Cultural Life in Independent Poland 1. Introduction 1. Difference Between

- 1 - Cultural Life in Independent Poland 1. Introduction 1. Difference between the atmosphere of the twenties and the thirties. The joy, even euphoria, that followed the recovery of independence in 1918 was faithfully noted by literature. Around 1930, the tone changed. The economic crisis, the violation of the constitution by the military junta, the emergence of fascist groupings on the Right, propagating antisemitism and announcing ‘a night of long knives’ for ‘Jews and intellectuals,’ converged with Hitler’s grab for power in neighbouring Germany. Marxist publications began to attract writers, although few felt able to place their trust in Stalin. The Communist Party of Poland, considered a foreign agent and, thus, illegal, was given a low rating in Moscow because of its efforts to adapt itself to specific local conditions; its leaders were called to Moscow in 1938 and executed by order of Stalin, while the party itself was disbanded under the pretext that it was infested with traitors. In intellectual circles a feeling of impotence and presentiments of an imminent European catastrophe prevailed. It is no wonder, then, that the literature of the thirties was marked by apocalyptic or humorously macabre visions. 2. Conditions for cultural life now very different. 3. Richness of interwar cultural life. 2. Poetry 1. Skamander - 2 - The dominant literary clique in Poland in the optimistic years of the 1920s, as distinct from the 1930s when the mood in the country became much gloomier and more apocalyptic was known as the the Skamander group. As the first generation of writers to come to maturity in an independent Poland, they were eager to throw off the heavy burden of commitment to the Polish cause which had weighed down literature in the nineteenth century. In the words of one of their members, Jan Lechoń: And in the spring let me see spring, not Poland. Julian Tuwim, another member of the group, put it more sharply. ‘I don’t want tombs, I don’t want a sad Orthodox chapel, the lamentations of crows, owls and other night birds’. Their artistic credo spelled out clearly their optimism and lightheartedness: We believe deeply in the present, we feel we are all its children. We understand there is nothing easier than to hate this ‘today’ of ours, not acknowledged by anybody as his own. We do not wish to pretend that evil is non-existent, but our love is stronger than all evil: we love the present with a strong first love. We are and we want to be its children. And this day is not only a day of the seven plagues, it is also a day when a new world is being born. That new world has not yet emerged from the earth; its shape is still a guess, but the trembling we feel under our feet proves it is rising already... We want to be poets of the present and this is our faith and our whole ‘programme’. We are not tempted by sermonizing, we do not want to convert anybody, but we want to conquer, to enrapture, to influence the hearts of men. we want to be their laughing and weeping... We know that the greatness of art does not appear in subjects, but in the forms through which it is expressed, in that most light and elusive game of colours, of words transforming a rough experience into a work of art. We want to be honest workers in that game, through our efforts hidden under frivolous shapes...1 Tuwim was poet who best embodied the Skamander aesthetic. Hewas born into a middle-class Jewish family in the textile town of Łódź and had a remarkable gift for verse, writing not only serious poetry but for cabarets and for children. He was obsessed with verbal coinages and innovative rhymes and expressed in his poetry a sensual love of life and nature. A liberal and a bitter opponent of antisemitism, he also attacked what he 1 Quoted in Mi_osz, A History of Polish Literature, 385,6. - 3 - described as the ‘materialism’ and ‘philisitinism’ of the Jewish bourgeoisie. Yet his sense of identification with the Jews can clearly be seen in his poem, ‘Jewboy’. He sings in the courtyard, clad in rags A small, poor chap, a crazed Jew. People drive him away, God has muddled his wits Ages and exile have confused his tongue He wails and he dances, weeps and laments That he is lost, is dependent on alms. The gent on the first floor looks down on the madman. Look my poor brother at your sad brother. How did we come to this? How did we lose ourselves In this vast world, strange and hostile to us? You on the first floor, your unhinged brother With his burning head dances through the world The first floor gent fancies himself a poet He wraps up his heart, like a coin, in paper And throws it out from the window, so that it will break And be trampled and cease to be And we will both go on our way A path sad and crazed And we will never find peace or rest Singing Jews, lost Jews. Tuwim was the most bitterly assailed of the Skamander group. The intellectuals of the right denounced him for ‘debasing’ the Polish language and for his ‘semitic’ sensuality. Tuwim responded by glorying in these attacks and turning on his detractors. The Polish literary critic, Artur Sandauer has argued that he responded to ‘demonization’ by ‘self-demonization’. This is probably also the origin of his fascination with the devil, who appears in many of his poems. His ripostes to his critics could be deadly, as in the following; Spitting poison and froth from his mouth He snorts and splutters And writes that I am a butcher A yid and bolshevik Jewboy, bacillus - 4 - A baboon and a Skamandrite That I deform the Polish language And the Devil knows what else. And to think that from all The fine activity Of this genleman - from the spittle Wheezing, screaming, scribbling, Spewing, kicking and wailing On which he has lost half his life From the books and articles From the words, sentences and titles From the reviews, from the sneering paragraphs In a word from that whole Journalistic mess Will remain...one poem And that will be - mine, not his. Indeed this very poem...O stern revenge Inspired by a Jewish God. Here is a phrase, a few words with which I toy To immortalize my enemy. In the 1930s, when the naive optimism of the twenties appeared seriously misplaced, he wrote a long poem Bal w operze (A Ball at the Opera), a savage description of Poland under a corrupt and fascist dictatorship. (It was published in its entirety only after World War II). Here, Tuwim’s abilities as an author of light verse, as a satirist, and as a tragic poet converge. The fury in his description of generals, diplomats, bankers, tarts, and plainclothesmen at a ball in the palace of a fascist dictator, Pantokrator, is matched by the nervous dazzling rhythm of his verse. Toward dawn, as the ball reaches its height, the scene moves to the outskirts of the capital (Warsaw), where peasant carts carrying fresh produce to town pass city sanitation trucks on their way to dispose of sewage in the country. It is an apocalyptic poem where Tuwim’s horror of a corrupt society’s filthy doings fuses with a foreboding of genocide. The poem bears a motto from the Apocalypse of St. John, and the end of the ball is nothing other than the end of the world. It is very difficult to translate but the following extracts may give some idea of its character. A Ball at the Opera (Fragments) 1 Today’s the Grand Opera Ball. - 5 - The omnipotent Pantokrator Gave his supreme protectorate; All the tarts wash their panties And buy their clothes on credit, Throngs and traffic jams in the street, Soldiers muster for the parade, Pancer cavalry helmets glow, Polished officer boots glisten, Horses foam and neigh, Cars roar, crowds surge. In the corps de garde troops like ants, State of readiness everywhere, Impatient wines sparkle, At the hairdressers’ people faint Waiting for their turn. Tarts’ calves tremble sweetly. II From their towers the astronomers, Their eyes upon the starry expanse, Saw a miracle in their telescopes: Apes ran across the firmament! In the zodiacal merry-go-round Reigns apocalyptic turmoil. At the stands of earlier beasts Twelve ugly apes took their seats, And began to plant ape misrule Amidst the planetary voids. The wicked monkeys spun the wheel Of heavens into a mad dance; They leap, they run about and prance as Behind the metal bars of their cage They display the plump reddish bottoms to The earth. No more celestial portents! The ape now orbits in the zodiac! And like a weighty nightmare he now Hangs over this awesome starry night, Orders the constellations to dance When the devils take the monkeys, The devils take, the devils shall take! His fellow Skamandrite, Antoni Słonimski, could count among his ancestors a number of leading members of the nineteenth century Warsaw maskilic elite, including the inventor and physicist, Abraham Stern, who was the first Jew to be elected to the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and Chaim Selig Słonimski, the first editor of the Warsaw Hebrew daily, Hatsefira and Principal of the Zhitomir Rabbinical School. The son of a socialist and baptized in infancy, Słonimski was a less ‘explosive’ poet than - 6 - Tuwim and his verse is reflective and intellectual, giving expression, as did his extensive prose writings, to his commitment to a liberal, tolerant and democratic world.

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