Originally Posted by
Des Essientes
Greetings Hannah, I am a Californian of Polish descent that became interested in the literature of my ancestral homeland a few years ago. I have since read a number of Polish authors in English translations. My opinions on some of those I've read follow:
Jan Potocki's "The Manuscript found at Saragossa" is indeed a brilliant frame-tale which I enjoyed for its eroticism and creepy Gothicism, but since Jan wrote it in French it technically isn't Polish literature. American literature has Washington Irving's "Tales from the Alhambra" which, despite being interesting and exciting, pales in comparison to Potocki's fantastical take on Spain and her Moorish heritage. (The Polish film based on Potocki's frame tale enjoys an ardent following here in America amongst cinemaphiles.)
Henryk Sienkiewicz's "With Fire and Sword", "The Deluge", "Fire in the Steppes"- these are the English titles of the three novels of the great Trilogy- Poland's Iliad. I know that Sienkiewicz has been somewhat politicized in Poland and I do not share the political opinions of the rightists who champion him, but I must tell you, Hannah, reading the Trilogy was among the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had reading. It was like being a kid again reading "The Lord of the Rings" but with an actual physical connection to Middle Earth. When the Gorales saved the King from the pursuing Swedes in the second book I almost wept for joy.
Sienkiewicz's "The Knights of the Cross" is also brilliant historical fiction, but alas niether my university library nor Project Gutenberg have the final volume of that tale and so I've never been able to enjoy Sienkiewicz's account of the Polish, Lithuanian and Tartar forces crushing the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald, but someday I hope to. Sienkiewicz's "On the Field of Honor" is a somewhat exciting account of the lead up to the Battle of Vienna but since it didn't include the battle itself I felt gyped. It was, however, interesting to see its portrayal of the latter stages of Polonization of an Armenian family.
I also read his "In Desert and Wilderness" which I found to be rather stupid and patronizing towards Egyptians and the Sudanese, but it was a children's novel and of its time. I suppose Sienkiewicz's hatred of the Mahdi, and his Islamophobia in the third installment of the Trilogy, may be ascribed to his desire to distance himself from his own family's Tartar Muslim ancestry.
Witold Gombrowicz's "Ferdydurke" is a supremely jarring and at the same time funny novelization of that awful nightmare in which one is sent back into public school as a pupil. I have frequently been subjected to this nightmare in my dreamlife and so I wonder if my dread of being infantilized didn't detract from my enjoyment of the hilarious absurdities which abound in the book.
Witold Gombrowicz's "Trans-Atlantic" is hilarious and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Gombowicz skewers the stuffy seriousness that infects too many Polish people. I am very glad that he found himself in Argentina as the war started. In his journals Grombrowicz qouted Mickiewicz's "Pan Tadeusz" to explain what life in the New World meant to him: "Born into slavery and wrapped in swaddling bands I have known only one such Summer of freedom in all of my life." His journals and "Trans-Atantic" were also of great interest to me because of their portraits of Borges.
Gombrowicz's "Cosmos" is a very interesting and strange novel about which it is difficult to give an unambiguous assessment. The characters in the novel behave abominably. From organizing a family trip to commemorate a transcendental masturbatory experience to murdering a housecat by hanging, this novel has some very unsavory aspects but somehow Gombrowicz still creates a compelling artistic vision from them depicting with the strange infectiousness of mimicry.
Czeslaw Milosz's "The Issa Valley" is a really wonderful novel. Some of my ancestors were Polish-Lithuanians, like the author and his protagonist, and so I read this novel very closely and I was absolutely delighted by its conceits. I feel like I too know of the devils that haunted the Issa Valley, and I thrilled to read of the undying pagan sensibilities of the novel's Lithuanian characters, one of whom had no qualms about descrating the eucharist in order to test God but who would never harm a snake! (Snakes having been the objects of Lithuanian reverence since long before their conversion to Christianity in 1386.)
I fear this post is getting too long so I will dispense with critiquing anymore Polish writers save one: Jan Pasek. Pasek was not a professional writer and his memoirs are all but unknown here in the USA but thankfully my university library had a translation of them. The tales contained therein are as weird and interesting as anything I have ever read. I really feel that the memoirs of a raconteur such as Pasek cannot be surpassed in literature. The man had obviously been telling those anecdotes frequently for years and years before he set stylus to hide (they were wrttten upon oxhide) thus they had been through the crucible and come out as entertaining and fascinating as can be. The story of his trained otter alone is bizarre enough to never be forotten but his memoirs contain so much more. I honestly wish I had never read them or that I got amnesia so that I could experience the wonder of reading them again for the first time. Hannah, I know that Sarmatism has been heavily criticized in Poland and rightly so, but who cannot symphathize with Jan and his fellows enjoying their Golden Freedom after seeing what a delightful characters said freedom produced?
I must say that you have read more than polish teenagers. I liked Sienkiewicz very much as a child and then during my studies. I was wondering how foriegners analise this type of literature. It is said that the reader has to know quite a lot about polish history to understand it however I think that " With Fire and Sword" can be a very good reason to find more information about history events of this period. Have you seen the dramatisation of this novel made by Hoffman?
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