Polish literature has the convoluted, dramatic course of Polish history to thank for its variety and individuality. From its beginnings - the first literary texts in Polish date back to the 13th century - till the end of the 18th century, Polish literature, the literature of a free country, experienced all the adventures and revolutions of European literature, giving birth to world-class poets like Jan Kochanowski, Mikołaj Sęp Sarzyński or Ignacy Krasicki, counted among Europe's greatest creators of the Renaissance, Baroque and Enlightenment periods.
The close of the 18th century, when Poland disappeared from the map for over 120 years, was a moment which begat an extraordinary situation, rich in revitalising and at the same time lethal consequences for literature. For a nation deprived of its statehood and all accompanying institutions, the writer became a spiritual and political leader, moral authority, lawmaker, and guide. Literature was the keeper of the national cultural identity. Language was the only fatherland. This meant that in Polish literature of the 19th century, the words of the poet gained the status of the highest good, law, truth, almost an epiphany. The poet became the national "bard and prophet" and literature "the service and the mission". Such a challenge could only be accepted by the greatest poets of the 19th century: Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński, and Cyprian Kamil Norwid.
Burdened by this patriotic duty, literature would at several moments during Polish history either surrender to the pressure of the people or rebel. Between "duty" and "rebellion" there stretches an area unusually rich in both ideas and aesthetics, where Polish poetry, prose and drama function to this day.
Between universality and hermetism - this dilemma and drama is illustrated by the fate and European significance of the first Polish Nobel Literature laureates. Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916), the author of the extremely popular, "spirit lifting" historical novels about Polish history (to this day the most widely read books in the country), gained world renown for Quo Vadis, a novel depicting the birth of Christianity, since filmed many times. In 1905 won the Nobel Prize for "outstanding merits as an epic writer". Also Władysław Stanisław Reymont (1867-1925) was honoured for the The Peasants.
Polish 20th-century literature, particularly since Poland regained its independence after the First World War, was characterised by a mutiny against those "duties". Witold Gombrowicz, certainly the most admired contemporary Polish writer known worldwide, made this "Freedom from Polishness" the main theme of his innovative works.
Such hitherto unknown qualities - ambiguous grotesque, philosophical catastrophism - appear in the writings of Bruno Schulz and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, whose dramatic oeuvre preceded the "theatre of the absurd".
Polish literature during the Communist era developed on two tracks. On the one hand, free from the limitations of censorship and all kinds of "ideological service" was Emigrant literature (Miłosz, Gombrowicz, Herling-Grudziński, Kołakowski); on the other was the literature created within the country, which had to find a way of existence and a language which would allow it to speak more or less normally in spite of the restrictions. After 1976, the birth of the literary "second circulation", illegal underground writings and publishers, in some sense "saved" Polish literature and helped the historical changes whose culminating point was 1989.
Paradoxically, the conditions that made freedom of speech difficult, as well as the historical circumstances, helped the formation of the "Polish School of Poetry". Its most characteristic feature is the ability to speak of the fate of the individual caught in history, to link the existential and metaphysical with the historical.
From a completely different perspective - and in a different language - is this destiny described by the grotesque dramaturgy of Sławomir Mrożek. And further, in his own field of philosophical "science-fiction", the work of Stanisław Lem, one of the most important writers in this field today. The picture is completed by the prose of Jerzy Andrzejewski, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Tadeusz Konwicki, Andrzej Szczypiorski, and Marek Hłasko, who have been translated into many languages.
After the fall of Communism in 1989, new tendencies appear, or gain in strength, in Polish literature. The most important and interesting of these are the attempts to find spiritual roots or regional identity within recent history (the novels of Paweł Huelle, Stefan Chwin, Antoni Libera), as well as attempts to introduce the language of the mass media and the symbols and heroes of mass culture into literature.
Between tradition and contemporaneity, between "duty" and "rebellion", between metaphysics and history, a present-day Polish literature is developing, a literature "on the move", aiming at understanding and recording the truth about the human adventure in the world...
Sławomir Mrożek
 |
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
Theatre of the absurd
The world career of the plays of S.I. Witkiewicz, "Witkacy", (1885-1939) began only during the Fifties. Their structure, referring to the artificiality of theatrical reality and a total refusal to construct illusion, had earlier led to accusations of "incomprehensibility", but in the 1950s seemed close to the style of the then fashionable "theatre of the absurd". What is more, the huge sacrifice of the Second World War and the division of Europe at its end seemed to confirm Witkacy's catastrophic diagnoses: The old world order had been replaced by a dictatorship of the stupefied masses, and the revolution had brought no freedom even for its originators. Witkacy "domesticated" the threat of these predictions with black humour, both in his novels (A Farewell to Autumn) and in his works for the stage, with The Shoemakers at the head. The dramatic works of Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) were also pigeonholed in the same way, which, from the pre-war Princess Ivona, through The Marriage up until one of his final works, Operetta, transferred his themes from his books to the theatre. The stage situations and direct "physical" relations between the actors perfectly lent themselves to the transmission of the essential elements of the Gombrowicz philosophy.
The slogan "theatre of the absurd" eased the international start of Sławomir Mrożek's (1930) dramas, from Tango, enthusiastically received by European audiences, to The Emigrants. Although it is true that the author himself has underlined that more absurd things happen in reality (especially during the Communist 1960s in Poland) than in his plays, the grotesque laughter appearing in his work was an answer to the twisting of the modern world and the collapse of norms and values.
Another Polish playwright whose works are often performed around the world is Janusz Głowacki (1938), who borrowed from his predecessors a tendency towards the creation of humorous situations depicting very serious themes and marked by an ironic distance towards his heroes. Beginning with Antigone in New York, he has used literary allusion, creating new contexts for characters originating from the world's most important theatrical works (Fortinbras Gets Drunk, The Fourth Sister).
The Polish School of Poetry
The name "Polish School of Poetry", actually invented outside Poland, usually characterises the work of a group of renowned contemporary poets. However, it is not a typical literary term in that it does not relate to a "poetic group" or "direction". Furthermore, if one examines the biographies and achievements of the figures gathered together in this "group", the differences are more readily apparent than the similarities.
Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) - witness to the 20th century, has experienced the bitter fate of the emigrant and been honoured with many awards, culminating in the Nobel Prize in 1980; he has also achieved success as an essayist, novelist, and translator; in his poetic works, of different types and subjects, he achieves a "perfect simplicity".
Tadeusz Różewicz (1921) - representative of the "war generation", reconstructing a world of values and questioning them once again; from his poetry comes the name of an innovative poetic system (the so-called fourth or Różewicz system); a playwright (The Card Index, Spaghetti and the Sword) breaking theatre and all its set conventions apart; prose author.
Julia Hartwig (1921) - poet, translator, essayist, author of children's books and a monograph on Apollinaire; an unclassifiable personality and oeuvre, in her book Flashes (2002), she achieved an autonomous form in poetic "notes".
Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) - The Socrates of poetry, able to construct aesthetic reflection from any situation, whether taken from everyday life or from mythology; essayist and playwright; Mr. Cogito, inconspicuous hero of his verse, became an archetypal character, possibly the only one created in the literature of the second half of the twentieth century.
Wisława Szymborska (1923) - Poetry shared out modestly, like priceless medicine, always surprising - like the famous repeated bow during the Nobel Prize ceremony in 1996, showing her ironic approach towards the scientific-sounding justification for the awarding of the prize, "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality"
Adam Zagajewski (1945) - from youthful rebellion to pure beauty, the conscious choice of a separate way of his own made at the most difficult historical moment, when it seemed that Solidarity and Solitude might be the title of a collection of essays and not, as it turned out, the evidence of a decision taken, determining his life and literary work.
So, what links such differing poetic voices? The ability to speak about the fundamentals: the existential, ethical, metaphysical and religious experiences and choices of humanity, the depth and intelligence of the reflection, the balance of themes, and the variety and richness of the artistic methods.
Giedroyc and Turowicz
Political conditions directly influenced the activity of the censor (Central Office for the Control of Publications and Performances), liquidated in 1990. The half-century-long system of interference in texts and even the banning of the mention of some authors' names was intended to make all forms of public activity subservient to the authorities. Opposition to this threat of a permanent break between author and reader required hard and relatively ineffective work.
The embodiment and symbol of this work are two living institutions. n In my understanding, the role of editor is not merely to recognise talent, it is above all a parental role. This statement by Jerzy Giedroyc (1906-2000), the founder and editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine "Culture", published by the Literary Institute in Paris, also applies to Jerzy Turowicz (1912-1999), the editor-in-chief of Cracow's "General Weekly" with the modest subtitle, "a Catholic socio-cultural journal". They both linked common sense with a refusal to compromise on morals, unbelievable diligence with professionalism of the highest order, consistency with an openness to unpopular views. Almost every significant character on the Polish cultural stage collaborated with one or the other (and most frequently with both). Their achievements were not limited to their enormous input into the changes in the political system, which they survived to see through, but also their influence on the way tradition is looked upon and their attempts to define the human situation in the contemporary world. The death of both legendary editors closed the era of "responsible care", supporting people and various phenomena from all walks of culture.
Tischner's Philosophy
Philosophy has always accompanied the changes occurring in literature, sometimes taking the form of artistic expression. Such a fusion of different fields became frequent during the Twentieth century, when the philosophical essay gained in popularity and a growing number of respected professors considered it necessary to make contact with "ordinary people" by means of the popular press. Such activity was undertaken by Fr. Józef Tischner (1931-2000), the prematurely deceased student of the famous phenomenologist Roman Ingarden. With his critical view of Christian fundamentalism, he was drawn into an argument with Thomist philosophy during the 1970s. Later, he worked out his own philosophy of dialogue, also known as the philosophy of meeting, expounded in the works The Philosophy of Drama and The Controversy over the Existence of Man.
In 1980, he approached "Solidarity", creating an axiological basis for its activities. He took part in union meetings, became its chaplain, and presented his views in the press and in numerous sermons given throughout the country. The fruit of this activity is the oft-translated The Ethics of Solidarity. After 1989, Tischner's publications attempted to intensify the social changes, to bring to consciousness the changes which the totalitarian system had caused in everyone who had come under its influence, and to defeat its remaining proponents, known as homo sovieticus.
Bruno Schulz
He spent almost all his life in provincial Drohobycz (near Lvov), when, in 1942, he was murdered by the Gestapo. He published only two collections of tales: Cinnamon Shops (1934) and Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (1937), written in strongly metaphorical prose and illustrated with equally mysterious graphics, filled with religious and erotic symbolism. His exceptional writing of the "internal myth" was interrupted by the war.
Solaris in Hollywood
The work of Stanisław Lem (1921-2006) is essential reading for fans of science fiction. By education a doctor and scientific theorist, perfectly at home with the theories of evolution, mathematics, cybernetics, astronomy and physics, he has become a universal after wisdom", philosopher and explorer of the trails which the development of science and technology lay before humanity. He has written tens of science-fiction novels, tales and dramas, translated into tens of languages, which have entered the canon of great 20th-century science fiction (Solaris, Fairytales for Robots, The Star iaries, His Master's Voice). The plots of his novels and tales are occasionally serious but more often grotesquely funny, containing stylisation and plays on literary conventions, and always rich in philosophical subtexts.
Lem's most popular novel, Solaris (1961), has been filmed twice: in 1972, by the legendary Soviet director Andriej Tarkovsky. The transfer of Lem's grand vision to the screen turned out to be a particularly difficult task. The Communist authorities demanded reams of changes from Tarkovsky, changes which destroyed Lem's original vision. The picture received the Special Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival, however, gaining the title of "the most intelligent and penetrating film in the history of science-fiction cinema". In 2002, Solaris was filmed by the duet of Soderbergh and Cameron at Twentieth Century Fox studios. After watching both versions, there can be only one conclusion, better to reach for the book...
The Magic of Place
The magic of place. Is there such a thing, and is it this which has meant that the most famous prose debuts of recent years have created lively interest in many countries? Stefan Chwin's (1949) Hanemann, published in 1995, is connected with Gdańsk, as are the earlier Who was David Weiser? by Paweł Huelle (1957), published in 1987, and Günter Grass' Tin Drum. It is not necessary to strip these books of their real aura of mystery to discover that it is possible to rationalise the source of the magic: it is the real return to a difficult past, created by people of different nationalities, cultures, religions and languages, living alongside each other at one time. Such magic also comes from other places, like Vienna, Warsaw or Cracow, described in Joanna Olczak-Ronikier's family saga In the Garden of Memory. A large readership, a Nike award (Poland's most prestigious literary award) in 2002, and translation options into 12 languages - all this confirms the triumph of literature opposing destruction, extermination, the cruelty of history, and forgetting, and not place.
Zbigniew Herbert | The Envoy of Mr Cogito
Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize
go upright among those who are on their knees
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust
you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony
be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous
in the final account only this is important
and let your helpless Anger be like the sea
whenever your hear the voice of the insulted and beaten
(�)
beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring
the bird with an unknown name the winter oak
light on a wall the splendour of the sky
they don't need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you
be vigilant - when the light on the mountains gives the sign - arise and go
as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star
repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends
because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain
repeat great words repeat them stubbornly
like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand
and they will reward you with what they have at hand
with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap
go because only in this way you will be admitted to the company of cold skulls
to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Roland
the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes
Be faithful Go
[Translated by John Carpenter & Bogdan Carpenter]
Czesław Miłosz
So Little
I said so little.
Days were short.
Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.
I said so little.
I couldn't keep up.
My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardour,
Hope.
The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.
Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.
The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.
And now I don't know
What in all that was real.
[Translated by Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee]
Wisława Szymborska
A cat in an empty flat
To die - you cannot do this to a cat
For what can a cat do
in an empty flat.
Climb up the walls.
Rub against furniture.
Apparently nothing has changed around here
and yet everything is completely changed.
Apparently not moved
And yet moved away.
And the lamp is not lit in the evening.
Footsteps can be heard on the stairs,
But they are not the same footsteps.
The hand which puts a piece of fish in the bowl
is also not the one which once did.
Something does not start here
at the usual time.
Something here does not happen
as it should.
Someone was here again and again
and then suddenly disappeared
and is stubbornly absent now.
Each closet has been looked into
Each shelf run across.
The space under the carpet has been checked, having squeezed in
And even the ban to tear up paper
has been breached.
What else is there to do.
To sleep and wait.
If only he comes back
If only he shows up.
He will surely find out,
that he cannot do it to a cat.
The cat will just walk up
as if he did not want to,
very slowly
on very offended paws.
And no jumps or yowls to begin with.
[Translated by Wojciech Graniczewski]
Tadeusz Różewicz
Who is a poet
A poet is the one who writes poems
and the one who does not write poems
a poet is the one who bursts one's fetters
and the one who puts them on
a poet is the one who has faith
and the one who cannot have it
a poet is the one who has lied
and the one who has heard lies
a poet is the one who has lips
and the one who swallows the truth
the one who has fallen
and the one who is raising
a poet is the one who leaves
and the one who cannot leave
(Translated by Wojciech Graniczewski)
Adam Zagajewski
A Letter to the Reader
There is too much about death,
about shadows.
Write about life,
about an ordinary day,
about the yearning for order.
(...)
Look,
the nations crammed
in tight stadiums
sing anthems of hate.
There is too much music
and too little harmony, peace
and reason.
Write about those moments
when the gangways of friendship
become more lasting
then despair.
Write about love,
about long evenings,
about the morning,
about the trees,
about the infinite patience
of light.
(Translated by Wojciech Graniczewski)
The Polish School of Reportage
Reportage as a self-sufficient phenomenon only arose in the 20th century and, in Polish writing, it was treated as one of the more interesting "border species" of literature as early as the interwar period. A relationship with the diaries, stories and chronicles popular in the 19th century, enabled its almost immediate escape from the confines of documentary description of reality. A concentration on the fates of authentic characters, joined with attempts at generalisation, turned out to be the narrative technique which would allow a literary diagnosis of the 20th century's tragic events, totalitarianism, war, and the Holocaust.
The development of the "Polish school of reportage" was connected with the events of the Second World War. However, the works of K. Pruszyński or M. Wańkowicz clearly pointed in the direction of fictional prose. A different method was chosen by Zofia Nałkowska in Medallions, an ascetic recollection of the Holocaust, and Tadeusz Borowski, whose tales which took place in an extermination camp, at first categorised as factual literature, accused the world of treating humans as goods. Gustaw Herling-Grudziński used his experiences in the Soviet camps to pose once again questions about the ethical and religious fundamentals. The deepness of A World Apart means that the opinion of Bertrand Russell, who counted this book among the "bravest and best which have appeared during the twentieth century" is still current.
Real events, from the sacrifice of Father Maximilian Kolbe in Auschwitz to the crimes of the Manson gang in Roman Polański's California villa, are employed by Jan Józef Szczepański in the works of his book Before an Unknown Tribunal in order to make them the subject of a reflection on morality. The Holocaust is always present in the fates of characters described by Hanna Krall (To Steal A March on God, Dancing at Someone Else's Wedding, The Subtenant), but her books are more than a memoir, they are an attempt to understand the modern world. A similar role is played by the exotic countries in the works of Ryszard Kapuściński (The Emperor, Shah of Shahs, Empire). Events distant in time, foreign customs, political revolt - all serve to interpret human existence and make sense of the ever more violent changes in reality. Such a perspective is probably the main reason for the worldwide popularity of these authors.
