THE SARMATIAN REVIEW
Vol. XXIX, No. 2 April 2009
Tradition and the Contemporary Talent
The first page (in the original Latin) of Polish historian Wincenty Kadłubek’s History of Poland (13th c.) The first printed edition by Jan Szcz∏sny Herburt (1612) was reprinted without changes by Heinrich Huyssen in 1712, as reproduced above. Courtesy of the Woodson Research Center at Rice University. Photo by Philip Montgomery. 1460 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2009
The Sarmatian Review (ISSN 1059- BOOKS Books ...... 1481 scholar’s labor. The second seeks 5872) is a triannual publication of the Polish Institute Kimitaka Matsuzato, History and innovation in the work discussed, and of Houston. The journal deals with Polish, Central, the possibility of a new interpretation. and Eastern European affairs, and it explores their Geopolitics: A Contest for Eastern implications for the United States. We specialize in Europe (review)...... 1481 Professor McQuillen’s analysis of the translation of documents.Sarmatian Review is Stanisław Wyspiaƒski’s monumental indexed in the American Bibliography of Slavic and James E. Reid, Katyƒ: A film East European Studies, EBSCO, and P.A.I.S. directed and written by Andrzej play offers a nontraditional International Database. From January 1998 on, files Wajda (review) ...... 1483 interpretation; mutatis mutandis, it in PDF format are available at the Central and Eastern plays the same role regarding that play European Online Library (www.ceeol.com). Theresa Kurk McGinley, Ameri- Subscription price is $21.00 per year for individuals, can Betrayal (review) . . . . .1485 that the hero of Gombrowicz’s $28.00 for institutions and libraries ($28.00 for About the Authors ...... 1486 Ferdydurke played with regard to individuals, $35.00 for libraries overseas, air mail). Polish Romanticism. The views expressed by authors of articles do not Thank You Note ...... 1486 necessarily represent those of the Editors or of the Announcements & Notes . . . 1486 During the process of translation Polish Institute of Houston. Articles are subject to and editing of Adam Mickiewicz’s editing. Unsolicited manuscripts and other materials First Lecture at Coll ge de France, are not returned unless accompanied by a self- From the Editor è addressed and stamped envelope. Please submit your it was discovered that in the edition rofessor Domaƒski’s article contribution electronically and, if requested, send a of Mickiewicz’s Lectures published printout by air mail. Submissions and Letters to the about thirteenth-century Polish P in Soviet-occupied Poland in 1974 Editor can be e-mailed to
Hedge funds in 2008 Number of hedge funds worldwide in 2008: about ten thousand. Amount of capital they controlled: 200 billion dollars. Percentage of hedge funds operating from London and New York (including its environs): 20 percent and 40 percent, respectively. Difference between hedge funds and other investment funds: hedge funds are said to “enjoy lighter regulation and considerably greater freedom of action than the investment companies that advertise in the financial pages.” Source: “An Address in Mayfair: Donald MacKenzie on Hedge Funds,” London Review of Books, 4 December 2008. European economy in 2008 recession Fall of GNP in select EU countries in the fourth quarter of 2008: Germany, -2.1 percent (estimated loss for 2009, -3.6 percent); France, -1.2 percent; Italy, -1.8 percent; Holland, -0.9 percent; UK, -1.5 percent; Estonia, - 9.4 percent; Czech Republic, -0.6 percent; Hungary, -1.0 percent (estimated drop in 2009: 3.5–5.0 percent). Source: Rzeczpospolita, 12 February 2009; BBC News, 13 February 2009. Poland is doing well in the crisis so far Increase in Polish GDP in the last quarter of 2008 (year-on-year): 3.1 percent. Source: Eurostat, as reported by Michał Pawlak in Donosy, no. 4848 (6 March 2009). Increase in car sales in Poland in February 2009: 13.3 percen in comparison to January 2009; 7.2 percent in comparison to February 2008. Source: Michał Jankowski in Donosy, no. 4847 (5 March 2009). Is “New Europe” sovereign? Percentage of “emerging Europe” bank assets owned by Western European banks: 80 percent. Source: Peter Attard Montalto in Financial Times, 16 February 2009. Global crisis and Russia Russian stock market losses in May and October 2008: 2,487 points and 550 points, respectively (a loss of approximately 80 percent). Fall in Russian industrial production in November 2008: 8.7 percent in comparison to November 2007, 7.5 percent in comparison with October 2008. Drop in standard of living in November 2008 in comparison to November 2007: 6.2 percent (2.9 percent in comparison to October 2008). Source: Ekaterina Mereminskaia, “Otlozhennye nadezhdy,”
Translated by permission by the Sarmatian Review staff. All Greek and some Latin quotations were translated into English. This article Sanctity or Sanctimony first appeared in Teologia Polityczna (Józefów, Poland), no. 1 (2003/2004), 154–163. in Stanis ław Wyspiaƒski’s Akropolis On Boundary Oppositions, Subverted Expectations, and NOTES Irony 1. Magistri Vincentii Chronicon Polonorum, or Chronica seu originale regum et principum Poloniae (different mss. have different titles), late twelfth century. The translation Colleen McQuillen into Polish by Brygida Kürbis and Kazimierz Abgarowicz was published in 1974 in Warsaw and titled Kronika Polska. he theme of animation, which constitutes one of Wincenty Kadłubek (1150–1223) became Bishop of Kraków Tthe essential elements of Stanisław Wyspiaƒski’s in 1207. In 1218 he resigned the bishopric and retired to a (1869–1907) poetics, manifests itself in Akropolis Cistercian monastery in J∏drzejów where he dedicated himself to scholarly work. He was beatified in 1774 by Pope through the multi-faceted story of resurrection. The Clement XIII. The first three volumes of his Chronicles take story resonates on a complementary array of thematic the form of a dialogue between Archbishop John of Gniezno and formal levels. First and foremost, the play opens and Bishop Matthew of Kraków. on the Night of Resurrection and closes with the 2. Bolesław the Brave opposed Bishop Szczepanowski’s resurrection of Christ on Easter. Acts 1 and 4 take place attempts to bring Poland closer to Germany. The conflict between midnight and dawn on the night before Easter between the king and the bishop has been subject to many and tell the story of Wawel Cathedral’s statuary coming debates: some historians side with Bolesław as representative to life to demonstrate the resurrection of Christ, who of Polish national interest; others claim that the king was in the play is called Salvador or Salvador-Apollo.[1] merely a proud and vain man, a Henry VIII in the making, Commentators have repeatedly referred to the play’s and that Bishop Stanisław was trying to restrain him. Bolesław killed Szczepanowski while the latter was saying allegorical meaning, one that rests on the idea of Poland mass. as the Christ of Nations: like the suffering Christ, 3. J. B. Korolec, “Ideał władcy w “Kronice” Mistrza Poland will rise up and once again become a sovereign Wincentego. Rola cnót moralnych w legitymizacji władzy,” state. Resurrection, however, is just one aspect of the in Pogranicza i konteksty literatury polskiego Êredniowiecza, play; another is the problem of the liminal spaces edited by Teresa Michałowska (Warsaw, 1989); “Les vertus created when opposing conditions, such as death and de la view publique,” Société et l’Église dans les Universités life, meet. This threshold is productive as a site of a d’Europe central pendant le Moyen Age Tardif (Actes du new synthesis. In this article I argue that liminality Colloque international de Cracovie, 1993), edited by Sophie constitutes the heart of Wyspiaƒski’s cryptic play and Włodek (Tournhout, 1995). is one of the reasons why the play has baffled critics 4. Władysław I Herman (1043–1102), ruler of Poland from 1079 until death. Bolesław III Krzywousty (1085–1138), and resisted stage performance over the past century. ruler of Poland from 1102 until death, withstood German On the formal level, the play (written in verse) emperor’s attact on Głogów (1109), conquered western challenges conventions of the dramatic genre. With the Pomerania and annexed it to Poland in 1122. Zbigniew incursion of the fantastical and disconnected plots, Herman (1017–1112) was removed from power by his Akropolis is what Martin Puchner would call an stepbrother Bolesław Krzywousty. He avenged himself by “exuberantly anti-theatrical” modernist play. Puchner turning to the German emperor and precipitating a German explains that the modernists’ penchant for writing plays attack on Poland. Sieciech, a Kraków-area aristocrat for the armchair reader rather than the theater spectator April 2009 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1469 resulted in plays with an excessively strong focus on Such a totalizing experience is similar to what the written attributes of the text. As Puchner puts it, Wyspiaƒski described in his letters to fellow poet and “The modernist closet dramas seek to undo the theater playwright Lucjan Rydel. The churches Wyspiaƒski and its human actors through programs that are best visited in France and Germany in 1890 seemingly came described by terms such as literariness, écriture, and to life and performed before his eyes: statues in writerliness” (18). By hovering in a liminal zone Strasbourg swayed to organ music, faces in the friezes between the genres of poetry and drama, and because at Reims ceased laughing when they were watched, of the various thematic manifestations of liminality, and all of Amiens itself became animated as if springing the play cannot be easily categorized or interpreted in to life (Taylor 199). For Wyspiaƒski, it was not just the a consistent fashion. Furthermore, I will suggest that church rituals that were performative; he experienced the delicate boundary between sincere national piety the physical structure of the churches as if they were and self-referential irony that the play straddles allowed performing. Jerzy Grotowski to stage a performance in 1962 that The playwright’s vivification of these European on the surface appeared antithetical to Wyspianski’s churches reveals early on the central role that animation original text. While his production was seemingly the will come to play in his poetics, including the poetics flip side of Wyspiaƒski’s play, Grotowski only nudged of stained glass. Two of Wyspiaƒski’s most famous Wyspiaƒski’s original concept out of the liminal space stained-glass windows, “Lord God” (Pan Bóg) and and into definitive irony. “Apollo” (completed at the Franciscan Church of Wyspiaƒski’s artistic output as a writer and painter Kraków in 1904, the same year Akropolis appeared) and his academic training as historian, art historian, shimmer with the sun’s vital force, seeming to animate and philosopher make him one of the most fascinating the figures depicted.[3] “Lord God” is a particularly and celebrated figures of the Young Poland movement. poignant example: the window’s subtitle, “Staƒ si∏!” His work has frequently been likened to that of Hugo meaning “Become!” or “Rise up!” plays out its own von Hoffmansthal and Henrik Ibsen, and his dramas command each morning with the rising of the sun. As reflect some of the primary concerns of French and the sun and clouds move across the sky, the illumination Russian Symbolists. Writing at the fin de siècle, the of “Lord God” changes in intensity and mood, and meeting of two centuries, the Russian Symbolists produces the optical illusion that it is Lord God himself expressed a certain centennial angst and apocalyptic rising up. The subject of Wyspiaƒski’s other great anxiety. This real-life liminality fueled their stained-glass window of 1904 likewise resonates with investigations into the ontological ramifications of the artistic medium: a stained-glass window is the boundary transgressions. Symbolist theatrical quintessential homage to Apollo, also known as experiments, with their overt attention to the fluidity Phoebus, god of the sun. of both physical and metaphysical boundaries, often Wyspiaƒski’s fascination with boundary crossings used the actual and conceptual space between actor and repeatedly manifests itself as the intrusion of the audience, creator and participant, art and life, as forums fantastical into reality. In Akropolis the fantastical for exploring boundaries and their transgression. consists not only of the miracle of Christ’s resurrection, The Symbolists’ desire to remove the footlights but also of the fact that statues and tapestry figures separating actor from audience stems from Nietzsche’s come to life. The fantastic, as Tzvetan Todorov theory that drama originated in ancient Dionysian suggests, depends on perceptual liminality, on what he rituals. In ritual there is no distinction between audience describes as “hesitation.” The fantastic transpires in and actors: everyone participates in the performance.[2] the moment when a character or reader must choose In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche argues that drama whether the event experienced is an “illusion of the grew out of the collective experience of the dithyrambic senses. . . a product of imagination” or “an integral chorus that sang and danced in obeisance to Dionysus. part of reality” (25). Once it is decided one way or He points to the work of Richard Wagner as a another, the event in question falls into the genre of contemporary example of such Dionysian ritual. the uncanny or the marvelous. For an event to be Wagner called his operas that exhibited the same all- fantastic, the reader must also consider it to be neither encompassing esthetic experience of ancient Greek poetic nor allegorical (33). It is impossible, therefore, ritual and drama Gesamtkunstwerk, or Total Art, for us to consider the events of Akropolis fantastic in alluding to the fact that the performances appealed to the Todorovian sense because the allegorical readings all the senses and united sound, image, and motion. are too suggestive. Todorov’s definition of the fantastic 1470 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2009 is nonetheless relevant, in part because of its insight and protective karma; as such, it is the quintessential that perception and cognition can be suspended memory theater, where past and present are creatively between two explanations of events, one that complies recombined. with the laws of the natural world and one that does In Memory and Literature: Intertextuality in Russian not. Along with the animated statuary, Wyspiaƒski Modernism, Renate Lachmann has likened the way that introduces another fantastical discursive space: the memory animates cultural monuments to a theater, and world of dreams in Acts 2 and 3. Dreams are connected she uses the phrase “theater of memory” as a metaphor to Todorov’s fantastic as they coincide with the hours for intertextuality. Her study of the role of cultural of supernatural events. As a reminder of night’s dark memory in modernism is relevant to a discussion of possibilities, Todorov cites the words of Alfonso van Akropolis because of the play’s deep engagement with Worden in Jan Potocki’s Saragossa Manuscript: “As monuments of Polish and, more broadly, Western everyone knows, ghosts have power only from culture. The “theater of memory” is an architectural midnight till cockcrow” (28). space where texts of the past rise up and interact as if Wyspiaƒski’s treatment of time presents another they were live beings, producing a densely coded challenge to boundaries. Akropolis subverts the notions synthesis. In reference to Russian Symbolist Andrei of linearity and causality, and shatters the conventional Bely’s Petersburg, Lachmann writes: “The cerebral dramatic unities of time, place, and action. Wyspiaƒski game of memory calls up images from other literatures situates the play’s four acts in different chronotopes (with their respective spaces reserved for memory), ranging from the Trojan War to Old Testament Israel images from other cultures, religions, and myths, giving to contemporary Poland. While most dramas move them over to the reader who must decipher them” (68). forward, propelled by one unified plot line, Akropolis The multiply coded correspondences of Bely’s memory cycles through time and lacks one central motivating theater are similar to those of Wyspiaƒski in Akropolis, conflict.[4] Act 1 is continued in Act 4 but the plots of since their use of the city space as a cultural palimpsest Acts 2 and 3 are discrete, albeit sequenced and of dense intertextual allusions are clearly visible. chronologically: Act 2 tells the story of Hector and Paris In contrast to Bely, whose web of allusions pertains from The Iliad and Act 3 relates the tale of Jacob and primarily to the Russian literary tradition, Wyspiaƒski Esau in Genesis.[5] draws on the riches of Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Time in also thematized through the Wawel complex Roman civilizations. (Cathedral and Castle), the setting of the play’s action. Just as one can speak of animating Wawel in the Wawel is a historical and cultural palimpsest, carrying theater of memory, one can speak of animating the the past into the present and future. As the former royal memorials that are part of Wawel (statuary and residence and as a necropolis housing the tombs of sculpture). The statues, monuments, and sculptures that Polish kings and military heroes, Wawel is a monument come to life are integrally connected to Wawel; they to past imperial glory and serves as Poland’s national are not merely fixtures, they are part of the structure reliquary. As the quintessential religious and cultural and as such, metonymic extensions of the Cathedral. symbol of Poland, Wawel bridges the sacred and the When the stone and marble statues awaken in Act 1, it secular. It is a sanctified house of worship that also is as if Wawel itself awakens. The animated statuary fulfills the role of national museum and mausoleum serves as a harbinger of Christ’s resurrection, which by housing the tombs of generations of Polish kings, sets up the transitive association of Wawel with the military heroes, and poets. Wawel cuts across time and body of Christ. This relationship directly recalls the existential planes and is a bridge of cultural memory. New Testament’s association of Christ’s body with the With Wawel as the place of action, Akropolis puts at Jerusalem temple. In Act 4 of Akropolis the words of center stage the relationship between performance and the animated statue of King David to Salvador reference cultural memory. Because the Wawel complex is both Jesus’ statement in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple a historical and mythical space where political eras and and in three days I will raise it up.” Says David, “Before cultural legend merge, it escapes the traditional You the Church will fall as rubble onto the heads of diachronic time and emerges as a synthetic artistic space my people. In three days a new one will rise through akin to human memory itself. Wawel is a physical the great cry of Your Word” (211).[6] The Gospel manifestation of memory’s accretions, a structure clarifies that Christ was speaking of the metaphorical whose varied architecture bears witness to its extensive temple of his body, which did indeed rise from the history, and whose mythical associations tell of dragons dead after three days (Hayes 7). April 2009 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1471 This passage of Scripture highlights the fact that people who are not yet ready for deliverance. The hero destruction precedes resurrection, that death is Konrad is a playwright (and a semi-autobiographical necessary for rebirth to occur—the essence of Easter. figure of Wyspiaƒski) who wants to establish a new The martyred Christ of Act 1 whose “blood trickles modern Polish theater, one that will represent the from his hands and feet and face onto the altar” nation. He condemns the esteemed poet Genius (a triumphantly rises up in the culminating scene of Act Mickiewicz figure) for having an outdated messianic 4 (Wyspiaƒski, Akropolis, 9). His resurrection (realized attitude, one that fosters false hopes and glorifies death as the arrival of Salvador-Apollo at Wawel Cathedral) as the only path to salvation and eternal life. Konrad is immediately preceded by physical damage to Wawel, believes that the people’s redemption can come without which serves as a demonstration of His might. The them having to play the martyr. At the end of the play, harpist King David calls on Salvador to tear off the Konrad attempts to lead the people away from the ceiling and burst the walls to show his power (211). danger of messianism, but they are not ready to follow. He then hears Salvador-Apollo arriving in his chariot; The metaphorical reading of Christ’s rising as however, the sound is not of the hooves of white steeds Poland’s uprising is justified by the dual meaning of but the hooves of centaurs, an allusion to the destructive powstanie as both resurrection and insurrection. King Dionysian impulse.[7] The Dionysian force breaks David the harpist reveals this lexical ambiguity in Act down physical and metaphysical barriers, introducing 4 when he declares, “The dead will rise up (powstanà) an element of destruction from which rebirth can begin. when you beckon with your hand” (204). David The centaurs’ hooves bang against the stone columns, addresses Salvador with this declaration, recalling and the walls of Wawel crumble and pour down as a Salvador’s power to restore life, as he (Jesus) did with demonstration of Salvador’s might (212). When Lazarus. Additionally, the words from King David in Salvador arrives, a moment represented sonically by the play have a military-political resonance because his booming voice and the roll of thunder as well as the biblical King David made Ancient Israel an visually by the appearance of Apollo in his golden independent state through his martial victories. In chariot pulled by white steeds, the silver coffin of Akropolis David welcomes Salvador as his people’s Bishop Stanisław Szczepanowski, Poland’s patron liberator: “You will put an end to the captivity of the saint, shatters to pieces.[8] years. . . and crush the fetters,” suggesting physical as This final scene is often read metaphorically as the well as spiritual liberation (206). Finally, David likens shattering of Poland’s past political oppression: the cacophony of Salvador’s violent arrival to a military Poland’s military rising will enable it to emerge once uprising: “And the horns rumble like cannons, like fires again as an independent nation. The Polish Romantics, on those fields; as if all of Poland has already risen Mickiewicz in particular, articulated a national myth up” (217). The insurrection that will ignite the dawn of Poland as the Christ of Nations in which they of a newly independent Poland is thus coded in the juxtaposed Christ’s two opposing roles as Martyr and messianic terms of Salvador’s resurrection. Savior. They held that Poland’s suffering as a politically Among Wyspiaƒski’s four plays that deal with oppressed nation (the memories of the failed rising of national problems (the theme of independence), 1830 were fresh) would ultimately lead to its Akropolis stands out for its seeming optimism.[10] The deliverance. Like Christ, Poland would have to suffer triumphant resurrection of Christ at the end of the play, and die in order to be reborn, and once resurrected, it read metaphorically as the successful political would show the world the path to salvation (Miłosz liberation of the Polish nation, presents a view of 226).[9] Wyspiaƒski challenged this messianic view Poland’s potential for deliverance that is atypically of Poland in his two satirical plays, The Wedding messianic for the playwright. It has been suggested by (Wesele, 1901) and Liberation (Wyzwolenie, 1903). In scholars such as Tadeusz Sinko that Wyspiaƒski’s The Wedding, Wernyhora (a mythical figure who attitude towards Poland’s liberation became prophesied the rebirth of Poland) gives a special golden increasingly optimistic over the period of time during horn to Gospodarz who in turn gives it to the peasant which he wrote The Wedding, Liberation, and Akropolis boy Jasiek. The horn is to be used to summon the Polish (Romaƒska 5). He likens these plays to Dante’s Divine people to action and to call forth an insurrection, and Comedy: Poland’s nationhood progresses from hell to the play’s characters expectantly await this clarion call. purgatory to heaven. Does this hopeful ending represent However, Jasiek loses the horn and thus the rising an evolution in Wyspiaƒski’s thinking, or does it cannot and will not take place. In Liberation it is the 1472 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2009 represent a new artistic strategy, namely one that relies singing, “You gave me a golden garment so that I would on irony to convey his skepticism? be extolled” (192). On the surface the triumphant return of Salvador In keeping with his biblical character, King David is seemingly expresses optimism regarding Poland’s celebrated as a harpist and singer in the play. His national revival. Akropolis culminates in Salvador’s creative capacity is that of a poet, suggesting on the dramatic arrival from on high: the Sun-Christ crashes level of a national metaphor that it will be the poet’s onto stage in his luminous chariot pulled by white duty to lead his people and to catalyze the miracle of steeds. Salvador’s rapturous, grandiose deus-ex- liberation. The power of the poet’s word to create is machina arrival is showy and stagy in a naive way that demonstrated in King David’s invocation of Salvador- recalls medieval miracle plays. Such spectacular Apollo as well as in the dialogic nature of Wyspiaƒski’s exuberance and artifice of art, far from the realism of poetic drama. Drama relies on dialogic exchange, a nineteenth-century social criticism, suggests an ironic synthetic act of negotiating meaning that is rooted in ending. The deus ex machina tradition so vividly dialectics. This dialogic-synthetic creative process is evoked in this scene symbolizes a simplistic solution seen in Act 4, scene 6: the exchange between the harpist to an intractable problem: the Polish nation will and Salvador sounds like an incantation, the generative overcome its oppression by means of a miracle. While power of which calls forth and affirms the existence deus ex machina, literally “god in a machine,” referred and immediate presence of Salvador.[12] In response in ancient Greek drama to the lowering and raising of to Salvador’s declarations “I am!” and “Strength, an actor on stage by mechanical means such as a pulley power!” the harpist replies, “Come”; this exchange is or crane, over time it has acquired a more generalized repeated three times, a number that signifies the Holy meaning relating to its role as a device of artistic Trinity and also has mystical significance in pagan convenience. Greek tragedians like Euripides used this cultures (as demonstrated by the fact that both Christian device to resolve impossible or hopeless situations, Salvador and pagan Apollo arrive).[13] While powerful earning the ire of Aristotle who believed that a plot as a creative force, dialogue doesn’t necessarily result should be resolved naturally through its internal logic in synthesis: sometimes it occupies a middle ground rather than though a convenient device. In Akropolis between speakers. As Jan Swearingen has suggested, the coming of the Savior, a providential intercession, dialog is “programmatically liminal: interstructural, is a convenient end to a play that has no consistent between two states or conditions, essentially plotline and that consequently lacks the potential for a unstructured rather than structured by logical denouement. The contrived convenience of this contradictions”(47). As Akropolis explores the tensions ending suggests a corollary of political skepticism. and moments of intersection between opposing Rather than intending Salvador’s showy arrival as an existential states (living versus dead, waking versus unabashed declaration of Poland’s special status as a dreaming, past versus future), Wyspianski’s choice of chosen nation, Wyspiaƒski may be expressing doubt the dramatic genre can thus be seen to complement his in such a convenient answer. probing of liminal spaces. The staginess of Salvador-Apollo’s entrance is As I have already suggested, it is difficult to know echoed by the ascension of King David on stage. In whether to read Akropolis as ironic or sincere. The Act 4, scene 6 David physically rises on stage in a drama walks a tightrope between these modes of similar deus ex machina fashion, his head and harp expression and creates hesitation in the reader/viewer bathed in the dawn’s light, at precisely the moment of similar to what one experiences when confronting a Salvador-Apollo’s arrival, suggesting his own parallel fantastic experience. Does it express patriotic optimism, role as savior. Among the many doublings and or does it mock Polish writers’ propensity toward allegorical correspondences in Akropolis (Wawel as messianism? Does the staginess and overwrought Acropolis as Jerusalem temple as Christ’s body; the spectacle undermine the otherwise pious and uplifting river Wisła as Skamander as the River Jordan), view of Poland’s political destiny in Europe and its Wyspiaƒski sets up the correspondence of the Polish cultural position in Western civilization? In a play that Savior (Christ) with the Greek Savior (Apollo) and engages to such a high degree the question of existential King David, savior of the Israelites.[11] Like Apollo- and perceptual oppositions and the liminal spaces Phoebus and the Sun-Christ of Słowacki, the gilded between them, it is not surprising that irony should win sculptural figure of David in Wawel emits a golden out. After all, the interplay of opposite meanings is the luminosity. David acknowledges his chosen status, very definition of irony: in the words of the Oxford April 2009 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1473 English Dictionary irony is “a figure of speech in which The dissonance of these scenes in Act 1 is not of the the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed same magnitude as that which separates Wyspiaƒski’s by the words used.” ostensibly pious and seemingly optimistic play and In Act 1 the conflict of oppositions already appears Grotowski’s 1962 production of it. Grotowski in a surprising and potentially blasphemous way, undermined Akropolis’s life-affirming Catholic vision indicating that the sanctity of what transpires is by presenting the contrasting Jewish experience of the threatened. The act equates lusty passion with vitality Holocaust: in contrast to Poland, which the play and interposes worldly love and bodily pleasures into ironically predicts will find salvation, twentieth-century the realm of the sacred on the Night of Resurrection, history proved that the Jews will find no such salvation. which compromises the solemn sanctity of Easter. The Grotowski replaced Wyspiaƒski’s focus on life, love, four angels supporting the silver sarcophagus of St. and creativity with death, destruction, and stasis by Stanisław in Wawel Cathedral feel the return of power relocating the play’s scene of action from Wawel to a (moc) and strength (siła) as “the blood flows into their Nazi concentration camp, and by having the actors- silver bodies” (12).[14] Once invigorated, the angels prisoners build their own crematorium in front of the seduce and express their love for the stone statues in audience during the performance. The crematorium is the cathedral, thereby bringing them back to life as in built out into the audience, as shown in James scene 3 between the Second Angel and Cupid:[15] MacTaggart’s 1968 video recording. The audience becomes trapped in the performance, thereby Second Angel: suggesting the complicity of idle spectators from Sumptuous am I, and abundant! abroad. Grotowski’s interpretation of the play shocked Embrace my waist. viewers both because of its raw depiction of camp life I want to feel your hands and because it seemed antithetical to Wyspiaƒski’s Near my chest Easter parable. Whatever the merits of Grotowski’s And your face before mine. interpretation, it strongly suggests that the play’s cargo Cupid: of irony and ambiguity is substantial. Fire is burning in your eyes. Wyspiaƒski’s play exists outside of chronological The heat in your eyes is glowing. time, inhabiting instead the time of imagination and cultural memory. The playwright’s palimpsestual Second Angel: layering of historical epochs contrasts with the way I am in love.— Grotowski traps Akropolis in the concrete historical moment of the Second World War. Wyspiaƒski’s Cupid: acropolis becomes Grotowski’s necropolis as the latter You are beautiful, oh lily! reduces the stage to a cemetery when the actors climb Why are those garments covering you? Those silver raiments, the clinging cloth. into one large black box at center stage that represents a mass grave, and the play ends with complete silence Second Angel: and emptiness. In the twentieth century Poland’s savior Your chest is bared; never materialized, and no modern-day King David Hold me to your bosom; appeared to save the Jews. In this way Grotowski O joy, in your eyes is the sun (27-8). cynically points out that Wyspiaƒski’s uplifting vision of a universally liberated Poland was one of historically This scene associates the reawakening of the life force unjustified optimism. The baroque monuments and among the statuary with the quickened pulse of elaborate sarcophagi of Wawel that are celebrated in romance, and emphasizes the statuary’s return to flesh Wyspiaƒski’s Akropolis stand in contrast to the mass as the figures crave the intimacy of kisses and caresses. graves of the Holocaust’s victims. The sexual impulses that motivate several scenes in Grotowski used Akropolis to present his own version Act 1 seem oddly dissonant with the solemnity of of events. While the subtext of Wyspiaƒski’s script can Easter, the holiday celebrating the resurrection of be and frequently is viewed as a political allegory, the Christ, son of the Virgin Mary. The torments of Christ’s plot contains no such explicit agenda. The original Passion are jarringly opposed to the pleasure of carnal play’s fantastical content and unconventional structure earthly passions: the crucified Christ on the cathedral’s make it an unwieldy instrument of social criticism. The great altar terrifies the angels. disconnect between the likely political agenda and the 1474 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2009 unlikely experimental modernist packaging, viewed in the Kraków cabaret “Green Balloon” hosted by Tadeusz together with the other oppositions and dissonances Boy-Îeleƒski and frequented by many Young Poland artists. already discussed, points to the possibility of reading See also Mark F. Tattenbaum, “A Good Show: Traditional Akropolis with a sense of irony, an approach that has and Nontraditional Puppet Theater in Poland,” Sarmatian sometimes been discounted because of Wyspiaƒski’s Review, vol. XXVII, no. 1 (January 2007), 1257–61 (http:// www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/107/271tatten.html). abiding love and respect for culture. However, 5. These two middle acts are based on seventeenth-century Liberation, written and published just one year before Flemish tapestries that hung in Wawel, the figures from Akropolis, ironically treats the messianic vision of which come to life in Akropolis in what seems to be a dream. Poland as the Christ of Nations articulated by the The tapestries are called “The Trojan War” and “The History Romantics. Scholars such as Wilhelm Barbasz have of Jacob.” attempted to reconcile the antimessianic satire of 6. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Ewa Liberation with the triumphant arrival of the Savior at Miodoƒska-Brookes pointed out the allusions to the New the end of Akropolis by suggesting that Wyspiaƒski had Testament in her extensive annotation to Akropolis. no interest in the martyred Christ, and for him Poland 7. Along with satyrs, bacchantes, and maenads, centaurs are was not a victim. Barbasz argues instead that mythological figures associated with the orgiastic celebrations of Dionysus. The Dionysian motif recalls Wyspiaƒski departed from Romantic messianism in his Russian Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov’s theorization of a view of Poland as capable of rising up without first Dionysian Christ. Whereas Nietzsche had completely having to suffer as the martyr. Barbasz’s reading, estheticized the complementary roles of Apollo and however, does not address the play’s hyperbolically Dionysus, stripping them of their early cultic significance, stagy ending. Ivanov sought to revive the religious aspect of Dionysus By recognizing that the play’s pathos and sublimity and to reconcile the ancient Greek rites with those of are actually subverted by its outsized staginess, and Christianity. Holding that Nietzsche had wrongly reduced that Wyspiaƒski’s vision for Akropolis was actually Dionysus to a symbol for unbridled excess, Ivanov sought more cynical than Dante’s Paradiso, one begins to see to balance the figure of Dionysus by calling to attention his that Grotowski’s Teatr Laboratorium staging of experience of suffering. Ivanov found in the ancient pagan rituals of the cult of Dionysus (and specifically his torment Akropolis was not so shockingly iconoclastic as might and resurrection) the prefiguration of the story of Christ. appear at first.Grotowski expressed in bolder and more 8. Wyspiaƒski’s reiteration of the Romantic myth of the Sun- contemporary terms Wyspiaƒski’s own ironic stance Christ is embodied in the appearance of Apollo at precisely toward national salvation. Rather than being reversed the moment Salvador arrives. He emphasizes Apollo’s in Akropolis, the playwright’s skeptical view of connection to the sun by identifying him as a double of Poland’s readiness for deliverance that emerges in The Phoebus, whom Aurora, the personification of dawn, calls Wedding and Liberation finds here a more complicated her lover. In Act 4 Apollo-Phoebus arrives in a golden chariot expression. Perhaps instead of interpreting Grotowski’s pulled by white steeds, ushering in Day and alluding to production as a radical departure from the playwright’s nature’s cycles of light and dark, life and death, to accentuate original vision and intention, we should commend him the theme of resurrection. Thus while Wyspiaƒski does not conflate Apollo and Salvador/Christ into one Sun God, he Δ for his insight. clearly draws on the parallels between them, such as their images as radiant sources of light and the fact that Apollo NOTES was also called Savior in ancient Greece. As Wyspiaƒski 1. Meaning savior in Spanish, Salvador is a name commonly would have known, Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki used in reference to the resurrected Christ. also used the metaphor of the sun to present Christ. Słowacki 2. Richard Schechner, Ritual, Play, and Performance (New presented Christ as the ideal manifestation of the King-Spirit York: Seabury Press, 1976). (Król-Duch). His unfinished poem King-Spirit (Król-Duch, 3. Wyspiaƒski submitted a series of sketches for stained glass Part 1, ‘Rhapsody,’ 1847) describes how the divine Spirit windows to be included in the renovation of Wawel, which roams the earth and inspires its chosen hosts, who have was begun in the 1890s. His sketches were rejected in favor included leaders, kings, and saints from different ages. The of the plan proposed by Sławomir Odrzywolski. King-Spirit had two missions: first, to guide earthly spirits 4. The absence of a discernible logical sequence between to their final goal; and second, to serve as a model towards Acts 1, 2, and 3 reflects the influence of the Polish folk which they could strive (Barbasz 377). Słowacki’s Sun- theater (szopka) on Wyspiaƒski. The szopka (Christmas Christ (Chrystus Słoneczny) was in turn influenced by Polish crèche) has multiple levels on which puppets can play out scholar Karol Dupuis whose 1794 work The Origin of All different stories simultaneously. Barbara Niemczyk has The Cults contained the chapter “An explanation of the myth stated that such structural qualities in Liberation suggest of the Sun, Celebrated under the name of Christ” the influence of the szopka. The szopka was highly influential April 2009 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1475 (“ObjaÊnienie mitu o Słoƒcu, czczonem pod imieniem Greeley, Dolores. The Church as “Body of Christ” according Chrystus”). to the Teaching of Saint John Chrysostom. Diss. University 9. Mickiewicz depicted Poland as the Christ of Nations in of Notre Dame, 1977. his Books of the Polish Nation and of the Polish Pilgrims Hayes, Dawn Marie. Body and Sacred Place in Medieval (Ksi∏gi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa polskiego, 1832). Europe, 1100–1389. New York: Routledge, 2003. In Genesis from the Spirit (Genesis z ducha, 1844), Słowacki Lachmann, Renate. Memory and Literature: Intertextuality suggests that the King-Spirit (a noumenal essence that in Russian Modernism, translated by Roy Sellars and wandered from body to body, inspiring leaders and Anthony Wall. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997. visionaries) could infuse not only individuals thereby bring Łempicka, Aniela. Wyspiaƒski: Pisarz dramatyczny, idee i them closer to Christ, but the entire nations. Poland was formy. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1973. thus inspired by the King-Spirit (Miłosz 241). Miłosz, Czesław. The History of Polish Literature, 2d ed. 10. Miłosz has used this rubric to group The Wedding, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, Liberation, Akropolis, and Legion (355). 1983. 11. Wyspiaƒski follows nineteenth-century philosophers and Miodoƒska-Brookes, Ewa. Wawel-“Akropolis”. Kraków: historians who likened Wawel to the Athenian Acropolis. Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1980. One influential example was Józef Kremer’s Grecja Niemczyk, Barbara A. “Młoda Polska and Symbolism: The staroÏytna: jej sztuka, zwłaszcza rzeêba that looked at the Quest for a New Theater.” Diss. Yale University, 1986. topographical as well as functional affinities. Also see Leon Popiel, M. “Wyspianski i estetyka modernizmu w kregu Zienkowicz (Miodoƒska-Brookes 104-5). pojecia konstrukcji artystycznej.” Ruch liberacki, vol. 44, 12. The harpist’s role in calling forth Salvator, an act that no. 3 (May 2002), 277–89. spurs the Savior’s crossing from death into life, recalls Puchner, Martin. Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti- Goethe’s trope of a harp string. In Zueignung (1797), he Theatricality, and Drama. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins uses the harp string to evoke an apparitional body (Volker University Press, 2002. 155). When the harp string is still, it is a dividing line Romaƒska, Magda. “Wyspiaƒski/Grotowski: Text and between past and present; when in motion, however, such Context of Akropolis.” Unpublished manuscript, 2008. divisions are erased (Volker 162). Presented as “After Wyspiaƒski: The Text and Content of 13. The frequent echo-like repetition in the dialog of Acts 1 Grotowski’s Akropolis.” Panel: Dreaming the Life of the and 4 recalls a well-known satire of mystical Symbolists: Nation: The Monumental Vision of Stanislaw Wyspiaƒski Aleksandr Blok’s Balaganchik, a play staged in 1906 and (1869–1907). MLA 2007 Convention, Chicago, IL. based on Blok’s 1904 poem of the same name. While I am Schachenmayr, Volker. “Points of Connection Among not suggesting a line of influence in either direction, I do Classical Statuary, The Grand Tour, and Stage Performance wish to underscore the satirical value of repetition as a sign in the Age of Goethe.” Diss. Stanford University, 1996. of unthinking devotion. Sinko, Tadeusz. Antyk Wyspiaƒskiego. Kraków: Drukarnia 14. Salvador proclaims the same words (power [moc] and Uniwersytetu Jagielloƒskiego, 1916. strength [siła]), as he rides into Wawel Cathedral in Act 4, Swearingen, C. Jan. “Dialogue and Dialectic: The Logic of echoing the angels’ erotic awakening and thus infusing Conversation and the Interpretation of Logic.” In The Salvador’s holy resurrection (his return from the Passion) Interpretation of Dialogue, edited by Tullio Maranhao. with the memory of profane earthly passion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. 15. On the sarcophagus of Count Stanisław Aleksander Taylor, Nina. “Stanisław Wyspiaƒski and Symbolist Drama: Ankwicz (d.1840) are two figures Wyspiaƒski has named: The Work of Art as ‘dramatis persona’,” The Slavonic and Niewiasta (Bride) and Amor (Cupid). Cupid is the “naked East European Review, vol. 66, no. 2 (April 1988), 198– boyish angel in a crown of small flowers and who with one 209. hand holds an extinguished torch—an attribute of death— Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to and with the other hand he makes a gesture of consolation a Literary Genre. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY: to the Bride” (Miodoƒska-Brookes n.174, p.14). Ankwicz Cornell University Press, 1975. was likely not of interest to Wyspiaƒski except for his Toporov, V. N. Iz istorii Peterburgskogo Apollonizma. sarcophagus. Moscow: OGI, 2004. Wyspiaƒski, Stanislaw. Akropolis, edited by Ewa REFERENCES Miodoƒska-Brookes. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Akropolis. Dir. James MacTaggart. Prod. Lewis Freedman. Ossoliƒskich, 1985. Arthur Cantor Films, 1968. ______. Wesele, edited by Aniela Łempicka. Kraków: Barbasz, Wilhelm. Wyspiaƒski na tle Romantyzmu. Lwów: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1975. Drukarnia Naukowa, 1932. ______. Wyspiaƒski: Ïycie i dzieło, edited by Jan Zygmunt Flaszen, Ludwik. “Wyspiaƒski’s Akropolis.” In The Jakubowski. Warsaw: Paƒstwowe Zakłady Wydawnictw Grotowski Sourcebook, edited by Richard Schechner and Szkolnych, 1967. Lisa Wolford. New York: Routledge, 1997. ______. Wyzwolenie, edited by Aniela Łempicka. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossoliƒskich, 1970. 1476 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2009 Mickiewicz’s historical outlines; literary analyses; and Adam Mickiewicz’s First Lecture descriptions of persons, epochs, and trends continue to in Collège de France remain valid and enlightening. 1840–1844 [1] LECTURE 1 (Tuesday, December 22, 1840) OUTLINE: 1. THE DIFFICULTY OF MY POSITION. THE SLAVIC Translated and annotated by Božena PEOPLES’ MORAL LEANING TOWARD THE WEST. FRANCE AND Shallcross PARIS AS THE CENTER OF THE DRAWING POWER. GEOGRAPHICAL VASTNESS OF THE SLAVIC LANDS. THE SLAVIC Translator’s Introduction (2008) TRIBE AND ITS PEOPLES; THEIR LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS. During the time he lived in Western Europe as an émigré POSSIBLE REASONS FOR THE WEST’S INTEREST IN STUDYING poet, Adam Mickiewicz was twice invited to serve as THE NORTH. ANCIENT CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE WEST AND professor of literature at institutions of higher learning. In THE SLAVS; THE CONTINUATION OF THIS CONFLICT IN MODERN 1839–40 at the University of Lausanne he lectured on Latin literature. In 1840 he accepted the Chair of Slavic Literatures TIMES. SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES: ZAŁUÏANSKI, CIOŁEK, at the prestigious Collège de France. Supported by the COPERNICUS. French government, this was the first Slavic Literatures professorship in Western Europe. Mickiewicz began Gentlemen! teaching there on December 22, 1840 and delivered his last he signals of sympathy from the audience— lecture on May 28, 1844. In his inaugural lecture he defined Tcomposed in part by my compatriots, among his teaching objectives and emphatically articulated several whom I see many friends—are precious to me. I do tangential themes including his concern about speaking in a not, however, harbor any illusions regarding their true foreign language and, on a different level, his desire for the meaning; they demonstrate to me that you, gentlemen, unity of European nations. know how to encourage me and that you feel the Conceived as a historical survey of all Slavic cultures, difficulty of my situation. Indeed, it is a risky one. For Mickiewicz’s lectures collected and taxonomized a great deal of information about them. Although some of his data and even if you could forget the impression made on you notions turned out to be inaccurate, the lectures attracted by the lectures of the famous professors at this the attention of a wide group of French scholars and artists institution of learning; even if I were oblivious to the from Jules Michelet to George Sand and Edgar Quinet, and, difficulties inherent in the subject about which I will of course, émigré Poles. Mickiewicz’s teaching style was speak before you, it would be impossible for me to rid based on improvisation; often he did not even prepare lecture myself of the sense of a certain disadvantage. notes. His lectures were recorded by a number of dedicated I am a foreigner. I must speak a language that has listeners and are known today in this mediated form. As nothing to do with the language that usually serves as Mickiewicz put it in his introduction to the German edition the tool for my thoughts; nothing in common with its of his Slavic Literature, he authored these lectures although origin, neither in form nor in flow. This pertains not he did not write them (Literatura słowiaƒska, 5). This improvisational technique went hand in hand with the poet’s only to the translation of my thoughts and emotions increasingly pronounced prophetic tone and political into a foreign tongue here before you; I will have to intensity.[1] Alarmed by Mickiewicz’s ideological vision, transform each thought, each emotion entirely and the administration of the Collège de France eventually extemporaneously. This strenuous inner labor is decided to remove him from the Chair. indispensable in lecturing about literature. In such lectures one cannot go in the direction indicated by a Manfred Kridl’s Introduction (1929) known and accepted scholarly method; one cannot lean This edition is based on the third edition of Feliks on formulas that allow the expression of one’s thought Wrotnowski’s translation of Mickiewicz’s Lectures (Poznaƒ, without concern for style, as is the case in exact 1865), which is the best of all available translations so far. sciences. After leaving the boundaries of grammar and However, it should be mentioned than neither the French philology, I will have to show you the literary original of Adam Mickiewicz’s Lectures nor the Polish monuments and works of art in such a way as to make translations have been fully analyzed by philologists. It should also be remembered that these Lectures were you feel the ardor that created them. Would preparatory delivered almost a century ago. Since that time archeology, research, even if we had time for it, give us the power history, literary studies, and philology have moved forward. to unearth from a masterpiece this latent life—hidden Some of Mickiewicz’s comments reflect the state of in its bosom—that constitutes the mystery of art? No; historical and literary knowledge in his age, and may seem to have this life spring up from the word created by an out of date today. But the prevailing majority of artist, a creative word has to be spoken, and such a April 2009 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1477 word cannot be uttered if one does not posses all the excludes them from the Christian community. Do they mysteries of the language in which the work was indeed lack their own civilizational element? Have they written. Would a foreigner ever enact the masterful contributed nothing to the intellectual richness and might of the alien word? Even if he were able to do so, moral good of Christianity? Such questions seem he would face another and equally difficult task. He offensive to them; eager to prove their right to belong would have to recreate the external form, the inherent to the Christian community, they try to speak for and often essential part of a work of art. Sometimes themselves, to write in your language, and to find in one incorrect word, ill-chosen or mispronounced, can their own works a road toward your literature. destroy the work’s form. These attempts, often undertaken for personal reasons I am familiar with all these difficulties; with each or from a factional point of view, have not succeeded. motion, with each movement of my thoughts I feel the It was finally understood that in order to gain the weight of this chain, just as you hear its clamor. If I attention of Western nations, shaken by so many only listened to the prompting of my self-love; if I only problems and tormented by so many difficult concerns, cared for my artistic and personal prestige (it is it was not enough to show them several bright spots humiliating to undertake public efforts if one does not within the domain of Slavdom; it was necessary to have this strength, which comes with fluency and unveil in full grandeur the entire Slavic world. It was charm), I would assuredly renounce the dangerous necessary to bring the magnitude of its literatures closer honor of speaking to you from this place. However, to the West. The French government realized the wish very important considerations compelled me to accept of the Slavic peoples in setting up this Slavic chair; I this duty. I was called to speak on behalf of the literature could not but blame myself if I did not agree to of the peoples with which my nation, past and future, participate in it. I also believe that certain past events is closely connected: [to speak] at this moment, when in my life make me an appropriate person to undertake words weigh a great deal, and in this city, which is the this task. My long residence in various Slavic countries, capital of the word. I could not refuse. the kindness that I encountered there, and the remaining One of our epoch’s characteristics is a tendency of memories have inculcated in me, in a manner stronger peoples to seek rapprochement and contact. It is well than any theory, a sense of our kin’s unity. The origins known that Paris is the center, the mainspring and tool of the Slavic discord and the potential foundations of of these relations, that through the mediation of Paris Slavic reconciliation are of keen interest to me. European peoples learn about each other and, Thus the plan for my course presented itself. I occasionally, even about themselves. It is one of presume that it will be easier for me than for any other France’s glories that it possesses this ability to attract; Slavic person to protect myself from the influence of it testifies to the advances France has made for the all passion, from all narrow particularity. Such one- ability to attract is always a function of spiritual activity, sidedness would oppose the pursuit of the well-being its stock of light and internal warmth. France’s of our [Polish] national affairs, and it would not be in superiority as the oldest daughter of the Church and as keeping with the intention of the administration that the nurse of artistic inspirations, skills, art, and literature endowed this chair. is so noble that other peoples cannot consider it As I have already mentioned, gentlemen, the most humiliating, in this respect, to accept her sovereignty. astonishing aspect of Slavic literatures is their On the other hand, nowhere is the willingness to geographical magnitude and the numerosity of works. approach Europe and to create a closer relationship with From the most objective and—according to the usual the peoples of the West as alive and widespread as it is perception—only truly objective point of view, from among the Slavic peoples. These peoples shared a the point of view of population and space, the Slavic border with the Frankish empire during two epochs, speech bears enormous importance: over seventy that of Charlemagne and that of Napoleon. A part of million people speak in its languages. It occupies one their territory was subjugated to your capitulars and a half of Europe and one-third of Asia. Drawing the line region is still subjugated to the Napoleonic codex. from the Venetian Bay to the delta of the Elbe, we find These peoples took from Europe religion, military behind this line and along its entire length relics of the organization, arts and crafts; through their material people pushed to the north by Germanic and Roman strength they, in turn, impacted the West, but today they tribes. The posthumous existence of these settlements are virtually unknown in the West. The European spirit already belongs to history, but moving toward the keeps them, I might say, at a certain distance and Carpathian Mountains, that eternal stronghold of 1478 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2009 Slavdom, we see on both sides, on both edges of At the same time, Czech scholars are undertaking Europe, Slavic settlements engaged in fierce fighting. and accomplishing a work[7] that can be compared to At the Adriatic Sea they defend their own existence those of the Alexandrian school, if it weren’t for the against Islam; at the Baltic, first conquered by a foreign fact that they have a character of their own and are tribe, they are gaining the upper hand. In the center of inspired by a patriotic ardor almost equal to the this territory Slavdom manifests itself in its whole religious enthusiasm of the ancient commentators of might. From there, along one of its sides Slavdom the Holy Scripture. In this assembly we shall also put moves to America and on the other, through the the Illyrian or Serbian poet, an old blind man singing Mongolian and Caucasian people it reaches China and rhapsodies accompanied by the guÊla[8] that inspired Persia, gaining the territories it has lost in Europe. such critics as Grimm[9] and Eckstein,[10] and whom These Slavic nations enclose within themselves all Herder and Goethe gladly translated.[11] manner of religious and political structures present in We see various functions and diverse tasks fulfilled both ancient and modern history. We have there an by different ancient and modern languages—Sanskrit, ancient tribe of Montenegrins whose customs are Arabic, Turkish, Persian—but here they are divided similar to those of the Scottish highlanders; however, among dialects of one and the same language. This is more fortunate than the latter, they managed to defend an unusual and unique situation. From research of this their independence against the Ottoman, Greek, mega-language one can extricate a new light, capable German, and Frankish empires and, most likely, in of illuminating very important questions of philology, antiquity, also from the Roman Empire. We have the philosophy, and history, the questions of the lineage of city of Ragusa[3]—the Slavic Venice and a longtime languages and peoples, the core and true meaning of competitor of Venice—which, by the way, also owes dialects, the development of ideas inherent in speech. its origin to the Slavs. Further, ancient Illyria,[4] Wouldn’t it be a wonderful discovery if a student of Bosnia, Herzegovina, the Czech kingdom, the Slavic biology found an organic entity that, traversing through part of the Hungarian kingdom—all these peoples all of the lower stages of life, preserved together within constitute half of the Austrian empire. Finally, the itself vegetable, animal and human forms of life, and Russian Empire and the entire former Polish Kingdom. each of them evolved to its fullness and wholeness? If we add the duchy of Serbia, Bulgaria, and the Slavic Therefore the lectures about Slavdom will not aim at component of Romania (in Wallachia[5] and acquainting you, gentlemen, with an unknown dialect, Moldavia), we have an image of the territory or, rather, will not add a new chapter to a universal grammar, the continent of the Slavs. will not enrich the linguistic museum with a new The language of these numerous peoples is divided sample. Their goal is to let you learn about this entire into many subgroups that, having developed family of languages, a new genus and a new species. independently of each other, preserve signs of unity. It Before approaching literature itself, let me point out is one speech, manifesting itself in all forms and at some results of the skills one can gain from our different levels of growth. In the old Slavonic it shows research; these results are not indifferent to the history itself as a dead language, a religious language; as a of nations, the history of science, nor to the moral and language of state administration and state orders in political issues. I have mentioned that Slavic nations Russia; as a language of literature and conversation in have frequently influenced Europe. As the Czech poet Poland; as a language of skills in the Czech lands; while Ján Kollár said: “All nations have already spoken their in Illyria, Montenegro, and Bosnia it remains in the last word; now it is time for the Slavs to speak.”[12] I primordial state as the language of poetry and music. think that these peoples have already spoken many Thus a Russian scholar who deals with the workings times, have spoken in their own manner, with the blows of the law—that, through their weight and breadth seem of lances and canon fire. It would be valuable to to belong to the time of Emperor Justinian—can understand what they have been saying. These peoples encounter a Ukrainian poet, whom one could take for are becoming a considerable force in political a contemporary of the Greek lyricists because he calculations; to defeat such a force in order to give it a possesses their inspiration, luminosity, and art and has direction, it would be reasonable to know its point of succeeded in expressing the national past in a fiery way. origin; to measure its previous course in order to Everyone can guess that I am talking about our poet estimate its intensity and divine its goal; at the very Bohdan Zaleski.[6] least, to do in the face of this new political force what astronomers never fail to do when they notice a new April 2009 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1479 comet or meteorite. Numerous observations, the all of a sudden the Polish army appears and conducts a consideration of which would be highly useful, are mortal fight, wakes up the world, shakes both brotherly written on the pages of history. It is known to you, and foreign peoples, inflames them with intense dislike gentlemen, that one cannot learn the history of a people and even more intense sympathy, and in the end it without descending into the depths of its literature. disappears, leaving behind a long echo of pain and The enlightened nations have a certain duty toward glory. The Russian eagle meets the Polish one posterity to pass on their achievements to the darker everywhere, the Russian hurrah is followed by the areas of the world. The Greeks and the Romans are Polish battle cry. If we strain our ears, we shall hear our only sources of information about the peoples that the echoes of the same struggle in the past. Often the used to be called barbarians. Specifically, Tacitus two adversaries did not wear their own colors and briefly dealt with the Germanic tribes, and his words fought over matters seemingly unimportant to either became for us the precious source of information about of them; they could still recognize each other by the these tribes. Tacitus’s brief comments produced an power of their mutual blows. The Russian poet Pyotr entire library of commentaries and dissertations in later Vyazemsky[15] called this struggle the eternal times.[13] We, the Slavs, replaced the barbarians in Thebaid.[16] contemporary historiography; we blame the Greeks and What is the real objective of this struggle and who the Romans for saying so little about us in their works, will win it? The future will tell. We cannot occupy and we do not want the situation to repeat itself in our ourselves with political matters here. However, the time. interest of the West should be raised not only by the There is one more reason to study countries other military deeds of Slavs, their barbaric forays in the than the Western European centers. Scholars conjecture pagan days, their subsequent Christian service in that the planets closest to the sun will eventually merge defense of Europe and, lately, their strong impact on with it. The Slavs have always leaned toward the West. political affairs. The West treasures the illusion that it It is from the presently Slavic lands that the hordes is the source of all the enlightenment among the Slavs; came that destroyed Rome, who refused to acquire it is not so. While many Western seeds have sprouted knowledge about them while they had always been in these northeastern lands, many a discovery was first eager to learn what was going on in Rome. made here even though the West considers them its [During the height of the Roman Empire, a famous own. Our own botanist, Adam ZałuÏaƒski,[17] writer, in his kindness, dedicated a few pages to a observed the hermaphroditic nature of plants one description of the barbaric countries and tribes. Despite hundred and fifty years before Linneus. In Linneus’s Tacitus’s fame, his work on the Germans (Teutons) did Methodus rei herbariae published in Prague in 1592, not, apparently, enjoy great popularity. His we find obvious proof that the Swedish botanist knew contemporaries did not quote it; it was seldom copied, ZałuÏaƒski’s work, although Linneus does not mention and only a few of these copies have survived. However, its author. Another Slav, Erazm Ciołek, also known as in our time Tacitus’s work is frequently commented Vitellion[18], was the first to employ mathematics to upon because each of its sentences possesses almost explain the phenomenon of optical illusion and in doing the weight of an article of future law; very much like so he founded the science of optics. To conclude, I each tribe that Tacitus described, each contains within will mention the most famous Slavic scientist, the only itself the nucleus of a future kingdom or empire.] [14] one known in Europe: Mikołaj Kopernik (Copernicus). Modern Slavic history is closely related to the history In what manner did these people, whose nations were of Western European nations. Not long ago, a Slavic not highly educated, elevate themselves to such an army, the Russian army, was seen on all the battlefields intensity of mind? How did it happen that outcomes and in all the capitals of Europe. Wherever it went, that are elsewhere usually the consequence of long this army was certain to meet another Slavic army, like labor, that lie at the end of lengthy investigations, here a vengeful shadow. The Polish army stood up against seem to be an unveiling (odgadnienie) and rise of the the Russians in Italy; it pursued them from the River dawn of skills? Niemen to Moscow; it disrupted the Russian crossing In these agricultural countries, perhaps, botany had of the Berezin River; it even stood up against the to preoccupy the human mind and develop as a Russians at the gates of Paris. Then, after the hero of repository of information in common circulation. In our time [Napoleon] was defeated, when everything the introduction to his work Vitellion claims that he calmed down and the Russian army returned to its den, thought of the first of his ideas during leisure time in 1480 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2009 the countryside, while watching the play of light on inspired dumas. Zaleski is a major representative of the so- the river waves beside his house. The opinion of some called “Ukranian school” in Polish Romanticism. French writers that Copernicus found some concepts 7. Mickiewicz’s complement is addressed to the Czech for his astronomical system in the Bible is not entirely founding fathers of Slavic philology such as Josef ungrounded. But a certain compatriot of ours, speaking Dobrovsky (1753–1829), a Bohemian philologist and historian. about Copernicus, observed that he discovered a system 8. GuÊla, a bowed string instrument of the Balkans. of the physical world that, like the Polish nation, 9. The brothers Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl “foresaw the essential movement of the moral Grimm collected and published folk songs and folktales; world.”[19] Copernicus destroyed old superstitions by their most famous collection is Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1812– pointing to the sun as the center of all the planets; the 1822). Polish nation pushed its homeland into the race around 10. Probably H. Eckstein, a bookseller from Magdeburg. the center of a great whole. By the same inspiration, 11. Between 1814–1834 several collections of Serbian folk Copernicus was a philosopher and the Polish nation poetry, folktales, and proverbs compiled by Vuk Karadziã “the Copernicus of the moral world.” appeared in German translations, causing a long-lived All these circumstances deserve the attention of fascination with Serbian folklore among the leading German poets and intellectuals including the Grimm brothers, foreigners and may awaken in them a curiosity about Goethe, and Herder. the eastern peoples that have not been known well, 12. In fact, Ján Kollár (1793–1852) was a Slovak poet, a especially that these peoples are slowly developing a proponent of Pan-Slavism, and a professor at the University conviction that their role in the future of Europe will of Vienna. be substantial. I have shown you some vignettes, I 13. Publius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 59–ca.117), a senator and asked a few questions that have to remain unanswered historian of the Roman Empire, De origine et situ for the time being. I have to use the shortest and most Germanorum (Germania, 98). direct route: the road of literature. 14. This paragraph is missing in the Wrotnowski translation Literature is a place to which all Slavic nations bring from French. It is taken from the German text that was their intellectual and moral achievements without probably translated from another set of notes. See Note 1. resentment and without trying to outshine one another. 15. Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky (1792–1878), Russian critic, poet, translator, archivist, and a friend of May this peaceful encounter on the beautiful literary Mickiewicz. stage become a symbol of their getting together in 16. Thebais or Thebaid, which derives from The Thebaid, another sphere as well. Δ an epic Latin poem by Publius Papinius Statius (ca. 45–96 AD), is used here as a symbol of fraternal strife. NOTES 17. Adam ZałuÏaƒski de ZałuÏan was a sixteenth-century 1. The present translation is based on Adam Mickiewicz, Czech physician and botanist. Mickiewicz used the Polish Dzieła, vol. 8 (Literatura słowiaƒska. Kurs pierwszy, spelling of his name. półrocze 1), translated from German by Leon Płoszewski 18. Erazm Ciołek (ca.1230–1280 or 1314), known as Vitello, (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1955), 13–23; and Dzieła, vols.11– was a Polish monk, physicist, and mathematician who 12, edited by Manfred Kridl (Literatura słowiaƒska. Rok created the foundations for the psychology of visual pierwszy, 1840–1841), translated from French by Feliks perception in his Perspectivorum libri decem. This treatise Wrotnowski (Warsaw: Biblioteka Arcydzieł Literatury, on optics was an influential work, known by Leonardo da 1929), 9–17. Professor Shalcross originally translated from Vinci and Copernicus. the Płoszewski text; corrections based on the Wrotnowski 19. Kazimierz Brodziƒski (1791–1835), Polish poet and text were later introduced. essayist. Mickiewicz quotes Brodziƒski’s essay “Mowa o 2. Wiktor Weintraub’s Literature as Prophecy: Scholarship narodowoÊci Polaków” [1831]. and Martinist Poetics in Mickiewicz’s Parisian Lectures (Mouton: Gravenhage, 1959). 3. The poet refers here to the Croatian Dubrovnik, which Wasyl Haniewicz, Tragedia Syberyjskiego Białegostoku used to be called Ragusa. (The Tragedy of the Siberian Białystok). Pelplin: 4. Illyria, an ancient name of the region in the Balkans along Bernardinum, 2008. 232 pages. Available from Ksi∏garnia the Adriatic coast, inhabited by the Illyrians, an Indo- Ludzi MyÊlàcych. Price: 29.90 ZŁ plus postage. In Polish. European people. Some scholars believe that the Albanian http://www.xlm.pl/sklep.php?a=4&id=10685. language is a descendant of Illyrian. Polish deportees of late nineteenth century established 5. Wallachia is located north of the Danube and south of the a village in Siberia. Virtually all males from that village Carpathians. 6. Józef Bohdan Zaleski (1802-1886), a Polish Romantic were shot on NKVD orders in the 1930s. poet and a friend of Mickiewicz, known for his folklore- April 2009 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1481 BOOKS Books and Periodicals Received History and Geopolitics Listy, by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Part 3 (in four volumes), edited with an introduction and notes by A contest for Eastern Europe Maria Bokszczanin. Warsaw: Paƒstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy and Instytut KsiàÏki, 2007. 595, 507, and By Andrzej Nowak. Warsaw: Polish Institute of 683 pages. Illustrations. ISBN 978-83-06-03066-2. International Affairs (Warecka 1a, 00-950 Warsaw, pub
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