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Tadeusz Miczka About the role of Cavalry myth in shaping of Polish identity (O roli mitu kawalerii w kształtowaniu polskiej tożsamości) Myths have an important integrating role in life of every community. They pass so called “sacred knowledge” and “ canons of values” from one generation to another. They strongly influence understanding of history and current affairs, just like facts do. Scientific research shows without any doubts that mythical thinking is durable and important part of human consciousness which shaped holistic visions of the world. The process does not depend upon the level of social development of particular communities or spreading of rationalistic attitudes and materialistic viewpoints. Other social structures, such as national identities, are based on these holistic visions. It is justified to introduce notions of strong and weak identity. In the history of mankind strong, or essential, identities were dominating. They are internally coherent, they integrate all the components and are based on constant fundaments. Weak identities, which are nonessential, are internally incoherent, they are constantly liberating from restrictions of tradition, culture and rules of social life. They were mainly theoretical constructs, artistic visions or fantasies and dreams of rebellious individuals. National identities, which are interesting for me, obviously start processes of identifying oneself and other people in the course of interaction, which connects elements of different types according to the rules typical for strong identities. National identities have been usually treated as objectively existing beyond control of an individual, they are derived from ready, universal and hard to undermine formulas, are strongly determined by historical conditions (their nature is to continue the past), they make us perceive an individual and its surroundings through the prism of defined centre, which authorizes excluding “not-us , in other words “others”. Still today in the era of globalisation and convergence of multimedia, which means increasing intensification of integrating and unifying processes, and on the other hand intensification of personalising and subjectifying processes. National identity is shaped in an increasing tension with different forms and variants of weak identities. More and more often it is possible to treat identity as provisional and ambivalent facts, which are not based on centres but on networks, “instant realities” replace the past. 1 In other words national identities are nowadays going through violent transformations, they become components of higher ranks identities for example European identity or global identity. At the same time they strongly articulate separate national qualities and they demand from other communities respect for their uniqueness and separateness. I would like to take a closer look at this phenomenon analysing evolution of the most durable and definite component of national identity, which is a myth. As far as Polish identity is concerned it is a myth of cavalry, which has shaped thinking of all generations of Poles for at least the last four centuries. The myth of cavalry, which in the past existed in all cultures, was based on the presumption those warriors use weapon requiring unique personal courage. As Roger Caillois writes: “Together with it the formation died, the last one in which a warrior fought with his own quality and own energy, without any help of external power, abstract and more powerful than he is” (R. Caillois quoted in M. Janion, M. Żmigrocka Romantyzm i historia, Warszawa, 1978, p. 284). In Polish culture romanticism of uhlan war was exceptionally strongly enrooted and practically never stopped acting as culture-creating factor. As researchers state, cavalry myth was an essential building material of Polishness till the end of romantic epoch, preserving “fascinating colour of individuality - noble autonomy of personality, both of a trooper and his horse” (ibid). Polish cavalry sentiments were particularly strongly revived by the memories of Polish cavalry which had won over the Turks at Vienna, national cavalry of the 18th century, uhlan victories in the 19th century. They did not disappear with the end of romanticism, it was the epoch when the Polish a few times started an uprising against the invaders. The idea of rebirth of Poland was often connected with the myth of Polish uhlans. When in 1918, after a century and a half of captivity, Poland revived, the myth of cavalry became one of the symbols of this revival. The next elements which contributed in further popularisation of the myth were: World War I, Polish-Soviet War in 1920 and a special attention of society for the parades of uhlans in the 20s and the 30s. This kind of weapon had a special privileged place in national consciousness, and what is a natural result, in Polish culture. Ksawery Pruszyński described it: ” Cavalry was for the Polish as important as Royal Navy for the British, bistro for the French, pasta for Italians, part of national life. [...] this agricultural nation, living on a plain, loved, appreciated and understood horses. Even the long line of wars of independence was finished on a horseback. The whole dynasty of Polish painters specialized in those Polish horseback victories: Kossak father, Kossak son, Kossak 2 grandson (K. Pruszyński, Czarna brygada. Wspomnienia normandzkie, Kraków, 1994, pp. 15-16) The apotheosis of this myth took place in September1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, when fascist Germany attacked Poland. Poland mobilized 11 brigades of cavalry, which fought with the enemy usually on foot, just like infantry. It was the time when the myth of cavalry was enriched with such event as uhlan charge on German tanks. In reality in tragic September there were a few charges like that, historians do not agree whether there were 2 or 6. In historical consciousness two of them are strongly preserved: one in Pomerania which took place on the 19th of September, when artillery of German armoured vehicles attacked frantic horses and the uhlans lost half of their possession, the other took place near Warsaw on the same day when the 14th regiment of cavalry tried to get to the capital city surrounded by the enemies (See C. Leżeński, Zostały tylko ślady podków..., Warszawa, 1984). The charges of Polish uhlans are confirmed not only by the statements of the Polish, but also by German soldiers and an Italian war correspondent. Those events in the statements of Polish witnesses were described in a solemn way and transformed into artistic legends, but in the statements of foreign witnesses they were treated as examples of anachronism and nonsense bravery, which is understood as total contempt for death. Fascist propaganda created a stereotype of Polish madness not only in published works, but also in the cinema, for example in the film by H. Bertram Battle Squadron Lützow (Kampfgeschwader Lützow 1941, in which a charge of Polish cavalry on German armoured troops was presented (J. Piekałkiewicz, Polski wrzesień. Hitleri Stalin rozdzierają Rzeczpospolitą, Warszawa, 1999, p.95). After the Second World War this motive became a basis of national stereotypes created by communist authorities and at the same time it became an attractive motive of Polish literature, art and film. The evolution of the myth of cavalry in Poland is a educational example of intertwining of historical events and mythical thinking and ideological struggle, it is an example of double influence of a myth. As it is known, mythical narrations, which are highly symbolic and synthetic, are usually treated as useful forms of social life, but their huge possibilities of destructive influence upon individuals and communities are also emphasised. Through fading of differences between abstracts and concretes, between signs and objects, myths easily deform reality or even remove it from social memory. They become dangerous, as Leszek Kołakowski proved “through its tendency for limitless expansion, myth can grow like a 3 cancer, may try to replace positive knowledge, the law, may try to take over almost all the fields of culture, may grow with despotism, terrorism and lies” and that is why, according to Kołakowski, in every culture there should be such “a division of work which attributes some with the one-sided dignity of myth guards and others with the one-sided dignity of its critics. [...] mythology [...] can be socially fertile only when it is constantly suspected, always closely watched, which disables its natural tendency for changing into a drug” (L. Kołakowski, Obecność mitu, Paris, 1974, pp. 103-104). I agree with Kołakowski but through analysing of concretization of the cavalry myth in Polish art I will try to prove that some myths, especially those which do not spread like malicious cancer growth, successfully escape both their guards and critics, thanks to ambitious artists trying to force them simultaneously in both orders of cultural interpretation and still function in national consciousness in spite of their anachronism. The image of Polish cavalry in 1939 went through a gradual and distinct evolution (it was precisely described by S. Zabierowski in the book Wojna i pamięć, Katowice, 2006, pp.21- 45). In the 50s of the 20th century this military formation was strongly criticized and ridiculed as a symbol of rejected by communists traditional Polishness. When so called social realism finished at the end of the 50s, in the 60s and in the 70s the cavalry myth appeared in art where this kind of weapon was presented in rather positive way. For example this stereotype of charging tanks with lances was transposed and even evoked social admiration as a specific ethos of universal struggle through exposing its aesthetical values. This ancient knight myth became in communist Poland in the 20th century a complicated and ambiguous myth about the birth of a nation. This birth was understood as revival after many years of captivity, this myth did not deformed history and did not remove it from social memory. It was mainly caused by the film by Andrzej Wajda Lotna (Lotna 1959), made in 1959, based on a short story by Wojciech Żukrowski, written soon after the war.

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