13/07/2021

Politics of memory à rebours. A short sketch about Andrzej Stasiuk’s latest book “Przewóz” [“Carriage”; Wołowiec: Czarne 2021, pp. 400, hardback ISBN 978-83-8191-174-0]

All of us are said to be peasants, but forgive the generalisation at the beginning if you are not. Andrzej Stasiuk made us wait a long time for his fictional prose and struck a chord of national-patriotic sensitivity. He has accustomed us to his journeys along the wilderness of Europe and, increasingly often, of the East. Who has not travelled to Babadag? But whoever looks beyond or before his travel prose will remember “Dukla” – one of the most beautiful prose poems in contemporary Polish literature. He often described Polish and Central European post-communist transformation from the bottom up. He tenderly drew portraits of the invisible and the unheard. He drew maps of a forgotten Europe. His prose was full of light and space, human faults becoming the only signs of memory. Beskid Niski – a mountain range in southern Poland – could not have found a more sensitive or tender narrator.

Stasiuk’s “Przewóz” [“Carriage” – a working translation] has everything you would expect: the province, ordinary life, the “transformation” which is already underway but which is de facto to come; but also a kind of living truth. There is also a surprise. The whole thing takes place at a significant moment in World War II, on the Bug River, just before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. We meet Poles from the borderline of cultures, with all the languages, religions, traditions that existed. There are Jews in hiding, decent Germans, and Soviets across the river. And anxiety hanging in the air, cut only by senseless violence, whose main perpetrators are candidates for future so-called “cursed soldiers” [“żołnierze wyklęci”]. Or maybe they are just ordinary bandits who want to take part in this war. They use violence against people in hiding, each other and animals; they do not have enough courage for a real fight, either against the Germans or the Soviets. This is just a declaration, a word, a boast. All the more significant is the voice of the Polish writer because “cursed soldiers” have become one of the primary symbolic historical references of the right-wing authorities, as well as of the associated extreme right-wing and nationalist circles, including - hooligan football fans. Both the official state narrative of the current government and the presence of references to these armed groups in popular culture are pillars of building the politics of memory in Poland. In opposition to this, the left in Poland tries to show their bandit and criminal character, which is following the knowledge of professional historians in this area. Grandmother Marysia, who comes from Białystok, used to tell stories about how bands of pseudo-partisans, who were in fact neighbours’ sons, robbed, raped and murdered, not in the name of any fight for freedom but in the name of short-term profits and desire to get rich. It is no different in Stasiuk’s book, although even this last element is not crucial. More important is their absolute powerlessness, a kind of armed impotence in the face of a natural enemy, a constant playing the game for the sake of their security. Stasiuk’s vision is, therefore, something more than just politics of memory à reboursto the dominant right-wing discourse. It is a negation of the whole idea of praising both armed heroes and anti-heroes.

The gallery of characters is vivid, expressive, sparingly sketched, with significant roles for women, the real protagonists of this war. Female characters turn out to be particularly important in Stasiuk’s work. They are the real ones - experiencing real emotions, fear, and showing real strength, courage, and wisdom. They are as if out of the world of the hitherto dominant female war characters. They are not presented in a sugary-sweet, naïve, stereotypically vulnerable mode, but they do not immediately become comic-book superheroes either. They are painfully honest in their strength and drive to survive. I don’t think anyone else has portrayed women of war the way Stasiuk did in his latest book.

All this is interspersed with Stasiuk’s contemporary journeys to the land of his childhood - real and reminiscent, alone and with his father. He comes across the ruin of his family cottage, and the descriptions of the destruction of the house, its colour, are very much to the taste of all chatterers. Memory has a physical name here. His memory is linked to the ruined farmhouse he knows from his childhood and to which he revisits. The old house triggers memories, reactivates images and stories of older generations.  The entire war is in Stasiuk’s mind made up of stories told by the elders - sometimes overheard and misunderstood, sometimes directly absorbed as children. Today it acquires meanings and senses, while the literary form makes the memories alive for the reader.

Finally, about smells: if his earlier books were visual, this one is full of smells, sometimes stinks. The sense of smell goes wild here, and the nose is thrown into imaginative ecstasy and disgust. Every scene has its smell; every person is depicted sensually; the food – though simple – reads as if we were looking over the cook’s shoulder; the nature at the turn of spring and summer explodes with scents. This is an extraordinary journey, one that makes you want to close your eyes and absorb the world with senses other than your eyes.

(Strzyga - Toruń, May - July 2021)

09/22/2020