94 Days In

The war in Ukraine is reaching, some claim, its decisive moments. After much defeat, Russia is making small gains in the east, in Donbas, which may give them grounds to declare victory—that is, a disastrously destructive stalemate from which neither party can recover for maybe a decade. And, for those who have lost loved ones, never. Putin has revealed his version of Russia to be a Potemkin state, a vacuous polity, a sham superpower, a gas station with nukes and a teenage conscript military of second-hand, second-rate hardware with jowly bemedaled generals in oversized hats. A dozen fewer now. His mission, a soulless, heartless, and not mindless but egregiously mistaken failure.

May Luck Smile on Ukraine

The war in Ukraine endures, to the credit of President Zelenskiy and the Ukrainians, who resist with almost perfect underdoggian pluck and wit, winning hearts in the information war, as propaganda is now understood, and holding their own at the moment on the ground, at least in the north around Khiv. Sanctions applied by the West have had potent and immediate impact on the Russian economy. As wars, hot and cold, have a decided economic dimension, odds are not good for Putin and Russia in the long-term. They seem to have lost the short-term, with the mid-term to be decided. As once observed, there are no winners in war, but there are losers. Putin and Russia may yet be the biggest. Cutting that loss is the question—and who does the cutting. The heroism of the Ukrainian people fascinates and inspires, even as we feel the tragedy of young Russian soldiers sent to unwittingly subjugate their brothers and sisters.

Ukraine

Russian ordnance is raining down on Ukraine. Some years ago, a Polish friend voiced concerns about Vladimir Putin, portraying him as a Soviet imperial revanchist who cannot be trusted—as if tyrants ever can. Accurate as that description seems now, I find it too generous. It assumes that Vladimir Putin has visionary interests other than his own, that he has the national interests of Russia at heart, a mission on behalf of the Russian people. Absurd. A tyrant has only one interest, his own. Russia and the Russian people are but a means to that end, and sadly, now the Ukrainian people.

Хай живе незалежна Україна.

Żubrówka

Sometimes, when you least expect, you encounter at the suggestion of a friend, more or less by accident, a token that makes you think, makes you rethink that token, its symbolic value in your life. In this case, that token is Żubrówka, the Polish vodka scented, enlivened with bison grass. Żubrówka, for me, is comic—and it is a family comedy—of being completely buffaloed on the bathroom floor, prostrate after a long day of shots and apple juice and love in Małe Śwornegacie; or, it is the memory of golden-tinted evenings in the pubs and dessert cafés of Kraków, with my friends, Monika and szarlotka.

In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, or rather, the movie by that name I’ve just watched at the recommendation of a friend and colleague, Żubrówka is described as “music by moonlight.” Chopin, perhaps, if you’re in that kind of mood, a melancholy, even a dangerous melancholy. In this story, a bottle of Żubrówka, scented like “newly mown lavender” returns the recently abstinent Sophie to her alcoholic depths, to her wayward life, and ultimately to her murder. Żubrówka, the vehicle to multipronged tragedy. I thought, at first, that this was just a movie, just a novel, and that what happens in such fictions doesn’t matter. The main character says as much, twice, about life even. But that’s not quite true. If it were a truly bad novel, or a bad movie, that would be true, but good books and good movies do matter. The problem is, they don’t matter much, they don’t matter enough. At least on their own. One needs a steady diet of them to affect one’s life for good—or bad.

And in this case, the disastrous role played by Żubrówka in The Razor’s Edge does not affect how I think about it, how I remember it, how I experience it, much. For that I am thankful.    

Dukla

Dukla is the name of a town in the far southeast of Poland, close to the Slovakian border, south of Krosno as the crow flies—no roads in Poland run as the crow flies. (Perhaps no crow actually flies as the crow flies.) But you eventually get to Dukla. I found it on my wall map without the aid of a magnifying glass and marked it with a yellow pushpin, which now completely obscures the name. Dukla is also the title of a book by Andrzej Stasiuk, a book of “mixed genre”, though it suggests just how categorically silly we’ve become as readers and critics with all our marketing and academic vocabulary. Not so long ago it would have been enough to call it simply “a book.” As if any extended piece of serious writing weren’t a mixture, simply literature.

In the process of not worrying overly about genre, I’ve been lightly enchanted nonetheless by Stasiuk’s prose and sensibility, and his sense, too, which sticks his sensibility in the eye when it approaches sentimentality. The author is about my age, and he visited Dukla in his youth and describes it in much the same way as I might my hometown, small, non-descript on the surface—however intricately detailed the description—and non-descript underneath, except for the merest suggestion of excitement and mystery out in “the bushes.” A modern Polish Breughel of homely life: “rubber boots on bare feet, the symbiotic smells of human and animal existence, curdled milk, potatoes, eggs, lard, no long journeys in search of trophies, no miracles or legends other than satiety and a peaceful death.” (73) Which is to say that having more than enough and peace are miracles for those of us lucky enough to have them. And death, too, in its time.

My Polish House Guest

My Polish house guest, after three weeks here in the Midwest, has returned to Poland. I trust that her stay was restful, restorative, and productive. Scholarly resources, not least the libraries and library hours, left her almost speechless, breathless with admiration. So much stuff. (The treasures of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków do not include library staffing until midnight—I remember when university libraries were open in the U.S. all night.) Except for her witnessing a physical altercation on the light-rail Green Line and dreaming, that is to say, bad-dreaming about Vladimir Putin, she reported only positive results, results so positive, that she sometimes imagines leaving Poland for the United States, or Sweden, or Ireland. Much as she loves her country, her patience with it, and hopes and fears for it, all attitudes tend in the wrong directions, respectively.

Her visit called to mind my accultural backsliding. I have not made significant progress since returning to the U.S. Language has languished. And while I have not wholly given up the project, I have not taken any concrete steps eastward. I can plead only laziness and negligence. Monika worried that her own disillusionment with Poland might have distempered my resolve, but in truth, I have few illusions about Poland, Polishness, or my project, even as I prefer to attend, when I attend at all, to their positives and curiosities. I must rediscover the occasion within, form some plans and stick to them. Very simple, discipline, but rarely easy.

Poland has been much in the news recently. Prime Minister Tusk has become the EU Council president. A squadron of U.S. helicopters put down in a field outside of Warsaw, owing to foul weather and fog. They represent a statement of solidarity with former central and east European satellites of the former Soviet Union. The Russians have embargoed Polish apples in response to EU sanctions over Putin’s many lethal mischiefs in Ukraine. I would eat a Polish apple in defiance of the Kremlin, even more than one, if I could get them here. And I’m not a particularly healthy eater. If war broke out, I think I should volunteer for the expatriate American brigade. Not having extensive soldiering skills, I probably wouldn’t survive, but falling in battle would likely earn me my White Eagle wings. There are many ways to become Polish.

Polish Museum

I have probably driven past the Polish Museum of America in Chicago a hundred times and said to myself at least fifty, “I should really try to visit someday.” So I did, on Friday. My Jagiellonian University colleague Doctor Hab. Monika Banaś, intent on some immigration and university research in America this summer, flew into O’Hare on Thursday and requested that we spend a few days in Chicago before she began her work in earnest. She had never been to the Big Shoulders, and wanted to see her favorite American painting, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, at the Chicago Institute of Art. Dreading the traffic and my complete lack of urban navigational skill, I nevertheless agreed and drove down to embarrass myself on the mean streets of Chi town. May I say that the Chicagoans could not have been kinder and more tolerant, but, seriously, someone needs to redesign access to I-90 westbound, and consider signage.

On a less successful note, the Polish Museum is reportedly open 10-4 on Fridays, and it was—the door anyway. We walked into the lobby 10:30ish—the bookstore and museum store don’t open until eleven—and spied no one at the front desk. I touched a virtual button, a primary color, red or blue, on a touch screen that prompted a robotic verbal summons somewhere behind the lobby indicating that service was being requested. We waited for five minutes, inspecting the closed bookstore and the unopened museum store, and snapped a few pics of the lobby. Nothing happened. No assistance arrived. A custodian walked through the lobby and said that someone would be coming. We waited five more minutes. I pressed the button again and reheard the verbal summons. We waited five more minutes. Dr. Banaś, who had not passed the Polish Museum a hundred times nor said to herself that she should visit someday, grew perturbed at the delay, and eager to walk the city, prevailed upon me to leave. I asked her if this incident said anything about Poles and/or Polishness. “Yes,” she snipped.

The Polish Museum Lobby

A More Successful Viewing