Przedwiośnie

A fine few days this week in the early, in the coming, spring, as such days are known here. Having returned my sociology chapters to Dr. Banaś, I felt the need to walk in the glorious sun—around which Mikołaj Kopernik proved the earth to revolve in 1543. That very same sun, a little older. At 59°F, it was a nice day in the solar system, ładny dzień.

I decided upon a long saunter, one that I’ve made before on previous trips, a couple miles to the kopiec Kościuszki, the Kosciuszko Mound, a large…you’ll see. Since I’ve not been talking the talk as ardently as I should, I’ll walk the walk, this particular one, which is known as the Zwierzyniec, named after the 12^th century village, though I don’t know how the town acquired its name originally, which could derive from zwierzać się or zwierzenie, “to open one’s heart, unburden” and “confession,” or zwierzę/ zwierzyna,”animal or fauna.” The town supported a convent in those days, and the Norbertine cloister is just across the street now. But in the 12^th century, there were probably animals here, too, even wildish ones, so it’s a tough etymological call. I’m going with the animals.

To proceed: Through my building portal out into the sun, around the corner and down the street, I stopped for a little bread ring, obwarzanek, poppy seed—which should be the national seed, if you ask me—then a mile or so to the Zwierzyniec. On the way, I stopped along the Wisła for a not undramatic shot of Wawel Hill.

The entry to the Zwierzyniec  is long and steep at times with pretty landmark churches on the opening stretch. Taken at a distance because the gates were barred, my pictures of them don’t amount to much, so I won’t burden the viewer. More interesting to me was the street sign for the way leading up to the Kosciusko Mound, the Aleja Jerzego Waszyngtona, the “Alley of George Washington,” Kosciuszko’s one-time commanding officer. Then the cemetery, which had three funerals scheduled for the week, one in progress, which I discreetly avoided. It’s small, handsome, tight (no turf) and rather busy, it seems, for a cemetery, but Poles attend to cemeteries more dutifully than we do to cemeteries at home, and commune more frequently, formally, even lavishly in flowers with their dead. Yet, with a becoming reserve. Poland, and older cultures generally, are more elegiac, probably because they have a lot more to mourn the passage of. The monuments themselves bear further individual study, when I get the chance, one particular stone grieving the tragic loss of a son in Warsaw, “the only and best,” just 20, in 1964. I cherish that theme of lost sons.

 The Kosciuszko Mound is a monument to the life of possibly Poland’s greatest national hero and favorite son—though ultimately a failed one—and rises at the top of the walk. It’s a curious and ironic piece of civic landscape and architecture, but a telling one, too, first of the valor, enlightenment, and independence of the man and his embodiment of the spirit of Poland; shortly thereafter, of imperial subjugation, and now, of a kind of pragmatic awkwardness. At a time when Poland did not exist as a country but had been partitioned out to three empires—Prussian, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian—the “free city of Cracow” raised the Mound on the heights of the Zwierzyniec in the early 1820s. Originally, there was no architecture, only landscape. In 1846, Polish nobles, emulating Kosciuszko’s efforts to resuscitate the homeland, rose in insurrection against two of the three empires, and like Kosciuszko, predictably, failed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire subsequently asserted control over Kraków and after 1850 built a fortress that completely encircled the Mound and subdued the city—as if to imprison and obscure the hero. Today, the Mound and the fortress stand in marked ideological and aesthetic contradiction: national freedom vs. imperial order, while the walls block views and sightlines of the earthwork. And yet, under a sun like this one, it’s not a bad spot, a must-see tourist destination at the end of an early spring walk.

I will share my final impression. On the walk down, a different route from the Zwierzyniec, through an upscale neighborhood above the Błonia, the great city greenspace, I saw the following sign, a sort of “beware of the dog” sign, I guess, though zły is translated as “evil, wicked, bad.”

Animals have the last word sometimes. Or their owners.