New Wave

[tufta]

There was a time I dressed all black too, when I went through my 'Sartre', existentialist phase
As to Bonobo, he is from Krakow as a Krakovian he stands by his beliefs throughout his life. Ratty Varsovians call this trait 'Krakovian conservatism'. Malicious ones, stubborness. All in all - once a heavy metal guy, always a heavy metal guy, and so help us God. In effect - he never took his safety pin off his nose. Am I correct, Bo?

[pjotr]

Feb 22, 2012 8:26:18 GMT 1 tufta said:

There was a time I dressed all black too, when I went through my 'Sartre', existentialist phase
As to Bonobo, he is from Krakow as a Krakovian he stands by his beliefs throughout his life. Ratty Varsovians call this trait 'Krakovian conservatism'. Malicious ones, stubborness. All in all - once a heavy metal guy, always a heavy metal guy, and so help us God. In effect - he never took his safety pin off his nose. Am I correct, Bo?

Tufta,

It was my Levinas, Nietsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard (actually more Kierkegaard than Sartre, but Sartre was an important part of the book with comments on other philosophers, "The humanism of men" of Levinas, what I was reading back then, next to Bergson and Heidegger), Gilles Deleuze and Albert Camus, existentialist phase. I tried in vain to find an philisophical foundation for art next to the art history, art theory and art criticism I got on the art academy and in the quality press and media. I liked Albert Camus more than Sartre, but know how important Sartre and his wife/lover Simone de Beauvoir were. Form Camus I read The Stranger shortly after I read Dostojewski's novel "Crime and Punishment", which I consider the best novel (okay translated into Dutch), so you see I liked heavy literature. After that I also read Camus The Plague, which is an exellent novel.

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obcy_%28powie%C5%9B%C4%87%29
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%BCuma_%28powie%C5%9B%C4%87%29

That was the black dressed, fin de siecle, existentialistic anarchistic period of my life, which in fact had a radical side in the sense of anti-establishment and Pro-Authonomy (libertarian freedom desire. Selfrule ideas) thinking. Pieter today must be a reactionairy conservative, or a petit bourgeois neoliberal in the eyes of the "revolutionairy" Hermit I was back then.

I often wonder how I came to such ideas, and being rather close to radical left thinking, while I always despised radical left people. I didn't like anarchistic squaters (only liked the punk and reggea concerts in their squads, and that was often the artist department of the squatersmovement; the musicians, the artists, the students and the philosophical types amongst them; the thinkers I could get along), the communists with their dogmatism and lack of humor, the Trotskists, due to their radical isolation and lack of sense of reality and the boring, grey social-democrats who lost the connection with their own working class and middle-class electorate. I learned though a great deal about the radical left, the left and the centre-left in those student and artist years in Amsterdam, the Hague and Arnhem. (1990-2001)
There was a great variety of leftist and centre-left movements in the Netherlands in the seventees, eightees and ninetees. In the early ninetees I stil had the chance to see all those cultural and political subcultures, groups, movements and political parties before they vanished like communism vanished in Central- and Eastern-Europe. I learned about the Marxist-Leninist mindset, about the Social-democratic (Labour) policies, propaganda and power and about the third leftwing movement, Anarchism, represented by Autonomism (squaters movement). The centre-right and right I knew from my youth, family, Dutch middle and high class, Dutch politics (I followed since I was 12). Being in leftist circles due to being an art student and artist later on, created a contrast with my rightwing family and often rightwing employers. In general there were also often rightwing or centre-right workers, middle-class and farmers next to the dominant Social-democrats. People tend to dress themselves from the perspective of their social class, their belonging to a subgroup of society.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

I am sorry folks my radical left anarchistic arty/indie nature
surfed on youtube on internet and found this terrible British New Wave icons of the final seventees and early eightees.

Where there more subsversive terrible Polish counterparts back then?
Anarchistic looners hated by both the Communist authorities and the Roman Catholic mainstream? ;D

[pjotr]

David Bowie - Warszawa from the album Low


Warsaw, when Joy Division was stil Manchester Punk


Polish Punk of today


Tufta and Bo,

When I look at youtube, it seems that Poland has a lively Indierock, Punk-rock, New wave, heavy metal and other kinds of pop music world. It is getting larger and larger. Western underground influences get merged with Polish language and the Polish pop music tradition (during communism -underground or dissident- and after communism). The development of Polish rock and pop music has had such a long period of time (decades) that there is no question about the fact that there must be typical Polish streams, movements or directions of music. Stil I wonder if their is a really authentic Polish pop music which is rooted in Polish folk music, classical music, underground rock tradition and Polish musical progression and development? I say this (absoultely as a layman. And you know that).

Cheers,
Pieter

[pjotr]

[pjotr]

[pjotr]

[tufta]

To me too the day was not amazingly great
To me too the winter is too long and harsh
To me too. But admit that all in all to be alive is miraculous, and
stop yelling! Stop howling! Stop crying!

[pjotr]

Tufta,





This was one of my favorite American Indie bands in my twentie years as a student (22/25 years old). I collected all the Sonic Youth albums. It was the most radical rock band I ever heard. They performed in Poland in 2007 at the Gdynia Heineken festival. And they played songs there of my favorite songs of their best albums. They are one of the few bands who sound live the same as their studio albums. Often bands who play life get a deformed sound with a lot of feedback, bleep sounds, distortions and etc. Like David Bowie in the seventees they manage to have great live concerts which shows their real music. They play very strict or disciplined, altough it seems a lot of noise. Their Indie rock is in the line of noise music and grunge, which came after them with Nirvana, the Seatle alternative rock.

Poland has become mature with quality Western Pop music. Ofcourse it was already mature with it's own Independant (dissident) and official pop music in the communist era. Today the Polish tradition merges with the Western pop tradition and history in general. In the past, during the Peoples Republic, many Poles listened to Radio Luxemburg and Radio Free Europe. And in that way they heard the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Elvis and many others next to their own music. I am always interested in cross overs, Fusions in music and eclectic music.

Cheers,
Pieter

P.S.- I don't like Heineken beer, I prefer Żywiec. Unfortunately Heineken owns this Polish beer company. I hope that they maintain the Polish original taste of Żywiec. I never drink Heineken, I prefer smaller Dutch and Belgian breweries who make real bear, like Jopen or Hertog jan.

[pjotr]

Mar 9, 2012 22:01:38 GMT 1 tufta said:

To me too the day was not amazingly great
To me too the winter is too long and harsh
To me too. But admit that all in all to be alive is miraculous, and
stop yelling! Stop howling! Stop crying!

The Polish Radio head.

[pjotr]

Tufta/Bo/Jim and others,

In my opinion Polish modern music and Pop music in general is very influenced by the British and American pop music. More than other continental European pop music. Because Dutch pop music had Continental European influences. The isolation of communism and the acces of Western music via foreign radio chanals, smuggling routes and travelling made Polish music cosmopolitan. That probably started with Modern Polish jazz.

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

[pjotr]

Tufta,

And Jamaica too! But the reaggea comes from a British colony too. That is good Polish Rasta music with Irish Folk and Polish folk influences.

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

Jan 25, 2012 23:01:01 GMT 1 uncltim said:

Enjoying this thread.

Yes, nice thread! Where are you Tim the Uncle? Appear!

I've browsed through this old thread and thought that several very recent threads converge well into presenting Czech singer Jaromir Nohavica's super hit, currently number one on Polish Radio Trójka weekly TOP. It is usually rock on the list so prepare for the noise




...Make the bed and try to sleep and she will snuggle
Expect the visits of those who existed but they don't anymore
Their names will spring out from battered memory in no time
Next morning when you awake she'll still be there like curled cat

She'll tell you
Here I am
Consider it
You've let me in
So now you know me
I am your past

[pjotr]

Nice Czech song Tufta. It reminded me of a gathering of my friends at my house last saturday. We played old folk songs, singer songwriter stuff. Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, Johhny Cash, the good old Rolling Stones and Beatles (Dear Prudence) songs, Jacques Brell and other stuff. We get older and then we like the musical songs, the singers and their musicality. More and more I like the more quiet guitar songs, folk songs and etc.

[tufta]

Those modest guitar songs sometimes have the power of roaring heavy artillery, don't they? To remain in Czechia, Karel Kryl performing his „Morituri te salutant'. Just look at the crowds in front of this small-postured yet great man with large heart and iron spine. Crowds of young Czech people singing in 1989, fed up with their land, their lives being 'sacrificed' :

"Sarge, please hold on just a sec! ... the sand is as white as Daniella's breast... The very moment I saw with my mind's eye
this long-gone moment of oblivion, the sergeant waved us on and we were sacrificed... Morituri te salutant!"




Or another unforgetable Karel Kryl's song ,Lasko' first sung in 1970 and till this days:




Same song performed in Polish by Czech Jaromir Nohavica



...and by Polish Antonina Krzysztoñ




...by Czech Daniel Landa („Czech Kazik Staszewski”)



...and even in Kraków in 2011! (in usual the most reflective, thoughtful way...

[pjotr]

New Wave was not only a musical expression but did also exist in other mediums, art and culture forms like cinema: www.artmargins.com/index.php/film-a-screen-media/365-the-polish-new-wave-at-tate-modern-film-review

[pjotr]

The New Wave in Polish Poetry



The Generation of ‘68/New Wave consisted of students who experienced the repression taken against students around the country who protested the closure of Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve (1968), as well as the brutal suppression of workers on the Baltic Coast two years later.



These events caused political concerns, however muted, to play a key role in their literary works. Although some of the leading figures positioned themselves as ‘confrontationists’ (kontestatorzy) in the vein of nineteenth-century Polish Romantic resistance, and the Cracow group Teraz (Now), which included Adam Zagajewski and Julian Kornhauser, advocated a strategy of ‘direct speech/straight talking’, circumlocutions (and indeed Aesopic language) often proved necessary in view of stringent State censorship. Generally, however, theirs was a democratic and committed standpoint, and the voice in their poetry is often that of the szary człowiek (man in the street), cautious, anxiety-ridden, but also filled with disquiet with respect to the regime.


Adam Zagajewski, one of the leading "New Wave" writers in Poland.




Julian Kornhauser

The focus of attention in their poetry was the official language of propaganda (Newspeak/nowomowa), particularly as employed in newspapers. Consequently, Stanisław Barańczak (author of the earliest manifesto, The Mistrustful and the Presumptuous, 1971) and Ryszard Krynicki, based in Poznań in the West of Poland, adopted a strategy of ‘linguism/linguistic poetry’, designed to satirise Newspeak and expose its inadequacies, thereby sensitivising audiences to the numbing effect of official discourse. This strategy was ultimately to prove misguided since the state maintained its power not merely through Newspeak but with the aid of an oppressive apparatus, whose operations were immune to merely linguistic criticism. Similarly, ‘straight talking’ as promoted in the movement’s (near posthumous) manifesto, The Unrepresented World, published by Kornhauser and Zagajewski in 1974, whilst intended to overcome the ‘duplicity and division’ in contemporary culture could only have detrimental effects for literature - if taken literally. The severity of their attack on leading writers such as Zbigniew Herbert and their apparent fondness for ‘realism’ reminded some of Socialist Realist agit-prop.



The authorities regarded the New Wave poets with considerable trepidation and generally frustrated their attempts to launch their own literary journal, thus severely restricting their publishing. Consequently, when the protest against changes to the Constitution in 1975 and then the workers’ protests against price rises in June 1976 occurred, and led subsequently to the establishment of the underground publishing network, the so-called ‘Second Circulation’, New Wave representatives unsurprisingly played a leading role. Barańczak (along with Andrzejewski) was one of the co-founders of KOR in September 1976. Barańczak later contributed the programmatic article for the first underground literary magazine, Zapis (The Record/Recorded Work) in early 1977. His words in this article were in many ways a summation of the New Wave’s position: ‘[it is our] conviction that it is not only an author’s right but his duty to register, or record, to perpetuate in words everything that, in his eyes, conveys the truth – either in the cognitive sense, or from the point of view of psychology and art. This truth – however mistaken or ill-conceived it may be – he has no right to conceal or stifle; he must not tone it down or repress it by self-censorship, or veil it by hints and allusions, or allow it to be curtailed and mutilated. He must record it faithfully, if only in order that it may be confronted with other truths, criticised and enriched in accordance with his own conscience and discretion. Unless this obligation is fully realised, literature has no meaning.’

[pjotr]

[pjotr]

www.youtube.com/user/naetv

[tufta]

Very nice outline, Pjotr. You make me think again about things I propbablyt wouldn't, thank you!
Adam Zagajewski is one of the two Polish authors - side by side Tadeusz Ró¿ewicz - who is constantly named by the Swedes as a candidate for Noble Prize (not that I still respect that prize the way I did anymore...). He is from Lwów, studied in Kraków - together with my older friends - he is widely translated into English

To Go to Lvov
by Adam Zagajewski

To go to Lvov. Which station
for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew
gleams on a suitcase, when express
trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave
in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September
or in March. But only if Lvov exists,
if it is to be found within the frontiers and not just
in my new passport, if lances of trees
—of poplar and ash—still breathe aloud
like Indians, and if streams mumble
their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs
in the Russian language disappear
into thickets. To pack and set off, to leave
without a trace, at noon, to vanish
like fainting maidens. And burdocks, green
armies of burdocks, and below, under the canvas
of a Venetian café, the snails converse
about eternity. But the cathedral rises,
you remember, so straight, as straight
as Sunday and white napkins and a bucket
full of raspberries standing on the floor, and
my desire which wasn’t born yet,
only gardens and weeds and the amber
of Queen Anne cherries, and indecent Fredro.
There was always too much of Lvov, no one could
comprehend its boroughs, hear
the murmur of each stone scorched
by the sun, at night the Orthodox church’s silence was unlike
that of the cathedral, the Jesuits
baptized plants, leaf by leaf, but they grew,
grew so mindlessly, and joy hovered
everywhere, in hallways and in coffee mills
revolving by themselves, in blue
teapots, in starch, which was the first
formalist, in drops of rain and in the thorns
of roses. Frozen forsythia yellowed by the window.
The bells pealed and the air vibrated, the cornets
of nuns sailed like schooners near
the theater, there was so much of the world that
it had to do encores over and over,
the audience was in frenzy and didn’t want
to leave the house. My aunts couldn’t have known
yet that I’d resurrect them,
and lived so trustfully; so singly;
servants, clean and ironed, ran for
fresh cream, inside the houses
a bit of anger and great expectation, Brzozowski
came as a visiting lecturer, one of my
uncles kept writing a poem entitled Why,
dedicated to the Almighty, and there was too much
of Lvov, it brimmed the container,
it burst glasses, overflowed
each pond, lake, smoked through every
chimney, turned into fire, storm,
laughed with lightning, grew meek,
returned home, read the New Testament,
slept on a sofa beside the Carpathian rug,
there was too much of Lvov, and now
there isn’t any, it grew relentlessly
and the scissors cut it, chilly gardeners
as always in May, without mercy,
without love, ah, wait till warm June
comes with soft ferns, boundless
fields of summer, i.e., the reality.
But scissors cut it, along the line and through
the fiber, tailors, gardeners, censors
cut the body and the wreaths, pruning shears worked
diligently, as in a child’s cutout
along the dotted line of a roe deer or a swan.
Scissors, penknives, and razor blades scratched,
cut, and shortened the voluptuous dresses
of prelates, of squares and houses, and trees
fell soundlessly, as in a jungle,
and the cathedral trembled, people bade goodbye
without handkerchiefs, no tears, such a dry
mouth, I won’t see you anymore, so much death
awaits you, why must every city
become Jerusalem and every man a Jew,
and now in a hurry just
pack, always, each day,
and go breathless, go to Lvov, after all
it exists, quiet and pure as
a peach. It is everywhere.

[pjotr]

Nice translate poem, actually a sort of proze like told story poem. A short story about Lwów, the stolen Eastern-Polish city, that wonderful old city that became Lviv and lays in western Ukraine now.

The only thing I miss in this historical, melancholic and beat generation like poem is the jewish element between the Polish Roman-Catholic and Ukrainian Eastern-orthodox or Greek-Catholic element, because Lwow was 1/3 Polish, 1/3 jewish-Polish and 1/3 Ukrainian in it's population before the war. I missed the Hassidic, sinagogue and the Yiddish element.

Only the sentense "I won’t see you anymore, so much death awaits you, why must every city become Jerusalem and every man a Jew," It doesn't descibe the vibrant and cosmopolitan city Lwów, Lviv, Lvov or Lemberg was before the war. It stil is according to an Iraqi Kurd colleage of mine ( a radio technician) who was in the city two years back.

Interbellum period

In the interbellum period Lwów (Lviv today) held the rank of Poland's third most populous city (after Warsaw and Łódź) and became the seat of the Lwów Voivodeship. Right after Warsaw, it was the second most important cultural and academic centre of interwar Poland. In the academic year 1937–38 there were 9,100 students attending 5 higher education facilities including the renowned university and institute of technology. In 1920 professor Rudolf Weigl of the Lwów University discovered the vaccine against typhus. The major trade fair called Targi Wschodnie was established 1921. Its geographic location gave it an important role in stimulating international trade and fostering city's and Poland's economic development.


Polish biologist Rudolf Stefan Weigl (September 2, 1883 – August 11, 1957, Zakopane)


National University Lviv

While the eastern part of the Lwów Voivodeship had a relative Ukrainian majority in most of the rural areas the city itself did not (see table to the right). Prewar Lviv (Lwów) had also a large and thriving Jewish population. The Polish inhabitants of the city spoke the characteristic Lwów dialect.
Although Polish authorities obliged themselves internationally to provide Eastern Galicia with an autonomy (including a creation of a separate Ukrainian university in Lviv) and even though in September 1922 adequate Polish Sejm's Bill was enacted, it was not fulfilled. Instead, the Polish government closed down many Ukrainian schools that had previously flourished during Austrian rule and closed down every Ukrainian university department at the University of Lviv with the exception of one. Unlike in Austrian times, when the size and amount of public parades or other cultural expressions corresponded to each cultural group's relative population, the Polish government emphasized the Polish nature of the city and limited public displays of Jewish and Ukrainian culture. Military parades and commemorations of battles at particular streets within the city, all celebrating the Polish forces who fought against the Ukrainians in 1918, became frequent, and in the 1930s a vast memorial monument and burial ground of Polish soldiers from that conflict was built in the city's Lychakiv Cemetery. The Polish government fostered the idea of Lviv as an eastern Polish outpost standing strong against eastern "hordes."

The Dutch writer and journalist Milo Anstadt about the first episode of his life in Lwów



I was born in Lwów (Lemberg in Yiddish and German, Liviv in Ukrainian), a city with an outspoken Polish history, which isn't Polish anymore. I grew up there in a Jewish family, an assimileerd family from the mothers family side, which spoke Polish and considered itself to be Polish. My fathers side of the family was orthodox jewish, spoke Yiddish and was not fond of Poles or had not much in common with Poles. Lwów was a multi-cultural city back then with three main ethnic groups that made up it's population. One-third of the population was Polish, one-third was Ukrainian and one-third was jewish. We lived in an appartmentblock with exactly that percentages of inhabitant, 1/3 jewish, 1/3 Polish and 1/3 Ukrainian. We had a Ukrainian nanny who took care of me and my sister and the houshold. As a child I developped a double loyalty which created such deep roots that I after staying for for sixty years in the Netherlands did'nt disconnect myself from Poland and the Polish culture and the Jews and the EastJewish culture. It is therefor only natural that I stil speak both Polish and Yiddish.



My mother contacted him in the eightees when negative news about Poland was played in the Dutch press. Mostly Anstadt who was raised in the Polish language, by his Polish-Jewish mother (not Yiddish like other jewish kids), stood behind my mother. Condemming expressions like "Polish concentration camps", or "the Polish anti-semites" or other generalisations about Poland. He was an assimilated Polish jew and later an assimilated Dutch jew. He hated the Orthodox jewish school he was attending as a kid, because he was beaten by the teacher, and like the secular (social-democtatic) school he went to after that. He was connected to Dutch communists, but broke with them in the beginning of the war, because he didn't like their totalitarianism and dogmatism and changed his loyalty to the Social democratic resistance, party and press.

P.S.- Until his death he had a good relationship with Poland and Poles, he loved Poland, and translated Polish texts. He had a lot of Polish friends. After the fall of communism to his great surprise and joy the new Polish ambassador in the Netherlands gave him a new Polish passport. That was very important to him.

Next to the book "Dziecko ze Lwowa" he wrote the book Poland and the jews. He put things into perspective and did not saw the jews as victims of the Polish state or Poles like many American jews and Israeli's did. I spoke two times with him via the phone (I found out his phone number) before he died, to ask him questions about Poland, the Polish-Jewish relationship, pre-war Poland and Communist Poland. He was a social-democrat and opposed to communism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Anstadt
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Anstadt

[tufta]

Pjotr, your outline is again very good and knowledge impressive, though in several minor points about Lwów I'd put it another way. Anyway, Pjotr, I have posted the poem because of 3 reasons

1. Because I was discussing with you It is a poem about a 'lost land', unknown to the author in person when he wrote it, he knew Lwów from his parents' stories only. „Lwów” in the poem is not actual Lwów but some lost promised land – idealised in the memories of author's parents [Which station for Lvov, if not in a dream]. Doesn't it remind you something or someone :---)


2. To demonstrate that 'new wave' is a new wave for a short while only since the poem is in some way 'predictable' Zagajewski-wise

3. hmm, I forgot the third reason...

Anyway, I am sure everyone of us would write it differently than Zagajewski so I am not surprised you'd write it differently too – provided we could write as well!- even given Zagajewski's life-history and the memories HIS parents passed onto HIM. Nonetheless I think in the idealised memory he -with distance and self-awareness presents, there is a firm trace of what you underline – the multicultural nature of Lwów, as multicultural as was past Rzeczpospolita in fact. [breathe aloud
like Indians, and if streams mumble
their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs
in the Russian language disappear
into thickets.//There was always too much of Lvov, no one could
comprehend its boroughs, hear
the murmur of each stone scorched
by the sun, at night the Orthodox church’s silence was unlike
that of the cathedral, the Jesuits
baptized plants, leaf by leaf ]

How personalized is our (human) perception of poetry! The very point which to you is a rembrance of Jewish citizens of the city to me is the most concentrated point of generalization or un-localization of the whole story!
[I won’t see you anymore, so much death
awaits you, why must every city
become Jerusalem and every man a Jew,
and now in a hurry just
pack, always, each day,
and go breathless, go to Lvov, after all
it exists, quiet and pure as
a peach. It is everywhere.] - that is why the poem is not local, it is general, former inhabitant of Wilno can understand it as well as former inhabitant of Breslau, Indian citizen of USA and so on and on.


Zagajewski is tricky
That is why he is so good!

[tufta]

Waglewski... new wave.. still superb and fresh, that's the guy with a beard in the vid...




"If you could make it to the hotel room I am now in, in a hotel I know so well, you'd understand how bored I am, how I long for something... for anything"




His two sons are both into music and performing... a new new wave

[pjotr]

Feb 3, 2013 20:49:27 GMT 1 tufta said:

Pjotr, your outline is again very good and knowledge impressive, though in several minor points about Lwów I'd put it another way. Anyway, Pjotr, I have posted the poem because of 3 reasons

1. Because I was discussing with you It is a poem about a 'lost land', unknown to the author in person when he wrote it, he knew Lwów from his parents' stories only. „Lwów” in the poem is not actual Lwów but some lost promised land – idealised in the memories of author's parents [Which station for Lvov, if not in a dream]. Doesn't it remind you something or someone :---)


2. To demonstrate that 'new wave' is a new wave for a short while only since the poem is in some way 'predictable' Zagajewski-wise

3. hmm, I forgot the third reason...

Anyway, I am sure everyone of us would write it differently than Zagajewski so I am not surprised you'd write it differently too – provided we could write as well!- even given Zagajewski's life-history and the memories HIS parents passed onto HIM. Nonetheless I think in the idealised memory he -with distance and self-awareness presents, there is a firm trace of what you underline – the multicultural nature of Lwów, as multicultural as was past Rzeczpospolita in fact. [breathe aloud
like Indians, and if streams mumble
their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs
in the Russian language disappear
into thickets.//There was always too much of Lvov, no one could
comprehend its boroughs, hear
the murmur of each stone scorched
by the sun, at night the Orthodox church’s silence was unlike
that of the cathedral, the Jesuits
baptized plants, leaf by leaf ]

How personalized is our (human) perception of poetry! The very point which to you is a rembrance of Jewish citizens of the city to me is the most concentrated point of generalization or un-localization of the whole story!
[I won’t see you anymore, so much death
awaits you, why must every city
become Jerusalem and every man a Jew,
and now in a hurry just
pack, always, each day,
and go breathless, go to Lvov, after all
it exists, quiet and pure as
a peach. It is everywhere.] - that is why the poem is not local, it is general, former inhabitant of Wilno can understand it as well as former inhabitant of Breslau, Indian citizen of USA and so on and on.


Zagajewski is tricky
That is why he is so good!

Yes, het is tricky and that's why he gets to you. Good 3 points. That you forgot the 3d one doesn't matter. No doubt it will have been a good point. Often these things that matter we forget. I was precise in my historical connection to Lwów, via Milo Anstadts memories, the memories of my Iraqi Kurd colleage who drove from the Netherlands, Germany, Poland (he loved Krakow), Ukraine (Lwów) to Moldova, where his Ukrainian-Moldovian wife comes from. He stayed in Lwów or Lviv today. He told me that there was a great difference between Poland and the Ukraine. Poland looking like and being a Western country, and Ukraine looking like for instance a poor region of Kazachstan or Uzbekistan. But Lviv was wonderful.

And my mentioning of the Jewish 1/3 th is ofcourse due to my own multi-cultural interest in Poland. Because Poland always comes back to me in cosmopolitan forms for some reason. I mean the subject comes back to me via for instance the German grandparents of a Dutch-German girlfriend (former lover) of mine who were Heimatvertriebenen from Stettin. Their town became Szczecin, and they moved to Western-Germany. Stettin and Breslau became Polish cities and received Polish "Heimatvertriebenen" from Lwów and other towns, cities and villages from East-Poland which became part of the Ukraine, the SovjetUnion. It was like a revenge of the Sovjets and Ukrainians for the 1918/19 Polish-Ukrainian war and the Polish-Sovjet war of 1920/21. I met also quite a few jews next to Anstadt who were one or another way connected to Poland. The wife of the former Dutch minister of foreign affairs Rosenthal, whom maiden name was Epstein, was from the Polish-Jewish family Epstein. I met her once at an opening of an exhibition of the boyfriend of her daughter. I met also Hungarians, Slovaks, Dutch and German people and others with memories of Poland. People who had lived and worked there or who had travelled to Poland. All of them had special stories about Poland. Next to the Jewish minority in Poland, you had the German, Dutch, Italian and Bohemian minorities in Poland. As a half Pole I think I am attracted to or connected to the Cosmopolitian Poland of the Polish minorities and the majority of Roman-Catholic Poles. I am attracted to the Pilsudski version of the Multi-ethnic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Maybe in Pre-war Lwów that Polish Commonwealth was stil alive, with it's multi-ethnic and very Polish character. It was a vibrant city of cultural, economical and spiritual importants (due to all the faiths that coexisted there)

I think that Zagajewski descibes that world good in his poem. And as a Pole with a christian background you are more connected to the Catholic and Orthodox-christian elements than to other minorities. When I was in Poland as a kid and teenager, I had never seen a sinagogue. I only remember the churches, cathedrals, Basilica, the monastries and the chapels of that very Roman-Catholic country. I was connected to that culture due to my Polish family heritage, which was very pius Roman-Catholic. So that Roman-Catholicism which wass traditional, deep, rooted, sprititual and cultural was directly connected to my own experiance and being. What did I knew back then about the Jewish, Eastern-Orthodox Christian (Russian-Orthodox and Ukrainian-Greek orthodox), German Lutheran and Dutch settlers Methodist influnces in Poland. Zero to nothing. My experiance and reality was the mix of the socialist society I saw and in that society a Roman-Catholic culture of the people in which fiath, spiritualism, realism and pragmatism (every day, practical life) merged. So from that perspective I understand Zagajewski poem, it was written from his experiance. If I had written the poem, than it was from the North-West-European Calvinist-Catholic perspective, viewing a magical world of Polish catholics, Polish jews and Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Orthodox christians and etc.

Cheers,
Pieter

[tufta]

Thanks for your answer Pieter. Zagajewski writes like Zagajewski while you are 'visual' artist, so maybe you'd write more like... one talented guy wrote about Drohobycz?

[pjotr]

Girl with a T-shirt with the image of Bruno Schulz

Tufta,

I like the work of the Polish artists Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885 - 1939), Bruno Schulz (1892 – 1942), the a Lemko folk and naïve painter Nikifor (1895 - 1968), Tadeusz Kantor (1915 – 1990) , Roman Polański and Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941 - 1996)


An Ex Libris made by Bruno Schulz

Stanisław Witkiewicz



Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885 – 1939), commonly known as "Witkacy", was a Polish poet, playwright, novelist, painter, photographer, philosopher and a friend of Bruno Schulz. Witkiewicz also promoted emerging writers such as Bruno Schulz. Shortly after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany in September 1939, he escaped with his young lover Czesława to the rural frontier town of Jeziory, in what was then eastern Poland. After hearing the news of the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, Witkacy committed suicide on September 18 by taking a drug overdose and trying to slit his wrists. He convinced Czesława to attempt suicide with him by consuming Luminal, but she survived.
Bruno Schulz (July 12, 1892 – November 19, 1942) was a Polish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher born to Jewish parents, and regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobych, in the Austrian sector of the Partitioned Poland, and spent most of his life there. He was killed by a German Nazi officer.


Selfportrait of Stanisław Witkiewicz

Witkiewicz was close friends with the Polish composer and pianist Karol Szymanowski (1882 – 1937) and, from childhood, with one of the most important 20th-century anthropologists, Bronisław Malinowski and the well regarded Polish painter Zofia Romer (born as Zofia Dembowska). Witkiewicz later works would show his fear of social revolution and foreign invasion, often couched in absurdist language. This was caused by his experiances during the First World War and his live experiances as a Polish officer in Sint Petersburg. (coïncidal is the fact that my Polish grandfather, Jozef Kotowicz, had similar experiances as a Polish officer of the [Czarist] Imperial army in Sint Petersburg during the October revolution. My grandfather -whom life was in danger during the second world war in Warsaw, as a member of the Polish intelligentsia- said that this were the most apprehensive moments of his life. He did'nt thought he would survive that.)


Stanisław Witkiewicz


Painting of a young lady by Witkiewicz

Witkiewicz had died in some obscurity but his reputation began to rise soon after the war, which had destroyed his life and devastated Poland. Czesław Miłosz framed his argument in The Captive Mind around a discussion of Witkiewicz's novel, Insatiability. The artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor was inspired by the Cricot group, through which Witkiewicz had presented his final plays in Kraków. Kantor brought many of the plays back into currency, first in Poland and then internationally.

Bruno Schulz



Bruno Schulz developed his extraordinary imagination in a swarm of identities and nationalities; a Jew who thought and wrote in Polish, was fluent in German, immersed in Jewish culture, yet unfamiliar with the Yiddish language. Yet there was nothing cosmopolitan about him; his genius fed in solitude on specific local and ethnic sources. He preferred not to leave his provincial hometown, Drohobych, which over the course of his life belonged to two states: the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Second Polish Republic (during World War II occupied by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany).



Although Schulz's prose did not gain the worldwide fame the work Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka befell, he is considered one of the most important and most original stylists of the interwar period. Writers like John Upd**e, Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevic Singer, Cynthia Ozick, David Grossman and Danilo Kis pronounced their great appreciation for his work. Once, the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal was asked on which cities he felt most at ease, he said, after he had named a few cities; "I feel the best where I've never been, the city I entered thanks to Bruno Schulz's the Cinnamon Shops. That to me is the most beautiful city in the world, which no longer exists, and probably that is the reason why." In 2010, Jonathan Safran Foer wrote his "Tree of Codes" by rearranging fragments of an English edition of Schulz 'Cinnamon Shops", so a new story emerged.



Bruno Schulz 'literary work is often compared to that of Marcel Proust. Others point to the relationship with the work of Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. In 1936 Schulz translatend Kafka's novel "The process" from German into Polish, with the cooperation of his fiancée Jozefina Szelińska.


Bruno Schulz, "Playful Women", drawing from the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute displayed at the "Drohobycz Artists" exhibition in the Warsaw Kordegardzie Gallery

[tufta]

Exactly Pieter! "Visualists" all of them

I suppose you will surely like less known but worthy to look into their minds deeper:

Leon Chwistek

here as Witkacy saw him



Wikipedia file about Chwistek
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Chwistek

Some of his visual art






and

W³adys³aw Strzemiñski

Wikipedia file:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Strzemi%C5%84ski




who was married to Katarzyna Kobro btw

(almost empty English) wikipedia file

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarzyna_Kobro


so French wiki file:
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarzyna_Kobro



Now, a question to you,Pieter if I may. When I think 'Witkacy, Schultz, Chwistek'- wise in relation to western European artists of the similar period, what names should come to my mind? What images?


Finally, dear forum members, good news this morning.



First hazel catkins have shown up! This winter has an end!

[pjotr]

Bruno Schulz wrote to Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz about the importance of his youth in his later life as an artist:

"I do not know how we form in our youth certain images whom have a decisive meaning for us. They play the role of those wires in a solution around which for us the meaning of the world crystallizes (...) Such images constitute a program, they provide us with the capital of the mind, which is given very early in the form of intuitions and half-conscious sensations. I think that we are bussy the rest of our lives to interpret these insights, to unravel the whole content we acquire, to process everything in our intellect, in everything we can include. These early images show the limits of the creativity of the artist."

P.S.- Unfortunately I can't read their conversation if there is a polish book with their correspondance? I had to translate this text and quote from the Dutch Wikipedia page about Bruno Schulz. I have the opinion that you can never get to the original content, meaning and quality of a text in a translated version. But unfortunately I had to read the Polish and Russian writers in translated, Dutch language versions. Ofcourse I read a few translated polish novels in English translated versions too. This was a double alienation experiance. Reading a book in another language than your own, and in the same time a translated version of the Polish original. Translated from Polish to English, and while reading translated in my head to a Dutch meaning of the English text, because we think and experiance things often in our original, native language.

[pjotr]

Tufta,

In general I think that Poland cultural, artistic and literairy was connected to the rest of Europe and the World via France, England, Berlin, Vienna, Zürich (Switzerland) and the United States of America.
Polish artists, scientists, musicians, writers, revolutionairies and aristocrats were in a lot of places in the West and East. The Poles were present in Russia, because they were part of Czarist Russia, so some Polish aristocracy, artists, diplomats and merchants were present or active in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Berlin, they say, has a Slavic soul or spirit, due to all the Slavic people who are present there today and in the past. There are a lot of Poles in Berlin. (and in other German cities and towns) No doubt Polish artists in the first half of the Century were attracted to the European art, culture, design & architecture Metropoles Paris, Berlin, London. Vienna (Wien, Wiedeń) maybe also was attractive to Southern-Poles, who lived in the Austrian (Habsburg) part of Poland. I know that my babcia went to Vienna in the early 20th century as a young girl with her mother, because she lived in Southern-Poland and spoke German due to the Habsburg education system. Maybe Budapest was popular to Poles to, due to the relatively good Hungarian-Polish relationship. There was a Central-European Interbellum culture of contemporary art movements, experiment and happenings/performance art, literature, poetry, new ideas and internationalism in the sense of the crossing border meaning, radiation and influence of writers, poets, artists, philosophers, theatre, cinema and the new medium photography. Bruno Schulz and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz belonged to the same Central-European cultural and literairy world as Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse, the Hungarian pianter, photographer and Bauhaus school professor László Moholy-Nagy, the Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky, who was also a Bahaus teacher.

In the Central-European art of the Polish artist you showed I see the influence or connection with artists like Marcel Duchamp, Kazimir Malevich (Russian constructivism), Piet Mondrian, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Surealism and maybe abstract Dada or Expressionist influences.

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich

In 1927, Malevich traveled to Warsaw where he was given a hero's welcome. He met here with artists and former students Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro, whose own movement, Unism, was highly influenced by Malevich. From there the painter ventured on to Berlin and Munich for a retrospective which finally brought him international recognition. He arranged to leave most of the paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union. Malevich's assumption that a shifting in the attitudes of the Soviet authorities towards the modernist art movement would take place after the death of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky's fall from power, was proven correct in a couple of years, when the Stalinist regime turned against forms of abstraction, considering them a type of "bourgeois" art, that could not express social realities. As a consequence, many of his works were confiscated and he was banned from creating and exhibiting similar art.

Polish art

Polish art has always reflected European trends while maintaining its unique character. The Kraków school of Historicist painting developed by Jan Matejko produced monumental portrayals of customs and significant events in Polish history. Stanisław Witkiewicz was an ardent supporter of Realism in Polish art, its main representative being Jozef Chełmoński. The Młoda Polska (Young Poland) movement witnessed the birth of modern Polish art, and engaged in a great deal of formal experimentation led by Jacek Malczewski (Symbolism), Stanisław Wyspiański, Józef Mehoffer, and a group of Polish Impressionists. Artists of the twentieth-century Avant-Garde represented various schools and trends. The art of Tadeusz Makowski was influenced by Cubism; while Władysław Strzemiński and Henryk Stażewski worked within the Constructivist idiom. Distinguished contemporary artists include Roman Opałka, Leon Tarasewicz, Jerzy Nowosielski, Wojciech Siudmak, Mirosław Bałka, and Katarzyna Kozyra and Zbigniew Wąsiel in the younger generation. The most celebrated Polish sculptors include Xawery Dunikowski, Katarzyna Kobro, Alina Szapocznikow and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Since the inter-war years, Polish art and documentary photography has enjoyed worldwide recognition. In the sixties the Polish Poster School was formed, with Henryk Tomaszewski and Waldemar Świerzy at its head.


Portrait of Kazimir Malevich


Self portrait of Kazimir Malevich


Self portrait of Kazimir Malevich


The painting "Evolution" by Piet Mondrian


Portrait of an art-collector Beffe, by Jan Sluyters


Marcel Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) (1912). The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures. It shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists, and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists.

Polish culture in the Interbellum

Polish culture in the Interbellum period witnessed a time of rebirth, as Polish culture was no longer suppressed by partitioners. It saw the retreat of the 19th century elite cultures of nobility as well as the traditional folk culture, and rise of a new mass culture, close to inteligentsia, integrating the new Polish society.
Wide discrepancies existed in the civilizational level between the three former partitions. The territories of the Prussian partition were most developed, while east and south territories - parts of the former Russian partition and Austrian partition - were among the least developed regions in Europe. Over time, the cultural hubs of Warsaw, Kraków, Wilno (modern Vilnius) and Lwów (modern Lviv) raised themselves to the level of major European cities.
While the term Polish culture refers primarily to the Polish language culture in Poland and in other countries, Second Polish Republic had also several vibrant national minorities: most notably Jewish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Lithuanian and German. To a degree that varied depending on time and particular ethnic group, those minorities where shunned by the mainstream Polish culture and subject to polonization policies.