READING MYŚLIWSKI, QUOTING MYŚLIWSKI
It would be difficult not to notice the expansion of an interview that has been taking place during the recent years in the (not only) Polish press. In every daily newspaper, opinion weekly magazine, economic, sailing, trekking and catholic papers there are a few interviews, short conversations, editorial debates and discussions, “guest interview”, “three questions to” etc. Not to mention lifestyle or glamour magazines, music, film or sport papers, where conversations with more or less interested in and knowing what’s what people constitute a fundamental feature.
I will mention, however, quite a surprising and baffling phenomenon in the form of more and more numerous interviews and conversations printed in pages of cultural-literary magazines, as well as in other specialist papers. It is not only about „Lampa”or „Studium” where interviews have constituted one of the most attractive parts for some time already, but also about actually all the other magazines on the market – from “older” papers („Kwartalnik Artystyczny”, „Odra”) to the youngest ones (online tygodnik.pl or paper „Arte”), from the more conservative ones to the more liberal in content and form, from magazines from Cracow and Warsaw to the provincial ones, from papers that want to reach out to a bigger readership to, one could say, academic magazines. There are conversations taking place everywhere, we can read them in almost all magazines. A few years ago it would have been unthinkable, not on such a big scale (and volume) as nowadays anyway.
Amidst this flood of every kind of expression, really valuable and interesting words that remain in the reader’s mind long after he has finished reading the conversation itself very often get lost. Certainly, it is also not about mentioning here archive interviews that do not deserve to be forgotten, however, it is worth to note some more interesting ones from the recent weeks as well – if only to be able to get hold of them without searching libraries and editorial archives.
Let’s begin with two conversations with Wiesław Myśliwski. The first, earlier one was published on 29<sup>th</sup> of April in „Polityka” weekly (2552/2006) where they allotted four full pages to it, something one can only be glad about. The other conversation appeared in „Tygodnik Powszechny”. Having read both interviews with Myśliwski I reached a conclusion that a really good interview was an interview that one would like to re-print or even copy in full oneself. And quote, quote. Copy in common place books, discuss in blog notes, describe in feature articles written for student papers. The interview for „Polityka” conducted by Zdzisław Pietrasik contains a lot of such peculiar and exceptional words. Myśliwski talks about his writing, about poring over a blank page, about whole years without a single word written, about a “pencil method” (“Maybe it is a kind of trauma, but a sight of a crossed out sentence, or even a word, affects me in a bad way, as if depriving me of imagination needed to create another sentence. So, I often say that I write more with an eraser than a pencil.”)
Myśliwski talks a lot about contemporary Poland, being irritated by politics and public life, about contemporary rural customs, more precisely about their degeneration or the fact that some of them (e.g. śmigus-dyngus – Easter Monday custom) are being taken over by the city and in this way are destroyed, barbarised. Let the eminent writer speak: “There are some strange guys out of nowhere hanging around on our screens, poorly educated, demagogues, not being able to speak properly and not ashamed of the fact that they are public people. It is not only them I blame for this. The crisis of the so called elite is, according to me, a reflection of the crisis of our society and this is a much more serious situation.” And a few more sentences worth remembering, hiding deep down in your heart, thinking through. About freedom: “Nothing reveals a true nature of a man as much as freedom. This is the hardest test both for freedom and society. Especially for us, Poles, not used to freedom. We are rich only in an illusion of freedom, which results from having lived under a domination of one sort of another for more than two centuries. We thought, for example, that the world behind the iron curtain was great and it was enough to sign up to this world and it would be great here as well.”
About so called literary life: “About which literary life? For me literary life means constant circulation of thought, exchange of ideas, discussions, disputes of aesthetics, programmes, redefinition of tradition, projections of new literature dimensions. There would be something for literature to ponder on, for example, how to find its own place and role in the contemporary, medialised world, if it does not want to be a repeat of that publicised, imposed on it world. (…) There aren’t even any authentic disputes over one book. At best we occasionally deal with an intensified propaganda of a book, for this or that reason, but in the least on account of its literary value. Commercials replaced everything. On the other hand, the literary life has been always based on cultural weekly magazines. And they do not exist. Instead, we have an abundance of appearances. The void is filled in by public fests books are only a pretext for. So, what literary life is that?” Theoretically, we may argue with Wiesław Myśliwski because there has been a literary weekly magazine published for several weeks (tygodnik.pl), only online though, not for a long time, and it is not fully known what, if anything, will come out of this project in the long run. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning here the appearance of a new title on the market and wish its authors all the best. Doing this, it is worth to remember that Myśliwski’s words are not an empty talk, and you can learn about this reading the whole conversation in „Polityka”.
Or at least the one in „Tygodnik Powszechny” (22/2006) almost in full devoted to Myśliwski’s latest book, words and language, literature and stories. It does not mean, however, that, firstly, this interview is less valuable and interesting than the conversation with Pietrasik, and secondly, it is only for those who already read <i>Traktat o łuskaniu fasoli</i> (<i>Treatise on Bean Shelling</i>). Nothing like that. Here is some evidence, for obvious reasons limited to the absolute minimum: “There is more and more stories, and yet at the same time we still feel a huge need for story telling, perhaps because of a vague sense that it is only a story that can save us. We exist because we can tell a story about ourselves. In the old days they used to talk about themselves when bean shelling, stripping feathers, taking part in the meetings held in country rooms which were the most important institution of peasant culture. Nowadays we are ready to prove our existence in glossy magazines or before TV cameras”; “How to live without a real fairy tale? Maybe we are this fairy tale? Maybe deep down inside we are still a seething fairy tale, because how else can we explain our need for constant talking and creating?; “A contemporary man has problems with his soul, a soul – as one of my characters says – became a commodity, because everyone today allows oneself to become a customer. Imagination, memory and a sense of one’s place in the world are our weapon against an attack from contemporary civilisation on us. Otherwise, one is defenceless in the face of temptations of the civilisation.”; “Sometimes I say that I don’t write because I know but because I don’t know. Writing is understanding, so it is from humbleness, helplessness and a doubt about the world that a book comes into existence.”
I hope a person reading the above extracts from the conversations understands why I fill in most of the text with Myśliwki’s words, not with the undersigned Wysocki’s. Not to restrict ourselves only to the eminent Polish writer, I will mention as well a conversation with an eminent German poet and essayist, Hans Magnus Enzenberger („Gazeta Wyborcza” 3-4 April 2006) – the conversation highly critical, not to say brutal, sometimes maybe even unfair in his judgement of Poland and Poles, our politics, religiousness (words concerning John Paul II, words that none of Polish intellectuals would dare to say), poverty, our paranoia and much more not only about us – but also about Germany, Cuba, Russia and The United States. It is worth reading.
And I, a common reader, having confronted the wisdom of the words of such individualities as Myśliwski or Enzensberger, can only bow my head humbly. And read, read and read. And quote, quote and quote.
Grzegorz Wysocki
Translated by Kinga Witowska
Discussed journals: Tygodnik Powszechny