determined to go to the desert
but wanted to give Eleonora one last chance. She had come to him to share his
solitude at the train station and what did he do to accommodate her better? He
staged a trial for her in which she had to be her own prosecutor, jury panel, witness,
and ultimately accused1. How could he expect that a woman could bear it all and
stay with a raving lunatic obsessed with history and Robespierre? Why did he want
her back after all? What did he know of the trials she had put herself to before she
came to him? Finally, why was he asking himself these questions now that she was
gone?
A little bit earlier today he had been to the waiting room2. How much more
desolate it seemed now that she was here no more. The walls stared back at him in
crazy patterns of fissures, crevices and peeling paint. There were cob webs to be
seen everywhere. It was as if he had entered a place completely estranged to him
now. He could barely discern the phone, all covered in spidery gauze now that she
was gone. She had made frequent trips to the phone talking to the other world
outside the train station3.
He squirmed on the bench and curled a bit more in an attempt to get a little
bit more warmth out of the friction of his body with the wood of the bench through
the tiny insulation of his tattered jacket. It was so quiet here now. He could hear the
crickets in the tall grass just behind him. He opened his eyes and saw the stars
burning bright in the sky above him. Against the pale light from the sky, he could
see dashing shapes moving at lightning speed in weird trajectories. Those would be
the bats on a night hunt alleviating his plight down below reducing ever so slightly
the number of mosquitoes who paid a visit to him every night.
He was thankful for that. He knew that death was not far away and even
longed for the desert4 where he could meet it away from it all, even his thoughts,
which told him that the train station was his home, that he had been happy here,
especially after the appearance of Eleonora.

1. A recurring theme from p. 16 onwards indicating the nameless character‟s obsession with
trials and judging people (Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981)
2. The waiting room at the train station is a place the main character makes frequent trips to
only to observe his spiritual spiral downfall (Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981)
3. Eleonora makes numerous attempts to reach out beyond the claustrofobic world of the Train
Station (Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981)
4. A recurring neurosis with the main character mentioned for the first time on p. 28 where he
imagines being in a desert in his own room trying to escape from the world without. (Viaţă
pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981)

2
 Suddenly, up in the sky, a star shot down towards the horizon. He observed
its swift, but graceful descent as if it was lingering at moments in which he was
supposed to take a snapshot of it, or think of… a wish. He closed his eyes and
thought of one…
The screeching of train brakes made him sit up and stare at the blinding light
of the headlights of the locomotive. The train had come after all! He staggered in
disbelief towards the first car where a door hissed open and a feminine looking little
figure descended the steps to the platform. He felt his heart accelerate to crazy
thumping within seconds. He could see her outlined against the phosphorescing
paleness of the night with a suitcase by her feet and blonde straight hair at shoulder
length.
“Fetiţo, ai revenit la mine! 5” he exclaimed still disbelieving his luck.
“I don‟t… understand you, Sir,” the young woman said for she barely was 21
years of age6.
“You… you‟re not Eleonora,” he stammered out.
„‟I‟m Esther, Esther Greenwood,” she said, “but I don‟t understand. What is
this place? I was supposed to have gotten off in New York.”
He looked at her hard and then laughed, “This is no New York, Miss,” he said
when he recollected himself.
“What is this place and why is everything so dark?” she asked, “could it be
possible that I‟m dead? 7”
“What a thing to say,” He laughed again, “You‟re certainly not, and are too
young to die, too. Come, sit with me on this bench and we‟ll try to figure this out.”
“You‟ve a funny accent,” she said, “I don‟t mean to offend you, “but where
are you from?”
“That doesn‟t really matter much,” he said, “where I come from there are
cobra tamers and women screaming in hair-dressing saloons and people carrying on
regardless, I have come to like it much more here8.”
“I must be dreaming,” she said sitting on the bench beside him.
“Where do you come from?” he asked her in turn.

5. “Girl, you have come to me!” – the usual way the nameless protagonist addresses
Eleonora (Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981) (translation mine)
6.Esther Greenwood enters the dystopian world of the train station in her sleep perhaps
under the influence of the sedatives she often uses thus escaping from the depressive
world of the alienated metropolis – New York moving into the surreal world of Life on a
Train Station Platform where she meets the nameless protagonist from the novel.
7. A reference to Esther‟s obsession with dying and seeing herself dead from the middle of the
novel onwards when she makes the spiraling descent into depression. (The Bell Jar,
1963),
8. A recurring motif with Octavian Paler where the nameless protagonist tries to escape from
the ominous cobra tamers who insidiously transform the world to their own liking
subjugating all the others to the role of mere pawns responding to their oppressive rule.
The expanded allegory of the cobra and cobra tamers is mentioned for the first time on
p.5 and runs throughout the novel. (Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981)

3
 “Boston and was going to New York to resume my studies after the craziest
summer in my life. Really, I think it must be these pills I‟m still taking9.”
“It might be,” he said, “there is no way we can know what death is until we
are actually dead, perhaps life is a dream from which we are about to awake.”
“I‟ve had lots of horrible moments,” she said, “have you ever felt as if you
were in a bell jar10?”
“Yes, in a way, it is this mask of glass11 people wear, that‟s what I‟ve
noticed, a mask through which we can see, but we cannot be touched, we may not
even be able to hear.”
“It is precisely this,” agreeing with him, “the sultry New York summer
mornings, the sidewalks giving off unbearable heat suffocating you, men wanting to
sleep with you and all I feel when I touch things is death, and when they touch you
and you don‟t feel anything…”
“I do feel,” he said, “but it hurts too much when I do. This train station has
been a wondrous salvation; still all I have now left is the memory.”
“What memory?” she asked.
“Mostly of a woman I knew, I met here, can‟t really say that I knew her,
though and I all did was to drive her away from me. That‟s why I‟ll be going to the
desert.”
“There is a desert here?”
“Yes, and a beach, too and a sea, of course.”
“It must be overrun with summer people12,” she said.
“Not really. I‟ve been all alone here, the sole exception being her and you
now. Well, there are some marshes13, too, but I wouldn‟t venture out there if I were
you. There might be cobra-tamers lurking in the bush there.”
“What cobra-tamers?” she asked.

9. Esther has been through a severe depression and resurrected from an attempted suicide. As a
result, she undergoes a massive therapy including electroshocks and numerous tablets she
has to take. (Lady Lazarus, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath)
10. The idea of the bell jar is a neurosis Esther is suffering from feeling that the world closes
in on her and suffocates her feeling herself dead while still living (The Bell Jar p.98)
11. The mask of glass is the way the nameless protagonist from O. Paler‟s novel sees the
world – a symbol of a conscious act on part of people to shut out the world without, a
recurrent theme in the novel mentioned for the first time on p. 14 (Viaţă pe un peron,
Bucureşti, 1981)
12. The attempted respite from the oppression of the metropolis is bound to fail as the beach is
also overcrowded only adding to the sense of repugnance Esther feels for utilitarian objects
imposed by people. In the novel she sees the parasols on the beach as tasteless mushrooms,
an organic decay (The Bell Jar p.80)
13. The marshes in the vicinity of the Train Station are a traditional symbol of low life
creatures (e.g. Dikens, Great Expectations, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Stephen
King, It, etc) (Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981)

4
 “Well, they basically took over my town after breaking all light bulbs and
forcing people to seek protection behind the walls of their houses, but they‟d still
make you do whatever they wanted to or set their cobras on you. They would make
women have sex with them on the sidewalks and the women would do it for fear of
being bitten by the cobras14.”
“How bizarre,” she said. “In New York I felt I was a dead body being studied
in a bell jar and nothing really mattered much because I felt dead, so they couldn‟t
do much to me, doctors, teachers and all.
“You know, we have a saying in my country about that – unde dragoste nu e,
nimic nu e15 and I do believe that‟s the only thing in life that matters.”
“What does that mean?” she asked intrigued.
“It means: where there isn‟t love, there is nothing.”
“Wow! That explains a lot then, so that‟s why I‟ve been so miserable so far.
Can there be love at all in the metropolis, I wonder?”
“Love is everywhere,” he said smiling, but to see it we must remove the
masks of glass we wear16 and perhaps risk getting bitten by a cobra and even die as
a result of that, but we‟ll be experiencing love because…”
“Yes, I know now,” she interrupted him, “because where there isn‟t love,
there is nothing.”
“Precisely.”
“How strange: to think I had to come to this inhospitable place to learn that,” she
said and laughed, “please don‟t take offence, this bench is actually the best one I‟ve
ever sat on… and you are the nicest guy I‟ve ever met. Ah, wouldn‟t it be
wonderful if we could all awake to this realization and change back to the human
beings we perhaps once were, before we became so ambitious and bent on
succeeding at all cost?”
“If we don‟t sooner or later, we‟ll all be doomed…”
“To filling spaces in skyscraper offices surrounded by walls of concrete
looking at the world through glass…
Esther‟s sonorous voice had been sounding in the night air in front of the
dilapidated train station for about an hour now. He looked at the train station and
then, at where she was, but suddenly she was nowhere to be seen. He looked a bit
further down, and in her place, was Eleonora and he thought he could see her
smiling at him from the train station platform.
He stood up from the bench and walked towards her wary not to break what
he thought was a spell.

14. A reference to the unscrupulous and indiscriminate methods of inflicting terror by

the cobra tamers – political opportunists.
15. “Where there isn‟t love, there is nothing” (translation mine)
16. A perceived impossibility by the nameless protagonist of Life on a Train Platform
for a meaningful life with another person while still wearing masks of glass, which
will make him vulnerable and exposed to the influences of others with potentially
fatal effects. (Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981)

5
 “Am revenit, 17” she said.
“Mă bucur să aud asta.18‟‟
He walked up to her and took off his jacket and then put it over her
shoulders. He then put his arm around her waist and they walked towards their
bench at the train station…
Esther awakened abruptly. She was in her bed in the Amazon hotel, the same
one she had stayed at the previous summer. It must have been all a dream then, she
thought, and what a dream it was!
She took in the objects around her slowly, her eye dwelling on the pot of sedatives
on her bedside table. The cap of the pot lay right beside the pot itself.
She wondered what it all meant and then remembered. She looked at the
window and saw the paleness of the breaking day through what looked like sheets
of torrential rain. It produced rivulets of water running down her window, smearing
the contours of the building opposite. She got up from the bed, took the opened pot
of sedatives and walked to the window, opened it and instantly the raindrops were
over her face and shoulders soaking her golden hair through within seconds. She
deeply breathed in. The air was strangely fresh, smelling of the ocean, she felt fresh,
too, as if born anew. She looked out the window and saw the thousands of
shimmering lights of Manhattan. Down below there were pedestrians with
umbrellas and yellow cabs, higher up there was the mist from the early autumn
morning. She looked at it all and knew that there were people there everywhere,
hurrying, sleeping, walking, driving, having a morning coffee or reading the
morning paper and she was happy to be part of it all.
She turned the pot with the pills upside down and they all flew in the air like
confetti mixing and dissolving in the rain.

17. ”I have come back.” (translation mine)

18. ”Glad to hear that.” (translation mine)

Cited works:
Octavian Paler, Viaţă pe un peron, Bucureşti, 1981
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963), New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971

Presented at the International Conference in Shumen, September, 2011