My father, moj ojciec, the youngest of four brothers, alone survives them into his 87th year. Gone are Hank, Dick (Kashek), and Ed (Edzio). Three of seven sisters, JoAnn, Lu, and Theresa, likewise the younger ones, carry on to the present—and “carry on” is the operative verb—though now on stainless steel knees and with the aid of pharmaceuticals. The original tongues and wits remain essentially intact, the tongues especially. Dear people on the whole, and from this pool my Polish blood flows to the Baltic.
Moj ojciec, Norbert, has written extensively of his early life; and revisiting his Reminiscences this Father’s Day, I nod in recognition and in memory and smile. Though not self-consciously Polish, which probably makes him forever more Polish than I, he exhibits the many signs, like Catholicism and a special attention and devotion to Aunts, cioci. I had thought that my own high regard for my father’s seven sisters owed completely to their incredibly agreeable singularity and collectivity and my own good sense and sensitivity. And now, in First Reminiscence, 5:1, I read again, “Aunt Sophie! Dear, sweet, gentle Aunt Sophie,” as she soothed his troubled First Communion conscience—had he actually received the host in a state of sin? damn you, Norbert!—in the ample pillow of her breast. On the next page appear these very cioci, the “Fun Aunts,” the four Betlejewski sisters (and my grandmother), a gorgeous progression from pleasing plumpitude to cheerfully morbid obesity, a perfect diet of amitular dumplings. Happy, so happy!
This aunt theme read familiarly, resonated, and I traced the original note in the echo chamber of my mind to the contemporary Polish poet Adam Zagajewski’s Two Cities, page 11, “My aunts . . . More important than my uncles.” [his ellipsis] Though his aunts in Communist Poland were characterized less by good nature than maternal ruthlessness, I consider the difference purely circumstantial. What matters here is the importance of those women—as well as the relevance and sagacity of Zagajewski, a Polish Pole. The hint here of a national character trait, blood-borne.
This past May, the New York Review of Books carried two poems by Zagajewski, the second dedicated to his father, “Now That You’ve Lost Your Memory.” It fondly remembers a moment they shared in the lantern of a lighthouse high “above the Baltic.” The son wants “to help,” but laments in the last line, “I can’t help you, I have only one memory.” (I heard him read with resigned longing this poem in October, 2009, in both English and Polish, that is, before I knew a word of Polish.) While I don’t think I have ever shared with my old man, stary ojciec, quite such a transcendent moment, despite that, I will be able to help if he ever loses his memory. I have his Reminiscences. Dziekuje, Pop.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Polish Moustache
Little accompolished these days—on vacation. Except that I have been monitoring the growth of my Polish moustache, polskie wasy, and a bit of beard, broda. Inspired by the whiskrage of Jerzy Hoffman’s movie trilogy, and some highly impressionistic, rigorously unscientific surveys of Polish social portraiture, I’m convinced that facial hair matters in Polish cultural semiotics. Now, no doubt, facial hair matters in the semiotics of all national cultures, but I’ll speculate that it matters just a little bit more in the Polish experience. Moustache and beard seem more visible in Polish imagery generally, and more positive emblems overall, even as, in contemporary times, they may be vanishing from the public face.
The most important moustache of the post-Communist era, and one of the hirsute reasons we have a post-Communist era at all, belongs, of course, to Lech Walesa—a Solidarnosc founder, a Nobel Peace Laureate, and the eventual president of Poland in its first genuine, democratically-elected government, post-WW II. A formidable horse shoe of a moustache, it spanned his mandible like a brass knuckle for his face, for the pounding of some sense into the clean-shaven, chinless cranium of Wojciech Jaruzelski. Note that all of Jaruzelski’s immediate forebears—Gomulka, Gierek, and Kania—sported not a hair on their dour and jowly visages. No semblance of a Party here. Walesa’s hyperbolic hyperbola proved a glorious band, a signature arc, a great triumphal arch, both stubborn and roguish. And further note that Poland’s previous political resurrection in 1919-20, proceeded under the muzzle hair of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, whose thick, drooping shaving brush rivaled the 19th-century stylings of Friedrich Nietszche—a fancier of Polish political heritage. In fact, reviewing the portrait imagery of all of Poland’s most successful practitioners of rule—Mieszko I, Boleslaw Chrobry, Kazimierz the Great, Stefan Batory, and Jan Sobieski III—one finds the wings of an impressive moustache, noses with dual horse-tail standards.
For most of my adult life, I have grown and worn facial hair, at least a moustache, on occasion, a fuller beard, and most recently, a salt and peppery short cropped scruff. Except for an early college beard, which occasioned my first published prose—though anonymous—these growths were cosmetic, aesthetic attempts to mitigate or distract from the flaws of an imperfect face: receding hairline, too-full lips, narrow jaw. My early college beard quite self-consciously declared a principled non-conformity, but in truth this late adolescent declaration of non-conformity came rather quickly to seem a stereotype, an age-appropriate non-conformity, that is to say, conformity. So, my intermittent moustaches, beards, goatees, sideburns have never amounted to more than accents, diacritical marks on a blank but increasingly creased and spotty parchment.
But for Poles, a moustache is a statement, a declaration, a manifesto even, one tending toward the extravagant, the determined, the romantic. As Davies has noted, “Male hair-styles tended to be exotic.” (I, 248) The fabulous eastern (Sarmatian) origins of the Polish nobility, the szlachta, account for much of this exoticism, along with the nation’s long contact with Cossacks, Crimean Tartars, Ottoman Turks, and even the Mongol hordes of the then recently departed Ghengis. I’m partial, myself, to the Cossack influence, the moustache with drooping wing feathers, tendrils that curl with the slightest hint of dangle. A true Cossack, provided he survived long enough, might sport a growth that could be worn over the ear on a windy day, but I’m not a Cossack, only respectful of them. They had some style. And so my most recent homage to the facial traditions of my ancestors. To date, my efforts have been both complimented and twitted as Don Quixote and Burl Ives: fair enough, but a Cossack Don Quixote, a free-booting and blood-thirsty Burl Ives, perhaps an Ataman Sanders of a Ukrainian Fried Chicken franchise. Have your fun.
The most important moustache of the post-Communist era, and one of the hirsute reasons we have a post-Communist era at all, belongs, of course, to Lech Walesa—a Solidarnosc founder, a Nobel Peace Laureate, and the eventual president of Poland in its first genuine, democratically-elected government, post-WW II. A formidable horse shoe of a moustache, it spanned his mandible like a brass knuckle for his face, for the pounding of some sense into the clean-shaven, chinless cranium of Wojciech Jaruzelski. Note that all of Jaruzelski’s immediate forebears—Gomulka, Gierek, and Kania—sported not a hair on their dour and jowly visages. No semblance of a Party here. Walesa’s hyperbolic hyperbola proved a glorious band, a signature arc, a great triumphal arch, both stubborn and roguish. And further note that Poland’s previous political resurrection in 1919-20, proceeded under the muzzle hair of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, whose thick, drooping shaving brush rivaled the 19th-century stylings of Friedrich Nietszche—a fancier of Polish political heritage. In fact, reviewing the portrait imagery of all of Poland’s most successful practitioners of rule—Mieszko I, Boleslaw Chrobry, Kazimierz the Great, Stefan Batory, and Jan Sobieski III—one finds the wings of an impressive moustache, noses with dual horse-tail standards.
For most of my adult life, I have grown and worn facial hair, at least a moustache, on occasion, a fuller beard, and most recently, a salt and peppery short cropped scruff. Except for an early college beard, which occasioned my first published prose—though anonymous—these growths were cosmetic, aesthetic attempts to mitigate or distract from the flaws of an imperfect face: receding hairline, too-full lips, narrow jaw. My early college beard quite self-consciously declared a principled non-conformity, but in truth this late adolescent declaration of non-conformity came rather quickly to seem a stereotype, an age-appropriate non-conformity, that is to say, conformity. So, my intermittent moustaches, beards, goatees, sideburns have never amounted to more than accents, diacritical marks on a blank but increasingly creased and spotty parchment.
But for Poles, a moustache is a statement, a declaration, a manifesto even, one tending toward the extravagant, the determined, the romantic. As Davies has noted, “Male hair-styles tended to be exotic.” (I, 248) The fabulous eastern (Sarmatian) origins of the Polish nobility, the szlachta, account for much of this exoticism, along with the nation’s long contact with Cossacks, Crimean Tartars, Ottoman Turks, and even the Mongol hordes of the then recently departed Ghengis. I’m partial, myself, to the Cossack influence, the moustache with drooping wing feathers, tendrils that curl with the slightest hint of dangle. A true Cossack, provided he survived long enough, might sport a growth that could be worn over the ear on a windy day, but I’m not a Cossack, only respectful of them. They had some style. And so my most recent homage to the facial traditions of my ancestors. To date, my efforts have been both complimented and twitted as Don Quixote and Burl Ives: fair enough, but a Cossack Don Quixote, a free-booting and blood-thirsty Burl Ives, perhaps an Ataman Sanders of a Ukrainian Fried Chicken franchise. Have your fun.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Zycie/Life
With spring semester over and time on my hands, I’ve been reading, or rereading actually, but reading, too, so I guess both rereading and reading. I’ve been rereading Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword; I’ve been reading Keith Richards’s Life: With Ax and Smack. (Well okay, I added the subtitle.) No slouch with an R&B lick, yet Keef can’t narrate to save his Life—no story line, no pace, almost pure hedonistic sequence—though aside from that, his book is not without interest, and a good understatement or two, “Land is always the dangerous thing for a boat.” (301) It won’t bear rereading, however.
My second tour of duty in the Ukrainian Steppe, the “Wildlands,” the Sietch, has proved much like the first: nasty, brutish, and almost interminable. Eleven hundred pages, and while not a constantly galloping account of slaughter on an epic scale or sabering on an intimate, the blood of the Poles and Cossacks gushes freely and apace, and, much more to the point on this encore reading, from a common artery. In Sienkiewicz’s eyes, the Poles and the Cossacks were brothers; this was civil war—with, admittedly, little civil about it. “This is a war between brothers!” laments the Voyevode of Kiev, “The blood that flows on both sides is our own!” (441) Well, all men are brothers, more or less; all wars are civil, mostly less. Brotherhood never stopped us from killing one another. Just ask Cain. Brothers, apparently, have to forge their bands against other bands of brothers, and most convincingly, to the death or in the face of it. Wojna! Wojna! gives outlet and the ultimate expression to high-spirited brotherhood: the boys make terrible meaning together, they make war.
And subtler, more sublime meanings, too. After battle, when the wojna slows and quiets, pauses at the funeral of Pan Podbipyenta, Sienkiewicz introduces that rare lyrical and elegiac note on the passing of time, the passing of worlds, and the loss of meaning, of which war might only be a symptom: “Their time was passing. A storm of changes was sweeping through their world. The qualities of knighthood would soon have no meaning. And many of them knew as they mourned Longinus Podbipyenta that they were also weeping for their nations and themselves.” (1066) Sienkiewicz claimed to have written to “uplift [Polish] hearts,” but this brother discovers, perhaps even more, counterpoints of despondency and langor, langor and resignation, futility unto eternal rest. For uplift, I think, I prefer the Stones. Start me up.
My second tour of duty in the Ukrainian Steppe, the “Wildlands,” the Sietch, has proved much like the first: nasty, brutish, and almost interminable. Eleven hundred pages, and while not a constantly galloping account of slaughter on an epic scale or sabering on an intimate, the blood of the Poles and Cossacks gushes freely and apace, and, much more to the point on this encore reading, from a common artery. In Sienkiewicz’s eyes, the Poles and the Cossacks were brothers; this was civil war—with, admittedly, little civil about it. “This is a war between brothers!” laments the Voyevode of Kiev, “The blood that flows on both sides is our own!” (441) Well, all men are brothers, more or less; all wars are civil, mostly less. Brotherhood never stopped us from killing one another. Just ask Cain. Brothers, apparently, have to forge their bands against other bands of brothers, and most convincingly, to the death or in the face of it. Wojna! Wojna! gives outlet and the ultimate expression to high-spirited brotherhood: the boys make terrible meaning together, they make war.
And subtler, more sublime meanings, too. After battle, when the wojna slows and quiets, pauses at the funeral of Pan Podbipyenta, Sienkiewicz introduces that rare lyrical and elegiac note on the passing of time, the passing of worlds, and the loss of meaning, of which war might only be a symptom: “Their time was passing. A storm of changes was sweeping through their world. The qualities of knighthood would soon have no meaning. And many of them knew as they mourned Longinus Podbipyenta that they were also weeping for their nations and themselves.” (1066) Sienkiewicz claimed to have written to “uplift [Polish] hearts,” but this brother discovers, perhaps even more, counterpoints of despondency and langor, langor and resignation, futility unto eternal rest. For uplift, I think, I prefer the Stones. Start me up.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Woda dla slonie
My second semester Polish grade is in: A-. Certainly closer to the truth of the matter than its predecessor, and I prefer the qualified, the diminutive in all its lesserness, its modesty, its unwieldy aerodynamics. A straight A average whistles through the stratosphere like a Polish saber; an A- muffles a bit owing to the wind resistance, like a battle hammer or a bulava. As you might guess, I’ve had much more time to reread Sienkiewicz since the final exam, 500 hundred pages, with only a couple hundred more to go.
Of course, I now know Polish better than I did when I received my A. The mechanics of the grading this semester, however, exposed one of my many weaknesses, my composition skills. I can’t compose (komponowac) in Polish, about my work, my family, my country (America) because I cannot think or say anything of interest, anything nuanced, anything rhythmic in the rudimentary Polish that I currently possess, so I think of what I want to say in English, then translate and transliterate and interpret into Polish with B-range results. The professor explained, somewhat apologetically, that I was too ambitious, and that while he took off for errors of grammar and usage, he did not reward for ambition. Never before have I been accused of ambition, but I deflected the charge with my own good nature, “One can learn much from mistakes.”
A second weakness, no doubt, was my oral incomprehension. My reading and pronunciation aren’t too bad, fairly fluid. But understanding the spoken word in its natural tempo and responding to it in a timely and coherent manner must be reserved for semesters hence, perhaps years. Last night I watched a recently released movie—Water for Elephants—upon the recommendation of a former colleague. A period romance—Great Depression, circus—with the indifferent Reese Witherspoon and the wonderful Christoph Waltz, it featured some Polish immigrant and language plot elephants...elements: Rosie, who had been trained in Polish and responded only to Polish commands. While it may seem humiliating to have aural skills inferior to a pachyderm, I now have a role model. Thanks, Jack.
Of course, I now know Polish better than I did when I received my A. The mechanics of the grading this semester, however, exposed one of my many weaknesses, my composition skills. I can’t compose (komponowac) in Polish, about my work, my family, my country (America) because I cannot think or say anything of interest, anything nuanced, anything rhythmic in the rudimentary Polish that I currently possess, so I think of what I want to say in English, then translate and transliterate and interpret into Polish with B-range results. The professor explained, somewhat apologetically, that I was too ambitious, and that while he took off for errors of grammar and usage, he did not reward for ambition. Never before have I been accused of ambition, but I deflected the charge with my own good nature, “One can learn much from mistakes.”
A second weakness, no doubt, was my oral incomprehension. My reading and pronunciation aren’t too bad, fairly fluid. But understanding the spoken word in its natural tempo and responding to it in a timely and coherent manner must be reserved for semesters hence, perhaps years. Last night I watched a recently released movie—Water for Elephants—upon the recommendation of a former colleague. A period romance—Great Depression, circus—with the indifferent Reese Witherspoon and the wonderful Christoph Waltz, it featured some Polish immigrant and language plot elephants...elements: Rosie, who had been trained in Polish and responded only to Polish commands. While it may seem humiliating to have aural skills inferior to a pachyderm, I now have a role model. Thanks, Jack.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
WUI
Took the final tonight, seven pages, not so bad, a few educated guesses, then rode home on the outskirts of a thunderstorm jaundiced with intimations of tornado—one that never lived up to that ominous promise, though it did shower Minneapolis with egg-sized hail. Decided to observe the occasion with the wet kiss of drink, three times, as the Poles do, though I took mine all on the mouth and not on the cheek—vodka, Chopin, from the freezer. I have been rereading of Pan Zagloba and his amazing exploits alcoholic in Ogniem i mieczem, of gorhalka (which I interpret to mean “grain alcohol”) and of Troyniak (“mead”). One year behind me. I have so far to go.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Last Class
Last class last week. Final upcoming. A long, cold semester closes out. At year’s end, we’ve finished 15 of the 30 chapters in Swan’s First-Year Polish. Students of the early 80s must have been twice the students we are now. Wait a minute, that would have been me!
Over the course of this semester, I managed to ace my quizzes, but as I review for the final exam and retake them, hiding the answers and corrections under a note card, I’m either overly tentative or absolutely sure on every question, then dismally mistaken in both cases. How can that be? Knowledge as kittens ambient in my short term memory but now grown up and bored and wandered off. I can’t even honestly say, “I used to know that,” I can only say, “I got that right on my quiz back then” and “That’s vaguely familiar.” Just over forty eight hours, then school’s...out... for...sum..ma.
Supplemental vocabulary for this weekend: mlecz (“dandelion”), bez (“lilac”), kardynal and rudzik (“robin”).
Over the course of this semester, I managed to ace my quizzes, but as I review for the final exam and retake them, hiding the answers and corrections under a note card, I’m either overly tentative or absolutely sure on every question, then dismally mistaken in both cases. How can that be? Knowledge as kittens ambient in my short term memory but now grown up and bored and wandered off. I can’t even honestly say, “I used to know that,” I can only say, “I got that right on my quiz back then” and “That’s vaguely familiar.” Just over forty eight hours, then school’s...out... for...sum..ma.
Supplemental vocabulary for this weekend: mlecz (“dandelion”), bez (“lilac”), kardynal and rudzik (“robin”).
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Wiosna w Minnesocie
Gray and cold with strong, chilling winds this first of May, jeden maju, so unspringlike as to keep me adesk with the Kosciuszko dictionary. I’m perusing A in search of adjectives and adverbs. Some champions of prose insist upon a style with a minimum of description, as if quality admitted no nuance, no shading of nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates by such modifiers. Say “yes” when you mean “yes” and “no “ when you mean “no.” Modification is for amateurs. So be criticism—I love adjectives and adverbs. To me, little in this life appears clean and unqualified, and I prefer to rag in detail, not infinitely, of course, about life’s and language’s still freshly ragged edges, deft tones, and hues evanescent.
Through A I copy, tally, and notice among ninety adjectives and adjective/adverb pairs a preponderance of cognates: absolutny, abstrakcyjny, absurdalny, adekwatny, administracyjny, afirmatywny …. Sweet. Finally, something about the language that doesn’t push complexity to the nth degree. And, not unlike English, the adverb forms are pretty regular and recognizable; absolutnie, absurdalnie, agresywnie, aktualnie, aktywnie, and even more sweetly, adverbs don’t decline like adjectives. They’re always the same. Some tricks, to be sure, must attend to finding and fastening the appropriate ending to an adjective—ny, yjny, alny, czny, wny—but the challenges here seem manageable. Only a few adjectives in my list do not call to mind, in due time, their English counterpart: adamowy (“stark naked”), aksamitny (“velvety”), antywojenny (“antiwar”), aspoleczny (“asocial”), and autowy (“out” as in sports’ “out-of-bounds”). Most of the cognate adjectives are imports. The less recognizable words have deeper native, Slavic roots. Except for autowy, which looks like something having to do with cars, but is, most likely, an echoic import—Out!
Through A I copy, tally, and notice among ninety adjectives and adjective/adverb pairs a preponderance of cognates: absolutny, abstrakcyjny, absurdalny, adekwatny, administracyjny, afirmatywny …. Sweet. Finally, something about the language that doesn’t push complexity to the nth degree. And, not unlike English, the adverb forms are pretty regular and recognizable; absolutnie, absurdalnie, agresywnie, aktualnie, aktywnie, and even more sweetly, adverbs don’t decline like adjectives. They’re always the same. Some tricks, to be sure, must attend to finding and fastening the appropriate ending to an adjective—ny, yjny, alny, czny, wny—but the challenges here seem manageable. Only a few adjectives in my list do not call to mind, in due time, their English counterpart: adamowy (“stark naked”), aksamitny (“velvety”), antywojenny (“antiwar”), aspoleczny (“asocial”), and autowy (“out” as in sports’ “out-of-bounds”). Most of the cognate adjectives are imports. The less recognizable words have deeper native, Slavic roots. Except for autowy, which looks like something having to do with cars, but is, most likely, an echoic import—Out!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)