JERZY KOS INSKI I A STUDY OP HIS NOVELS David J. Lipani A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1973 BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 556843 ii ABSTRACT Vo. The Introduction examined relevant aspects of Kosin­ ski’s life in an attempt to establish a relationship between his past experiences and the major themes of his fiction. It was discovered that the author’s exposure to diverse forms of authoritarian control constituted the source of his bias against any external force operating counter to the self’s freedom. The four novels comprising the Kosinski canon were analyzed in detail, especially as they were directed toward the quest for a viable self in a contemporary world threatening to submerge the individual consciousness. Each protagonist was shown struggling with some variant of social repression» the boy in The Painted Bird faced hostile peasants who, swayed by Nazist ideology, viewed him as a menace to their own safety» the narrator in Steps fled the socialist bloc because there he had no control of his destiny, nor was his being acknowledged as an entity separ­ ate from the masses» Chance, in Being There, was subjected to a more insidious totalitarianism--the television medium, whose false representation of reality effectively kneads the individual into an easily manipulated, mindless soul» and Jonathan Whalen, in The Devil Tree, fell victim to the Protestant Ethic, the demands of which left him unable to see himself as something other than an image occasioned by wealth and status. It was concluded that Kosinski's theme throughout was the elusiveness of self and the self’s efforts to achieve an identity amidst collective societies whose influences upon behavior made such identification difficult, if not impossible. It was determined, furthermore, thatL the author’s attention to characters desiring autonomy of self spoke to the need to expand and define the self, to make the self more aware of its essence and its potential. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION .................................................. '. ... ........................ 1 THE PAINTED BIRD........................................................................... 37 STEPS........................ 79 BEING THERE .......................................................... 131 THE DEVIL TREE.......................................................... 185 CONCLUSION......................... ..................................................... .... 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................... 258 CHAPTER I» INTRODUCTION “Non-fiction is outdated by reality. Fiction amplifies reality." Jerzy Kosinski 2 Perhaps as intriguing as the novels he has written is the life he has led and the relationship of that life to his fiction. Certainly the protagonist of his first novel, The Painted Bird, seems but a thinly disguised Jerzy Kosinski, and that of the second, Steps, a more literary but still factually-based version of the same man. Many of the scenes, incidents, and characters in both works appear to have had their origin in the author's actual experience. Yet Kosinski is vehement in his denial of these sup­ positions! he cannot be found in his fictions, he claims. The denial is a common one among artists, but whereas many would offer it as a camouflage for their lack of inventive­ ness, it is with Kosinski a significant aspect of his artis­ tic vision. The form and content of his first two novels depend directly upon his having separated the artist in him­ self from the rest of his being! had he not been able to do so, his literary efforts would have been too personal, too subjective to find adequate expression.The reality of his past had to be transformed into metaphor and symbol before weaving itself into his fiction. The bare facts of that past are fascinating in ^This separation of the artist "from the rest of his being" is alluded to in Notes of the Author (p. 11) and more extensively in the note on page Ij" of this chapter (Prom No Third Path) and the remarks following. 3 themselvesi they form a body of material which strikes one as being the very essence of fiction, so filled is it with struggle, pain, determination, victory at times and defeat quite often. One can assume that until Kosinski was five or six years old he had a normal, happy childhood. Born on June 14, 1933# be was the only child of Mieczyslaw and Elzbieta Kosinski. Both parents were educated» his mother was graduated from Moscow Conservatory and was a pianist (she was never allowed to perform in public)» Mr, Kosinski had attended Petersburg University and, among other accomplish­ ments, spoke fluent Latin, as does his son. (When he was studying in Moscow in 1957» Kosinski would telephone his father and the two would quickly exchange political gossip in Latin before the Soviets had time enough to provide a Latin censor.) Of his father Kosinski has said« He was born in Russia. He saw the Revolution of 1905» then World War I, then he escaped from Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, and then he lived through the Second World War. So if anyone had a reason to be fed up, he had. And he withdrew from the twentieth century altogether. He studied ancient Greece, and the origin of the European languages. It was his escape device. Jerzy Kosinski did not withdraw from the twentieth century, though he, too, suffered a similar and perhaps more horrify­ ing fate» instead, he studied that century and discovered ^Cleveland Amory, "Trade Winds,” (Interview), Saturday Review. 17 April 1971» P. 16. 4 his own means of escape in so doing. When Poland was invaded in 1939» his parents believed that their son would stand a better chance of surviving the Nazi terror if he were placed with friends» the young Kosin­ ski was dark-haired and dark-eyed—unmistakably Jewish. Thus he spent the war years as a largely independent waif, much like the several million other children left homeless and orphaned in the wake of the German holocaust. Thrust upon his own resources, cast amidst the genocidal mania of the Nazis on the one hand, the communists on the other, and a treacherous peasantry in-between, he fought a perpetual battle simply to sustain himself. No doubt he had to endure a number of trials for the duration of the war, and, no doubt, that which he heard and saw those six years has forged the basis not only for his first novel but for his entipe outlook on life» "By the age of eight, in terms of character ... I was already completely formed. He was eventually reunited with his family following the war's end and resumed his formal education. An adept student, he received an M.A. (in history) from the University of Lodz in 1953 and another (in political science) in 1955. Kosinski then studied photo-chemistry at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw from 1955 to 1957» and later in that year embarked upon social research at Lomonosov University, 3Amory, p. 16. 5 Moscow. His experiences in the Russian capital were later captured in two non-fiction works, The Future Is Ours, Com­ rade and No Third Path, both written under the pseudonym Joseph Novak and both highly regarded as perceptive social texts. The author frequently refers to what he rightly calls a momentous decision made in the winter of ‘57. By that time he had become thoroughly disillusioned with the commu­ nist system and desperately wanted to flee its grasp. He had plotted his escape carefully over a two year period, establishing himself as a financially successful photographer so as to avoid rousing the authorities* suspicion when at last he asked permission to leave the country, He claimed to have a Chase Manhattan Bank Foundation Scholarship which would allow him to carry on his studies in the United States. No such scholarship or foundation ever existed. But Kosin­ ski obtained a passport, flew into Western Europe, and thence to America, a free man. Free in more than one sense. He had slipped away from the totalitarian rule that had literally crushed his independent spirit, a spirit fostered in him by his youthful experiences. Free, too, though only figuratively, from that past which had formed his character. When I came /to America/, I did not want to do anything that I had done before. I thought it would be dragging a part of my past into an entirely dif­ ferent place, and one of the reasons I came here was 6 not to drag anything from the past. It was not really a matter of leaving Poland» it was leaving myself in the Polish context. I was so much a part of that con­ text, and I did not like myself. I thought that if I changed the frame of reference, it would also change me into something else. It was, therefore, entirely a literary decision.^ The total significance of this decision will be discussed more fully in a moment. It is important to note here, how­ ever, that Kosinski had reached a crisis, probably the most crucial turning point in his life, and one that would inevi­ tably shape his destiny. Had he failed in his attempted flight, he would have faced an extended prison sentence and perhaps worse. "But I had rejected that life to the point where I really could not care less what happened to me, and if I had been caught, I would have removed myself, one way or another.Indeed, he carried a cyanide capsule in his pocket throughout the journey westward. He arrived in the U.S, with very little money and almost no knowledge of English, The story he tells of learning the language must rank amongst the finest anec­ dotes in literary history. Soon after settling in New York City he surrounded himself with dictionaries and books and saw several movies daily.