THE SARMATIAN REVIEW
Vol. XVIII, no. 1 January 1998
The Range of Central European Literatures Polish Yiddish German Poetry Short Story Children’s
Warsaw in the eighteenth century. 498 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 The Sarmatian Review (ISSN 1059- “The March Breezes, ” a 5872) is a triannual publication of the Polish In- From the Editor powerful Hemingwayesque story by the stitute of Houston. The journal deals with Polish, In order to be noticed in German writer Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Central, and Eastern European affairs, and their American society, a common-interest was ably translated by Professor Hal implications for the United States. We specialize group (we prefer this designation to the in the translation of documents. Rennert. It deals with what is still Subscription price is $12.00 per year for individu- ideologized ‘minority’) has to be insufficiently known and understood in als, $18.00 for institutions and libraries ($18.00 described in a language that incorporates German society: Nazi behavior toward for individuals, $24.00 for libraries overseas, air the idiom of the day and remains both Polish peasants and Polish mail). The views expressed by authors of articles comprehensible to the group in question. do not necessarily represent those of the Editors intellectuals in World War II. or of the Polish Institute. Articles are subject to The Irish have described themselves Among the crop of excellent editing. Unsolicited manuscripts are not returned abundantly, the central and eastern reviews, we would like to single out unless accompanied by a self-addressed and Europeans less so. The writers John Mark Wegierski’s comments on the stamped envelope. Please submit your contribu- Merchant has so aptly selected reveal tion on a Macintosh disk together with a printout. reminiscences of a Canadian Polish Letters to the Editor can be e-mailed to some of the secrets of Polish American doctoral student about the fate of her
My grandson must see I am as frail as the past, “A Chance of Snow” is a different story. It does January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 505 not center around the death of one generation and the beginning of another; rather, Bukoski shows the What was in the old country that was so special possibilities that exist for regeneration and rejuvenation he’d return to it just because of the stones in the road?’ in the Superior Polish community. In this case, it is the defection of a Polish sailor, in the 1980s presumably, and However, as noted above in discussing “A Chance his brief stay with a family which changes a young girl’s of Snow,” Bukoski does hold out hope for positive change life. Before his visit, the girl’s (Agnes’) Polish identity is and growth for the Superior Polish community. Like superficial: she looks in the Polish dictionary only to find Dybek’s alliance between Hispanics and Poles, Bukoski the word gacie to use as an insult for her little brother; portrays the union of Poles with Native Americans, both when she wants to get rid of him, she slings his (their) last in marriage and in death. In “The River of the Flowering name at him as if it were an insult; and she is annoyed by Banks” in Children of Strangers, a wedding takes place the ‘racket’ her father and his friend make when they play between a Polish-American man and a Chippewa woman. polka music. The introduction of the ‘foreigner,’ however, Throughout the story, the two main characters, Warren, changes her perspective on her own ethnicity and she presumably a Polish-American boy, and his Native begins to see herself differently. It begins almost as a American friend, Gerald, serving as altar boys for the tautological lesson from the sailor, Mr. Cedzynski, for as summer, witness the wedding and, soon after, the he is introduced to Agnes and Stevie, he renames them desecration of a Native American burial site by some and restores them to their Polish roots. ‘Dad says, “This workers for the State of Wisconsin. The situation at first is my son.” “Yes, Stefan,” the sailor says. “And Agnes.” tests the relationship of the two boys, as the remains are “Agnieszka”’ (47). The imprecise foreignness of Mr. not buried in the Catholic cemetery, but their unified Cedzynski makes Agnes take a closer look at herself and ethnicity of ‘otherness’ is restored when Father Nowak her classmates (more American than Polish). She looks blesses the remains, saying ‘we’re your guests’ (180). for that foreignness in the fading faces in photographs Gladsky argues that, for Bukoski, such a union marks a that grace the hallways of Szkoła Wojciecha and, shift toward an expanded understanding of ethnicity and ultimately, wonders what it means to be foreign. In having ‘an awareness that all minorities are bearers of something’ the sailor return suddenly to Poland, after ‘trying to fit in,’ (Gladsky 270). Perhaps it is like the holy water kept in Bukoski succeeds in illustrating how a new seed can be Bukoski’s (“Water Plains”) and Mrs. Burbul’s (“Mrs. planted for the next generation of Polish-Americans: Burbul”) houses, which will someday be poured into the ‘What was in the old country that was so special he’d ancient waters that cannot drain from the wetlands around return to it just because of the stones in the road?’ (63). Superior because the clay is so compact; that is, the mixing Like Dybek, Bukoski makes religion an of the waters will strengthen and bless the past as well as important part of the cultural and spiritual world of this future generations. community. Gladsky suggests that the focal point, morally, Susan Strempek-Shea: family history as ethnic tale and geographically, in Bukoski’s fiction is St. Adalbert’s, While Stuart Dybek and Anthony Bukoski build the parish church, and Szkoła Wojciecha, the parochial their stories from a strong sense of place, Susan Strempek- school. (Gladsky 265). This is correct: the Slipkowskis Shea seems to craft her novels around the Polish-American and their children are educated by the Polish nuns, Mrs. family. In doing so, she does succeed in portraying life in Burbul is placated by the new Irish priest who does not the Polish-American community in and around understand or share her relationship to history, Edek Springfield, Massachusetts. Though she has written two Patulski skips mass and eats donuts at a coffee shop nearby. novels, Selling the Lite of Heaven and Hoopi Shoopi St. Adalbert’s is at once the embodiment of the Polish Donna, only the latter will be used for the purposes of community’s religiosity and cultural identity, and a sign this essay. Strempek-Shea fills Hoopi Shoopi Donna from of a ‘petrified culture, frozen in time’ (Gladsky 266). start to finish with ethnic references of all kinds, the most Although it is not included in this collection of stories, obvious being music. Of all the other cultural elements the burning down of St. Adalbert’s, which Gladsky notes combined (language, religion, food, and family tradition), occurs in the story “A Concert of Minor Pieces,” is it is music which holds the most sway over the narrator, certainly imminent in stories such as “Children of Donna. Strangers.” When Mrs. Slipkowski worries about the The title refers to a polka song with the title imminent loss of Sister Bronisław and the scattering of ‘Hupaj, siupaj dana”, a favorite family polka song. her children (no grandchildren to replenish the school/ Donna’s family, the Milewskis, live right across the street church), the future looks grim. from Pulaski Park, ‘the place known to all as the Polka 506 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 Capitol of New England.’ (Hoopi Shoopi Donna 29) Music is the aspect of her heritage which she embraces most My mother was forever running a tape measure ardently. Her father would ‘play his polka records, mostly from my shoulder to my wrist, or holding different 78s as thick as dinnerplates and cared for as gently as colors of fabric against my face and hair... I did Babci kept her one precious set of china’ (26). Donna not need a Barbie doll - I was one myself... (21) inherits his passion for music, just as he inherited his from his uncle, Jasiu. Strempek-Shea uses music to build the Being slightly more ‘American’ than her husband, Mrs. family bond with music (each family member had a song Milewski dreams of being a fashion designer as a girl and that the father, as DJ, would play upon request), as well as does not speak much Polish. Donna’s parents at once to characterize the patriotism and cultural activity of the embody the hard-working, blue-collarness of the second Springfield Polish community. For example, in signing generation and, yet, contain in themselves seeds of future up for polka lessons Donna thinks that her town ‘had to conflict. Regardless of how well she knows her husband, have more people than Poland itself’ (14). During polka she cannot understand what causes him to disown his picnics, a deep sense of lasting Polish patriotism is tied to daughter, Donna. Just as the grandson in Bukoski’s “Tango the music with the singing of “Bože coÊ Polsk∏:” Bearers of the Dead” cannot penetrate his grandmother’s hidden memories, so too is Mrs. Milewski locked out. Knowing full well what was coming up, the Names play an interesting role as cultural crowd would begin the song ahead of the band, signifiers for Strempek-Shea. For example, the big shift asking God to save the land that even those who’d in direction for Donna’s family begins when it becomes never been there figured had to be wonderful - aligned with the Conways. Strempek-Shea uses this isn’t that where all this great music got its start? (32) instance to show the complexities facing families in such ethnically close-knit communities as the one of Donna’s For Donna, polka music and her ability to play it youth. On the one hand, the financial opportunities symbolizes her ties to her ethnic heritage and her presented by making links with people like the Conways relationship with her father. In fact, it is only when her are substantial: Mrs. Milewski designs clothes for Mrs. father stops listening to her practice her accordion and Conway and Representative Conway pulls a lot of strings begins listening only to her sister play that she feels truly for the family. However, there is also the risk of losing betrayed. something close to the heart, an intangible fragment of one’s identity: The father, in addition to his passion for polka music, is associated with the hard-working generation We knew few people with what most people might of Polish immigrants who are willing to work two jobs, consider to be regular names, ones many families seven days a week, to feed their families. in this country have...[t]hose without a ‘ski’ or a ‘icz,’ or Ls pronounced like Ws and Ws like Vs, In addition to music, Strempek-Shea instills each Js like Ys and other Js like Is. (63) member of the Milewski family with a different Polish- American cultural trait, or even, one could venture, Just as in Dybek, names are maps marking the stereotype. Babci is strongly connected with food. When changing face of a community. When Donna dates a boy Donna’s adopted sister comes from Poland, ‘our table named Sean Riley, she thinks of the Irish neighborhood overnight turned into something out of a travel brochure, near her old house and the small selection of corned beef all covered with vats and trays and casseroles containing Tenczar’s Market would carry in March, which they would strange stuff I’d never seen before, and most coming label with names like Kerry, Kelly, and Christy but ‘that complete with an old-country legend or some trick began with an O, then had an apostrophe interrupting the explained by Babci.’ (49) The father, in addition to his rest, like it was a contraction rather than somebody’s last passion for polka music, is associated with the hard- name.’ (151) working generation of Polish immigrants who are willing What makes Hoopi Shoopi Donna different from to work two jobs, seven days a week, and sit with his most of Dybek and Bukoski’s fiction is the focus on family daughter at the dinner table to help her with her studies. history and conflict. While Bukoski does touch on this in The mother, though not an immigrant like her husband, is “Polkaholics,” a story in which the son and daughter of similarly inclined to hard work, and is characterized by working class parents rebel against the constraints of their her skill at sewing. ethnicity, it is not as deeply developed as it is here. The January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 507 daughter in “Polkaholics” merely leaves the story, while especially, and to Strempek-Shea less so, the place to in Strempek-Shea’s novel the reader is given much more which Dee wants to return is not that of her parents and of the psychological and emotional development of the her youth. All that matters is that a certain level of ethnic conflict. Unlike in Dybek and, at times, Bukoski, ‘comfort’ is available, a certain degree of sympathy in the Strempek-Shea decides to provide her protagonist with landscape. It is as if the neighborhood Dybek describes in all the missing answers at the end of the story. The secret his work has been internalized by Dee and is carried around history that is not revealed in “Tango Bearers of the Dead” with her. Once in familiar territory she feels she has and “Mrs. Burbul” is all revealed to Donna by her Polish reached someplace and can relax. double, Aniela, who, like Donna, has suffered from her family’s secrets. Also, different from the other two writers, he lived in my favorite part of cleveland. an old Strempek-Shea does not necessarily forge a new slovak neighborhood under the bridge. it looked generation or expand her sense of ethnicity; rather, her like my grandparents with houses that were dirty protagonist, Donna, fulfills her childhood dream (to form brick old and dark wood and banisters and an all-girl polka band) and attains a tangible feeling of baseboards and the sky and the mill and i felt happiness. For Donna, the problem is not so much a better already (Comfort 5). cultural or ethnic one as it is a personal one. Likewise, in Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Polish-American life is vibrant, The idea of loss also is a theme in Dee’s work. In though changing, and the key to its survival rests within her native Pittsburgh, Dee regrets the destruction of the the family. mill in which her grandfather once worked. As with Dybek Denise Dee: Irish-Polish-American stories and Bukoski, loss can take the form of physical structures Denise Dee is probably unknown to most readers (the mill) which act as institutions as it were, or it can take of contemporary fiction. Her two works discussed here, more cultural or traditional forms. Prompted by her mother A Certain Comfort and Gobnascale: House of the making galunki, Dee thinks about the layers of loss that Storyteller, were self-published and may have, at best, been have passed from her grandmother’s ability to cook Polish distributed at alternative bookshops around the United dishes (‘her mom used to cut noodles out by hand on the States. What makes her work so intriguing, besides her kitchen table every saturday’), to her mother’s (‘im diary style writing, is the mix of ethnicity which she herself thinking about this as im sitting at my parents table eating embodies. With a father of Irish extraction and a mother the one thing my mother knows how to make that my coming from a Polish background, Dee’s work traipses grandmother did’), to that of her and her sister (‘i don’t back and forth from one aspect of her ethnic makeup to know how to make them and im wondering if my sister another. However, there are some telling areas in which does’) (Comfort 7). However, Dee finds some consolation Dee’s work coincides with that of the other three writers for her feelings of personal and cultural loss in a bowl of already discussed. her grandmother’s soup, as ‘the nights after i ate my Like Dybek, Dee shows the need to get back to grandmothers soup i fell asleep with my hands crossed familiar territory, back to a place in which the buildings on my stomach and it was the one night i knew i wouldn’t and the people are familiar. Paraphrasing Thomas Wolfe, have any nightmares’ (Comfort 7). she argues that you can go home again. Dee’s dual ethnicity, Irish and Polish, is the focal point of her other work, Gobnascale: House of the since the earthquake i had been walking around Storyteller. Dee appears to get conflicting messages from a little lost. i was looking forward to going east her parents, her practical mother and her dreamer/ for comfort to reaffirm my connections. it was a storyteller father. In Irish or in Polish, Dee looks for words foolish thing to cling to i thought the idea of a to express the feelings she contains deep inside. place that would make the tension leave me that once i was walking around there i would suddenly I call my mother up and ask is there a word in remember who i was but there was always Polish for happy and sad at the same time. She something about cleveland and the people there thinks awhile; not that I know melancholy that calmed me down. (Comfort 1) bittersweet... I’ll ask your aunt, she says in a way I know she’s already forgotten and wish I would This is reminiscent of the narrator in Dybek’s “Blight,” too (Storyteller 1). in which he feels the urge to go back to the old neighborhood ‘to think.’ In contrast to Dybek and Bukoski, Dee feels naturally drawn toward her father and his knack 508 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 for storytelling, though this ‘Irish’ trait, as presented here, that have yet to be heard. The question remains, though, does not always mesh with her mother’s Polishness. what the next generation of Polish-American writers will make, or is making now, of the clues and guides that have Bssch, you don’t believe that do you? my mother been left for them. Taking into consideration the trend would say after I told her some fantastic Irish toward super-grouping of ethnic groups, along with the story I had heard. That didn’t happen she’d say... growing globalization of the United States and the world, I just wanted to believe so I’d hide it away in me the degree of control the next generation of Polish- and dream later (Storyteller 3). American writers will have over their own identity will determine to what extent they will be able to preserve a The conflict does not seem to reside so much in the distinct voice in American literature. Δ personal realm (being put down by one’s mother), than it does as a comment from one ethnicity about another. BIBLIOGRAPHY
It seemed that the only place it was acceptable to Bukoski, Anthony. Twelve Below Zero. St. Paul. New believe stories in Polish was the church. No Rivers Press. 1986. _____.Children of Strangers. Dallas. Southern Methodist matter how fantastic those stories were people University Press. 1993. believed them like they happened to one of their _____. “Water Plans,” Townships, edited by Michael family members. If you questioned anything you’d Martone. Iowa City. University of Iowa Press. 1992. Pp. get the same scorn they gave one of your non- 26-30. religious stories... Or Jehziz gohani, my mother’s Dee, Denise. Certain Comfort. San Francisco. 1990. favorite cry of despair (Storyteller 3). Self-published. _____.Gobnascale: House of the Storyteller. San Ultimately, Dee follows in her father’s footsteps, taking Francisco. 1990. Self-published. up the role of ‘seanachie which means storyteller in some Dybek, Stuart. Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. New common uses it means saint’ (Storyteller 5). It is this York. Ecco Press. 1986. ______. The Coast of Chicago. New York. Vintage. 1991. same Irish belief in the power of stories and words in ______. “You Can’t Step into the Same Street Twice,” which Dee searches for a cure for her father’s illness, not Townships, edited by Michael Martone. Iowa City. in her mother’s pragmatism or faith. Stories and fables, University of Iowa Press. 1992. Pp. 42-46. what her father sees in her as ‘the ability to feel,’ are what Gladsky, Thomas. Princes Peasants, and Other Polish her father passes on to her. Selves: Ethnicity in American Literature. Some final thoughts Amherst. University of Massachusettes Press. 1992. Though hardly a uniform group of writers, there ______.“From Ethnicity to Multiculturalism: The Fiction are some common themes and elements to all the work of of Stuart Dybek,” MELUS, 20/2 (Summer 1995), 105-118. the four writers discussed above. Mystery, confusion, Lyra, Franciszek. “Following the Cycle: The Ethnic Pattern memory, and place are the over-arching elements evident of Polish-American Literature,” MELUS, 12 (Winter 1985), 63-71. to all four authors; all of which are triggered by Mucha, Janusz. “Polish America, American Poland,” associations and references to food, music, religion, History of European Ideas, 20/1-3 (1995), 599-605. language, and people. The landscape of Polish-American Rokicki, Jaroslaw. “Euro-American Ethnicity and Polish- fiction is dotted with steaming bowls of cabbage soup, Americans in th U.S.A.,” History of European Ideas, 20/ radios tuned into the local ‘Polka Hour,’ old women 1-3 (1995), 627-636. kneeling in churches, snippets of the Polish language, and Singh, Amritjit, J. Skerrett, Jr., and R. Hogan, editors. people, some of whom are as old as this century, who Memory and Cultural Politics. Boston. Northeastern carry around with them the deep waters of memory. Stuart University Press. 1996. Dybek, Anthony Bukoski, Susan Strempek-Shea, and Sova, Dawn B. “Polish-American Literature,” in Alpana Denise Dee all unfold psychological and emotional maps Sharma Knippling, editor. New Immigrant Literature in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary in writing of their ethnic identity as Polish-Americans (and, Heritage. Westport. Greenwood Press. 1996. Pp. 319-327. in Dee’s case, as a Polish/ Irish-American). The contours Strempek-Shea, Susan. Selling the Lite of Heaven. New and details of each differs somewhat, but most of the same York. Washington Square Press. 1994. points of reference are there. Of the four writers reviewed ______. Hoopi Shoopi Donna. New York. Pocket Books. here, it is probably Denise Dee that embodies the link to 1996. the next generation of Polish-American writers. Voices January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 509 At one time, in Poland, somebody wrote about Aleksandra Ziołkowska-Boehm me in WiadomoÊci Literackie:4 ‘A no-nonsense writer, interviews expressing himself in Yiddish.’ I write about Jews and about Poles. My characters, whether Jewish or Polish, Isaac Bashevis Singer may be thieves or prostitutes. I do not generalize. I could not care less for readers looking for generalizations in my books. I do not write for them. Translated by Nina Michalak It is important to write about people that one knows best, regardless of whether they are Jewish, Prot- Aleksandra Ziołkowska-Boehm: What is your estant, Turks or what have you. Writing about the most message to the men and women of letters?1 familiar things or people reveals our origins, as new or as Isaac Bashevis Singer: That they meet three incomplete as they may be. We should not cut ourselves conditions. First, that they have a story to tell. Present- off from our ancestral roots. day literature is increasingly careless about that. We do A writer should never abandon his mother tongue not have to adhere to Aristotle’s rules for writers, but it is which is a veritable treasure house of idiomatic expres- imperative for the storyteller to have a good story to tell. sions. More than any other artist, a writer belongs to his A consuming desire to get published makes writers for- countrymen, his language, history and culture. get that their mission is to describe human experience. Second, have a passion, a need to tell this par- I do not generalize. I could not care less for ticular story as opposed to some other one. I remember a readers looking for generalizations in my books. time when I had a good theme but no passion, so in the end I wrote nothing. A true creator belongs to his people, to his com- Third, it must be your story. You must be con- munity, regardless of whether he likes it or not. A cosmo- vinced that no one else is able to describe it so well. It is politan person will never write anything exceptional, since not easy to have such a conviction. It only comes to the his work will be a generalization. Literature is intimately greatest writers. It is important to write about what you connected with one’s origins. Great masters’ roots are are familiar with, what you know best. Have your own firmly embedded in their nation’s past. Tolstoy, story, your own topic. Dostoevsky, Gogol belong to the Russian nation. Dostoevsky dreamed of the world falling in love with When you read the Bible, you do not know what Russia. Kafka was the only great writer without roots. somebody was thinking, but you always know what the What I can, however, say about him is that he was search- person was doing... It is a heresy of our times to use our ing for them, was trying to discover them. thoughts and moods as the yardsticks in appraising al- A writer must stay within themes that correspond most everything that is around us. to his passions, that spring up from the depths of his be- ing. This is what makes a writer original and great. Leave As for myself, what I know best are Jewish it to a dilettante to take up any subject. It is not up to the people, not those living in Sweden though, but those in artist to worry about creating principles. His role is to Poland. We all have our limitations, our constraints. One accentuate what is individualistic, to be interested in what should be able to realize that. I am not able to describe is exceptional. A scientist, regardless of how how much everything. It took me years to understand that. Initially, he admires the exceptional, tries to make it unexceptional. I wanted to imitate Knut Hamsun. I eventually learned That is his job. Modern man is increasingly interested in that I was neither Tolstoy nor Hamsun, nor Gorky, that I the abstract and in the underlying principles. His mind must write about my milieu, one that has become my own works in a scientific way: it refuses to get acquainted with and personal passion. just one exceptional person. It wants to familiarize itself When I read Pan Tadeusz,2 I know that Adam with characters and systemize their classification. Mickiewicz was perfectly familiar with what he was por- I believe that if a true writer wants to describe or traying. Joseph Conrad never wrote about Poland.3 He a painter to paint an apple, it has to be an exceptional wrote in English and, in his books, the sea was the center- apple, worth the effort. The role of literature is to demon- piece and people played a secondary role. Had he been strate the uniqueness of a life being lived. To present this writing in Polish, his characters might have been more reality in an interesting way is what I call the quintes- vivid, more authentic. sence of talent. It is important to show simultaneously the ex- We should not cut ourselves off from our an- ceptional and the common, the national and the univer- cestral roots... A cosmopolitan person will never write sal, the realistic and the mystical. The moment a writer anything exceptional.... I learned Yiddish and I write in attempts to generalize a problem and see it on an expan- that language.... I try to write about people I know best. sive scale, he stops being a writer. It is only after his liter- ary endeavor is completed that he may go and make a I know Hebrew, I learned Yiddish and I write in speech in support of a candidate or a loved one. His novel, that language. Some people told me: ‘You write in a dead however, must not be a political dissertation. The role of language for people who are dying off.’ But fortunately, literature is not to analyze ideas but to describe experi- due to translations, my books reach out everywhere. I put ences. Frankly, mixing social and political issues with a lot of work and creativity into the English version. writing is not a very healthy practice: its outcome will 510 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 reside outside true literature. alities into one. I would move the clock back for a couple True literature focuses on experiences and situa- of years and place an event in Poland; using a character tions. When you read the Bible, you do not know what whom I might have met recently on a holiday. I always somebody was thinking, but you always know what the have a model. I think that all genuine painters use mod- person was doing. People may sit and talk for hours about els. For I believe that nature has in store more surprises what they are thinking, but it is only through their action for us than our imagination can possibly think of. that we may judge their true colors. It is a heresy of our What I try to keep in mind first and foremost is times that we use our thoughts and moods as the yard- to write in my own mother tongue and about people I know sticks in appraising almost everything that is around us. best. By forgetting this principle, a writer who is attempting Instead of searching for words, the contempo- to assimilate into a foreign tradition fails to enter that society rary art of writing consists of restricting them so much since he absolutely does not belong to it. that they become cliches. I refer to such words as good, AZ-B: What do you think about the modern bad, decent, immoral, charming, ugly, noble, abstract, world? cunning, talented — those and many others which have IBS: Modern man, especially a young person, been emasculated. is unhappy because he lacks religion. I am not necessar- Talents are born; I do not believe talent can be ily referring to organized religion, but to a faith in higher, achieved through hard work. Genes do not produce many supernatural forces. For thousands of years, people be- talents, in every generation talent is a rarity. Talent is a lieved in God or in the gods. They believed that the world freak of nature. did not just happen and that a supernatural power was At the same time, it would only be fair to say that their ultimate judge, rewarding the good and punishing a talented person may write bad novels and bad stories. the evil. Pagans, of course, did not have such faith. But AZ-B: How do you write? the Jews had a profound faith in a supernatural power and in IBS: In my early days, I wrote in the third per- justice. They believed that God revealed Himself to some son, now in the first, but I will go back to narrate in the people, and that these people knew what they were doing. third person. I write with a pen, then I type, but I find it But the philosophy glorifying humankind and more and more difficult to write by hand. I think I will centered purely on its interests and values destroyed what- soon switch over to a typewriter. I spend two hours ev- ever weak faith there was. Then came wars, revolutions eryday in the morning writing. and such people as Hitler and Stalin who considered them- selves humanists, spoke in the name of humankind and Sometimes, I would blend my characters into referred to themselves as socialists. Wars and revolutions one. I would move the clock back for a couple of years not only destroy people but also precious cultural roots, and place an event in Poland; using a character whom whereas peace makes these roots grow and provides them I might have met recently on a holiday. with nourishment. Faith in God and His Providence are at the very As I write, I realize how many traps lie in wait heart of literature. They tell us that misery is but a mask for a writer. The worst one is the premise that a writer on the face of fate. must be a sociologist or a politician constantly tuning into Human beings are constantly spied upon by the process of social development and change. Yet an- forces which appear to know all their desires and compli- other danger is the desire to make a lot of money and get cations. Having a free will they are, at the same time, led quick recognition. And finally, the need to be original by on by a mysterious hand. Literature should be love’s and working under the illusion that rhetoric, fancy stylistic destiny’s safe haven, a reflection of the tempest of human novelties and the game of silly symbols may be able to passions running wild and man’s wrestling with them. articulate the constantly changing nature of interpersonal relations, that the pretense of originality may shed light Modern man, especially a young person, is or explain complications arising from surroundings or unhappy because he lacks religion....The Jews had a heritage. This type of ‘experimental’ writing harmed a profound faith in the supernatural power and in jus- great deal of talents, destroyed a lot of contemporary po- tice. They believed that God revealed Himself to some etry by making it obscure, unattractive. people.... Faith in God and His Providence are at the As elucidated by Spinoza, imagination relates to very heart of literature. ‘the natural order of things’ and not to ‘distortions.’ Lit- erature is well able to describe the absurd, but it should Modern man feels as if he were a lottery player: not itself become absurd. he will either win or lose. He does not believe in any power The first fifteen years are never lost for a writer, that will take care of him and his affairs. A peculiar disil- since literature wrestles with the past. My present life lusionment prevails among people. I would venture to consists of describing my remembrances. The writer’s own say that never before in the history of humankind have life and the people he comes across are the best providers there been so many people disillusioned and doubtful as of the necessary raw material. Therefore, even when I now. Suffering makes an intelligent person wiser. A write about other people, my personal recollections are person lacking wisdom may suffer a hundred years and part and parcel of the story being told. I do not invent my die stupid. There are no set rules. characters, I reminisce about people that I have met and My brother, Israel Jehosua Singer, was also a see how they would be able to help me, how they would writer [author of Josie Kałb, Warsaw 1934 and 1960, fit into my story. Sometimes, I would blend their person- AZ-B.]. I often discussed with him this very topic of the January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 511 lack of dignity, the degradation, the abasement of mod- easier for me to speak in English,’ said Mr. Singer. The Polish ern man; his shaky, questionable family life, his greed rendition of the interview was based on Dr. Ziołkowska-Boehm’s and lust for luxury, contempt for the old, his narcissistic pursuit of a temporal youthfulness, his blind faith in psy- notes. It was duly authorized by Mr. Singer and appeared in chiatry and his increasing tolerance of crime. Ziołkowska-Boehm’s Korzenie sà polskie (Warsaw 1992). This I do not want to talk about or preach morality. I book was then translated into English.Titled The Roots Are Pol- do recognize its importance, but it is not up to me to preach ish, it will be published by the Canadian Polish Research Institute it. I dislike generalizations; I am not a moralizer nor a statistician, but a writer. For me, every single person in Toronto. We are pleased to add this small but revealing frag- counts. Every human being is like a new chapter. ment to Mr. Singer’s English language opus. I always felt that God was not too generous, not 2 An epic poem by Poland’s favorite Romantic poet. It was pub- to say stingy, in his gift-giving. He definitely provided us lished in 1834. with a short supply of wisdom and physical strength, and 3 showered us with a profusion of feelings and passions. Here Singer is wrong. Conrad’s “Prince Roman” is a story about But, alas, these produce suffering and shame. Poland and Poles. No matter whether we want it or not, we must 4 A literary weekly published in Warsaw in 1924-39. communicate with others. I would say that the best form of contact is through love and sex. Love and sex are great teachers. They reveal our true human nature. In society, a man may be perceived as a powerful player, but in sex, he may be reduced to a role of a child, a dwarf. An eye or an March Breezes ear would never sabotage its owner. An eye does not stop seeing even if it does not like what it sees. I would say that sexual organs throw light on the human character more than anything else. More sensitive than the mind, Marie Luise Kaschnitz they are not diplomatic and are usually merciless in tell- ing the truth. Of all the readers, children are the most genuine, for they are totally unbiased. Children will not read a book Translated with an introduction because it was written by a ‘great writer’ or by an ‘au- by Hal H. Rennert thority.’ Nor will they be impressed by the fact that Shakespeare wrote so many wonderful works. They would make up their mind to like or dislike a certain writer by Introduction simply reading his works. Pages of favorable reviews by literary critics are equally unable to earn a child’s admira- In standard histories of German literature, the tion. post-World War II generation of German writers is said I have my own challenges. All my life, I made to include few women. One reason for this is the promises to God. I have made thousands of resolutions assumption that women should be excluded from only to end up going back on them. For instance, I prom- the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or the ised myself to get up at eight in the morning, but I get up coming-to-terms with the past. The presumption here at ten. In my Warsaw days, almost every day, I promised is that women did not have to come to terms with the myself not to waste time in the writers’ club, not to en- Nazi past because they were excluded from the Nazi gage in gossip and useless meetings, and right after that, I political process. But were they? would go there, and waste my time talking nonsense. Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1901-1974) was born My isolation, my seclusion have not changed for into an aristocratic family in Karlsruhe in southwestern years. I have surrounded myself with melancholy becom- ing its prisoner. How can one run away from oneself? Germany. She was the author of several novels and And where? I have dreamed of ethics, of humanism that radio plays, and she also wrote poetry. In 1955, she would give us tools to interpret events sent us by Provi- received the Georg Büchner Prize of the German dence.... Academy for Language and Literature. The role of art is to make us forget about human “Märzwind” (“March Breezes”) was written in inclinations, at least for some time. 1952. The topic of the story is the hanging of a Polish I try to spend this ‘some time’ in a worthwhile forced laborer in a German village, but the broader manner. Δ theme can be described as the ‘everydayness’ of Nazism, or what Manfred Durzak has called, in 1 The interview was conducted in September 1985 and it has connection with another story by Kaschnitz, the never before been published in English. The conversation took Wirklichkeitsvergiftung, or poisoning of reality, in Nazi place mostly in English, with the understanding that it would ap- Germany. The story can also be read as proto-feminist, pear in an authorized Polish rendition (both Mr. Singer and Dr. in that it explores the lack of solidarity between the Ziołkowska-Boehm are natives of Poland). ‘I know Polish, but it is two women characters. The German text can be be found in M.L. 512 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 Kaschnitz’s Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 4 (Frankfurt am the Pole, up close, for the first time since the day, Main. Lusel Verlag), 110-118. Δ months ago, that they’d gone into the vineyard together. The Stanislaus of that day was young, strong and The execution is supposed to set an example. beautiful. The Stanislaus of today is emaciated, sullen That is why all Polish forced laborers have been ordered and pale — he acts as if he has never seen her before. to the place of execution. From early in the morning He is a stranger. No one cares about a stranger. on they gather in small groups, accompanied by their Martha Gruber, forty years old, is self- guards. They can see from far away that the hill is possessed and healthy. A year ago she settled into the occupied by the troops and that the black limousines village with her husband. At the time, the meager iron with small flags on their windows have already arrived. ore contained in the red earth started to be extracted Therefore they believe that a mass execution awaits through a large mine shaft dug into the vineyard. them, but then only two of them are chosen to execute Having spent all of her time in the city since her one of their fellow countrymen. The others are wedding day, Martha Gruber hates this valley. She is supposed to pass in review, single file, looking up at afraid of the mountains which rise above the village the corpse, when it’s finally over. Meanwhile they stand like a wave that is about to collapse, threatening to in a semi-circle among the bare trees, their pale faces crush all life below it. She hates the sullen evening turned to each other, shivering, whispering. sky and the west wind that persistently fills the valley Because an example is to be set, the more with its wailing. From the corner of her eye, she looks spectators the better. For this reason, the participation at the muddy, bottomless paths and the miserable of all children above the age of ten has been ordered; village street where there is no movie theater or coffee they are to bear witness to the sanctity of the racial house. She is contemptuous of the people who live laws. But the local farmers are not in agreement with here and who, in her eyes, are rich and humorless, this measure. They sent their children into the forest dishonest and devious. to collect branches, put them to bed or locked them up Martha Gruber casts a look at the woman from in the barn. There isn’t a single child on the hill at the next door, this show-off, this cowardly bitch. There edge of the forest. Of the adults only those who she stands with her goitered neck, her bulging stomach received a directive are present: the mayor, the clerk on which her fingers move the rosary with little clicks. of the court, the policeman, the farm woman who had A few weeks ago Martha Gruber would still have liked lodged the complaint with the authorities, Gruber, the to choke her. But now she is content to note that her miner, born in Bochum, in the Rhineland, who had enemy trembles with fear, that her nose is red and that immigrated only last year, his wife Martha, nee she will soon lose all of her teeth. Pzycholl, who is originally from East Prussia and was The soldiers are now stirring. Something is the lover of the condemned man. being carried over to them, a board, a ladder or These people are standing around in small something like it. This, at last, sends a shock through groups. They’d like to be far away, but they have been Martha Gruber. She can no longer see Stanislaus, she put in place by the polite police lieutenant and don’t doesn’t want to see him, luckily she is nearsighted and dare move. They stand on the road at a point where it can’t make out anything except the uniforms of the disappears into the forest. Between them and the spot soldiers and the uniforms of the prisoners, the damp where the gallows has been erected are several hefty trunks of the beech tree and the bright March sky above tree trunks. It is foggy, so that later on, they will find it the forest. She, too, will pray for Stanislaus, but not difficult to follow all the details of the procedure. here, not now. She will see him before her the way she Martha Gruber, the mistress of the Pole, first met him, carrying the scythe on his shoulder, sun buttons her black, woolen gloves only to unbutton them and sweat on his beautiful young face. He will sit across again. She is wearing her dark blue dress with a jacket, from her at the kitchen table, close enough for their off the rack, pre-war material, but still in good condition knees to touch and he will devour her with his eyes and a small hat, old-fashioned, but which in comparison while over the radio, news of victories and raucous to the church-going hats of the peasant women looks marching bands can be heard. like the latest style from Paris. Her face is damp from The farm woman sighs briefly. Her husband tears, but there is no connection between her present stands beside her. He is tall, almost a giant, but his state of emotion and these tears. She is crying because back is bent, his arms dangling and in his eyes there is it is the thing to do, not because she is despondent. a fearful and hungry look. He is not nearsighted, he Only a few minutes earlier she had seen Stanislaus, January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 513 can clearly see that everything has been prepared, the is to exterminate people on the basis of their birth or rope has been pulled through the hook, the ladder convictions. But he has the pleasant demeanor of a leaning against the tree. He stares at it, but he senses mortician and his subordinates are very fond of him. the presence of his wife beside him, and something The black limousine careens around the corner contracts in his chest like a vulnerable animal. He is and stops with a jolt. The mayor who also happens to old and shabby, and his wife is in good health, terribly be the local party boss and fuhrer of the peasants snaps vibrant and powerful. In spite of this, for some time to attention. He has gained considerable weight of late already, he hasn’t been able to stand her. He goes his and his brown uniform is stretched tight over his own way, aware of the darkness and danger of this. stomach. He remains standing for a while with locked They are waiting for something, the miner knees and an unblinking gaze. Then he is called over Gruber says suddenly, just to break the silence which to the car where he gives his report. makes you freeze and feel miserable. Nobody answers, Martha Gruber listens to him speak but doesn’t but from afar, from the depth of the forest, emerges a understand a word. It is impossible for her to make dull hum, the sound of a powerful car engine rapidly any connection between the events of the past and those approaching. of today. She thinks about the evening when her Soon it will happen, the farm woman thinks, husband first brought Stanislaus home. Her husband and her lips move with a sudden, involuntary went out, leaving her sitting there with the Pole. She vehemence, making a series of smacking noises. Holy spoke with him in the language of her childhood, Mary, Mother of God, have mercy on us. Martha pidgin-Polish, which he could understand fairly well. Gruber, the miner’s wife, now stands right in front of They talked and laughed. He had the smell of childhood her and the farm woman sees her curly hair under the about him, the open spaces of the East, the bright colors crooked little hat. It’s her fault, the farm woman thinks. of the festivals, the tinkling sound of the sleighs, and She wanted her pleasure, just like a girl, just like a the whitish dust clouds of the roads in hot August. She young woman. She went into the city to have a hadn’t done anything to draw him to her. Suddenly he permanent. She sat in broad daylight in front of her was there, like a memory of something, a long forgotten house with her hands in her lap. Blessed art Thou word. She suddenly felt like the girl she had been at amongst women... The farm woman is so preoccupied his age. They looked at each other with that dark desire with her thoughts that her mouth opens all by itself, — to be released for a moment from the oppressive, and these words come out of her mouth, and can be strange landscape, from the irrevocability of their fate.... heard, loud and clear. He isn’t the same, she thinks. The moment The mayor spins around and looks to his left appears to her like a series of events unfolding on a and right. Why don’t you be quiet, he says angrily. screen, a frame from the terrible newsreels of the war He addresses her by her first name; they are all on a to which one cannot relate in any way. The film rolls first name basis in this village; they are all related on, the mayor steps back, and the men who arrived in somehow. It’s unnecessary to pray aloud, especially the car walk into the forest. there where he stands. A year ago he resigned his Ida has stopped praying. It isn’t my fault, she membership in the church, although he has neither the says suddenly; they all look at her with contempt. She strength nor the independence of an atheist. But he doesn’t dare keep praying. She thinks, I didn’t want to has adopted the way of thinking and the way of have anyone die. I simply meant to give that Gruber expression of the party, and when he recalls a few of woman the message that she too has to work the way the party’s slogans he feels strengthened and uplifted. we do. Ida starts crying and feels a certain relief in Stop it, he says again, because he sees that the doing so. She doesn’t know that in this valley, not too pale lips are beginning to move again. He has been long ago, another woman who refused to grow old was angry with Ida, who is one of his nieces, ever since drowned in the mill creek with a stone tied around her that evening in the fall when she came to tell him that neck. there were crimes against the racial laws committed in In the forest someone begins to speak, reading the village, ever since that evening when he reached something. He speaks loudly, but no one at the road for the telephone receiver, thus tipping the mountain can follow what he is saying because at this moment that would crush a human being. the miner has a coughing attack he is unable to control. Step back, the officer calls out with a muffled He coughs in fits and his eyes begin to have a glassy voice. He is a member of the Gestapo and his sole task look. He caught the cold yesterday at the drafty shed 514 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 of the brick works when he fondled the little breasts image of millions of marching boots, shiny flags and and slender hips of twelve year old Anna with his coarse stretched-out arms, of the surging flood of life hands, blowing his warm breath into her face. He has swallowing up the sacred sacrifice. been doing such things compulsively ever since last Of that small group of people on the road the year. That is why he doesn’t want his wife to mayor is the only one who watches as the Pole accompany him; that is why he must divert her Stanislaus is executed. The glasses of the fat city clerk attention. He doesn’t want to; he can’t help himself. are opaque with condensation; the miner’s eyes are full Other men his age take up activities of their boyhood of tears from coughing; the neighbor woman is still years, putting fruit seeds into the ground or collecting fighting nausea and holds her handkerchief to her face. stamps. He too is taking up the activities of his It would be good to tell about the woman who once boyhood. Only he never collected seeds and stamps, was the lover of the Pole, it would be good to say that but instead he was creeping around little girls, in lustful she screamed full of anguish, regret and compassion. silence. But she doesn’t scream. She stands perfectly still, her The mayor tries to slap Gruber on his back, eyes closed with a smile for her young lover. thinking he has something stuck in his throat. He And then it’s finally over and done with. The doesn’t mind this coughing because it helps to pass Poles walk past the gallows, slowly, stumbling and in the time, these terrible minutes until it’s all over. Soon silence. One after the other look up at the corpse as they’ll walk home. Today the villagers will be excited, they have been ordered to do. Many of them are filled but by tomorrow they will start to forget. The mayor with thoughts of revenge, and some are whispering keeps slapping the round back of the miner as if he something like God have mercy on his soul. No one is wants to beat him up. Then he suddenly notices that thinking about the crime of disgracing the race but they he himself is freezing and that his teeth are chattering all sense suddenly that the March breezes are gloriously like window shutters in a storm. The execution is taking flooding the valley and that they are men with blood in place in the year l942. There isn’t any reason yet for their veins and wind in their faces. I didn’t want this the mayor to have doubts about a German victory or to to happen, the miner thinks, as the many feet begin to fear the revenge of the Poles. What is bothering him is move, as the cars start to roll and voices are raised. He a ghost rising in mysterious ways out of the conscience sighs and starts to shuffle after his wife who arranges of his childhood and out of the thinking of those people her little hat, getting ready to walk through the village that he fights and patronizes. Because of this ghost he full of spite and hatred for the people who, from their sometimes slinks around like a beaten dog in spite of windows, will look at her as if she is a venomous his official power. It is because of this ghost that he animal. associates the life and death of the Pole Stanislaus in a I didn’t want this to happen, the mayor says crazy, contradictory way with the life and death of his to the city clerk whom he joins as they walk down the only son. steep road. He raises his voice; he wants it heard and With bulging eyes the mayor stares at what is he wants it passed on. He wants it to be some kind of now taking place in the forest. Everything is ready. re-assurance, a small attempt at bargaining with destiny The prisoners standing in a semi-circle, the soldiers for the life of his son, of whom there is no news and facing them on the other side. In the center is the who has, in fact, been dead for two weeks, lying in the gallows — a horizontal beam nailed to two tree trunks. icy waters of the Pripet swamps. Against one of the trees the ladder leans, held by some Smoke comes from all of the chimneys of the prisoners. Flanked by two soldiers the young Pole now village, the people are eating lunch, they talk and crosses the forest clearing with firm steps, his head commiserate. Up in the forest, the young Pole lies in raised. his hurriedly dug grave, black loose forest soil on his No one can hear the steps of the condemned beautiful, contorted face. He has lived twenty-two man because of the blowing wind and because the forest years, three years in this village in which he was now ground is wet and mossy. But to the mayor these steps hanged. He worked for a peasant and sat with him at are like hammers pounding at his heart. his table even though it was forbidden to feed the Now, now, now, he thinks. It must be now prisoners. He had given the wife of the peasant a hand that my son is dying out there in Russia. It is a crazy, and carved toys for the children for Christmas — green childish idea. It is an intoxicating idea for someone peacocks feeding at a trough and colorful fishes that who carries within him an image, an enormous, blurred moved like snakes. January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 515 His home town was a small village close to borderlands, relating them to the struggle for independence which Cracow in Poland. I’ve been told that it has a long, so affected gentry life in partitioned Poland. This scholarly book wide village road with creeks on both sides, white-front reads well; the subjects discussed range from studies of exiled houses and a wooden bell tower, that there is a river Polish scholars such as Jan Badouin de Courtenay to the Polish with high banks on each side, and that the forested river Hassidic movement. canyon is full of lilies-of-the-valley in the spring and Kultura i jej kràg (Kultura and its circle), edited mushrooms in the autumn. There are huge built-in by Grazyna and Krzysztof Pomian. Lublin. Maria brick stoves in the peasant homes with pictures of saints Curie-Skłodowska University Press. 1995. 203 pages. on the walls and the big marriage beds are piled high Numerous illustrations. Index. Paper. In Polish. with embroidered pillows and blankets. But whether A scrapbook centered around Jerzy Giedroyc and the Stanislaus had these images before his eyes in his last monthly Kultura which he co-founded and edited for over forty hour I do not know. No different from the son of the years. It contains an index of Kultura authors from 1947 to 1986. mayor he was the hope of his parents, the pride of his We were pleased to note that the Sarmatian Review contributor, teachers and the joy of the girls in his village. He was Sally Boss, has published numerous articles in Kultura. The fans a small seed from the golden ears of grain, ground up of Kultura — and there are many among the Polish intelligentsia — will treasure this book which provides a glimpse of daily labors by the terrible millstones of the time. And we can and successes of the editor and his sympathizers. imagine everything except the thoughts of the dying. Δ Nowy imperializm, czyli o tzw. edukacji seksualnej (the new imperialism, or about the so- called sexual education), by Marek Czachorowski. BOOKS BOOKS and Second printing. Warsaw. Inicjatywa Wydawnicza “ad astra” (P.O. Box 86, 00-963 Warszawa, tel/fax Periodicals Received 625-1028). 1997. 210 pages. Paper. Zl. 16.00. In Mowy wybrane o màdroÊci (Selected Polish. Speeches on Wisdom), by Stanisław ze A readable book about the sexual revolution which in Skarbimierza (Stanislaus de Skarbimiria, Sermones Poland was delayed by the hardships of communism. A father of de sapientia selectae). Edited by Mirosław Korolko. three children, Czachorowski (b. 1956) is a professor of philosophy Kraków. Arcana Publishing House (ul. at the Catholic University of Lublin and a deputy chair of the Lublin chapter of the Society for Responsible Parenthood. Dunajewskiego 6, Kraków). 1997. ISBN 83-86225- The book contains an exceptionally eloquent defense of 56-4. 269 pages. Hardcover. In Polish and Latin. human sexuality and a persuasive argument against pornography. This bilingual collection of speeches/sermons on just and It condemns the sexual revolution, arguing that in second- and third- unjust wars, godly and ungodly wisdom, justice and its relation to world countries, it has becomes a tool of neocolonialism. The the wisdom of God throws light on the intellectual atmosphere in International Planned Parenthood Federation, the World Bank, the fifteenth-century Poland, and how the subsequent generations failed United Nations and the World Health Organization have to appreciate and promote their medieval and Renaissance heritage. occasionally engaged in what the author calls cultural imperialism, Stanisław from Skarbimierz (1360-1431) was Rector of Jagiellonian or forcing the poor countries to promote abortion. The horror of University and co-author (with Paweł Włodkovic) of the argument China’s ‘one child policy’ has been repeated in other countries, he in favor of the rights of nations presented at the Council of Constance says, but the publicity is lacking. A very strong book that should be in 1414. His philosophical and theological speeches are of interest to parents and prospective parents, as well as to those commentaries on the Book of Wisdom; shockingly, they had never involved with public policy. before been published. Unabridged Polish-English Dictionary, by Iwo Kresy, Syberia, literatura: doÊwiadczenia Cyprian Pogonowski. 3 vols. New York. Hippocrene dialogu i uniwersalizmu (the borderlands, Siberia, and Books (171 Madison Avenue, NY, NY 10016). 1997. literature: what a community of discourse and a Graphs, appendices. xLvi + 3,963 pages. Hardcover. dialogue tell us about them), edited by Eugeniusz $200.00. Czaplejewicz and Edward Kasperski. Warsaw: This is the largest Polish-English dictionary ever Wydawnictwo TRIO (Nowy Âwiat 18/20, Warszawa). compiled, providing English translations of some 200,000 Polish 1995. 252 pages. Index. Paper. Zl. 15.00. In Polish. words (if nothing else, it demonstrates that Joyce’s Ulysses could A collection of papers by various authors, mainly those have been composed in Polish). In addition to a painstaking associated with the Teachers’ College in Pułtusk. The papers translation of the Polish vocabulary, Pogonowski provides examine various aspects of Polish exile literature and Polish translations of geographical and personal names, a table of weights 516 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 and measures, and a number of other appendices, as well as a persuade the American medical establishment of the validity of his phonetic guide to Polish pronunciation. Unquestionably, an discoveries. The author, a California journalist and Pulitzer Prize important work. nominee, hints at the financial interests involved in opposing Dr. We have noticed some typos and misspellings in the Stanisław Burzyƒski’s pioneering contribution to cancer treatment. Dictionary, as could be expected from the first edition of so massive Józef Brandt, by Irena Olchowska-Schmidt. a work prepared virtually single-handedly. Pogonowski is a truly Kraków. Ryszard Kluszczyƒski Publishers (30-110 remarkable American of Polish background, a genuine role model Kraków, ul. Kraszewskiego 36, tel/fax 21-22-28). 1996. who combines Benedictine devotion to work, fidelity to the best ideals of Polish history, and an ability to achieve some success in 79 pages. Hardcover. In Polish. American public life. A recipient of a recent Polish American Prize, An album of reproductions (the originals are mostly in Pogonowski is one of those ‘bright points of light’ which every Polish museums) of a nineteenth-century Polish painter who ethnic community has to have to remain viable and to justify its specialized in the painting of horses and in country scenes. Excellent existence in a broader spectrum of American society. paper and a professional commentary. A coffee-table book. Awantura o Basi∏ (much ado about Basia), Ziemia przemyska, by Tadeusz Budziƒski. Texts by Kornel Makuszyƒski. Illustrations by Władysław by Tomasz Jurasz. Olszanica. Wydawnictwo Bosz S.C. Radziwiłłowicz. Poznaƒ. Oficyna Wydawnicza GMP (38-622 Olszanica 311, fax 0-1376-62-94) 1995. Texts (60-623 Poznaƒ, ul. Mazowiecka 59, tel/fax 471-800 or in Polish, English, and German. 471-801). 158 pages. Paper. Zl. 8.70. In Polish. A book of photographs, on excellent paper, of areas near This delightful story for teenagers has been a favorite of PrzemyÊl in southeastern Poland. These are lands of breathtaking Polish children for generations. Originally published in 1937, it is beauty, a paradise for vacationers, well worth visiting. The book a fairy tale about a small girl lost at a railway station. The book is also contains photographs of local churches (some of them Uniate) guaranteed to raise the spirits of both the young and the old. A good and palaces, many of them built in the seventeenth century. paperback to use in the Polish-language schools in the United States. Polish Love: Short Stories in Polish and English, The First Easter Bunny, by Fr. Richard P. translated and edited by Mirosław Lipiƒski. New York. Lewandowski. Illustrated by Anne Schaper Englot. Hippocrene Books. 1997. 109 pages. Hardcover. Worcester, MA. Brent Anderson Publishers (25 Darnell This little collection contains love stories by Karol Road, Worcester, MA 01606, tel. 508-342-0291). 1995. Irzykowski, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Tadeusz Rittner, Zofia Second printing in 1996. 20 pages. Softcover. $4.95 plus Nałkowska, Stanisław Dygat and Halina PoÊwiatowska. Decidedly $1.00 for shipping and handling. middlebrow. A Treasury of Polish Aphorisms (Bilingual). A delightful children’s story about a bunny who follows Jesus through the events of the Holy Week and is the first living Compiled and translated by Jacek Gałàzka. Introduction creature to witness the Risen Jesus. Jesus then bestows upon him by Jerzy R. Krzyžanowski. Cornwall Bridge, CT. Polish the honor of bringing special treats to children on Easter Sunday. A Heritage Publications (75 Warren Hill Road, Cornwall remarkable attempt to redirect the tide of de-Christianization of Bridge, CT 06754). 1997. 139 pages. Illustration. Christian holidays such as Easter or Christmas, back to the spiritual Hardcover. origins of these holidays. A successful attempt to appropriate secular symbols such as the bunny rabbits and eggs for Christian symbolism. We would have argued about the selections, but Other Books Received: ‘darowanemu koniowi nie zaglàda si∏ w z∏by....’ The 1998 Polish Heritage Art Calendar. Preface The Polish Coal Miners’ Union and the German by Professor Jerzy Malinowski, captions by Janusz Labor Movement in the Ruhr, 1902-1934: National and Walek, Curator of European Art in Kraków’s Czartoryski Social Solidarity, by John J. Kulczycki. New York- Musem. New York. Hippocrene Books (171 Madison Oxford. Berg Publishers (70 Washington Square South, Avenue, NY, NY 10016, or http://www.netcom.com/ NY, NY 10012). 1997. xv + 283 pages. Maps, index, ~hippocre). 1997. bibliography. Hardcover. $46.00. The topic of this year’s Calendar is the city of Wilno A scholarly study of the Polish labor movement in the (Vilnius) and the Polish artists associated with that city. Δ immigrant areas of the German Ruhr. A review to follow. The Burzyƒski Breakthrough and the The Auschwitz Eyewitness: Government’s Campaign to Squelch It, by Thomas D. An Exhibit of the Artworks of Jan Komski Elias. Los Angeles. General Publishing Group (2701 A Polish Catholic Auschwitz Survivor Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 140, Santa Monica, CA 90405). will open January 15, 1998 at the Holocaust Museum Houston 1997. 286 pages. Index. Hardcover. $22.95. 5401 Caroline, Houston, Texas 77004, 713-942-8000 The story of a Polish cancer researcher’s struggle to January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 517 Twelve chronological chapters contain a general overview of the whole of Europe’s past, from prehistory to the present. Even on this most basic and traditional level Davies Europe doesn’t want ‘to develop learning at the expense of writing’ (Lord Acton’s warning). Starting with the short and ‘Latinized’ chapter titles (“Peninsula,” “Hellas,” “Roma,” “Origo,” “Medium,” “Pestis,” “Renatio,” “Lumen,” A History “Revolutio,” “Dynamo,” “Tenebrae,” “Divisa et Indivisa”) by Norman Davies. New York - Oxford. Oxford he tries to intrigue and amuse. Each chapter is accompanied by a series of ‘capsules’ that illustrate more specific subjects, University Press. 1996. xviii+ 1365 pages. Hardcover. generally neglected in great syntheses. Capsules so different Maps, illustrations. tables, index. $39.95. as “Hejnal”, “Syrop,” “Condom,” “Cravate,” “Papessa,” “Łyczaków” and hundreds of others are intended to rouse Andrzej Nowak historical curiosity and imagination of readers. The readers are also helped by a kind of a historical ‘snapshot’ at the end of each chapter presenting the whole Continent from a Contemporary Western syntheses of European particular point of view and at a particular historical history have generally been flawed by deep-seated moment. E.g., the chapter dedicated to late medieval Europe assumptions about the eastern half of the continent. The ends with a snapshot from the Kremlin, Moscow, dated 6 peoples living east of Germany and Italy have been edited January 1493, and the “Lumen” chapter ends with the out of European history as alien, inferior, and not interesting premiere of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Prague on 29 enough to merit attention in the enlightened literary circles October 1797. The overall effect of this varied narration is of the ‘real,’ i.e., Western Europe. Russia alone, ever compared by its author to ‘a historical picture album, in since she formed her aggressive empire, commanded more which panoramic tableaux are interspersed by a collection attention, critical at times but reverential most of the time. of detailed insets and close-ups.’ One hundred and thirty There exist individual studies of German, French, or even pages of very useful appendices follow. English authors dealing with matters of various eastern, Davies’ great achievement is to help understand or east central European countries with considerable the place of Poland, and of other east central European knowledge, sophistication and historical objectivity, but their countries, in the history of the Continent. He openly attacks contributions have been almost completely neglected by historical prejudices and ignorance in this regard. His the authors of the various German, French, and especially general assessment of the federative state called the English and American textbooks of European history and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, so commonly accused civilization. In this respect, as in many others, the latest by Western historians of incurable anarchism, gives justice single-volume synthesis of the Old Continent’s history to this particular political and cultural system as ‘a bold constitutes a real revolution. At last, the pasts of Poland, experiment in democracy that, in the era of absolutism Hungary, Bohemia, Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, and even and general strife, offered a refreshing alternative.’ The Albania have been integrated into the big story of Europe. reputation of the Rzeczpospolita ‘should not depend on That Norman Davies is the author of this revolution is hardly the jaundiced propaganda of its later assassins’ (555), a surprise. He made his name as a scholar writing two cautions Davies. Ironically, his warning can be construed fascinating compendia of Polish history: God’s Playground as directed not only at Western historians but also at the (1982), and Heart of Europe (1984). These books are contemporary Polish critics of national traditions. Davies indispensable to anyone who wishes to get some idea about is aware that all too often, Poles have yielded to the vision the meaning and flavor of the other half of Europe’s story. of their own history propagated by Poland’s most intractable Davies’ first book was the monograph of the Polish-Soviet adversaries. War, 1919-1920: White Eagle, Red Star. “Propaganda” is the topic of one of the most In the early 1990s, shortly after the collapse of interesting capsules. Davies draws on the theorists of the Berlin Wall, the last symbol of the division of Europe, propaganda to draft a concise and useful ‘five rules of Davies set for himself an ambitious task of ‘constructing a propaganda’ illustrating the Soviet’s mastery of its methods total history of all Europe.’ As a Professor of History in the and the naivete and cynicism of its western dupes (500- School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at the 501). In capsules titled “Ghetto,” “Pogrom,” and “Wiener University of London, he was well positioned to perform Welt,” Davies reminds his Western readers that Poland the task. was not the place where anti-Semitism was born, but just In his new book, Davies not only introduces a the opposite: over the centuries, she was the traditional main content that has been overlooked by many, but also uses refuge of European Jewry. He brings up the certain formatting devices meant to give the readers an Lembergerpogrom case (Lwów/Lviv, 22-23 November almost three-dimensional impression of his narration. 1918) to demonstrate how anti-Polish propaganda was successful in pinning on Poles the guilt for atrocities 518 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 perpetrated elsewhere and by others. Davies defends the isolation from one another; however, a concatenation of honor of the Polish winged hussars, so many times ridiculed them makes this work less useful as a reference volume not only in Western, but also in Polish histories (519). He than might otherwise be the case. In fairness, it should be incisively explains the remarkable extent of Polish tolerance said that the task of copy editors (whom such first-rate during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation (504). publishing houses as Oxford University Press presumably He gives credit to Polish soldiers for defending Europe employ) is to catch and eliminate such minor mistakes, while against an absolutely real threat of Soviet invasion in the proofreaders should have eliminated the rest. Someone at Summer of 1920, and to Polish workers for ‘bringing the the Press was woefully inefficient in exercising his/her Soviet bloc to its knees’ in the 1980s. editorial duties. This volume seems not to have been Davies’ book has its anti-heroes as well. One of copyedited or proofread by competent professionals. them is Russian imperialism. Davies depicts its history in Some examples of why revisions in subsequent terms of a pathological addiction to territorial conquest, editions seem necessary: in 1241, it was not Henry the born of gross inefficiency and traditional militarism. He calls Bearded (+1238) that led the Polish princes against the this phenomenon bulimia politica (655) and incisively Mongol invasion at Legnica, but his son, Henry the Pious repudiates all rationalizations given to it by Russian (364); it was not the Grand Marshal of the Crown, historiography: ‘the gathering of lands,’ ‘national tasks,’ Stanisław Lubomirski (1720-1783), who owned the ‘filling security vacuums,’ and others. Davies rightly largest latifundium in the Polish-Lithuanian stresses the double standards of many Western history books Commonwealth, but another Stanisław Lubomirski (1704- when he depicts the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917- 1793) who was the voivoda of Kiev, and even his fortune 1918 and the parallel collapse of the Austro-Hungarian was never close to ‘a million serfs’ claimed by Davies (585); and Ottoman Empires. Most of the national republics that the First Polish Army fought in Berlin not under Ivan Konev, broke free from Russian control at that time are not given but under Georgii Zhukov as the Commander of the First by Western historians the same status as those which broke Belarusian Front (720); less than 40,000 Poles were sent away from the Central Powers. ‘Few historians seem to to Siberia after the insurrection of 1863, and not 80,000 as regard Soviet Russia’s reconquest of Ukraine or of the Davies says (828); Aleksander Bocheƒski could not have Caucasus as anything other than an internal “Russian” event’ published his History of Stupidity in Poland in 1842 (932). Similarly, Davies observes the striking absence of because he was born in 1904 and his book deals with the the analyses of Soviet intentions in the historical debate 1863 Polish insurrection (860); the fortress of PrzemyÊl about the origins of World War II. His intuition in this was captured by Russians in March 1915, after a 19-month- regard has been proven right after the publication of long siege, and not after an 18-month siege in the Summer Europe: A History, when Russian archives ‘disgorged’ at of 1917 (903); Roman Dmowski’s Polish National last the primary sources to Stalin’s aggressive plans of Committee was established in Lausanne in August 1917, launching a war against Europe not only in 1939, but also in and not in Paris in August 1916 (914); Lwów is presently 1941 (when he was forestalled by Hitler by only three weeks). not the second largest city of independent Ukraine, but Davies’ synthesis of European history does not only the sixth, after Kiyv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Doneck, hide the cruelest side of either the Russian Revolution or and Odessa (920); Witkacy was not a mathematician (935); of its eighteenth-century French model. The ‘revolutions not all the western provinces of Poland were transformed from abroad,’ installed by Soviet force in east central by Hitler into the General Gouvernement: half of them Europe in 1944-7, likewise remain within his field of his were simply incorporated into the Reich (999); Katowice vision. Thus the killing of the Vendée prisoners, or the and the western part of Upper Silesia were not awarded famous “Noyades,” form a capsule, and so do “Vorkuta,” to Poland by the Potsdam Conference in 1945, but “Katyƒ,” “Smolensk” and the Ukrainian “Harvest.” belonged to Poland since 1921 (1049); in 1944, the Warsaw Genuine scholarly intuitions, bold historical insurrectionists surrendered after 63 days, and not after 94, verdicts, illuminating observations; these and many other and on 2 October and not 4 October (1041); on the night of virtues are present in this unusual literary-historical collage 13 December 1981, General Jaruzelski did not manage to titled Europe: A History. We have to remain indisputably arrest ‘in a few hours’ 40,000-50,000 Solidarity activists; grateful to Norman Davies for his achievement. But, as the total number of the interned and arrested was about 5,000 an ancient adage says, Plato is a friend, but truth is a greater (1108). friend... Davies pays a considerable price for his achievement ‘It is not sufficient for the good historian merely to as a single narrator of such a complex plot. One is establish facts and to muster the evidence,’ writes Davies, tempted to apply to the author of Europe: A History the ‘The other half of the task is to penetrate the readers’ same words he applies to Izaak Babel as the author of minds, to do battle with all the distorting preceptors with Konarmiia: ‘He is quite content to burgle history, so long which every consumer of history is equipped.’ Norman as the resulting haul is artistically satisfying.’ (936) So Davies has proved with his last book how wonderfully Davies’ great work contains a number of small errors and efficient he is in executing the second half of the historian’s quite a few typographical errors which ‘burgle’ dates and task in particular. After the editorial revisions which will figures. Most of these mistakes are trivial when taken in presumably be made after initial printings, the book will January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 519 become a classic for many decades. minority group is stridently crying about its past suffering For us, the peoples of the ‘other Europe,’ the and victimization, in order to assert its moral superiority book is a priceless gift. Davies went against the prejudices over the majority and obtain appropriate entitlements and which still run deep in the corridors of academic power. In redress. Among the hidden casualties of a society consumed Davies’ book, the history of Europe has been presented by by victimology are those persons and nations that actually a Westerner without massive silencing of voices from did suffer incredibly in the past, but whose histories are, for Europe’s eastern half. Davies’ boldness has been a shocking whatever reason, considered inappropriate or irrelevant to offense and scandal to many. In spite of many minor the current public debate. The sufferings of Poles in Nazi- mistakes, the book introduces a major correction to our and Soviet-occupied Poland during World War II clearly fall attempts to understand Europe’s history. Δ under this category. These two memoirs constitute an excellent reminder of those sufferings, and they also define Editor’s note: The seventh printing of the book, in May 1997, more closely what true suffering, oppression, and eliminated a good number of mistakes and typos present in the victimization consist of. initial printings. Kojder’s family history begins before World War I. The miseries of life under virtual serfdom in eastern Europe Marynia Don’t Cry: described in the book extended to about 70% of the population in that area. Only the strongest, healthiest, and Memoirs most enterprising people could survive. Kojder recounts the extraordinary women of her family who managed to piece of Two Polish-Canadian life together - often in the absence of men - after it was repeatedly shattered by war and hard times. The title of the Families book comes from some lines of comfort given from mother (Kojder’s great-grandmother) to daughter in 1926: ‘Marynia, By Apolonja Maria Kojder and Barbara don’t cry. As long as I’m alive I’ll help you. And maybe you’ll survive because nobody will bother you. And later Głogowska. Foreword by Benedykt Heydenkorn. your children will help you.’ (18) Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1995. Multicultural History Society of Ontario- The dissolution into banal, shallow, North Ethnocultural Voices Series. ISBN 0-919045-65- American identifications of the majority of these 0. 196 pages, 20 photos, 1 map. Paper. $24.94. persons of Polish descent... is also some kind of tragedy. Mark Wegierski Kojder’s family had achieved a relative degree of prosperity in eastern Poland by 1939, at least for poor The so-called ethnic writing in Canada, unless it is peasants. But as a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact, eastern done by currently fashionable minorities, is often relegated Poland was incorporated into the Soviet empire. In the winter to the margins of literary and popular appreciation. This of 1939-1940, the mass deportations of Poles to Siberia book, however, particularly Kojder’s section (“A Mother’s began. Persons were literally given an hour’s notice before Legacy”) says something meaningful about the human being herded on cattle cars that traveled for several weeks condition in the twentieth century. Głogowska’s piece, before reaching Siberia. Thousands died just in this passage. “Three Generations,” is a short addendum to the main Once there, they were conscripted into back-breaking forced family story told by Kojder, and it deals with Polish suffering labor. In a deft touch, Kojder notes the degrees of unfreedom during World War II, the difficulties of life in Canada before in the Soviet Union: as simple peasants, her family was ‘only’ the 1960s, the hardworking endeavors of Polish immigrants subject to forced labor, not to the horrors of political to Canada and their adamant refusal to take advantage of incarceration. Deaths under forced-labor, semi-starvation the system. When reading the memoirs, we find ourselves conditions abounded, of course. Those who could not meet light years away from present-day Canadian realities and the heavy work assignments were not fed even the meager political attitudes. food of regular laborers, and quickly passed away. What Kojder’s narrative abundantly makes clear What we are seeing in Canada today is the is that, even when the Soviet Union became an ally of the dominance of one, hyperliberal culture, combined West as a result of Hitler’s invasion, and Poles were with multiracialism, rather than a pluralism of true theoretically allowed to leave Soviet territory, absolutely cultural diversities. no help was afforded in the evacuation process. Tens of thousands died of disease or starvation after the agreement reached by Stalin and the Polish government-in-exile in It seems that in Canada today, virtually every London. 520 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 When World War II ended, Poland’s boundaries in Polish translation. Apolonja Maria Kojder, who is were shifted by 200 miles westward, which meant there was currently working on her doctorate in Education at the no return possible for Kojder’s family. Kojder lists twenty University of Toronto, is one of only a few persons of the relatives who had not survived the war. Among these were generation born in Canada, the offspring of the postwar her father’s brother, Antek, who was executed by the Soviets immigrant wave ‘of a troubled time,’ who have maintained in 1940, probably at Katyƒ. A further tragedy struck the a significant degree of Polish heritage. Out of those tens of family in late 1945, when her father’s cousin, Władysław thousands of persons of Polish descent born in Canada Kojder, a prominent leader of the independent Polish between 1945 to 1965, only a handful have maintained a Peasants’ Party in newly-liberated Poland, was murdered significant degree of identification with Polishness. by the communist secret police. Kojder notes that the actual perpetrators remain unknown and unpunished to this very day. Many years after the fact, the family found out that When the Soviet Union became an ally of the Stanisław Pieczko, her father’s brother-in-law, had died in West as a result of Hitler’s invasion, and Poles were 1947, having refused Soviet citizenship, ‘in the gulag theoretically allowed to leave Soviet territory, location of Oktsiubinsk, Kazakhstan, of hunger and absolutely no help was afforded in the evacuation poisoning from his job in a chemical factory.’ (99) process. As opposed to all this misery, one would have thought Canada would offer a sunny contrast. However, by Further study is called for, as to why such a the standards of the engorged, post-1960s lifestyle most of comparatively large generation melted almost completely us are accustomed to and vociferously demand as our into the North American mold. What can be immediately ‘natural right,’ Canada also appears, in both Kojder’s and noticed is that this generation lived in an era of transition. Głogowska’s pieces, as ‘no picnic.’ It is rather ironic that At the beginning, assimilation was sharply demanded, and before the 1960s, eastern Europeans and white ethnics in ‘ethnics’ were not especially popular, but afterwards the era general were seen as ‘too ethnic;’ while in the post-1960s of so-called multiculturalism began. After the introduction period, they are seen as ‘not ethnic enough.’ For example, of multiculturalism policy in Canada in the late 1960s, when questions about ethnic origin in the Canadian census were in fact the main ethnic groups in Canada were eastern and not used as a basis for affirmative action initiatives, as is southern Europeans, it might have seemed that, finally, these the case today with so-called ‘visible minorities.’ It could groups would get their chance for ‘a place in the sun.’ But it be argued that what we are seeing in Canada today is the turned out that the further evolution of multiculturalism in dominance of one, hyperliberal culture, combined with Canada entailed the mass immigration of visible minorities. multiracialism, rather than a pluralism of true cultural It often happened that in the space of five or so years, there diversities. would arrive in Canada more persons from some visible minority group (e.g., to cite some of the latest examples, Kojder lists twenty relatives who did not Somalis or Tamils), than there had arrived of representatives survive World War II. of some white ethnic group in the space of a century. Multicultural policy thus effectively turned out to be a policy Apolonja Kojder pointedly writes: ‘Sometimes I of multiracialism, where the focus of concern was to be not heard...that the natives wanted compensation for the land the longstanding ‘white ethnic’ minorities, but the newly the white people had taken from them. And I’d wonder why arrived visible minority groups. nobody talked about the land that had been taken from my The dissolution into banal, shallow, North parents and grandmother by the Russians....’ (136) American identifications of the majority of these persons of The reviewer would recommend the reading of this Polish descent (who could be termed, somewhat poetically, book for those who want to find out what life in the earlier ‘the last generation of the Polish Second Republic’) is also part of the twentieth century - and probably throughout most some kind of tragedy. of human history - was really like. In the reviewer’s opinion, Apolonja Kojder ends her book with a tribute to the book offers a highly valuable perspective especially for her father, who died much too early in a tragic accident on those who feel themselves so direly oppressed today. the railway, while trying to save the life of a fellow worker: Comparing those earlier situations with today’s situations ‘My father’s favorite quotation was a line from would allow the reader to get a feel for the extremities which Adam Mickiewicz’s “Oda do młodoÊci,” or “Ode to Youth:” characterize this century. Extending, for example, from the ‘Without a heart, without a soul — man is but a skeleton....’ almost casually accepted mass murders of innocent persons (138) under totalitarian regimes, to the unwillingness of current The endeavors and efforts of persons of this Polish- Western democracies to properly punish even the most Canadian generation who, like Apolonja Maria Kojder, heinous crimes or to uphold the sovereignty of their borders persevered in their Polishness, and in a patriotic outlook on in the face of a burgeoning immigration tide. Polish matters, should be especially cherished. Δ It would be highly desirable for this book to appear January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 521
The Forgotten Few: The Polish Like other young men smitten with the allure of Air Force flying, early Polish pilots were fun-loving and risk-taking barnstormers. They flew for the red and white in conflicts in the Second World War ranging from World War I to the Polish-Soviet war. They By Adam Zamoyski. New York. Hippocrene came from all social classes and regions in Poland. The Polish Air Force gained respectability through superb pilot Books [171 Madison Avenue, New York, NY training and ground support that was second to none. 10016]. 1995. xi + 239 pages. Index. Bibliography. Maps and photographs. Hardcover. It is a recurring feature of Polish history, and $24.95. of the history of the Polish Air Force, that the Poles do not control the ‘means of production’ - in this case, Joseph Kotarba production of airplanes. They only fly them, albeit exceedingly well.
My educated guess is that most Polish-Americans’ When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, however, understanding of the role of the Polish military in World the 159 open-cockpit and slow Polish P-11 fighter planes War II consists of grossly misleading accounts presented in were no match for the Luftwaffe’s 2000 sleek and powerful the mass media. The most common accounts are those Messerschmitts. The surrender of Poland a month later led offered in thirty-second sound bites of late-night television to the exodus of Polish pilots who, for the most part, ended documentaries on World War II combat. The typical bite up in England. There, they joined the Allied war effort and begins with a film of Stuka dive bombers screaming towards accounted for themselves quite well. In all, the Polish Air and blasting away small groups of Polish cavalry - on Force in Britain consisted of 14 squadrons and 17,000 pilots horseback, no less! - with gleaming swords raised high. The and support personnel. They flew a total of 102,486 sorties, bite concludes with a wave of Panzer tanks roaring over the shot down 745 enemy planes, dropped thousands of bombs, land to finish off the gallant if confused Polish officers. By and laid hundreds of mines. Almost 2,000 fliers were killed means of such sound bites, Polish military efforts during and almost as many were wounded. The Polish Air Force the war come across as just another Polish joke. fought hard in spite of spotty support from the Allies, cultural differences with British pilots and civilians, debilitating The narrative makes it clear that militancy, confinement in Soviet gulags earlier in the war, a longing of the kind practiced so often by Germans and for home, and a host of other hardships. The Polish pilots Russians, is simply not a Polish feature. fought with the hope that they would eventually return triumphantly to their homeland, a hope dashed by the Allied Adam Zamoyski’s readable history of the Polish betrayal at Yalta. Air Force does much to dispel the misconception of modern Although Zamoyski’s descriptions of battle activity Polish military ineptitude. He tells a marvelous and often is thrilling, the best material in the book is the personal humorous adventure story, full of bravery, commitment, stories of the heroic pilots. One of Zamoyski’s stars is Jan pride, and determination. The reader also gets bits of insight “Johnny” Zumbach. Zumbach was Squadron Leader of the into the Polish character. most famous Polish squadron, #303. He quickly built quite Zamoyski sets the tone for the book with his a reputation both as a fearless dogfighter, shooting down account of the birth of the Polish Air Force: eight German planes during the Battle of Britain, and as a ladies’ man. In December 1944, Zumbach met a shady The first Polish operational flight took off on 5 entrepreneur in a bar in Wellington, and was soon helping November 1918 from Lewandowska airfield against him move uncut diamonds from London to Brussels in his Ukrainian nationalist forces attacking the city of Mustang fighter plane. After several years of short-term Lwów. It was carried out by Janusz deBeaurain, the and unrewarding (i.e., land-based) jobs, Zumbach was asked son of a doctor from Zakopane, and Stefan Bastyr, an in 1962 by Moise Tshombe to create an air force for Katanga, officer in the Austro-Hungarian air service. They were the rebel province in the Congo. Zumbach also fought in piloting a contraption composed of salvaged parts of and survived the war in Biafra in 1967. He died a mysterious at least three different aircraft....The flying machine, death in 1986. proudly painted in the Polish colors of white and red, One very obvious point Zamoyski makes bumped along the grass runway and rose steadily into throughout his book is that the Polish Air Force and its the air. It puttered over the Ukrainian lines and exploits were, and still are in the Western world, largely dropped two bombs, causing more astonishment than under-appreciated if not forgotten. After the war, the British damage, and then returned safely to Lwów. The Polish did not want them to stay, and the Soviet-imposed Air Force was born. (6) government in Warsaw did not want them to return. I can 522 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 think of two issues discussed in Zamoyski’s book that go a mass media in the United States, Zamoyski’s story would long way in explaining this sad fate, one negative and one be written into a screen play and produced as a film. The positive factor that together may also apply to the Polish film would be built around the exploits of Johnny Zumbach, experience more generally. to be played by...let’s see...how about Tom Cruise? Yes, First, to borrow from Marxist terminology, the Tom Cruise would do a great job recreating the spirit of Polish Air Force did not control its means of production: a courage and cunning that marked the Polish Air Force pilots historically recurring problem for Poles and Polish- and crew, but which also marks who we are. Postmodern Americans. It was largely an air force without its own planes. culture, dominated by the presence of the mass media, offers The Polish pilots were dependent on the availability of this strategy as an appropriate way for ethnic groups to British, French and American planes and supplies. They successfully project their character to the world. Δ took their orders and pay from British officers and, consequently, they sometimes appear as underpaid and naively romantic mercenaries in Zamoyski’s book. I do not F.M. Dostoevskii. Poetika. like this feature of our ethnic character. Second, Zamoyski’s forgotten few provide Mirooshchushchenie. Bogoiskatel’stvo. additional evidence for a feature of the Polish character that should be obvious to everyone, but for some strange reason by Louis Allain. St. Petersburg. Izdatel’stvo Logos. is not: Poles are not very mean or militant. Sure, Zamoyski’s 1996. 173 pages. Paper. In Russian. pilots loved the adrenaline rush of a good dogfight, a crisply tailored uniform, a timely salute, and the adoring attention of the single girls in town. Zamoyski, however, provides Angela Brintlinger no evidence that the pilots were in any way inclined to treat the enemy as an object to be hated and annihilated, the way The essay “Poetics” which opens the book is the most the German and Russian troops did in accordance with their interesting and challenging of all. In it, Louis Allain rejects commitment to total warfare. Feliks Szyszka’s experience Mikhail Bakhtin’s reading of Dostoevskii’s characters, arguing is illustrative: that Bakhtin’s main mistake was in confusing the aesthetics of the novel with the aesthetics of the theater. Ultimately Allain Feliks Szyszka was shot down over Warsaw on the concludes that Bakhtin ‘underestimated the ambitions of first day of the war, and as he hung on his parachute, Dostoevskii the ideologue, Dostoevskii the thinker.’ (19) his face and body badly burned, a German fighter Emphasizing the illusionary nature of theatricality in the novel, flew back and forth shooting at him. He had seventeen Allain suggests that the characters are merely ‘marionettes’ in bullet wounds on his legs alone when he landed, and the hands of the author and not living people or theater actors spent four months in the hospital....In Britain he joined with their own personalities, fates and world views. Dostoevskii one of the Polish fighter squadrons, and in 1941, over never gives away his right to the word; his voice is audible France, bagged his first Messerschmitt. The German within the voice of each of the other characters, especially those baled out, and Szyszka found himself tearing down on of secondary characters who are more likely to enunciate the parachuting pilot. ‘I really don’t know what was philosophical tirades for their author. This convincing anti- happening with me, but my finger was poised on the Bakhtinian stance seems to me a real contribution to Dostoevskii machine-gun button,’ he recalls. ‘I only needed to studies. press it. But I had to see his face. So I bore down on The first essay continues with an illuminating analysis him and held my fire. The German grew in my sights, of the ‘semiotics of the gesture and of speech’ in Dostoevskii. twisting on the cords and waving his arms fanatically. Drawing on most of the major novels and some of the minor In the end I saw his face clearly. It was terrible, but ones (especially The Gambler), Allain argues that Dostoevskii’s different, oh how different, from the face I had seen own relationship to his body (perceived as weak and unreliable over Warsaw. It was crazed with fear. The German in contrast to the mind) shapes the physical descriptions and dropped his arms and hung there like a rag doll. But actions of his characters. Dostoevskii’s lack of the ‘gift of I could not shoot. I just couldn’t. I banked my Spitfire gesture’ (as opposed, we may assume, to the gift of and passed a few meters from his face. For awhile I loquaciousness) made him uncomfortable with others, and his watched as the parachute drifted groundwards. Then characters inherit from him this discomfort and alienation. (22- I rejoined the squadron, and when I landed - I 23) An analysis of ‘the phrase’ in Dostoevskii focuses on the suddenly felt deep happiness.’ (117) ‘snake-like’ logic often found in the speech of narrator and character alike; calling Dostoevskii psychologically indecisive, I am glad Feliks did not shoot the German pilot, and I am Allain suggests a Tiutchevian attitude toward the word in the glad we are like Feliks. great novelist, echoing Tiutchev’s ‘a thought spoken is a lie.’ When I finished reading this book, I imagined what This line of thought leads into the final section of the essay, a great story this would be for Americans besides those of one devoted to ‘the poetics of the unspoken’ in The Devils. Polish descent. If we had any meaningful influence on the January 1998 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 523 In the second essay, “World-sensation,” Allain plays arguments throughout the book with no acknowledgement of with the idea of seeing versus sensing, experiencing the world, their earlier mention and no sense of building upon the author’s by not using the more familiar, and more translatable, concept previous theses. The reader finds her/himself wishing for a bit of world view, Weltanschauung. Allain describes Dostoevskii’s more credit in assimilating the material and for a wider range search for coherence in the world, for a system by which man of textual support drawn from Dostoevskii’s work. can operate, identifying that search as a struggle between the The series in which F.M. Dostoevskii was published, law of order and the law of accident. (82) The most fascinating titled Fates, Evaluations, Memoirs, represents an exciting section of this second essay addresses what Allain calls development in the realm of interlinguistic scholarship. The ‘Dostoevskii’s Bestiary.’ There are three main groupings of links between France and Russia exemplified by this book offer animals in Dostoevskii’s oeuvre, Allain argues, ‘reptiles and a vision of cross-cultural conversation that is often lacking in wild animals, domesticated animals in the broad sense, and the field. But this fact points to an additional frustration with insects.’ (99) Allain discusses these animals type by type, animal this volume for the American audience: while the book by animal, focusing particularly on the use of animals to demonstrates cultural connections forged by French and describe human beings through metaphor, simile, or association. Russian scholars, Allain’s essays might have gained an extra The author finds that the horse is the most valued of animals dimension if such American scholars as Michael Holquist, for Dostoevskii, the bull is despised because it is too crude and Joseph Frank, David Bethea and Harriet Murav had been violent (see Bykov in “Poor Folk”); the monkey is a particularly referenced. David Bethea’s theories of the horse in Idiot would hated image in Dostoevskii (which stems, Allain suggests, from offer interesting dialogue with Allain’s bestiary (The Shape of Dostoevskii’s attitude toward Darwin and Darwinists). Insects the Apocalypse in Modern Russian Fiction, Princeton 1989); in general and the spider in particular, as any attentive reader Harriet Murav’s recent Holy Foolishness: Dostoevsky’s Novels of the great novels knows, is connected with sexual violence and the Poetics of Cultural Critique (Stanford 1992) could and sensuality, a connection Allain identifies through a poem have shed more light on Dostoevskii’s God-seeking. However, by Schiller translated into the Russian by Tiutchev. This ordered while we continue to hope for more such interaction between scheme of animals and humans may indeed be Dostoevskii’s scholars publishing in different languages, readers will enjoy systematic way of perceiving the world around him. meditating upon the abundant and rich quotations and The third essay, subtitled “Dostoevskii before God,” reiterations of important themes and issues in Dostoevskii’s details the novelist’s search for belief, for Christ, for salvation work to be found in these essays by the French scholar Louis and for God. Allain argues that Dostoevskii’s Allain. Δ anthropomorphism ‘irresistibly aspires to egomorphism;’ (168) thus Dostoevskii takes any attacks on Christ personally, and indeed Christ becomes one of Dostoevskii’s own characters. About the Authors (170) Allain ultimately concludes that Dostoevskii was able to Angela Brintlinger is Assistant Professor of Slavic languages find God by believing in himself and his art, and thus in the and Literatures at Ohio State University. Russian people and their soul, which led him to Christ and Joseph A. Kotarba is Professor of Sociology at the University from Christ to God. Thus the proof becomes circular: Allain of Houston. asserts that Dostoevsky was able to perceive various reflections David Malcolm is Professor of English at the University of of the divine within himself (172) and it was precisely such Gdaƒsk. evidence of the existence of God which he sought. John Merchant, a graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago, In all three essays, the incomprehensibility of is a doctoral student at Jagiellonian University. Dostoevskii’s characters constitutes a repeated theme. Andrzej Nowak is the founder and editor of Arcana, a cultural ‘Dostoevskii’s heroes,’ writes Allain, ‘are not fully clear not and political bimonthly. only to themselves but also to the author himself, not to mention Hal H. Rennert is Associate Professor of German at the the occasional bewilderment of the reader.’ (85) University of Florida. Having rejected the Bakhtinian reading of the Mark Wegierski, a native of Canada, writes for Telos, relationship between characters and narrator, as well as between Humanitas, Arcana and other philosophical and social journals. characters and author, Allain tries to find another route to Aleksandra Ziołkowska-Boehm is a Polish writer and literary understanding Dostoevskii. His approach is essentially critic. biographical and psychological, treating material from The Diary of a Writer and Dostoevskii’s letters on an equal basis Acknowledgements with the author’s fictional works. A slightly more problematic We acknowledge permission of the Verlag Richard Scherpe characteristic of Allain’s approach is its non-chronological to translate and publish Marie Luise Kaschnitz’s nature, which gives one the sense that Dostoevskii’s literary “Märzwind.” We also thank the Canadian Polish Research works are being examined as if they had been written Institute in Toronto for permission to publish Aleksandra simultaneously. While each essay has its individual merits, the Ziołkowska-Boehm’s interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer book remains essentially a disconnected collection; the essays prior to its publication in book form. do not seem to have been reedited to form a whole. One result is that occasionally, the same quotes are used to bolster 524 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 1998 Central Europe Study Group at Cat Was Sick Rice University Chory kotek
presents Stanisław Jachowicz (1796-1867) Translated by David Malcolm Paul Gottfried Elisabethtown College Cat was sick and lay in bed. The doctor came. “How’s things?” he said. Cat held out his paw - “So bad, I need...” Polonophobia He took his pulse - yes, sick indeed. and Other Phobias Surprised he snaps: “Too much guzzling, cat. And what’s more, not mice, but ham and fat. So bad...a fever! Oh cat, so bad, February 6, 1997, 7:00 PM (Friday) You’ll stay in bed a long time, lad. 110 Rayzor Hall With nothing to eat - gruel at most - Rice University No wurst, no cakes, by the Holy Ghost!”
“Maybe a mouse?” cat whispers scared. Professor Gottfried is a noted American intellectual and a “Or the tiny wee thighs of a tiny wee bird?” prolific writer. His “Polonophobia,” published in Chronicles “Good Lord, no! Leeches and diet severe, in January 1997, generated a spirited discussion. Your recovery hangs on that, I fear.” Wine and cheese party to follow. So cat rested - wurst and tripe This lecture is co-sponsored by the Houston Chapter of the Untasted - and mice both plump and ripe. Kosciuszko Foundation. See the effects of gluttony! Cat ignored the mean, So the poor chap was punished, as we have seen. We would like to thank those persons and institutions who have Thus, too, with you children, may it be - contributed to the Sarmatian Review Publication Fund in God shield you from the sin of gluttony! September-December 1997: Mr.& Mrs. Jim & Marla Burns, CPA, of BURNS AND ASSOCIATES; Mr. & Mrs. Tadeusz & Zofia Burzynski; Dr. Andrew Ehrenkreutz; Mr. & Mrs. Vassil & Roza Ekimov; Professor RADIO COURIER & Mrs. Ralph & Elisabeth Frankowski; Dr. & Mrs. Boguslaw & Polish American Radio Network Maria Godlewski; Ms. Jadwiga J. Henderson; Dr. & Mrs. Joseph P.O. Box 130146 A. Jachimczyk; Col. Francis C. Kajencki (U.S. Army, ret.); Dr. & Houston, Texas 77219 Mrs. Waclaw & Malgorzata Mucha; Mr. & Mrs. Tadeusz & Polish Language Program Krystyna Pawulski; Drs. Waldemar & Teresa Priebe; Mr. Richard C. Prusinski; Ms. Aurellia Sobczyk; Mrs. Barbara Z. Saturday 11:00 AM, 1520 KYND Surmaczynski, Dr. & Mrs. Andrew & Patricia Thomas. Feminist Corner
In 1988, Polish chess player Monika Bobrowska, age 10, came in second in the world chess competition for children. This GiveGive wherewhere itit reallyreally year, she came in second in the competition for the best young (up to the age of 20) chess players in Europe. Three other Pol- countscounts ish women took ranking places in the same competition in Tallin, Estonia. Marian Kester Coombs says that girls mature earlier than boys: 'God's way of bettering the survival odds for supportsupport female children,' and then boys overtake them. Monika seems to be a counterexample. Congrats Monika! TheThe SarmatianSarmatian ReviewReview Sources: Nowy Dziennik (NY), 22 September 1997; Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, October 1997.