My essay last week earned a grade of B-. This is almost a C, a grade otherwise known as failure. And given that our instructor grades generously, well, it sobers one. But I don’t worry myself, nie martwie sie. When you are older, there is something reassuring about the truth eventually getting out.
Little else to report on my increasing Polishness—little increase that it has been. This week we watch a movie, With Fire and Sword, based on the first volume of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Polish historical trilogy. It tallies 1100 pages in book form. I’m hoping for subtitles, preferably English.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Relentless Grammar
This week we engage the accusative case. We have encountered it before and blithely ignored its challenges, but now, well into the second semester, we cannot avoid the accusative, nor the bewildering and ineluctable intricacies of case generally—and number and gender and agreement and geez
So, let’s say you want to say, “The dog bites the man.” In Polish, pies is “dog” and mezczyzna is “man,” but both of these nouns are in the nominative case, so when we decline “man” to the accusative case to indicate that as the direct object he receives the action of the verb, we would write mezczyzne, or Pies gryzie mezczyzne. Because “dog” is so obviously in the nominative case and “man” so obviously in the accusative case, word order doesn’t really matter. One could write Mezczyzne pies gryzie or Mezczyzne gryzie pies and convey the same essential action of dog biting man, though with slightly different emphases. In English, of course, our nouns don’t, as a rule, decline for case, which is usually signaled by position in a sentence and context. In the sentence, “The man bites the dog,” neither noun has changed its form, though the meaning has been reversed owing to the change of position. In Polish, this unusual occurrence would be rendered Mezczyzna gryzie psa, with “dog” being declined into the accusative case.
If that were all one had to attend to, the knowledge that a noun tricks itself out a little differently according to its function in the sentence, case would seem a little cumbersome but workable. When, however, one learns that these little trick-out endings number over a half dozen according to gender (three types of masculine: inanimate, animate, and male persons only; two types of feminine, depending on hard or soft stem endings; and two neuter, depending on stem endings) and another half dozen owing to number and the hardness and softness of stem endings, one can get a little ticked off. On my Accusative Case Endings Study Sheet, there are four columns (not counting sub-columns) and twelve rows (not counting sub-rows). Another unhelpful feature of the accusative case is that the adjectival endings are different from the noun endings. If a man bites the “new dog,” he’d bite nowego psa, not nowa psa. And if he were to bite the whole damn pack, he’d bite nowe psy. And I remind you that there are seven different cases in Polish. If they replicate the complexity of the accusative—and I’m beginning to suspect that they do—well, damn it! Damn it!
Last week I sent my first draft Polish essay to a friend in Poland for proofreading. A native speaker of Polish, and fluent in Swedish and English, she apologized for her native tongue—along with supplying numerous corrections—“There is no logic in Polish.” This is not what Professor Polakiewicz has assured us. He has assured us that Polish is precise and mathematical. You just apply the rules. At some deep linguistic level, no doubt, it is, but if that structure and logic is not readily apparent to a highly educated native speaker, I wonder how clearly it can be explained to a foreigner. There are rules, it would seem, and there are exceptions to the rules, which seem to have rules of their own, then there are genuinely ruleless exceptions you just have to memorize, and then there are idioms. True enough, it may all work like clockwork in the end, but have you ever seen the inner workings of a clock? Does one have to know how it works in order to tell the time?
On NPR this week, some reference was made to the French Education minister’s proposal that all French children study English from kindergarten. One socio-linguist—as socio-linguists are wont—deplored the proposal owing to its implied power consequences: English was being politically privileged over other foreign languages and even, subtly, French. (He deplored this proposal for his American audience in English.) The counter position, interestingly, was “not to worry,” that in the future, translation software would be so sophisticated that no one would have to learn any second languages at all. In the forehearable future, we will all speak into some device in our native tongue, where it would be translated and voiced in the auditor’s native language, who can respond in her native language for it to be translated back into ours. Problem solved, technologically, as most great political questions are solved, when they’re not solved by violence. I won’t hold my breath, and in the meantime, will study my grammar, because as my Polish friend warned, “The grammar is relentless.”
So, let’s say you want to say, “The dog bites the man.” In Polish, pies is “dog” and mezczyzna is “man,” but both of these nouns are in the nominative case, so when we decline “man” to the accusative case to indicate that as the direct object he receives the action of the verb, we would write mezczyzne, or Pies gryzie mezczyzne. Because “dog” is so obviously in the nominative case and “man” so obviously in the accusative case, word order doesn’t really matter. One could write Mezczyzne pies gryzie or Mezczyzne gryzie pies and convey the same essential action of dog biting man, though with slightly different emphases. In English, of course, our nouns don’t, as a rule, decline for case, which is usually signaled by position in a sentence and context. In the sentence, “The man bites the dog,” neither noun has changed its form, though the meaning has been reversed owing to the change of position. In Polish, this unusual occurrence would be rendered Mezczyzna gryzie psa, with “dog” being declined into the accusative case.
If that were all one had to attend to, the knowledge that a noun tricks itself out a little differently according to its function in the sentence, case would seem a little cumbersome but workable. When, however, one learns that these little trick-out endings number over a half dozen according to gender (three types of masculine: inanimate, animate, and male persons only; two types of feminine, depending on hard or soft stem endings; and two neuter, depending on stem endings) and another half dozen owing to number and the hardness and softness of stem endings, one can get a little ticked off. On my Accusative Case Endings Study Sheet, there are four columns (not counting sub-columns) and twelve rows (not counting sub-rows). Another unhelpful feature of the accusative case is that the adjectival endings are different from the noun endings. If a man bites the “new dog,” he’d bite nowego psa, not nowa psa. And if he were to bite the whole damn pack, he’d bite nowe psy. And I remind you that there are seven different cases in Polish. If they replicate the complexity of the accusative—and I’m beginning to suspect that they do—well, damn it! Damn it!
Last week I sent my first draft Polish essay to a friend in Poland for proofreading. A native speaker of Polish, and fluent in Swedish and English, she apologized for her native tongue—along with supplying numerous corrections—“There is no logic in Polish.” This is not what Professor Polakiewicz has assured us. He has assured us that Polish is precise and mathematical. You just apply the rules. At some deep linguistic level, no doubt, it is, but if that structure and logic is not readily apparent to a highly educated native speaker, I wonder how clearly it can be explained to a foreigner. There are rules, it would seem, and there are exceptions to the rules, which seem to have rules of their own, then there are genuinely ruleless exceptions you just have to memorize, and then there are idioms. True enough, it may all work like clockwork in the end, but have you ever seen the inner workings of a clock? Does one have to know how it works in order to tell the time?
On NPR this week, some reference was made to the French Education minister’s proposal that all French children study English from kindergarten. One socio-linguist—as socio-linguists are wont—deplored the proposal owing to its implied power consequences: English was being politically privileged over other foreign languages and even, subtly, French. (He deplored this proposal for his American audience in English.) The counter position, interestingly, was “not to worry,” that in the future, translation software would be so sophisticated that no one would have to learn any second languages at all. In the forehearable future, we will all speak into some device in our native tongue, where it would be translated and voiced in the auditor’s native language, who can respond in her native language for it to be translated back into ours. Problem solved, technologically, as most great political questions are solved, when they’re not solved by violence. I won’t hold my breath, and in the meantime, will study my grammar, because as my Polish friend warned, “The grammar is relentless.”
Friday, February 4, 2011
Under the Weather
Under the weather and the perfect storm of information known without affection here as Swan: Chapter 9, I hack and grind and resist paralysis both physically and mentally, a rheumy struggle all round. I fall into oblivion, awaken from oblivion unrested, take drugs, hack, grind, resist, and repeat. One has no idea how the ancients did this, though obviously they didn’t do it in Minnesota in the winter. I don’t complain, only observe.
I will register my first complaint, however, with our main text, Oscar Swan’s First-Year Polish. Last week he introduced us to about 20 Polish adjectives ending in –ny, a special case for declension, and to the names of about 20 animals. (He also introduced us to plurals, variations on adverb and adjective forms, and the declension of possessive pronouns; the complexities up for complaint with those topics are not Swan’s, but the language’s.) My complaint with Swan centers on the exercises in which, killing two birds (ptaki) with one stone—we’ve not yet been introduced to geological terms—Swan has us combining the adjectives with the animals, repeatedly, gymnastically, and ultimately, absurdly. Of course, one can resort to the stereotypical anthropomorphisms of pretty birds, comfortable cats, ambitious lions and eagles, funny ducks and geese, beautiful peacocks and swans, intelligent elephants and pigs, strange fish, finicky poodles, ingenious horses, popular dogs, cruel crocodiles, polite sheep, and efficient German Shepherds. By exercise 2, you’ve pretty exhausted the obvious conventions. There are fifteen exercises. In the post-modern world, or a fiction-writing class, eliciting unusual combinations might be a spark to insight or creativity. But what could possibly be meant by talented ducks, well-bred crocodiles, and cruel chickens. That a chicken (kura), probably a rooster, might, on occasion, exhibit behavior that would appear to the human eye as “cruel” (okrutny), I grant, but one probably would not apply the term to the plural “chickens” as a class with anything like fairness. (In Polish, by the way, Swan is Labedz, with a barred L, pronounced Wa-bendj. I find no appropriate adjective from the list to express my frustration with him.) And his strange (dziwny) choice to combine these two topics leads to the following questions for translation: “Why does your new cow look so sad?” and “Is that the same goose. No it’s a different one.” Beware of cruel poultry and depressed cows in Poland.
And besides, just now, I need the content from Chapter 13: Jestem chory (“I’m sick.”)
I will register my first complaint, however, with our main text, Oscar Swan’s First-Year Polish. Last week he introduced us to about 20 Polish adjectives ending in –ny, a special case for declension, and to the names of about 20 animals. (He also introduced us to plurals, variations on adverb and adjective forms, and the declension of possessive pronouns; the complexities up for complaint with those topics are not Swan’s, but the language’s.) My complaint with Swan centers on the exercises in which, killing two birds (ptaki) with one stone—we’ve not yet been introduced to geological terms—Swan has us combining the adjectives with the animals, repeatedly, gymnastically, and ultimately, absurdly. Of course, one can resort to the stereotypical anthropomorphisms of pretty birds, comfortable cats, ambitious lions and eagles, funny ducks and geese, beautiful peacocks and swans, intelligent elephants and pigs, strange fish, finicky poodles, ingenious horses, popular dogs, cruel crocodiles, polite sheep, and efficient German Shepherds. By exercise 2, you’ve pretty exhausted the obvious conventions. There are fifteen exercises. In the post-modern world, or a fiction-writing class, eliciting unusual combinations might be a spark to insight or creativity. But what could possibly be meant by talented ducks, well-bred crocodiles, and cruel chickens. That a chicken (kura), probably a rooster, might, on occasion, exhibit behavior that would appear to the human eye as “cruel” (okrutny), I grant, but one probably would not apply the term to the plural “chickens” as a class with anything like fairness. (In Polish, by the way, Swan is Labedz, with a barred L, pronounced Wa-bendj. I find no appropriate adjective from the list to express my frustration with him.) And his strange (dziwny) choice to combine these two topics leads to the following questions for translation: “Why does your new cow look so sad?” and “Is that the same goose. No it’s a different one.” Beware of cruel poultry and depressed cows in Poland.
And besides, just now, I need the content from Chapter 13: Jestem chory (“I’m sick.”)
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Second Semester
Our first class of the new semester ended at 9:33 p.m. on what would be one of the coldest nights of the year, and in Minnesota, that’s a cold night—and a black one, the black of deep space, though around the stars, point sources of light, and the moon, were tiny nimbi of gun-metal blue. Anyway, it was cold. Up north they recorded temperatures in the -30s, even before figuring in the wind chills. Here in the Twin Cities, it got down to the -20s, but as I mounted my rime-crusted bike, moj rower, for the ride home, it was probably only in the -10s. The moon though, bright and cold as a blade, was cutting through my layers and somewhat into my will to live, and by extension, my will to study Polish. We had just churned through a number of exercises in the last half hour of class, leaving my mind benumbed, and the good professor assigned what seemed to be double the homework of any week from the first semester. This was Polish II after all. In our second week, the class earned a sharp and uncharacteristic reprimand for not executing these very homework drills with any due speed or competence. We simply weren’t prepared. Still, I can’t say we were any less prepared than in previous weeks, but, again, this was Polish II. When I left my second class, it was still winter and will be for a long time.
A fellow friend of learning recently observed that the second semester of language study was always the hardest. She spoke from her experience in Latin and German. I never made it to second semester Latin and cannot recall second semester German from thirty years ago. But I concede a case can be made and will take her word. Her travail reminds me that learning can hurt, an ancient conclusion, as Aristotle noted in his Politics, “Learning is not a matter of amusement. It is attended by effort and pain”; and Qoheleth, “much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
But the company is really good. The best.
A fellow friend of learning recently observed that the second semester of language study was always the hardest. She spoke from her experience in Latin and German. I never made it to second semester Latin and cannot recall second semester German from thirty years ago. But I concede a case can be made and will take her word. Her travail reminds me that learning can hurt, an ancient conclusion, as Aristotle noted in his Politics, “Learning is not a matter of amusement. It is attended by effort and pain”; and Qoheleth, “much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
But the company is really good. The best.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Vulgarities
The late American comic, George Carlin, earned considerable notoriety for a bit he developed in the 1970s entitled, “The Seven Words You Never Hear on Television,” a shortlist of “dirty words” that censors of the American broadcast networks proscribed from the airwaves. There were others, of course, but the shunning of this indecent, indecorous seven made us, children of the 70s, at least in part, the curious prudes and hypocrites that we are today—me, anyway. Not that one didn’t, and doesn’t use them, even with some frequency at times, and to great relief and effect, but that when they drop from my lips, especially in a setting that can be described as “public,” I pause, as if a striped-shirted discourse official might appear and whistle a technical foul. Anymore, these days, it has to be flagrant.
But vulgarity, obscenity, indecency, and malediction provide insight into a language and a culture, as much as its standard literary expression; and a brief foray into the subject, between academic semesters, would seem the time. Hence, I make these preliminary observations after some more than cursory but less than completely thorough surveys of my authorities, the Kosciuszko Dictionary and the naughty and pseudonymous Stanislaw Kielbasa’s Dictionary of Polish Obscenities. The seven words that you would not have heard on American network TV in the 1970s I would identify as the following: gowno, siki, jebac, cipa, mineciara, jebaka, and cyc.
Gowno (goov-na) and siki are noun forms, the results of our indelicate excretories, the latter, siki, interestingly, is in the plural, the liquid collective. The verb forms generating these end products would seem multiple in Polish. Thus, English is more economical; we take half the syllables to crudely articulate our business, and our monosyllables serve as both noun and verb forms. For power, you want brevity in your maledicta. The f-bomb in English I’ve rendered with the verb form jebac (yea-batch), though I could have chosen dupczyc (dub-chich) and ruchac (roo-chach), as well. In the Kosciuszko all three carry the same primary effing definition; “screw” appears second, though seemingly almost synonymous, of course carrying less socio-linguistic opprobrium. Street research will be required to further elucidate the relative power and the appropriate contexts for the apparent manifold forms of the nasty, but again, the options seem more nuanced, less reductive, and thus, gentler. Cipa (chi-pa) feels more feminine than its counterpart in English, vulgar, yes, but softer and mossier. While in the English a particularly ugly word and insult, mineciara refers to the feminine noun form, though the root noun, mineta refers generally to “oral sex”; context, apparently, would determine the specific act, actor, and nature of the insult. Jebaka, though a feminine noun, refers to the masculine actor, though nowhere, even in Kielbasa, do I find the scurrilous addition of matka (“mother”), matkajebaka, to the epithet; though both the alliteration and assonance would creditably replicate the English. As for cyc (tsits), as Carlin originally observed, it shouldn’t even be on the list.
The most popular, or perhaps populous, ribald category in the Dictionary of Polish Obscenities would be those terms referring to the male member, numbering well over a hundred entries. Slangy and obviously metaphoric, they include the Polish words for cannon, banana, bolt, wire, flute, fife, pipe, gland, cable, canary, corporal, hooded monk, bearded man, clarinet, candlewick, rooster, horse, root, tassel, stick, cane, lollipop, barrel, tail, stake, trombone, bell, digit, gun, bird, python, bar, and rascal. Among the more imaginative or felicitous are grzechomierz (“sin-meter”), chabeta (“old horse”), dyndala (“dangler”), and cygaro z bakami (“cigar with sideburns”). I suspect the compiler of this reference work guilty of no little phallocentrism, given that his pseudonym, Kielbasa, is itself on the list.
By contrast, one counts fewer than half that number of references to the Venusian mystery, with many diminutive derivations of a few basic terms. Above cipa, we find a few standard mammary images: balcony, train bumpers, flower pots, knockers, udders, rolls, the twins, and big blue eyes (duze niebieskie oczy). Bar mleczny (“milk bar”) puns off of Communist-era “bars” that specialized in dairy products, social establishments intended to combat alcoholism. Strangely, another term for cyc is przedsiewziecie (“enterprise”), the root for the Polish word for “entrepreneur.” I have no idea.
But vulgarity, obscenity, indecency, and malediction provide insight into a language and a culture, as much as its standard literary expression; and a brief foray into the subject, between academic semesters, would seem the time. Hence, I make these preliminary observations after some more than cursory but less than completely thorough surveys of my authorities, the Kosciuszko Dictionary and the naughty and pseudonymous Stanislaw Kielbasa’s Dictionary of Polish Obscenities. The seven words that you would not have heard on American network TV in the 1970s I would identify as the following: gowno, siki, jebac, cipa, mineciara, jebaka, and cyc.
Gowno (goov-na) and siki are noun forms, the results of our indelicate excretories, the latter, siki, interestingly, is in the plural, the liquid collective. The verb forms generating these end products would seem multiple in Polish. Thus, English is more economical; we take half the syllables to crudely articulate our business, and our monosyllables serve as both noun and verb forms. For power, you want brevity in your maledicta. The f-bomb in English I’ve rendered with the verb form jebac (yea-batch), though I could have chosen dupczyc (dub-chich) and ruchac (roo-chach), as well. In the Kosciuszko all three carry the same primary effing definition; “screw” appears second, though seemingly almost synonymous, of course carrying less socio-linguistic opprobrium. Street research will be required to further elucidate the relative power and the appropriate contexts for the apparent manifold forms of the nasty, but again, the options seem more nuanced, less reductive, and thus, gentler. Cipa (chi-pa) feels more feminine than its counterpart in English, vulgar, yes, but softer and mossier. While in the English a particularly ugly word and insult, mineciara refers to the feminine noun form, though the root noun, mineta refers generally to “oral sex”; context, apparently, would determine the specific act, actor, and nature of the insult. Jebaka, though a feminine noun, refers to the masculine actor, though nowhere, even in Kielbasa, do I find the scurrilous addition of matka (“mother”), matkajebaka, to the epithet; though both the alliteration and assonance would creditably replicate the English. As for cyc (tsits), as Carlin originally observed, it shouldn’t even be on the list.
The most popular, or perhaps populous, ribald category in the Dictionary of Polish Obscenities would be those terms referring to the male member, numbering well over a hundred entries. Slangy and obviously metaphoric, they include the Polish words for cannon, banana, bolt, wire, flute, fife, pipe, gland, cable, canary, corporal, hooded monk, bearded man, clarinet, candlewick, rooster, horse, root, tassel, stick, cane, lollipop, barrel, tail, stake, trombone, bell, digit, gun, bird, python, bar, and rascal. Among the more imaginative or felicitous are grzechomierz (“sin-meter”), chabeta (“old horse”), dyndala (“dangler”), and cygaro z bakami (“cigar with sideburns”). I suspect the compiler of this reference work guilty of no little phallocentrism, given that his pseudonym, Kielbasa, is itself on the list.
By contrast, one counts fewer than half that number of references to the Venusian mystery, with many diminutive derivations of a few basic terms. Above cipa, we find a few standard mammary images: balcony, train bumpers, flower pots, knockers, udders, rolls, the twins, and big blue eyes (duze niebieskie oczy). Bar mleczny (“milk bar”) puns off of Communist-era “bars” that specialized in dairy products, social establishments intended to combat alcoholism. Strangely, another term for cyc is przedsiewziecie (“enterprise”), the root for the Polish word for “entrepreneur.” I have no idea.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Promised Land
Between semesters, my discipline for study wanes, and I persuade myself that attending to the Facebook posts of my Polish cousins, visiting the home page of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and watching a Polish movie—subtitled in English—count as language and culture study. They do, sure, but it’s scholarship lite. One catches a few new words, accustoms oneself to actually seeing or hearing phrases in genuine Polish use, and notices those curious features of language that make us (nerds) love words. A cousin posted a snapshot of herself at a costume party and used the word zdjecie (“photo”). Then, that very evening, I encountered it again in the opening movie credits as zdjecia (I read “cinematography”). Thus, a single root encompasses the high and low, the full range of visual expression from party pic to Academy-Award-nominated framing shot, just as, in English, we “paint” the bathroom and the Mona Lisa. (An artist brother of mine, MFA University of Hartford, calls them all “pichers.”)
Andrzej Wajda is probably the best and best known of the Polish film directors of the modern era, which has been mostly Communist, though he is hardly a socialist ideologue or propagandist. Ziemia Obiecana (“Promised Land,” 1974) depicts the 19th-century industrialization of textile production in Lodz (pronounced “Woodj”) in antique tints as much Dickensian and Oliver Stonian, as Marxian. The film inhabits a misty, smoky industrial sfumato; exteriors draped with the black effluent of factory smokestacks, interiors with cigar smoke and the wafting fog of torched millworks. Excellent zdjecia.
The main protagonist, Karol Borowiecki (I take special ironic note of the name: mine was originally Charles Borowicz), handsome, energetic, driven, dabbles with, when not committing outright, just about every possible serious felony and human sin in the tragic achievement of becoming a captain of Polish industry. He ultimately orders the shooting of striking workers, but along the way demonstrates an equally perfect indifference to human suffering at all points, but on a smaller scale: a factory worker who loses at least an arm, probably two, much blood and probably his life in a rolling machine earns no sympathy and hardly a response from Borowiecki, who instead orders everyone else back to work and laments the loss of cloth to blood stain; he brushes off a fellow industrialist looking for a temporary personal loan with a recommendation to set fire to his own factory for the insurance money, and he disregards the industrialist’s muttering in despair an intention to kill himself—an intention the latter shortly fulfills with a pistol shot to the head; Borowiecki betrays his fiancée with his mistress and eventually his pregnant mistress as well for a lucrative marriage of convenience; he sells his noble patrimony to a sugar-sucking, upwardly-mobile boor, probably a peasant; and he traffics in conspiracy and insider-trading, though these habits are less explicitly crimes or sins in capitalist economies and more like standard operating procedures. My almost namesake Borowiecki represents an object lesson in how dehumanizing ambition can be, in this case with capitalist trappings.
It is unclear what Wajda meant by the “Promised Land”: perhaps, the previous Poland of the noble tradition, which is represented with surprising nostalgia, or the coming socialist Poland represented by a wounded striker’s red kerchief. Or, more possibly, to a socialist Poland that was yet to come, even in 1974—and one destined never to arrive. Or, to the living myth of a “Promised Land” that has been promised to all people and nations (cue the Boss), for which, alack, there is just not enough real estate on earth. Watching the film unassisted by subtitles, I tallied understanding just over 100 words and a dozen phrases, many of which were used more than once, to be sure; however, at the moment, mine is too meager a vocabulary for gaining entry into any promised land.
Andrzej Wajda is probably the best and best known of the Polish film directors of the modern era, which has been mostly Communist, though he is hardly a socialist ideologue or propagandist. Ziemia Obiecana (“Promised Land,” 1974) depicts the 19th-century industrialization of textile production in Lodz (pronounced “Woodj”) in antique tints as much Dickensian and Oliver Stonian, as Marxian. The film inhabits a misty, smoky industrial sfumato; exteriors draped with the black effluent of factory smokestacks, interiors with cigar smoke and the wafting fog of torched millworks. Excellent zdjecia.
The main protagonist, Karol Borowiecki (I take special ironic note of the name: mine was originally Charles Borowicz), handsome, energetic, driven, dabbles with, when not committing outright, just about every possible serious felony and human sin in the tragic achievement of becoming a captain of Polish industry. He ultimately orders the shooting of striking workers, but along the way demonstrates an equally perfect indifference to human suffering at all points, but on a smaller scale: a factory worker who loses at least an arm, probably two, much blood and probably his life in a rolling machine earns no sympathy and hardly a response from Borowiecki, who instead orders everyone else back to work and laments the loss of cloth to blood stain; he brushes off a fellow industrialist looking for a temporary personal loan with a recommendation to set fire to his own factory for the insurance money, and he disregards the industrialist’s muttering in despair an intention to kill himself—an intention the latter shortly fulfills with a pistol shot to the head; Borowiecki betrays his fiancée with his mistress and eventually his pregnant mistress as well for a lucrative marriage of convenience; he sells his noble patrimony to a sugar-sucking, upwardly-mobile boor, probably a peasant; and he traffics in conspiracy and insider-trading, though these habits are less explicitly crimes or sins in capitalist economies and more like standard operating procedures. My almost namesake Borowiecki represents an object lesson in how dehumanizing ambition can be, in this case with capitalist trappings.
It is unclear what Wajda meant by the “Promised Land”: perhaps, the previous Poland of the noble tradition, which is represented with surprising nostalgia, or the coming socialist Poland represented by a wounded striker’s red kerchief. Or, more possibly, to a socialist Poland that was yet to come, even in 1974—and one destined never to arrive. Or, to the living myth of a “Promised Land” that has been promised to all people and nations (cue the Boss), for which, alack, there is just not enough real estate on earth. Watching the film unassisted by subtitles, I tallied understanding just over 100 words and a dozen phrases, many of which were used more than once, to be sure; however, at the moment, mine is too meager a vocabulary for gaining entry into any promised land.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
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.
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.
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