Uneasy A

My grade is in: A. I would have been happy with anything B or better, and to be honest, a grade in the B to A- range would probably be a more accurate representation of my achievement. According to our grading standard, A is supposed to represent “outstanding” performance, which, again, to be honest, I rarely aspire to anymore because, in my heart, I know myself to be somewhat lazy, troche leniwy, or, at the very least, leisurely. Stand out performance should be a pinnacle of industry and genius, a form of overachievement, but I know I can work harder and do better. I excuse and remind myself that Polish is a difficult language—even for the native Russian speaker in our class.

I have learned a great deal and even begun to forget some of what I’ve learned and memorized, but I’m registered for second semester Polish and will continue on my journey. Among the lessons, primary is that language study reveals our common humanity, our shared Chomskyan apparatus for communicating the world, as well as language’s tacit influence on our apprehending and interpreting it. (We don’t quite live in a prison-house of language, or if we do, it’s an unusually expansive and minimally secured institution. Or, linguistically, we are more or less out on probation.) Even as I wonder why Polish speakers would solve a language problem their way instead of how we do it in English, I can comprehend how they solve that problem and even appreciate its occasionally superior elegance. So that each language is like a kaleidoscope: it fractures the world differently, diffracting and refracting, sometimes bizarrely complexly, though never quite unrecognizably, renders it askew, aslant, like Picasso’s portrait of Ambrose Vollard. A foreign language is at the same time both foreign and language, the latter of which is evolutionarily deeply familiar.

The differences—arbitrary, unique, and frustrating initially to language learners—become, at last, distinctive and charming. For example, in Polish there are no definite or indefinite articles, no “the,” no “a.” So ubiquitous in our everyday speaking, we think we can’t do without them in English, and we don’t, but we could, maybe. In many Slavic languages, like Polish, “The definiteness and indefiniteness of a noun is determined by context” (Swan, 5). That is to say, definiteness and indefiniteness of noun is determined by context. Not much difference, really, in sense, but the absence of articles affects the sound and cadence of an expression, which makes the familiar strange and sometimes funny owing to its strangeness. In a sweet little romantic comedy, Big Trouble, for example, some lightweight Russian mobsters deal bombs and small arms out of a “bar” in Miami, Florida, and give utterance to gems of misspokenness: “We sponsor girls’ softball team,” “maybe I have item for you,” “How can I help FBI?” and when accused of dealing thermonuclear weaponry, rejoin, “Is bar,” then “I want lawyer.” With their amusingly rolled r, the effect delights, though, remembering that Russian has no present tense form of “to be,” the “Is bar” line may represent an instance of comic linguistic license.

Three weeks until Beginning Polish II. Some opportunity to explore the language and culture outside the covers of our text.

Useful Expressions

So, as I’ve been studying for my final in first-semester Polish, rehearsing my exercises in the “standard, literary” forms of the language, I confess to becoming a little bit bored—so much to memorize—and somewhat curious as to the relationship between what we are learning in class and lived life and the spoken word on the Polish streets and in the Polish fields. Hardly an original attitude at the end of the semester, but one I haven’t taken in many years. Turning away from my textbooks, I cracked the Kosciuszko Dictionary just for a change of pace, to find immediately on the inside cover Codzienne zwroty (“Useful expressions”), though we might also translate codzienne as “daily.” In either case, the list is truly, though darkly, comic.

Half, it seems, of the most useful, daily expressions in Poland are as follows: “Back off! You are under arrest! Get your hands off! Get down! Don’t touch me! Stand back! Stay down! Don’t move! Get away! Cut it out! Break it up! Let go of me! Hands up! Move it! Duck! You listen to me! Get lost! Get a doctor. Look out! Get an ambulance. Get out of here! Shut up! Stop that man! Pull over! Get out of the way! Leave me alone!” Except for that last one, I would hope never to use any of these, and in that one exceptional case, I would elide the exclamation point and add prosze, “please.” This list does not seem to be a holdover from the Communist Era; this edition was published in 2008. The rest of the list is not much more encouraging, though I have made use of Nie rozumiem (“I don’t understand”) already in class; and Zabladzilem (“I’m lost”) charms me. “Please,” “thank you,” (dziekuje) and “Where is the toilet” (Gdzie jest toaleta?) do not make the list. Very strange. As if they were less necessary for survival than “Duck!”

Usually, such black linguistic comedy results from the bad translation of menus, assembly instructions, directions, sales pitches, and speeches by Jimmy Carter—more often than not by do-it-yourselfers with one semester of foreign language under their belt. But this list is the work of among the most authoritative users of both languages. I surmise that the issue isn’t language or translation at all, but the mindset of lexicographers. Like me, they are quiet, word and book people, timid, and bruise easily. The streets and fields seethe danger and require almost constant warning and verbal aggression. The only daily, useful expression for our readerly world is “Shshsh.”

Magnificent Mazowsze

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then writing about dancing must be…. left ultimately to the logicians. I myself don’t dance, at least in public, committed as I am to the public good. And I don’t attend much to dance as an art form, except when I find myself at a performance for any number of reasons having nothing to do with aesthetic preference. Usually, someone has persuaded or dragged me into accompaniment to some event, where I am usually pleasantly surprised at dance’s beauty or intelligence. Somehow I fail to remember this delight and grumble in reluctant attendance upon the next event.

Recently, and for the purely intellectual reason of cultural research, I attended Mazowsze, “The State Song and Dance Ensemble of Poland”—The Magnificent, self-styled. They were celebrating their 60th anniversary with a holiday extravaganza, “Christmas Time in Poland,” and magnificent and extravagant it was, in spite of a curious, not uncomical, and slightly overlong play to the American audience’s folk culture: renditions of “Old MacDonald,” “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain,” et al., in slavically accented Amerykansku.

The program covered all the national dance forms: oberek, kujawiak, krakowiak, mazurka, and polonaise. The polka, I learn, though it would seem the most Polish of dances (polka can actually mean “Polish woman”), in fact, originated elsewhere and is commonly danced among the wider central European cultures. Each of the native Polish dances has a different regional origin and a different time/tempo, among many other historical details I won’t go into because I do not know them. Suffice it to say that they were at points fluid and graceful, athletic and acrobatic; the stylized kinetic evolutions were always precise and sometimes startling in their use of garlands, walking staffs, and long-handled hatchets. But Mazowsze never accelerated into that inauthentic, feverish tappy virtuosity of Riverdance. And the shirts stayed thankfully on.

The most notable feature of the dancing, the most spectacularly visible, was the costume, the color, which seemed to change for every dance and sometimes even during. Every garment gathered and displayed brightness and particolor. One doesn’t normally associate neon lavender with military uniform, but it has its place on the dance floor apparently. Peacock cockades. Intricate needlework. Ottoman influences. No severity, no austerity. Dance as fantastic kaleidoscope. Atwirl, the women’s long skirts opened like Tiffany lampshades.

Atwirl, the women’s long skirts opened like Tiffany lampshades. Dance, if I understand anything about it, expresses sublimated sexuality. The eroticism of Polish dance is little like the eroticism of say, African dance, or flamenco, or salsa, but erotic subtlety, restraint, has a power all its own. Underneath the billowing skirts and petticoats, slender legs descended in tight, white hosiery to ankle-high red boots, surprisingly high-heeled, or to black boots with red laces. Sigh. A dance-impaired fellow could fall sublimely in love with Mazowsze.

From Bad to Worse

We learned last week in Polish that gorszy means “worse.” An irregular formation of the adjective zly (“bad”), it mirrors the irregularity of English: “bad, worse, worst,” not “bad, badder, baddest”—except in limited colloquial contexts. The comparative/superlative sequence zly, gorszy, najgorszy remains otherwise unremarkable, except that gorszy is a nickname of mine, one whose newly revealed meaning comes as a bit of a surprise and a disappointment. I had thought better of myself, always an intellectual error for those with no shortage of self-esteem.

Gorszy, what I had previously thought of as a term of endearment, represents an intentional corruption of Josh, first Jorsh or Gorsch or Gorschen, diminutivized at last into the affectionate, Gorschie, or, in Polish, Gorszy. Other brothers’ names have been similarly nicked: (James) Julian to Noodles, Eric to Reerack, and Neil Joseph to NeeNeeJoj. One can easily imagine their word histories. But imagine finding, too, a word’s, a name’s, secret meaning, and finding in that meaning reproof, a reminder of inferiority.

Not a bad thing, actually. It calls to mind the wickedly funny little poem by Wislawa Szymborska, “In Praise of Feeling Bad about Yourself.” We Poles, we humans, have a gift for self-deception regarding our own goodness. “If snakes had hands,” she writes, “they’d claim their hands were clean.” And if they had conscience and language, just like us. It is good for Polish to remind me that we have conscience and language and badness in our being—and worseness, at least in mine. I do take some consolation in the fact that my nickname fails of the superlative. Moderation in all things.