Nie

Poles have a thing for the negative, it seems, pay it special attention. The double negative rules in grammar: Nic, nie mam.  “Nothing, I don’t have/I don't have nothing,” that is, “I don’t have anything.” Nikt, tu nie znam. “No one, here I don’t know;” or, “I don’t know anyone here.” Except when you triple negative: Nigdy, nigdzie nie ide. “Never, nowhere I don’t go.” “I never go anywhere.” Furthermore, when you negate a transitive verb, you highlight it by shifting the case of the object from accusative to genitive. (As if remembering the accusative weren’t tricky enough.)  Nigdy, nie ma mleka, not Nigdy nie ma mleko. I can’t even think how to double negate this phrase in English; it means, “There’s never any milk.” (“Never not is there milk”?) And historically, of course, Poles were notorious for the Liberum Veto, the power of a single, noble, contrary member of the Sejm to forbid any legislation just by saying nie.  Other great nugatory political principles stud the social fabric: Nic o nas bez nas (“Nothing about us without us”) and Nihil novi (“Nothing new”). There’s no mistaking: No meant something, nie.

Living as we do, in the land of the Everlasting Yea, where the power of positive thinking, issuing in great volumes of happy talk and promising slogans, “Yes, we can,” I appreciate the unvapid negative as strangely tonic, cantankerously inviting—if you don’t make it a habit. In what country do they say, “Maybe we can, perhaps not, but let’s give it a try”? Moze mozemy, moze nie, ale probujmy.

Pan Josh

The first class of the semester garnered me two things from the instructor, Professor Polakiewicz—need I remind anyone, “Professor-Son-of-the-Pole”—a compliment on my moustache and a new form of address, Pan Josh. Pan is the Polish masculine titular, meaning “Mr.,” “Sir,” or “Lord,” as in Pan Tadeusz, Poland’s signature epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz. Okay, so, a younger Josh has just joined the class, and a certain distinction is now required. But don’t tell me it has nothing to do with moje polskie wasy, moje dobrze ubranie polskie wasy, “my well-dressed Polish moustache(s).” 

Uncool

I have no time to waste this semester, a predicament that doesn't really prevent me from wasting time, though I probably waste less of it, mostly at work, surfing the web, where one happens upon "news" stories, verging on the nonchalant and astonishingly inane. This week I happened upon a report of survey results that accounted the U.S. and Americans the "coolest" of 15 national cultural options; Poles and Poland rated second to last, worsted only by Belgium and the Belgians. The survey, the method, the population hardly bear reference, even mention, so lax a research question, so spurious a method, so unrepresentative a population--a social network. Heavens. In what kind of universe does such an absurd exercise pretend to any meaning at all? (Answer: one in which Fox News [sic] does not spontaneously dissolve in its own vitriol.) The second least cool? False, stupid, categorically false, patently stupid, and yet, somewhat encouraging to someone as uncool as myself. Maybe I can get in.

Spring into Fall

This evening I finished volume III of Reymont's The Peasants: Spring. It ends with the death of old Mattias Boryna, first of the peasant husbandmen of Lipka, mortally injured at the end of Winter in a village uprising against the local Squire, who had been logging illegally in the peasant wood. The final volume, Summer, I won't likely get to until winter. Tomorrow I begin my third semester of Polish language study.

In 1924, for the most part on the strength of The Peasants, Ladislas Reymont won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the same year that my grandfather, Aleksander, returned to Poland, though without either Reymont's or Boryna's material success. Other coincidences reveal themselves in the reading. Lipka, as it turns out, was based on the town Lowicz, south of Torun, which is only @ 30-40 km from Kikot and Lipno, towns associated with my grandfather's "estate" and his birth and early years. The conditions Reymont describes, physical and economic and political, were those contemporary with my grandfather's and my great-grandfather, Vincenty's, generations. Reymont's pictures of country, peasant life are worth their thousands of words, and like Sienkiewicz's images of the nobility, they tend toward the mythic, and yet the familiar, because I have seen family pictures, even taken some--of Vincenty's well and the remains of the foundation of his house or barn--and trodden upon those very lands. An earthy heroism, even a dirty one, redolent of animals and manure, but also of cut hay and miscellaneous wildflowers.

Plsh 3001

Yesterday morning (wczoraj rano) I registered for second-year Polish, pass-fail. Work circumstances prevent me from giving as much time as I would like to the subject, and much less than it deserves from its true students. Can't stop, though. I had originally intended to audit the course, that is, sit in on the lectures and exercises, receive instruction, but not be subject to evaluation and examination. The Regents Scholarship, however, won't subsidize such liberal learning. The modern University must pay for grading and credentialing. Education is dear, they say, but not so expensive as ignorance. Still, one doesn't need to ruin one's post-doctoral, non-degree GPA in the process. Hoping for an easy S.