Kołakowski was arguably the foremost Polish philosopher and
intellectual historian of the post-war period, recently deceased (d. 2009). And
while I’ve never been mistaken for a marxian—by a Marxist, at any rate—or
truckled much with the cultural theories derived from it, that tradition is not
without insight, value, and interest. But more importantly, Kołakowski
represents a great generation of Polish hearts and minds—Wotyła,
Miłosz,
Szymborska, Górecki—that is recently passed away, as well as their
particular record of Polishness. They consider and mark Polish culture at the
rebeginnings of the Polish state (1919), a state that had the misfortune of
time and place to re-enter the world at the end of the world and at the
epicenter of its destruction. As Polishness emerged from the rubble and emerges
now from the ruinous concrete grays of the Soviet system, it seems freer to
become itself, but will likely become much more like the cosmopolitan, the
global us. Just as the Marxists and marxians warned. Not perhaps the most
terrible fate, but neither is that the Poland, or Polands, I’m most interested
in. Yet, one must always abide where one is, or hopes to be, while visiting the
past.
My request for a recess appointment and six months in Poland
has been submitted. I await the final word of the not unsympathetic, but
bureaucratic powers-that-be.
