Poland, 1945

Jerzy Andrzejewski, Ashes and Diamonds (1948)

As a historian, there are particular moments in European history that I especially want to understand; among them, preeminent even, is the passage of Eastern Europe from Nazi Occupation to Soviet-dominated governments.  What events precipitated the defeat of nationalist aspirations in Poland (for example) during the critical years between the end of the war and the establishment of the Polish United Workers' Party under Boleslaw Bierut? The facts aren't difficult to come by; what is wanted is the feeling of these years, impressions of the primary participants in the nation's reluctant embrace of Stalinism, a sense of the human cost to a nation already dismantled by the Nazi Occupation, Hans Franks' systematic terror, and the extermination of Polish Jews.  As usual, one must turn to works of literary art to gain insights, however limited, into the tragedy of post-war Poland. 

Often the 'whys' of history are neglected in the standard textbooks. We might say, for example, that given the horrors of Nazism, the Soviet Union was a natural ally for Polish nationalists who survived the camps (non-Jewish Poles were sent to Arbeitslager or German slave labor camps like Gross-Rosen, which figures prominently in Ashes and Diamonds) and were liberated by the Red Army.  But one suspects that this explanation is too simple; the truth, it would appear from Andrzejewski's brilliant and compelling novel, is that men and women were drawn into the sphere of Soviet influence, seduced by promises of brotherhood and Polish solidarity, for all sorts of reasons--out of patriotism, despair, personal ambition, greed, and idealism.  Andrzejewski's remarkably well-drawn characters embrace or reject communism only in part because of their experiences in the war; a great strength of this novel is that it depicts the power of an individual's will even at the most "world historical" of moments.



Barracks at Gross-Rosen



At the beginning of Ashes and Diamonds, the war has just ended--or has it? One of Andrzejewski's narrative talents is the blurring of time.  The novel transpires over some undefined period of days or weeks, and the events of the war, once so visceral to its survivors, are now receding from the memories of some characters (by choice) and defining the actions of others, especially those who hope to create a communist nation--a brotherhood of equals--in Poland. In other words, history isn't experienced in the same way by every person, and this is not only true, but a brilliant novelistic observation that enriches and deepens Andrzejewski's great book.

The deftness with which Andrzejewski sketches his characters is remarkable.  During a briefing that will lead to the murder of a member of the Communist Party by a Polish nationalist, the Colonel, who has ordered the assassination, calms a young man's qualms by saying:

"We're living and fighting under very difficult and complex circumstances. But the war years, which were the testing years for everyone, have taught us that things have to be regarded in their elementary, basic set up. There's no time for subtle discrimination. If there had to be any discrimination, it must be simple and clear. Good is good, and evil evil. You agree?"

But of course nothing is ever so clear.  For the socialist Podgorski, the world isn't divided into Manichean absolutes but gray with ethical questions and humane concerns; for the ambitious Mayor Swiecki the tragedy of Poland has served only to feed his ego--a mediocre man in peacetime, Swiecki remakes himself into the perfect Party toady, a yes-man for the cynical and brutal.  For Kossecki, at one time a prisoner at Gross-Rosen, the aftermath of the war is fraught with fear and self-loathing for what he allowed himself to become in the camp.  Opportunists like Drewnowski and Pieniazek (yes the names will give you fits!) have no allegiance to party or nation, while others, like the richly- drawn Communist Szczuka, have complex feelings about the meaning of commitment in the face of Poland's apocalypse (six million Poles, including over 90% of Polish Jews, perished in the war, out of a pre-war population of 35 million). 

Among Andrzejewski's many narrative talents is the subtlety with which he moves his story forward.  Much of the action of the book takes place in the Monopole, the central hotel and restaurant in the town of Ostrowiec, an establishment previously owned, we are offhandedly informed, "by Lewkowicz...one of the wealthiest men in Ostrowiec, [who] died with the rest of his family at Treblinka." Slomka, the new manager of the Hotel Monopole, has been the beneficiary of Nazi racial policies, but no further mention of this fact is made. In 1945 there is emerging a new order, a world that is a blank slate for the ambitions, idealism, and cruelty of every man and woman. When the new world (of communism or of Polish nationalism? That remains to be seen, at least in the novel) has been created, will it be "only ashes and confusion" or "a star-like diamond./The dawning of eternal victory?"  [from the epigram by Cyrpian Norwid].  We know the answer of course--Poland's story since the war has been far more a tale of ashes than of diamonds.  And Andrzejewski as well seems to have been fully aware of the historical situation of his country:

"The fact is I don't know what this new Poland is, just yet."
"How can I put it in a few words? It's difficult, that's probably the best way to describe the tangle of conflicts and contrasts which we're faced with at every step and which we certainly shan't resolve tomorrow or the day after. ...the war is over, but the fight here is only beginning." 

Ashes and Diamonds was the third film in Andrzej Wajda's great trilogy which included A Generation (1954) and the unforgettable Kanal (1956) [Ashes and Diamonds appeared in 1958].  I saw the entire trilogy over one long, rather depressing weekend while in college.  Andrzejewski wrote the screenplay for Ashes and Diamond; the films are available through Janus and provide an emotional immersion in both wartime and post-war Polish history.

Ashes and Diamonds, the novel, is brought to us by the wonderful folks at Northwestern University Press whose series of European Classics includes novels by Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, Vladimir Voinovich, and the incomparable Heinrich Boll, who has written the introduction of Andrzejewski's novel. 

http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/Home/AllTitles/tabid/86/Default.aspx


George Ovitt (4/16/13)

The Other Europe

Contemporary East European Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Emery George

How many Eastern European poets can you name? Until some months ago I myself could name but three: the Polish and widely-feted Milosz, Szymborska, and Zagajewski. Great poets, surely but hardly representative when it comes to the dazzling multitude of nations, languages, and cultures that comprise this historically rich, politically charged region, a fact made plain to me one evening when I happened upon a copy of this extraordinary anthology in a local bookstore. “Eastern Europe is one half of Europe,” writes the editor, Emery George, in his introduction to the collection. “It is a vast and vital realm of society and culture which, for all the attention lavished on it since World War II, remains for many Americans either that sinister expanse ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ or, at best, ‘the old country,’ where tales of Dracula, ethnic grandmothers, and good recipes come from.” 

Offering readers a sampling of the work of no less than 162 contemporary poets, both men and women, from at least fifteen different languages, this volume is astonishing both in its breadth and resonance, stamping the names and homelands of these poets on the cluttered, workaday maps in our brains. Including writers from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,Poland, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, as well as former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, editor Emery George also provides a short if illuminating section on Yiddish poets still writing today. Here, from the anthology, is my own brief sampling:

In Chalk Rooms

                                                                 let all the walls

                                                                 about me be green

                                                                 like a whole harvest

                                                                 of summer’s meadows

walls like light

        sliding through green bottle-glass

walls like forest

       moss-grown and damp

walls like mouldy

       cheese on a knife

and walls like frogs

       so cool and loud

walls with gentleness

        like budding leaves

walls of juiciness

        as of chopped turnip tops

walls in that tone

        in which rain soaks moss

and yellowed like cabbage

        butterflies abandoning cocoon

walls hard and green

        corrugated wet

encompassing me

                                                                 as have only woods and waters.

                                                                 but the world listens

                                                                 to me as to a gnat’s song

                                                                 though I suffer terrible

                                                                 famine for greenness

 Aina Kraujiete (Translated by Inara Cedrins)

Father’s Winter

The birds have all left

my father’s tall trees.

Now only frozen stars

cling to the black branches.

Old farm tools stand stagnant:

plows, scythes, hands and hoes.

It seems there is nowhere to go,

nothing to make us wonder.

The wonders of Father’s life

have passed unnoted and expected—

who will marvel at the water or grass,

or write down the spring or winter?

If you listen, at night

you can hear the deep and heavy sighs

of the senile, faithful Guernsey 
passing up from the cattle-shed.

All thoughts, like snow, blend to one.

Justinas Marcinkevičious (Translated by  Irene Pogožzelskyte Suboczewski)

The Early Chaplin

We know the early Chaplin but before him

was an earlier Chaplin   Those films

are already forgotten   Chaplin

had the face of a brute he bared his teeth

like a wildcat readying to spring and had no

scruples he seduced women hired gangsters

to rub out his rivals rejected he sought revenge

by all means fair and foul when the lovely Mabel

Normand was in an auto race this blackguard

wetted down the pavement switched around the signs sending

the car to the precipice planted dynamite despite

everything Mabel survived and won he almost

burst with fury the audience

was bursting with laughter and of course showed

him no sympathy at all   He did not yet have

his dress suit cane mustache   He had

a monocle and goatee   His name was not

Charlie but Chas   This went on

for some time  But in time

his face figure and inner self began to change  This

happens not only to actors but

to apostles and mere mortals   More than one

person has lived through this in his youth wondering

and suffering when his skin

hardened in a grimace which

seemed to be an exact replica

of the inner self when it crumbled and again froze

in another mould    No one knows

how all this happens   This is no

run-of-the mill decision  Maybe inspiration   Thus Chaplin

after making thirty-five films went ahead and

changed from Chas to Charlie   In the last

of these films they both were there Charlie

dreamed of being Chas   From sleep

the loiterer was wakened by the policeman’s stick   He got up

from the park bench and hobbled

into the distance with an embarrassed smile   There was no

anger in him only hope   No craving

for success but a desire

to defend human dignity   From the pursuer

he became the pursued   And this was now

the early Chaplin whom

we came to love without ceasing to laugh

Wiktor Worosylski (Translated by Magnus J. Kryńnski and Robert A. Maguire)

Emory George is the author of sixteen books, including seven of his own poetry and two collections of the work of Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti.  Contemporary East European Poetry: An Anthology is published by Oxford University Press.

Peter Adam Nash