Kronika dziejow Polski [a chronicle of Polish history], edited by Stanislaw Kolodziejski et al.
Introduction by Marek K. Kaminski. Krakow. Wydawnictwo K.
Kluszczynski [30-110 Krakow, ul. Kraszewskiego 36]. 1996. Copious
illustrations, photographs, graphs, reproductions of paintings. Index. 400
pages. 12_ x 9.5_. Hardcover. ISBN 83-86328-34-7. In Polish. No price given.
This is a superb example of the revival of the
art of publishing in post-communist Poland. The quality of this book compares
favorably with any art book published anywhere. The volume is a chronological
and encyclopedic history of Poland written by over a dozen Polish scholars from
various branches of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The format alternates
between narrative and dated entries. The book takes the reader from the Ice Age
on what later became Polish territory, to the events of 1994. Among its most
recent entries are the new Gdansk oil refinery, a new chapel in the village of
Lapszanka in Podhale, and the story of General Maczek who died at age 101 on 11
December 1994.
The book is copiously illustrated: those
looking for "typically Polish" experiences will find them in pictures
as well as in words in this opulent volume. We would like to recommend this
book to Polish libraries in this country, Polish cultural clubs and parish
libraries, Polish genealogical societies and private readers. Write to the
Kluszczynski Publishers for a price list that should have been more widely
distributed.
Polish Baroque and Enlightenment Literature: An Anthology, by Michael J. Mikos. Columbus, Ohio.
Slavica Publishers [P.O. Box 14388, Columbus, OH 43214]. 1996. 382 pages.
Illustrations and Photographs. Hardcover.
The first English anthology of Polish prose
and poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The prolific
"Sarmatian" seventeenth century is represented by Piotr Kochanowski,
Daniel Naborowski Hieronim Sarbiewski (translated from the Latin of course),
Hieronim Morsztyn and Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, Wac_aw Potocki and many others.
There is even a letter translated from the famous collection of King Jan
Sobieski's Letters to his wife. Bishop Ignacy Krasicki's Fables figure
prominently in the eighteenth-century section, which also contains a rich
selection from later eighteenth-century reformers. We are looking forward to
Professor Mikos' Romanticism anthology.
A longer review to follow.
Swoboda na smyczy: Wspomnienia 1946-1956 [leashed freedom: memoirs
1946-1956], by Leszek Dziegiel.
Krakow. Arcana Publishers [ul.
Dunajewskiego 6, II p., 31-133 Krakow]. 1996. 286 pages. Illustrations and
photographs. Paper. ISBN 83-86225-55-6. In Polish.
A professor of ethnology at Jagiellonian
University, Dziegiel (b. 1931) describes the life of educated youth in
Soviet-occupied Poland in 1946-1956. These were the years of the greatest
oppression and the most intense efforts to separate Polish students from their
cultural and religious past. Written in the style of the gaweda, Dziegiel's
engaging memoirs will ring a bell for those who experienced those times, and
will provide a useful resource to those who did not. An easy read.
Democracy, Civil Society and Pluralism in Comparative Perspective:
Poland, Great Britain and the Netherlands,
edited by Christopher G.A. Bryant and Edmund Mokrzycki. Warsaw. IFiS
Publishers [00-330 Warsaw, Nowy Zwiat 72]. 1995. 424 pages. Paper.
A collection of very competently written
articles on the three countries mentioned in the title. The Polish authors
represent the political and social ideology associated with the Left (Freedom
Union and Social Democracy of Poland). Consequently, there are many
denunciations here of things that have to do with tradition. The British
authors are likewise somewhat leftist, renouncing Thatcherism at every
opportunity. We found the two articles by Christopher Bryant to be particularly
useful and enlightening, as they show sensitivity toward the growing
multi-ethnicism of Britain which has absorbed nearly three million people from
her former colonies. Bryant also deals intelligently with the devolution of
unity of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Do Snowia i dalej... [to Snowie and beyond...], by Jaroslaw Marek Rymkiewicz. Krakow.
Arcana Publishers [ul. Dunajewskiego 6, II p., 31-133 Krakow]. 1996. 240 pages.
Paper. ISBN83-86225-95-5. In Polish.
This is volume four of the projected
five-volume opus by one of Poland_s most "Polish" writers. It
strongly smells of Rodziewiczowna. However, the author is fully conscious of
postmodernity, and he is a literary scholar by profession. As was the case with
Dziegiel, Rymkiewicz uses the gaweda genre to tell his tale centered on the
life of Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1856) in a Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian setting,
with an admixture of another story about Polish poet Ludwik Spitznagel and
echoes of modernity. For those who like the gaweda genre, and for those who
wish to taste the essence of the traditional and somewhat passive Polishness, Rymkiewicz
is tailor-made.
Kielce July 4, 1946: Background, Context and Events, by Tadeusz Piotrowski, Iwo C. Pogonowski et al.
Toronto and Chicago: The Polish Educational Foundation in North America (390
Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto, ONT M6R 2M4]. 1996. Maps, Bibliography, Appendices.
151 pages. Paper. $8.00 US
The oft-repeated and, according to the
authors, much-abbreviated version of the Kielce pogrom is that on 4 July 1946
in the city of Kielce, a mob attacked a house inhabited by Jews. In the fight,
42 Jews and two attackers perished (some speak of 39 Jews and two gentiles).
The Soviet-controlled police and army were present at the scene, and their role
is the main point of contention in this book. The subsequent trial of
perpetrators resulted in nine death sentences for Polish civilian participants
in the pogrom.The authors of the brochure suggest that the Kielce pogrom was an
elaborate plot by the security forces in Soviet-occupied Poland, devised to
advance two goals: 1. to discredit anti-Soviet resistance in Poland by
suggesting to the free world that only harsh Soviet rule could contain Polish
anti-Semitism, and 2. to encourage Jews from the Soviet-occupied territories to
emigrate to Palestine in accordance with the Zionist plan of creating there a
Jewish state.
In support of their thesis, the authors point
to several issues overlooked by most commentators. According to the testimony
of a Jewish survivor, the first shots were fired by the police at the Jews :
"The soldiers fired through the closed doors..." (p. 120) Dr. Seweryn
Kahane, the head of a local Jewish association, was shot in the back of the
head at close range, or Soviet excecution-style, by a uniformed police officer
(p. 94). Many other questions are raised but none is fully answered. The
ambiguities however suggest that the matter of the Kielce pogrom is overdue for
a scholarly historical study. The book goes off on tangents too frequently, and
the authors, some of them with academic credentials, are generally unable to
maintain scholarly detachment without which a reassessment of Kielce events
will not be possible.
A good number of Jews attribute the
responsibility for the pogrom to Poles, since it happened on Polish soil and
involved a Polish-speaking mob (albeit, as the authors suggests, controlled and
goaded on by men in NKVD uniforms). A mention of the Kielce pogrom appears in
the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and in other Holocaust museums in the
United States. Many Polish Americans perceive this as unjustified
"dumping" of guilt on a powerless and largely voiceless Central
European nation. For many Jewish Americans, Kielce constitutes proof of Polish
complicity in the Holocaust and a particularly odious manifestation of
anti-Semitism, as it occurred shortly after the Holocaust. In 1996, Polish
foreign minister Dariusz Rosati officially apologized to world Jewry for the
pogrom.
Among other questions raised by the book are
the following: What kind of legal and moral responsibility is carried by
individuals citizens, or a body of citizens, in a country subjected to a
represssive military occupation? How should one interpret Czeslaw Milosz's
comment that "The first cadres of the Polish Communist Party in
1945...were composed by men in uniform, a very large proportion of them
intellectuals of Jewish descent." Or that of Aleksander Smolar, a Polish
intellectual of Jewish descent, concerning the perception of the murderous
Soviet occupation in the 1940s: "To many Poles, it seemed as though the
Jews had won."
The Dedalus Book of Polish Fantasy, edited and translated by Wiesiek Powaga. New York.
Dedalus/Hippocrene [171 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016]. 1996. 320 pages.
Paper. $16.95 or L9.99.
A delightful collection of stories by twenty
Polish writers, some of whom (Wladyslaw Reymont, Bruno Jasienski) you would
never have suspected of writing fantasy. We were particularly delighted to find
in the volume a story by Poland_s greatest writer of children_s literature,
Kornel Makuszynski (whose novels amply deserve translation). A review to
follow.
Hoopi Shoopi Donna, by
Suzanne Strempek Shea. New York. Pocket Books [1230 Avenue of the
Americas, NY 10020]. 1996. 356 pages. Hardcover. $22.00.
A Polish American novel by the author of
Selling the Lite of Heaven (reviewed in SR, September 1995). Strempek Shea has
an uncanny ability to zero in on typical trivialities of life (in this case,
Polish American life) and elevate them to the status of symbols. She is like
Mike Royko and Garrison Keillor rolled into one. Her book, with its easy plot,
at first seems to be another first-person, silly-little-girl narrative, but in
this second novel Strempek Shea deepens her insights considerably, revealing
the self-destructive side of the Polish character. But the book ends on a note
of hope.
After Plattling, translated
and edited with an introduction by Olga M. Cooke. Illustrations.
Berkeley, CA. Berkeley Slavic Specialties. 1996. 69 pages.
A bilingual collection of 14 poems, in English
and in the original Russian, written by Russian prisoners-of-war who found
themselves in Germany in 1945. These were former soldiers in General Vlasov_s
Army, as well as people forcibly deported to Germany from the section of the
Soviet Union occupied by the Nazis. Many of them were then deported back to the
Soviet Union by the Allies. They went to certain death. Among others, Polish
novelist Jozef Mackiewicz wrote about this tragedy which was one of the ugliest
examples of collaboration between the Allies and the Soviet regime.
The collection was originally published in
Russian in the town of Plattling, Bavaria, in 1946, the site of one such
deportation. Olga Cooke found the collection in the Hoover Archives, and
translated it for the English reader. The poems express not only the sadness of
captivity but also great patriotic fervor and hope for Russia. The Russians who
wrote them loved Russia so passionately that even in the The tenor of these
poems is strikingly similar to the poetry about Chechenya [Ishkeria] written by
Chechen exiles today. This example of patriotic literature may also be worth
comparing to the writings of Slavic peoples in similar circumstances.
Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast, by Tomas Venclova. New Haven and
London. Yale University Press. 1996. xiii + 369 pages. Hardcover.
In one of G.K.Chesterton_s stories, Father
Brown is asked where is the best place to hide a letter. He answers, "In
the forest." "What if there is no forest?" "Then you have
to plant one," answers Father Brown.
This episode comes to mind as one reflects on
the exposure given in Polish literary life to Aleksander Wat, a
"disappointed" former communist and a sophisticated poet. First
Czeslaw Milosz came forth with a massive two-volume, question-and-answer
quasi-autobiography of Wat, and produced a book that opened to him many a door
previously closed. Now an academic press that would most likely scorn a
critical study of many a neglected Polish writer lends its prestige to yet
another volume on Wat, by someone coming from the same intellectual circle as
Milosz and thus unlikely to offer a strikingly novel interpretation. It seems
that the volumes describing the life of a "dissident communist"
contribute to a certain vision of communist times, obscuring the causes and
consequences of the longest period of cultural and material destruction in
eastern Europe, and highlighting the fate of the few intellectuals who agonized
over this enterprise. Thus the story gives the communist slaughterhouse a human
face, an eloquent ornamentation softening its historical image. A counterpart
on the Nazi side would be a memoir of a "disappointed Nazi,"
imprisoned or shunned by other Nazis for his abandonment of radical Nazism yet
not sufficiently hostile to the Nazi enterprise to be slaughtered together with
radical oppositionists. In defense of Wat, one should say that he has most
eloquently repudiated communism in his memoirs.
This said, the volume is excellently written by
a Lithuanian American poet and scholar, Tomas Venclova. It starts with Wat's
early years marked by futurist leanings and pro-Soviet sympathies (fortunately
for Wat, he did not betake himself to Soviet Russia as he once planned), and it
ends with Wat's exile in the West. Wat was one of those tragic Polish writers
who in large measure were victims of forces beyond their control. As he shed
off his early futurist mannerisms, he became a profound and austere poet given
to meditation on topics of timeless relevance.
A longer review to follow.
Polish American Tourist: Turystyka do Polski, Published yearly by PAT- Polish
American Tours, division of Worldwide Travel [1053 Riverdale Street, West
Springfield, MA 01089, tel. 413-747-770]. 1996. 20 pages. Numerous photographs.
Newspaper format.
The best resource on travel to Poland we have
ever seen. It contains information about hotel rates, car rental, rail travel,
escorted group tours, festivals and events, reservations and more. Information
about Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Danube tours is also included, as well
as tours which combine Poland with other countries.
Pokonac raka: Biografia dr Stanislawa R. Burzynskiego [conquering
cancer: Dr Stanislaw R. Burzynski_s biography], by Wieslaw Horabik. San Francisco, CA. CanQuest
Publishing Company [1360 Taylor Street, Suite 6, San Francisco, CA 94108].
1996. 229 pages. Photographs. Hardcover. In Polish.
A biography of Houston's famous cancer doctor
and researcher who has cured a number patients afflicted with untreatable kinds
of cancer.
Songs, Dances, and Customs of Peasant Poland, by Sula Benet. Preface by Margaret Mead.
New York. Hippocrene [171 Madison Avenue, Ny, NY 10016]. 1996. 247 pages. 16
illustrations. Hardcover. $24.95.
nie zaplacony czynsz: wiersze pieszyckie, by Adam Lizakowski. Dzierzoniow. OBOK
Publishers. 1996. 75 pages. Paper. In Polish.
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