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The Explosive Dziady
Adam Michnik 2008.01.31 12:57 Gazeta Wyborcza
We defended Dziady when we defended Polish culture, freedom, and national
dignity against the Oaf and the Ignoramus.
|
ZOBACZ TAK¯E Dziady z dynamitu (31-01-08, 00:00) |
'The
vastness of inspiration contained in Dziady is a national treasure,
but it is a troublesome one. A "nationally"-minded young
man or statesman must view this ultimate exaltation with reserve
and mistrust. Which side should he take in the eternal conflict
between Mrs Rollisonowa and Senator Nowosilcow? He must feel that
the words "national interest" are more important than
the desperate cries of Rollison's mother. And who knows whether
someone bolder will not call this great national poetry "rotten
idealism" or "pretentious aestheticism". Where does
this poetry, which those fighting with reason challenges to a battle
of the heart, stand today? This poet will appear again and again,
like a ghost during the "dziady" ritual when ancestors'
spirits are honoured, a ghost not easily satisfied and sent away.
Mickiewicz's ashes are not the dead dust of the past, not dust,
but dynamite'. |
'During
the premiere, both the chairs and the balconies cried. The government
ministers wept, the theatre technicians' hands shook, the cloakroom attendants
wiped their eyes with handkerchiefs. Dziady came as a shock. They harmonised
with the burning questions Poles had been asking themselves. They confirmed
their presence with might. With might comparable with that of Mickiewicz,
every conversation with whom - as Zygmunt Krasiñski
wrote - was a "fistfight". Time had not cancelled Dziady's topicality.
The piece still burns. There is dynamite in this play, and it explored
during the first night'.
At the turn of 1967/1968, Dziady exploded again. It was as if Mickiewicz
had stepped down from his monument and mingled with the crowd.
For many of us of the '68 generation, Poland became a stage. The protest
against the confiscation of Dziady by the censors was, for us, a continuation
of the most beautiful part of the Polish national tradition: the struggle
for Poland's freedom and for civil liberties in Poland. We defended Dziady
because we defended Polish culture, freedom, and dignity against the Oaf
and the Ignoramus. Because, dressed in a cavalryman's uniform with a breastplate
on their chest, manipulating the public's anxieties and emotions, the
Oaf and the Ignoramus were reaching for power in Poland.
It was to be a Poland censored of Mickiewicz and of the tradition of national
independence. The confiscation of Dziady became a harbinger of what was
to come: we were to live in a Poland without Gombrowicz and Mi³osz,
without S³onimski and Ko³akowski,
without Jasienica and Andrzejewski, but instead with brutal interrogations,
prisons, and new exiles, with anti-Semitism, primitivism, and the disgrace
of Poland's participation in the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
It was an unfair fight. Forty years ago, the Poland of democracy was defeated
by the Poland of a regime that was far-right and pro-Soviet at the same
time; the spirit of endek-communism prevailed.
We look at those times from a distance. We are happy that the disgrace
was soon expiated by the workers' protest in the name of freedom and dignity
in December 1970, the founding of the Workers Defence Committee, or KOR,
the wonderful August 1980, the resistance against the martial law, and
finally - by the compromise made at the Round Table and the June 1989
elections.
Adam Mickiewicz proved more powerful than the seemingly omnipotent SB
officers, the party mandarins, the knights of journalistic denunciation.
However, one can hardly resist the sad reflection that the spirit that
confiscated Dziady then has proved well entrenched. The Oaf and the Ignoramus
of our times wanted to eliminate Gombrowicz from the school recommended
reading list, organised a shameful row over Czes³aw
Mi³osz's coffin, got a lot of
pleasure out of slinging mud at Wis³awa
Szymborska when she won the Nobel prize.
Adam Mickiewicz wrote:
The people themselves will slay their former heroes
They will forget the names they once held dear
Roar, noise, and toil will follow
And the legacy will go to the mute, dim, and hollow.
translated by Maricn Wawrzyñczak
¬ród³o: Gazeta Wyborcza