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Przemysław Czaplinski

Dominika M. Baran

DEUTSCHLAND T h e i m a g e o f G e r m a n s i n Po l i s h l i t e r a t u r e

IN THE MID-1970’S,

WHILE VISITING THE UNITED STATES, A CERTAIN POLISH MAN WAS HAVING A BRIEF CHAT WITH AN AMERICAN. WHEN ASKED THE ARCHETYPAL QUESTION, “WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” HE REPLIED, “POLAND.” “WHERE IS THAT?” PROBED THE AMERICAN, KEEPING UP THE FRIENDLY EXCHANGE. “IN EUROPE,” SAID THE POLE. “BUT WHERE EXACTLY?” THE LOCAL MAN INSISTED. “BETWEEN RUSSIA AND GERMANY,” WAS THE POLE’S SUCCINCT ANSWER. “BUT THERE IS NO SPACE IN BETWEEN THERE!” EXCLAIMED THE PUZZLED AMERICAN. THEY FINISHED THEIR COFFEE IN SILENCE.

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness had fallen under the sway of megalomania and xenophobia THE NEED FOR THIS RENEWAL, ­IN ­LIPSKI’S view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness.

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These were peculiar cries. ZOMO recruits were always young men: our neighbors’ sons, our classmates, cousins, brothers. They were our own society’s flesh and blood.

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness had fallen under the sway of megalomania and xenophobia LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polis.

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he present essay, whose subject is the relationship between Polish and German cultures, emerges in some sense from a place which does not exist – the place for which there has always been too little space.

I. STRANGERS AT HOME In the mid-1981, in the very midst of Poland’s experiment with Solidarity, Jan Jozef Lipski wrote his essay “Two homelands, two patriotisms”1, which outlined a proposal for the renewal of Poland’s collective identity.

The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness had fallen under the sway of megalomania and xenophobia, which work to unite society through feelings of hatred and injustice directed at its neighbors. Megalomania allows one to deride the Czechs, sneer at the primitive Russians, reproach the Ukrainians for their cruelty; xenophobia, 3

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness had fallen under the sway of megalomania and xenophobia

meanwhile, relentlessly revives the loathing of Germans and reproduces the most nonsensical prejudices against the Jews. Megalomania works to bleach bloody stains out of native history – that is, wrongs that were done to the Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Czechs or Jews – and assists in maintaining a sense of moral purity. The hatred of the foreign Other certainly holds a community together, but such a community fails to notice that the glue which binds it is made of poison. This toxic cement of collective life turns against the community itself: if it has coalesced around the hatred of Germans, it is easy to steer its emotions by kindling anti-German sentiments in order to exclude; if it is united in its contempt for Russians and all things Russian, then it will never discover Russian elements in its own culture, consequently failing to establish a true dialog with itself. Megalomania and xenophobia are not simply the rejection of the unknown, but, most importantly, they draw a narrow perimeter around what is seen

as one’s own. A community which cuts itself off from the Other can only define its identity by stating who and with whom it does not wish to be. Such a collective is not interested in discovering how much of the Other it part of itself, or how heterogeneous it really is.

The author contrasts this kind of Ressentiment patriotism with critical patriotism which he also finds in Polish tradition. Critical patriotism is rooted in the readiness for solemn reckonings, acknowledging both the good and the bad, or even the worst, acts committed by the native community. It does not shun the duty to love one’s homeland, but it always asks what kinds of actions this love seeks to motivate, and who it is willing to exclude. This reflective patriotism does not question heroic achievements, but neither does it allow the past to be reduced to a catalog of triumphs. Guided by a sense of responsibility, next to sources of pride it places causes for shame and disgrace.

Lipski thus aims to convince us that the

stranger is within us, in the shape of both denounced evils as well as regular cultural influences, so that any attempt at building a national identity based on excluding the Other leads to denial and hatred. Megalomania and xenophobia are not simply passions directed at outsiders, but they form a blueprint for relations within the community itself – their essence rests in coercing all members into a uniform model of identity, which in turn consists of a tally of despised characteristics.

Lipski writes: “Patriotism derives from love and it is meant to lead to love – in any other form it becomes an ethical aberration.” This Christian-sounding project can, however, be expressed in different terms: if we wish to communicate with each other better, we need to get to know ourselves more completely. This entails allowing the foreignness within us to be heard, and consequently for the strangers standing by our side to be granted full expression. It is thus impossible for Poles to relate to each other differently

without first changing their attitude towards Russians and Germans.

II. STRANGERS, GO HOME! A few months after the publication of Lipski’s essay, martial law was instituted in Poland.

Beginning in January 1982, on every monthly “anniversary” of this event – January 13, February 13, March 13, and so on – people gathered in city streets to vociferate their hatred of communism, condemn the authorities for their crime, commemorate the victims of martial law, manifest their protest.

The demonstrations were surrounded by a tight cordon of militia. Robust and well equipped, they were carefully selected for this kind of task. They were known as ZOMO, the Polish acronym for the official name of their unit: the Motorized Squad of Citizens’ Militia, which was the most despised segment of Polish security forces. The crowd faced these dumb, baton-wielding warriors of the communist state, shouting, “ZOMO – Gestapo!

ZOMO – Gestapo!” Louder and louder, with mounting aggression, till their voices turned hoarse. Sometimes this was enough: the militiamen marched into action with their rubber swords drawn, clashing with the small groups into which the crowd would have split. If, on the other hand, the protesters managed to advance a few hundred meters, a basic political message entered the chanted slogans.

The crowd passed the empty party headquarters, yelling, “Soviets – go home! Soviets – go home! Soviets – go home!”

These were peculiar cries. ZOMO recruits were always young men: our neighbors’ sons, our classmates, cousins, brothers. They were our own society’s flesh and blood. The cry: “Gestapo!” did not mean that they were German, but rather that they treated other Poles the way Germans had during World War II. This insult served to exclude their actions from the set of acceptable community behaviors, expressing the underlying belief that being a member of ZOMO is as foreign to 4

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness had fallen under the sway of megalomania and xenophobia

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness had fallen under the sway of megalomania and xenophobia

modern Polishness as the methods employed by the Gestapo had been during the war. The second cry, meanwhile, meant that the martial law and the whole communist project in Poland were an Eastern import enacted by people who were ideological and cultural outsiders. Both these slogans therefore meant more or less that under martial law, Polish society was beaten by forces so foreign to our identity that they could be equated with the Gestapo, who took their orders from a government politically so alien that it was essentially Soviet.

Martial law – one of Poland’s greatest postwar traumas – was thus never named in local terms. And foreign names ascribed to it pushed evil outside the boundaries of the community, while bestowing on the community itself features of a collective suprahistorical martyr. As the two slogans implied, forty years after the war we were still besieged by the Germans and the Russians. The acute anachronism of this idea points to the need for different diagnoses and new evaluations. But the appearance of World War II stereotypes meant that the simple task of finding more fitting labels for militiamen and party functionaries first required a reconceptualization of the Gestapo and of the Soviets.2 And that is because collective identity always constructs itself in opposition to internal and 5

external Others.3 III. ALMOST JEWISH The first attempt at such a reconceptualization following martial law was undertaken by Andrzej Szczypiorski in his novel The Beginning. The significance of this book lay not so much in proposing a new version of history, but in a regrouping of sentiments surrounding the Other.

With respect to Polish-German relations which are of interest to us here, Szczypiorski’s contribution is both apparent and ambiguous. It is apparent in that the author broke with the stereotypical portrayal of the German. Its ambiguity, meanwhile, lies in the fact that the renewal of Polish-German relations proposed in the novel takes place at the expense of the Jews and the Russians.

The author achieves this in a straightforward manner. He tells the story of a beautiful Jewish girl, who, having been reported to the Gestapo by a fellow Jew, becomes the subject of a rescue mission on part of her neighbors, while the final link in the chain of solidarity turns out to be Johan Müller – a German who saves Miss Irma Seidenmann from the hands of the Gestapo by pretending to be her friend.

Years later, in 1968, Poland’s communist authorities expel Miss Irma from her job, and then from the country. Through this story

Szczypiorski not only points out that Germans could be humane and good, and that post-war communism was antisemitic, but above all he seeks to weaken the effectiveness of employing nationalism as a key to interpreting collective experience. We have relied on this key to explain Poland’s 20th century history: if we were oppressed by two nations motivated by anti-Polish ideology, then our raison d’être had to consist of nationalistic patriotism. Szczypiorski, however, shifts the center of gravity from the nation to the totalitarian regime and, surprisingly, introduces the German as an ally in the Polish struggle against totalitarian authority. Post-war Ger-

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET The need for this renewal, in Lipski’s view, came from the fact that Polish patriotic consciousness had fallen under the sway of megalomania and xenophobia

mans are no longer nationalist socialists, but rather – as befits their innate perfectionism – model democrats.

Szczypiorski thus tells the story in which the Poles become almost Jewish: they suffer persecution, but all the more so when forced to watch the persecution and killing of Jews.

Because of this double injury – empathizing with the Jews coupled with the immensity of their own sacrifice – years after the war the Poles, like the Jews, find themselves trapped in painful ruminations and in their hatred of Germans. The author exploits this parallel to propose a change. His novel seeks to convince us that since, like the Jews, we treat Germans with emotional distance, we can use this to break the barriers and begin a new narrative – a dialog between a doubly-injured victim and its sworn enemy. First, however, we have to let go of the generalizing view which sees all Germans as criminals or their helpers.

IV. GERMANUS SEDENS Although full of shortcomings caused by sentimentality, Szczypiorski’s novel did a lot of good. It legitimized writing about the civilian experience of the war, it included the German civilian among the war’s victims, it showed that building human relationships in the post-war world is closely linked to how one talks about the wartime world, and it undermined nationalistic thinking. At the same time, the sense of incompleteness generated by the novel created the right conditions for countless civilian wartime narratives to break through national categorizations and to unveil thus far overlooked experiences.

As long as European consciousness was dominated by war narratives which centered on frontline campaigns, partisan activity or espionage, civilian experience remained on the sidelines. But the wartime picture changes radically when we introduce the perspective of those focused not on fighting and killing, but on surviving – the perspective familiar from books such as The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, The Silence of the Sea by Jean Marcel Vercors, or A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising by Miron Bialoszewski. And along with it change national characterizations. Soldiers are not really free to mix with enemy armies, but the mixing of civilian populations of diverse – and hostile – national provenance is a common occurrence. They are also often, for various reasons, isolated from the war itself.

Precisely this kind of historical setting features in Stefan Chwin’s novel Hanemann.4 The author recounts the life of the main hero – a German doctor living in Gdansk and specializing in anatomic pathology – who just before the war loses his beloved, Luiza Berger, in mysterious circumstances. Until Luiza’s death Hanemann studies human ca6

c­ ritics. Nevertheless, approval is still not the sentiment of the majority of the population. text

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Przemysław Czaplinski

Dominika M. Baran

The dynamics of equilibrium

IVETA RADIČOVÁ I n t e r v i ew

Can we still talk about common political and economical goals?

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY

An important factor of the critical perception of post-November developments was an insufficient awareness of the need for profound change. This is related to the late socialist modernization of Slovakia as well as to the specific, softer course of normalization after the occupation of Czechoslovakia

by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. The majority of the Slovak population at the end of the 1980s did not perceive the communist regime as an unredeemable realm of evil; they did not experience first hand that the socialist economic system had reached the limits of its growth and was living at the expense of future generations. This insufficient admission of the need for profound economic change has since remained impressed in the minds of a large portion of the Slovak public.

The ratio of economic “realists” to economic “illusionists” in Slovakia has long shifted towards the latter.

AND PROMINENT SLOVAK POLITICIAN. SHE HAS AUTHORED MANY BOOKS AND WAS DIRECTOR OF SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF THE SLOVAK ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. IN 2009 SHE WAS A RUNNER UP DURING THE SLOVAK PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND DURING 2006-2006 SHE WAS AN MP IN THE SLOVAK PARLIAMENT FOR THE SLOVAK DEMOCRATIC AND CHRISTIAN UNION-DEMOCRATIC PARTY (SDKU).

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he present essay, whose subject is the relationship between Polish and German cultures, emerges in some sense from a place which does not exist – the place for which there has always been too little space.

What do we still have in common eighteen years after the Visegrád Declaration?

Karel Čapek once wrote: “The Creator made Europe small, and even divided her up into tiny parts, so that our hearts could find joy not in size but in diversity.” To enjoy and understand diversity, however, requires a high degree of openness, liberty, responsibility and tolerance. A common, diverse world should be created by encouraging solidarity, protecting human rights and counteracting xenophobia. The coexistence of national and supranational identity lies in ways of forming cohesion in diversity.

The path to this goal is full of trials and tribulations. It means resolving to subordinate one’s individual, individualized and often egocentric interests, the fulfilment of one’s notion of life’s necessities. Seeking and carrying out common “welfare” -- as opposed to “warfare” -- has its own socio7

Democracy and civil and political rights clearly dominate among the advantages people associate with the present regime. On the other hand, the critique of the new establishment is rooted especially in the loss of long-term social securities. Another reason for frustration is the widespread notion that after the fall of communism, those who had privileged positions before – former managers of state companies and communist party officials – retained them. People see the type of change that occurred in our countries not as a circulation but as a significant reproduction of elites.

economic, political and cultural dimensions.

I first set foot in a country behind the Iron Curtain on 1 April 1990. For me, Oxford was both impressive and totally stressful. The English I had learned resembled very little the language people used to communicate in the United Kingdom. I failed to understand not only verbal, but also non-verbal communication, mores, and elementary everyday routines. I learned about helplessness (a phenomenon we wrote theoretical studies about in Slovakia) in its full, naked glory. Helplessness, tears… and a determination to succeed.

At an invitation to the “high table”, I managed to spill red wine over myself at the gong announcing the start of dinner… and trying to salvage the situation, managed a single sentence: “I am sorry, I am from the Eastern Bloc.”

What can we learn from the experience of our neighbours?

The transformation of Slovakia – a former part of socialist Czechoslovakia integrated into the Soviet sphere of influence – took place under conditions that were more complicated than in other Visegrád countries.

Two decades on, we can say that Slovakia managed to meet its basic challenges: it succeeded in establishing a pluralistic democratic system, a market economy and an independent state, and in becoming integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community.

Even though in people’s minds the Velvet Revolution is one of the most positive events in modern Slovak history, it cannot be said that the majority has enthusiastically embraced the new way of life, the product of a complicated social and economic transformation. By contrast, not an insignificant part of the population found more shortcomings in the post-communist regime than in the previous one. The development of attitudes towards both regimes resembles more a wavy line than a steady incline in support of the new establishment. The democratization of totalitarian regimes – in the early 1990s as well as later, during the building of an independent state – was itself not linear, straightforward or without serious perils.

Tendencies towards authoritarianism and the undermining of democratic institutions accompanied the transition. The most significant swing towards the current regime occurred in 2006, when supporters of the present regime clearly outweighed the

Behind people’s insistence on the strong role of the state lies their critical reaction to social inequality, which grew significantly in the new economic conditions. The public was not ready for the deepening social differentiation – the communist era instilled in their minds an ideal of equality that refused to compensate workers differently according to their productivity or added value for society. After 1989, the levelling of Slovak society started to disappear, and the vast majority (68%) of the population has come to believe that the new economic differences are less fair than under socialism.

What opportunities have been missed by the Visegrád countries during the past two decades?

The general attitude of the Slovak public to-

HE REVISES THE FRENCH TRANSLATIONS of all his books; these therefore are not considered translations but original works.

wards economic transformation was considerably reserved even at its inception. Positive expectations focused mostly on the reforms’ potential to increase opportunities for talented and able individuals, to bring better goods and services, and to increase possibilities for the improvement of the environment. Negative expectations anticipated the deepening of social inequalities and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number individuals at the expense of the majority; rising unemployment; the worsening of interpersonal relations; the sale of national assets to foreign capital; and “brain drain”.

And what is probably most significant, only a third of the Slovak population believed that the economic reforms could create the resources for a strong social policy.By the time of the April 2006 elections, the effects of the

reforms were clearer. People could compare their previous fears with reality. With the exception of the healthcare reform, none of the reforms generated a majority opposition strong enough to call for their fundamental alteration. Most commonly, the reforms were though to be basically good, although requiring fine-tuning and improvement in certain details.

Could the V4 play a meaningful function in resolving Slovak-Hungarian tensions?

An important factor that aided the increase of economic optimism was Slovakia’s admission into the European Union on 1 March 2004. During the accession process, the Slovak public strongly supported this step and its positive attitude strengthened even more 8

HE REVISES THE FRENCH TRANSLATIONS OF all his books; these therefore are not considered translations but original works.

For these reasons, we can only welcome The World of Milan Kundera’s novels by Květoslav Chvatík (Brno 2008). The title promises that Chvatík will focus on what is so obvious that it is often ignored: that Kundera is first of all a novelist, a novelist par excellence, and as such speaks and acts mostly through his books.

The author Milan Kundera and his interpreter Květoslav Chvatík are interconnected in many different ways. They were born within a year of each other at the turn of the 1930s.

After the Soviet invasion in 1968 they were both forced to leave their academic posts in Prague. Chvatík’s main field of interest was the aesthetician Jan Mukařovský and Czech structuralism, which despite Mukařovský’s self-criticism in 1951 was never reconcilable with scientific materialism. Later both Kundera and Chvatík emigrated – the former to France in 1975, the latter to Germany five years later.

Chvatík developed his original orientation in the study Structural Aesthetism, in which he creatively picked up the concepts of Jan Mukařovský. The World of Milan Kundera’s Novels can be considered his most important work in the field of literary criticism. It was first published in Czech in 1994, has been translated into several languages, including French, German and Spanish, and belongs to the basic secondary literature on Kundera. Here, Kundera’s and Chvatík’s common journey reaches its peak and comes to an end.

MILAN KUNDERA the writer

CZECH LITERARY CRITICISM

, AS REPRESENTED BY THE CRITICS JIŘÍ OPELÍK OR ZDENĚK KOŽMÍN, SEEMS TO HAVE SAID EVERYTHING ESSENTIAL ABOUT THE WORK OF MILAN KUNDERA AS EARLY AS THE 1960S. LATER, SOME MORE OR LESS KNOWLEDGEABLE DISCUSSION WENT ON IN ÉMIGRÉ JOURNALS. BUT THE LAST TWO DECADES OFFER A RATHER STRANGE SIGHT: EVERYBODY ASSUMES THAT KUNDERA HIMSELF SAID EVERYTHING IN HIS ESSAYS OR IN THE RARE INTERVIEWS HE GAVE, AND THAT HIS LATER WRITINGS ARE NOT WORTH SERIOUS ATTENTION. OF COURSE, BOTH IDEAS ARE PURE NONSENSE. text

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Jan Nemec

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Marek Seckar

constitutive. Later, Kundera opposed lyricism as a worldview both in his essays and his novels, and developed his own contrasting concept of human and artistic maturity.

The theme of ideology, on the other hand, permeates The Joke; here Kundera himself was to take a cure of his own.

Chvatík’s lack of interest in certain topics stems not only from his respect for the author’s wishes, but also from his academic leanings: as a structuralist and a disciple

i have no reason

Milan Kundera is an author who permanently reappraises his work and life. As concerns the work, Kundera discards whatever he finds immature, unsuccessful or just occasional. What remains, on the other hand, is marked with opus numbers.

not to respect Kundera’s concept of his own work ”

“I have no reason not to respect Kundera’s concept of his own work”, says Chvatík, and subsequently deals only with what Kundera wants to be dealt with. In practice, it means he only explores the novels, completely skipping the early stages of Kundera’s evolution in the 1950s. Two thematic fields are neglected in particular: the author and poetry (Kundera published two books of verse and one longer poem), and the author and ideology (in 1948 and 1956, Kundera twice joined the communist party). In both cases however, this experience was not only negative, but also significantly

Mukařovský’s, he insists on the autonomy of the work. For this reason, the reader will learn nothing about the biographical background of the novels or the contemporary literary context of Kundera’s work. Despite this, Chvatík’s background has a positive impact. In the introductory chapters, he makes good use of his broad outlook as an aesthetician and literary theorist while grippingly telling the story of the modern novel. Among other things, he proves his talent in choosing apt quotations: “’Novels are Socratic dialogues of our times.

In this liberal literary form, worldly wisdom

has taken refuge from scholarly wisdom’, wrote Schlegel. Today, we can just add to this scholarly wisdom a long list of thinktanks and different ‘strategies’.”

The book’s core is subsequently composed of chapters interpreting individual works by Kundera. It is obvious that these were not written concurrently, but are rather based on texts written after the publication of the novels (some have been already used as afterwords). The outstanding and generally acceptable explanations of most of the novels written in Czech are unfortunately followed by descriptive chapters on Kundera’s more recent novels written in French, mostly in a different form.

In his book, Chvatík has no intention of reproaching Kundera for anything, nor, unfortunately, of entering into a productive debate with him. Any great work merits not only exegesis but also heresy; Chvatík simply stands up for Kundera. Nevertheless, his study can be read as an informed, but at the same time widely accessible introduction to the work of the writer Milan Kundera.

Květoslav Chvatík, The world of Milan Kundera’s novels, Brno 2008.

Jan Němec (1981) is a Czech journalist and critic and an editor of the literary monthly Host.

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