URBS MELANCHOLICA
The latest edition of „Tygiel Kultury” [7-9 (151-153) 2008] proves that it is right to regard melancholy as a figure, which perfectly characterizes the modern man. This periodical is very much attached to Łódź and usually shows the greatest preoccupation with its matters. What the magazine offers this time is a melancholic mode of exploration of the city. Łódź has been presented here as marked by loss. At the same time, a universal attempt to grow into the city has been made through evoking its past landscapes – both spiritual and architectural – which do not exist anymore.
Agnieszka Cytacka in her article Ograniczoność Łodzi (The Boundedness of Łódź) combines a melancholic perspective with a notion of identity which has recently become dominant in culture studies. In this context the author sets Łódź as a ruined city with “affected tissues.” Referring to history, Cytacka points out that Łódź was not formed by transformation or adaptation of medieval urban structures. It came into being in a different way – an independent town was established in a rural and wooded area. Such a place is, as the author emphasizes, marked by absence. Black bile drips from the spleen (and not a liver, as it is frequently stated in melancholic literature) of Łódź – a giant factory that constantly produces the excretion. The lack of a city centre – so easily identified in Polish urban structures – was compensated by a multiplied artificial heart, new points that would replace the traditional agora. Such actions make the city “more dispersed, sloppy and as a result – more visibly melancholic. (…) the more multiplied organs it gets, the less consistent it becomes, it is unable to merge and constitute a unity.”
Cytacka illustrates her thesis about the melancholia of Łódź with poems written by poets associated with this place. To interpret the city within such categories, the author anthropomorphizes it – just like the poets she quotes – because melancholy is “a state and ex definitione typically human ailment.” What is very interesting is the remark that when the man and the body frequently undergo reification, the city – which constitutes a human creation – gains an independent ontological status in poetry. Another valid point made by the author is that nowadays Łódź factories change their application – what had previously served as places of hard labor turns into shopping and entertainment destinations. It is a transformation slightly related to the Benjaminian interpretation of the metamorphosis of Baudelairian Paris.
Since I have already mentioned poetry, the essay by Wit Pietrzak titled Poezja jako wspomnienie (Poetry as Reminiscence) is worth recommending. It was inspired by this year’s international Post-Industrial Cities in Contemporary Literature and Culture poetry symposium. The conference included poetry workshops conducted by the British poet Christopher Reid. During the meetings a question “what does poetry exist for?” was posed and the answer, as Wit Pietrzak explains, “may seem very obvious but, in fact, it is not: » poetry exists so that we could remember and reminisce.«” Pietrzak assures us in a very learnt way, after Derrida and Heidegger, that a poem is a place where a date with a past moment encoded can be retrieved. Approaching the poem becomes a meeting, which completes a ritual of eternal return – it defends us from forgetting.
Let us look once again at melancholy. What comprises its essence is capturing passing culture or phenomenon, a city etc. in a period of transformations. This thread is traceable both in Cytacka’s article, where she writes about contemporary poets’ efforts to redefine Łódź that are connected with the actual revitalization of the city, and in the text by Wiktor Marzec and Agata Zysiak titled Miasto, morderstwo, maszyna (City, Murder and Machine). The authors describe the changes that Łódź underwent throughout history (thanks to such solutions as, for example, the implementation of tram transport). Zysiak and Marzec analyze factors, which might have caused the fact that modernism –as an artistic substitute for progressive changes – did not flourish in Łódź. They indicate the Benjaminian “primary phenomenon” of economic modernization that surprisingly did not manifest itself in a suitable culture.
There is also a motif of wandering in “Tygiel.” Agnieszka Gralińska-Toborek went for an urban trip and her article Street-art nasz powszedni (Our Daily Street-art) begins with a very significant statement: “I like to walk around the city.” The trace of one of the author’s hikes becomes the record of the city’s metamorphosis as seen through a prism of murals and graffiti. Włodzimierz Wrzesiński’s text titled W kręgu łódzkich staroci i antyków (In the Realm of Łódź Antiques) also refers to the past that comes back thanks to old objects and pieces of furniture. The passing of old worlds is the main theme of a short story (or a memoir?) Szum morza w Łodzi (Sound of the Sea in Łódź) by Magdalena Starzycka. In the story “the end of miss Aleksandra’s world” means the end of a certain epoch. Some funny reminiscences of the past era can be also found in Cały ten interes (All That Business) – Małgorzata Półrola’s outline of a booklet published in 1913 (authored by Reinhold Piel from Pabianice and titled Czapka pełna wiców z Łodzi i Pabianiców (A Hat Full of Jests from Łódź and Pabianice). This booklet helps us to move back in time to pre-war and multicultural Łódź, home of the so-called “lodzermensch” whose image is associated with a peculiar sense of humor typical of the old multiethnic community.
The picture of Łódź that emerges from “Tygiel” is complete and balanced, because apart from the affirmative standpoints, the magazine also presents some critical approaches. One of such disapproving texts is for example Wrastanie Leszka Skrzydły (Leszek Skrzydło’s Growing In), in which the author skillfully recounts his own process of taming the city. Skrzydło honestly confesses: “I did not like Łódź. It was grey, smelly, with fumy drains everywhere.” Some fragments of his memoirs, in which he depicts post-war Łódź in a pioneer period of the city’s development, are related to the famous Film School.
The editors of “Tygiel Kultury” retrieve the overlooked history. This undertaking is visible in the article written by Krzysztof Stefański Johannes Wende – zapomniany budowniczy dawnej Łodzi (Johannes Wende – the Forgotten Builder of the Old Łódź). The eponymous German builder was not treated with due respect by scholars, who begun an official study of Łódź architecture in the 60s, because of political pressure. The tale about Wende is a “typical example of the Łódź story” with a war drama, which forces to leave “the small homeland”, embedded. Stefański ends his text with the following words: “The grandson of the builder, however, comes back led by the sentiment and the family story passed on by his parents and grandparents. Not for the first time it makes us aware that Łódź and its past are still fascinating and appealing for people scattered around the world who here find their roots.”
Although my own roots are not in Łódź, after having read the latest “Tygiel Kultury” I feel encouraged to visit the city and go for an urban trip of my own.
Agnieszka Wróbel
Translated by Katarzyna Cisak
Discussed journals: Tygiel Kultury