LOW VS. HIGH
“Pogranicza” is remarkable for at least two reasons. Firstly, it one from few bimonthly which issues appear regularly, what is very important because of our market of cultural magazines passed to quarterly and every half a year issues, even more often we meet once a year issue (“Rita Baum”, “Krytyka Polityczna” and it is also said that “Kartki” still exist [?]). Secondly, the issue of “Pogranicza”, which I’ll talk about here, is only the second issue this year and about ¾ of its reviews concerns books published exactly in 2007, this is very rare in our publishing market. Of course, I’m a bit exaggerating, but such grumbles are never too many, because it would be great to see a magazine which would not only follow and react but rather would be ahead, provoke a discussion, which would come out every one or two months, it would maintain a vivacity which is characteristic for weekly. “Pogranicza” is not an ideal, but it’s something to talk about.
ETHICS IN A COMIC BOOK’S CARICATURE
The main topic of “Pogranicza” 2 (67) 2007 is a confrontation between so called high culture and so called pop culture, and everything which is more or less connected with this confrontation. In a text which can be treated as an editorial (Pop i kultura bez przymiotnika / Pop and culture without an adjective) a deputy editor-in-chief, Piotr Michałowski, convinces us that it’s really something to talk about, that the confrontation of “popular” with “high” is a recurrent theme (“reactivating old disputes and mobilising opponents”) and an important question is asked – whether it is possible to totally suppress differences so “an authentic unification of trends and elaborating a model of a synthetic culture that is no-adjectival”? Michałowski asks several questions which he liver a reader alone encouraging to read further pages of “Pogranicza” on which he maybe would find at least fragmentary – without claims to exhaust the topic – answers and maybe he would understand a phenomena of co-influencing levels of culture. Michałowski accurately notices that “Classical literature appears into popular light readings only in a form of ornamented quotations, psychology of soap opera’s characters contains itself in pills of aphoristic synopsis of scientific theories, ethics in a comic book’s caricature of evil and Vivaldi in few times of mobile phone’s tune. Substitutes satisfy an ambition and often simulate an educational mission”. From this short Michalowski’s text it is worth to note notions which explaining may help to understand “pop culture” and “high culture” and also what are differences between them, not from today being fuzzy and revaluated: popular culture, alternative, unofficial, counter-culture, underground, subculture, kitsch.
PSYCHOSIS OF LITERARY CRITICS
An important text is an outline “By name with pop” by Krzysztof Uniłowski, who in this text engages polemics with thesis of Teresa Walas (in her book Zrozumieć swój czas. Kultura polska po komunizmie – rekonesans / To understand your time. A Polish culture after the communism – reconnaissance), he writes widely about „high” culture and literature, which in his opinion inevitable lost their dominating position in favour popular culture; he also mentions a lot of the then counter-culture. Uniłowski notices that reading Janusz Leon Wiśniewski and Andrzej Stasiuk at the same time doesn’t make schizophrenia these days, that we don’t have to excuse ourselves that we are fascinated with criminals, fantasy or romances. “Similar psychosis” sums up Uniłowski experience probably only literary critics “because of their academic connections”. Also interesting are Uniałowski’s remarks about bringing down an old hierarchical order “Artist from a ‘high’ circulation act as pop-culture superstars whereas pop artists – in roles not long ago reserved for intellectuals and so called moral authorities. Few years ago a project like “Lampa” by Paweł Dunin-Wąsowicz would be seen as a sign of barbarity which can deprave readers. Nowadays we see in it a noble trial of making receivers, who were raised by popular culture, to take up a literature, a trial which shows publisher’s kind-heartedness and also naivety.
FACTORS INITIATING CHANGES
However, I can’t agree fully with finishing fragments of Uniałowski’s sketches in which the critic suggests that nowadays not „Tygodnik Powszechny” or the newest novel of Paweł Huelle but “Lampa” by Dunin-Wąsowicz and a novel by Jacek Dukaj are factors initiating changes in Polish literary life is a fault of the first ones, which represent high culture. To make things worse “guilties” make from themselves victims: “We, unattractive because not medial writers and critics, who have a lot to offer for the society”. I don’t understand something here. Either Uniałowski wants to say us that Huelle and „Tygodnik Powszechny” don’t have nothing to tell us (and what is sure less than Dukaj’s books or Dunin-Wąsowicz’s writings) or that nowadays they can only incorporate themselves into “a medial discourse” in a way it’s now and to subject to it, because now there is no other approach to culture than consumer.
“WITH A BROOM” AGAINST THE HA!ART CORPORATION
About a clash of pop-culture with culture are also another drafts by Agnieszka Nęcka (in the end of the text Kiedy ta Trzecia staje się tą Pierwszą [When The Third Becomes The First] she remarks: “It’s about time to stop feeling sorry for what is irretrievably lost and to get used to changes in a stratification in a literary circulation in a way in which a Cinderella could have a chance to become a ladylike princess”) and by Bernadetta Darska, who peers at “women series”, which present literature with an aim to be popular, light, easy and pleasant (an article Podejrzliwie, bez uprzedzeń / Suspiciously, without prejudices). Darska accurately notices that from time to time in all of series (of Polish publishing houses) “with broom” or “with cinnamon” we could find really valuable positions, which if had been published in other series could have been a cause of interesting and important discussion. Darska puts in opposition to such exceptions books of low literary level and full of stereotypes, but published in respectable publishing houses and because if it they had their say in “a socially important matter”. It’s a pity, however, that as examples of poor literature published in a respectable publishing house Darska mentioned three books and everyone from “Ha!art”. Lastly the Corporation had a function of “a scapegoat”, which it deserved to a high degree, however, we shouldn’t forget that works of art of young Polish prose writers published publishing houses such like “Czarne” or “Prószyński i S-ka”. Not only “Ha!art” sins with putting on the market beautifully wrapped up but empty inside to a large measure modern novels concerning some popular in this season themes.
A QUARTER OF A MEDIAL INTELLIGENT
From the newest “Pogranicza” it’s also worth to read an interesting draft by Dominika Cieśla-Szymańska and a one devoted to the language of the debut novel by Dorota Masłowska (Wymowność słów traci swój sens – czyli raz jeszcze o języku Wojny polsko-ruskiej pod flagą biało-czerwoną Doroty Masłowskiej / The meaning of words loses it’s sense – that is once more about Snow White and Russian Red by Dorota Masłowska). Szymańska spares exhaustive fragments of her text for a penetration of a medial reality with a social live and for an uprising of a new genre “A quarter of a medial intelligent”. Although author’s thesis aren’t revealing reading them is very pleasant, it feels that we are talking about very important topics. There is also a plus for the draft’s title taken from a song by “Boys” and the first sentence, which is a travesty pseudo-intellectual language of Masłowska.
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS OF INTELLECT
And a few more sentences about week points of this issue of Szczecin’s bimonthly. An interview with young translators of Polish literature to Italian language rather should be published by Italian press – Polish reader would feel strange about it (Z ziemi polskiej do włoskiej. Czy literatura polska może zniechęcać? / From Polish to Italian earth. Can Polish literature discourage?). The thing, that young translators want for some time to start a postgraduate studies and that they translate books which they don’t like but for some unknown reasons they do it, don’t interest me at all. However, a text by Wioletta Kazimierska-Jerzyk Masowa porażka sztuki antypublicznej (A mass failure of an anti-public art is worth – in my opinion – engaging in polemics, because the author claims (following Friedrich Schiller whom we can engage in polemics…) that’s senseless and groundless to involve in an art area “somebody who doesn’t understand its context”. Obviously, let’s lock ourselves in ghettos, let’s barricade gates and read ourselves (we, the last of the Mohicans of intellect) Friedrich Schiller to sleep.
STROFOIDS WHICH ATTACK BOTH A HEARTH AND A MIND
Finishing, the last example – a critical-literary debut of 21 years old student of Polish studies Joanna Magdalena Marek (oh, it sounds so beautiful!) who published in a section “Under lines of Szczecin” a text titled Zagubiona w gąszczu pytań (Lost in the thick of questions). I have no idea why it was published, but I suppose that they decided to give a bit of joy for the reader, who would like to recover from Unilowski’s sketches and Schiller’s letters. Encouraging to read the debut of a future Polish scholar I would like to say goodbye with a few citation from her text: “In spite of a shortness an apparent simplicity this poetical utterance puts an interpreter in front of a labyrinth of possible senses affording a number of important questions, which attack both a hearth and a mind, don’t let to put ourselves off with laconic or evasive ansvers”; “To encode, even partly, a secret hidden in those five short strofoids I’ll try to find a sender and a person who he charges”; “A human being observes a steam liquefying on a glass or, if someone wants, on a pane of a window. And this induce to serious reflection: Does a human really isn’t restricted with any chains? And what with a passing which brings death?”
Exactly? What with them?
Grzegorz Wysocki
Translated by Agnieszka Żbikowska
Discussed journals: Pogranicza