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unfortunate that there is no explanation of the Two of these are the November and January inclusion criteria. There appears to be a Risings in the nineteenth century, while the preference for contemporary individuals and other five reference anticommunist activities topics. Wigilia is included as an entry, but not with the last entry being August 1980. Why not święconka. Oczepiny is included, but neither include the Mierosławski revolt? Why not the stypa nor gwiazdka. Silesian or Wielkopolska risings? The Rising in 1944? There is likewise a “Timeline of Kaleidoscope of Poland is an illustrated volume Polish Literary Figures Cited,” but it is arranged with images on glossy paper. As a volume by period rather than the author’s last name, so aspiring to serious presentation of things Polish, if one does not know that Gabriela Zapolska was it has considerable drawbacks. Entries suffer associated with one has to look from the editor’s self-imposed limit of about 150 through the entire list to find her. Why timelines words which precludes adequacy concerning were chosen as an organizing principle for these such events as the Second World War or such is not stated. There is also a listing of “Major figures as Tadeusz Kościuszko. The latter entry Polish national and Regional Risings” (again by makes no mention of Kościuszko’s exceptional the Polish names) and a section listing service at the Battle of Saratoga in the American “Important Twentieth-Century Conferences Revolution, his participation in the Polish- Affecting Poland.” Russian War of 1792, or his famous attempt to free and educate the slaves. Although the book These are serious shortcomings. However, the contains a colorized cross-reference system, encyclopedia is attractively produced; the none of the entries are accompanied by any photographs are of good quality and include reference nor is there a bibliography, yet the portraits of individuals, images of food, famous editor identifies one of the book’s purposes as places, historical sites, and artwork. The being a reference source. boldfaced cross-references within the entries provide useful cross-listings of related topics. ∆ Using the volume can also be needlessly cumbersome. Although it is intended for English speakers, the entries are listed in Polish and MORE BOOKS there is a Polish index. While this poses no difficulty for such relatively well-known words as Piłsudski, listing “martial law” as “stan Cienie moich czasów [The shadows of my wojenny” or “the Second World War” as “druga time], by Bronisław Wildstein. Poznań: wojna światowa” is a great way to make sure Wydawnictwo Zysk (www.zysk.com.pl), 2015. that few readers will consider the volume useful. 451 pages. ISBN 978-83-7785-701-4. Paper. In These inexplicable choices are compounded by Polish. the use of the Polish alphabet which includes It is frustrating to review books like this. They diacritical marks rather than the English for reveal and teach so much, yet they are kept away arranging the entries. Would someone not from the vast sea of potential readers by being familiar with Polish know to look in a different written in a little-known language. Many place for an entry containing an e or an ę, an l or English-language readers are anxious to learn an ł? There is an English index in the back but what has really happened in Eastern Europe over no reference to it in the table of contents which the last half-century. So many mistakes, reflects only the page numbers on which the inaccuracies, and plain lies have circulated in different beginning letters of entries start. academia and the media about Eastern European history that books like this are like a breath of Similarly incomprehensible ways of presenting fresh air. Yet they are also irritating because the material are seen in the appendices. There is a reader knows that their content has so far been “Timeline of Polish Historical Months” (what’s locked up. that?) that includes seven major risings and crises, but why it is listed by month is uncertain.

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This autobiographical book tells the story of a to the needs of the empires in which they man who actively participated in the political originated. What is needed is a broader and social events in Poland starting with the pre- distribution of books written by the Eastern Solidarity period. He observed with his own Europeans themselves, as well as inclusion of eyes the transformation of people like Adam these books in the literary curricula of Western Michnik from promoters of anticommunist universities. How many chairs of Central and revolution to supporters of the former Eastern European literatures at American communist policemen and propagandists, such universities have recently been founded? Zero? as Czesław Kiszczak or Jerzy Urban. He saw Therein lies the problem. (JB) Lech Wałęsa give in to his enormous ego and Scriptorum: Fragmenty Pism, czyli uwagi o become a “salon clown.” One can also find here wojnie i pokoju [Notes on war and peace, 1660], paragraphs about Western pundits being by Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro. Translated spectacularly wrong in pontificating on Polish from Latin by Jagoda Chmielewski and anti-Semitism. The book does not lament the Bartłomiej Bednarek. Introduction and notes naivety of the Western cultural establishment by Marek Tracz-Tryniecki. Warsaw: that has reified Eastern and Central Europe Narodowe Centrum Kultury (www.nck.pl), beyond recognition, and has not progressed 2014. 845 pages. Index, notes, photographs. beyond the 1980–81 vision of naïve Eastern ISBN 978-83-7982-063-4. Hardcover. In Polish. workers trying to abolish communism. The author is too smart for that. Western readers Andrzej Fredro was excised from Polish could learn a great deal about how the world memory by colonialism. This is one of the works from reading this book. Needless to say, a hundreds of instances in which a wise statesman possible publisher for this excellent volume is and writer from whom generations of Poles and welcome to call. (SB) others could have learned a great deal has been thoroughly forgotten. Dropped in the memory Comparisons and Contexts: Essays on Central- hole. Under there was no Eastern European Literature and Culture, institution whose task it was to publish and edited by Bogusław Bakuła, Dobrochna make known the great works of Dabert, and Emilia Kledzik. Poznań: of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Biblioteka Porównań, 2015. 300 pages. Index, Normally, acountry takes care of promoting its photographs. ISBN 978-83-62298-75-4. writers. For nearly two centuries Poland, a midsize European nation, was deprived of this Published by the most active center for basic right because it was militarily occupied by comparative studies in Poland, this volume tries Russia, Germany, and Austria. No restitution once again to bring to focus the specificities of here. literatures in non-Germanic Central and Eastern Europe. Over a dozen essays address Fredro writes about society and politics. His methodological issues, postcolonial problems, learning is vast: he throws in comparisons from cinema, the Holocaust and its role in the the little known ancient and Renaissance writers, perception of Eastern Europe in the West, and concludes that in many cases the Polish Polish-German relations, and the literary canon. system has provided more liberty than any other The essays by Bakuła, Kledzik, Kołodziejczyk, and that it should therefore be treasured and and Skórczewski should be singled out because defended. Fredro did not anticipate that the of their outstanding value. Last but not least, it European Christian order in which he believed should be stressed that only through tomes like would disappear within two centuries. He this can Central and Eastern European literatures thought that countries within Europe would be introduced into the Western mainstream. The behave honorably toward each other. He was not secondhand opinions culled from Russian and a utopian thinker and anticipated wars, but he German writers that still circulate in academic could not imagine that three European countries circles in America falsify the picture according would cannibalize Poland by dividing her into

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three parts and absorbing each part, with the misconceptions about Old Polish literature. One hope expressed in the last partition treaty that of his examples of “metahistorical poetry” is the word “Poland” and “Polish” would Zbigniew Herbert’s Report from a Besieged eventually disappear from world vocabulary. City. That the nation survived under these circumstances should be a point of wonder and a Ojczyzna literatura: O środowisku skupionym source of strength for contemporary Poles who wokół Związku Pisarzy Polskich na Obczyźnie, grapple with the inevitable uncertainties and by Regina Wasiak-Taylor. London: Poets’ and storms of the postcommunist era. Was is Painters’ Press (Oficyna Poetów i Malarzy, 103 Poland’s Catholicism that made Protestant Colindeep Lane, London NW9 6DD), 2013. 294 Prussia and Orthodox Russia so hate the Polish pages. Index of names, biographies of writers, nation? Interestingly, it was the Catholic empire Reproductions of paintings and drawings. ISBN of the Habsburgs that was placed next under the 978-0-9570372-1-2. In Polish. guillotine of history. Austria, one of the This beautifully published volume contains partitioning powers, came out of Word War I articles and interviews related to the now- stripped of its non-Austrian possessions and legendary group of Polish literary émigrés in condemned to the status of a minor European London during World War II and afterwards. republic, eventually becoming less important Regina Wasiak-Taylor is a talented writer and than Poland who, in spite of strenuous efforts to interviewer whose style resembles Andrzej liquidate or corrupt its elites, emerged out of the Bobkowski’s Szkice piórkiem: it seems to barely two world wars renewed in many ways. scratch the surface, but the end result remains No, Fredro does not write about all this. But his vividly in memory. Among the writers book inspires these reflections. Much discussed are Melchior Wańkowicz, Bolesław recommended for those who enjoy serious Taborski, Stanisław Baliński, Florian Smieja, reading. (JB) Marian Hemar, Włada Majewska, Józef Garliński (who also wrote the preface), and a Historia według poetów: Myślenie couple dozen others. The book reads extremely metahistoryczne w literaturze polskiej, 1764- well, one of those little pearls of literary culture 1848 [History according to poets: Metahistorical that should be known to everyone claiming even thinking in Polish literature, 1764–1848], by minimal expertise in the subject of Polish émigré Andrzej Waśko. Kraków: Arcana, 2016. 515 writers or literary life in the mid-twentieth pages. Bibliography, index of names. ISBN 978- century. 83-65350-03-9. Hardcover. In Polish. The Quest for a Free , by Olena Professor Waśko’s specialty is Romantic poetry, Chekan. Edited by Bohdan Rodyuk Chekan. a subject rather alien to those accustomed to the Vienna: Der Konterfei, 2015. 94 pages. ISBN exclusion of spirituality from contemporary 978-3-903043-04-6. Paper. In English and literary scholarship. He has written important Ukrainian. books on the transfer of Polish identity from The book consists mostly of interviews Baroque diarists to Romantic bards, and has now conducted by Ukrainian journalist and actress come up with an ambitious work outlining the Olena Chekan for Ukrainian Week. The volume spiritual dimension of the literary reflection of came out in memoriam, following Olena’s death Polish risings in the eighteenth and nineteenth from brain cancer on December 21, 2013. Her centuries. The book ignores the contemporary son Bohdan made an earnest effort to preserve trends in literary criticism and defiantly follows her memory. In addition to the interviews, he the style of writing that combines history with included in this volume notes about Olena poetry. Waśko persuasively contests the idées Chekan writted by Serhiy Trymbach, Maksym reçues of Polish post-Enlightenment writers who Striha, Volodymyr Melnichenko, and others. despised the achievements of the Polish Baroque The book’s cover features Olena Chekan in the and Renaissance. He corrects a number of

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role of a woman from Kievan Rus, perhaps Better proofreading and more meticulous work meant to symbolize Ukraine. A reader with the English translation would have made undeterred by the book's vague title and a this volume more trustworthy. As it stands, the mystifying cover design will find inside a bits of trivia on Olena Chekan are repeated over collection of conversations with various and over. There are discrepancies in the English Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles on topics spelling of proper names owing to a lack of ranging from Ukraine, Russia, and Europe to consistency in transliterating from either Russian arts and politics, Holodomor, Chernobyl and or Ukrainian. These details are indicative of the Chechnya, solidarity and integrity, and the role Ukrainian situation today. Ukraine is a work in of the elites and ordinary citizens in society. progress, much like this cluster of interviews. These conversations suggest that Ukraine's quest Raw material may be cooked, a chrysalis may for a place of its own on the world map did not transform into a butterfly, and Ukraine may begin in 2013–2014 during the so-called Dignity achieve independence, prosperity, and an agency Revolution; this period only finalized one stage of its own. Undoubtedly Olena Chekan has been in a long journey toward the European family. In a part of this process. (Tetyana Dzyadevych) 2010–2011, or during Victor Yanukovych’s presidency, Ukrainian Week was able to provide a platform for discussion about Ukraine’s future. Olga Chekan belonged to both Russian and About the Authors Ukrainian cultures. She studied at the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute in Moscow, and her Krzysztof Brzechczyn is Professor of Humanities at the Institute of Philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz career was launched on the Soviet screen. This University in Poznań. hybridity is reflected in the biographical section: Tetyana Dzyadevych is Instructor in Russian at the the editor uses the Russian spelling of her name, Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Elena Vasilievna Chekan, adding the Ukrainian Literatures, University of Illinois at Chicago. version in brackets. The hybridity is confirmed Barry Keane is Lecturer in Comparative Studies in an article by Andrew N. Okara, a Russian- specialising in Polish and Baroque literature at the Ukrainian political and cultural analyst from University of Warsaw. Moscow, titled “Ukraine between Freedom and Jacek Koronacki is Professor of Statistics and an Iron Calf of an Empire.” The piece explores Director of the Institute of Computer Science at the Russian-Ukrainian relations, and it is not until Polish Academy of Sciences. He is also a political and social commentator and a regular contributor to the end that a connection is made with Chekan the conservative Polish bimonthly Arcana. herself. Rafał Malczewski (1892–1965) is a Polish painter The interviews are placed in a sequence that is and writer. neither chronological nor alphabetical. Some of James S. Pula is Professor of History at Purdue the interviewees are well known: Boris University Northwest and a noted specialist in things Polish. Nemtsov, Vaclav Havel, and Krzysztof Zanussi; James Edward Reid is a Canadian writer. His “On others, like Kerstin Jobst, Natalya Translation: An Interview with Peter Dale Scott” was Gorbanevskaya, or Ahmed Zakayev, may be published early in 2016 in Volume 42 of the journal question marks for the uninitiated readership. Paideuma at the University of Maine in Orono. The The volume gives voice to those representatives interview touches on Scott’s time as a Canadian of the Russian empire who are no longer diplomat in Poland in the late 1960s, on his contact welcome in Russia (Yuri Shevchuk); those who with Zbigniew Herbert, and. at some length, on his have been killed (Boris Nemtsov); and those relationship with Czeslaw Milosz. who, like the Chechen Ahmed Zakayev, live Adrian Lucas Smith is a Briton enamoured of abroad with their dream of an independent Zakopane. Chechnya.

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