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Political Aspects of Contemporary Polish Fantasy Prose and Political Fiction Bogdan Trocha, University of Zielona Gora, Poland

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Political Aspects of Contemporary Polish Fantasy Prose and Political Fiction Bogdan Trocha, University of Zielona Gora, Poland American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 Political aspects of contemporary Polish fantasy prose and political fiction Bogdan Trocha, University of Zielona Gora, Poland Abstract: The subject of the article is to examine the relations between the most important political events in Poland in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and domestic fantastic prose. The author distinguishes three fundamental periods connected with the most important historical moments in contemporary Polish history. These are the events connected with regaining independence and creating a new statehood, the period when Marxists rule in Poland and the time after the democratic revolution of Solidarity. The analyzed material is related to these three periods. Further research is focused on the thematic dependence of specific novels and political aspects of a given period. In relation to the third (most extensive) period, novels that go beyond the canon of the most important political events of that time are also analyzed. The analyses have an indication of specific mechanisms of constructing fantasy novels that take up political motives. The second research objective is to determine the function in which political motifs are introduced into specific literary works. These are both intra text and cultural functions. Keywords: Politics, Democracy, Authoritarianism, Scientific Fiction, Political Fiction, Alternative Reality, Speculative Fiction Introduction The subject of this article is to trace the use of fantastic political motifs by the creators of Polish prose in their novels. It also indicates the historical and political conditions of these treatments and presents the mechanism that governs these literary treatments. As Polish fantasy prose begins to appear at a time when Poland lost its independence to Russia, Prussia and Austria, the 20th century novels written before 1918 (the regaining of independence by Poland) should be taken as the boundary marking our interest. This preliminary assumption already indicates at least two basic horizons for the issue we are interested in. The first one is related to the complicated cultural and political situation of Poles under the occupation by the three partitioners. It is connected both with the problem of struggle for the preservation of national and linguistic identity as well as with actions aimed at regaining independence. This is certainly a tragic period for Poland. Two lost national uprisings, thousands of people exiled to Siberia, deprived of their property and forced to emigrate, and the need for survival often associated with forms of political, economic and even social coexistence forced by the partitioners. The second horizon is marked by the literary space, enabling both the construction of utopian or dystopian worlds and the free use of technical and scientific discoveries that may lead to a change in the status quo imposed on Poles by the invaders. Both the choice of material and its description will be made in accordance with the principles of thematic criticism, which in this case seems to be the most obvious methodological choice. 1. The precursors of Polish fantasy The creators of the first known Polish fantasy novels took up both the traces set by the most eminent authors of that era, such as Jules Verne and Edgar Alan Poe. The best examples are 1 American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 the novels of Władysław Umiński and Bogusław Adamowicz. However, the first important writer to take up political issues in his fantasy novels, Jerzy Żuławski, and author of novels highly valued in childhood by Stanisław Lem. His well-known lunar trilogy, which consists of the novels Na srebrnym globie1, Zwycięzca2, StaraZiemia3, using the motif of a trip to the moon, creates an image of the mechanisms of power and its influence on the individual and society. This is the first Polish fantasy novel in which the fantastic world becomes a moral laboratory. It is a place where various models of power are studied. By introducing people to the lunar environment, Żuławski tests not only the biblical figures of human history, collapse and salvation, but also points out the mechanisms leading to the degradation of societies in practical, axiological and cultural terms. This allows showing not only wishful models of community, but also the destructive influence of morally corrupt individuals. Thus, society, or rather its leaders, is plagued by the nietzschean will of power. The consequences of the protagonists' actions indicate the mechanisms responsible for the downfall of heroes claiming to be leaders with knowledge that could save the community. The protagonists' intentions, which are not understood by the community or deliberately distorted by the antagonists, lead to collision between the individual and society. Żuławski is one of the first Polish creators of scientific fiction to point out the complicated engineering of social order and the importance of both outstanding individuals and anonymous emotions of community members. The second important writer of this period is Anthony Lange, who in his novel Miranda4 based on the similar to that of Herbert Georg Wells in his work Men Like Gods5, creates a specific social structure containing both utopian and dystopian elements. It is an occult fantasy, but in which not only the motif of the utopian island of Survivatsu appears, but above all, there is an author's polemic with the views of Tomasso Campanell and Frederick Nietzsche. Also important here are clear references to the Genesian trend in the work of one of the most outstanding Polish poets of the Romantic era – Juliusz Slowacki. It is a very erudite novel, in which both threads related to the liberation of Poland and criticism of European civilization appear. The polemical attitude to the utopian views of European philosophers as well as the skepticism and philosophical determinism characteristic of Lange present in Miranda is the reason why the novel is often treated as a precursor to much later literary works exposing the true nature of Soviet policy towards subordinate nations. This novel is the first contemporary utopian novel. The last important item is the four-volume novel Wyspa Mędrców6 by Maria Buyno-Arctowa, which was one of the most popular fantasy novels of young readers before World War II. Political motifs become an active background for the fantastic story. However, they do not serve as a background. They are set in a very important function for prose directed to young people. The main character is a young but typical representative of the Polish landed gentry, impoverished but extremely strongly connected with tradition and its own culture. It is this ethos of the Polish landed gentry that becomes the basic foundation of the hero's choices and actions. And yet, the fantastic aspect itself is not reduced to the role of an aesthetic ornament, but a test field of character and importance of cultural principles. The main thread of the plot 1 J. Żuławski, Na Srebrnym Globie, Lwów 1903. 2 J. Żuławski, Zwycięzca, Kraków 1910. 3 J. Żuławski, Stara Ziemia, Kraków 1911. 4 A. Lange, Miranda,Warszawa 1924. 5H.G. Wells, Men Like Gods, Cassell, McMillan Inc. 1923. 6 M. Buyno-Arctowa, Wyspa mędrców, vol. 1-4, Warszawa 1929-1930. 2 American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 is the issue of power, in this case power to rule the world. In the struggle for it take part representatives of the former partitioning countries, but also the mysterious sages trying to hide from the human attention. The plan configured in such a way allows introducing the young, aware of his own cultural identity of the hero into the world of basic questions about the nature of power, its purpose, responsibility associated with it and the power with which it can be used. In the field of these questions the main character, as a result of various events, discovers the ambivalent nature of power and the role that ethics and religion play in contact with it. As can be seen, in the first period, when the focus of attention was on the restoration of independence and the model of the new state, the political aspects in the fantasy literature were most often used from a philosophical and cultural perspective. If they took up the subject of power, it was in a very broad context. Even in prose for young people, politics was rather associated with a didactic function. 2. In the circle of totalitarianism 2.1. Playing with social realism The loss of independence after 1945, as a result of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, not only introduced Poland into the field of political, economic and military domination of the Soviets, but also cut it off with an iron curtain from Western culture. However, it is difficult to point out among the creators of the fantasy novels of that period the apologists of the new political order of this measure and the involvement that Russian writers such as Ivan Yefremov or Alexander Beliayev presented. Pre-war fantasy novels were not published and were slowly being forgotten. Writers writing in the times before the outbreak of the war did not succumb to the characteristic socialist realism and became niche writers. Among the few fantasy novels from that period introducing the motifs of socialist realism one can point out the Obłok Magellana7 of Stanislaw Lem, a very important novel about Contact, which, however, has didactic aspects characteristic of socialist realism and does not run away from depreciating Western culture. It was one of the characteristic treatments of socialist realism leading to the presentation of ideological enemies as persons and societies existing at a lower level of cultural and civilization development. It should be remembered, however, that already in the earlier novel Astronauci8 , describing a 1000 years distant future in which communism reigns on the whole Earth.
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