GENIUS LOCI AND WARSAW’S PRAGA DISTRICT
The new issue of “Konteksty” (Contexts) [3-4 (282-283) 2008] has been devoted to the anthropology of cities, with special consideration given to the contexts of Warsaw’s Praga. We are informed of it from the outset by the cover of the periodical, depicting an intriguing photograph of this district. It is worth mentioning that a rich photographic documentation constitutes a substantial advantage of the edition I am about to discuss.
The organization of the articles in “Konteksty” indicates that a differentiation is made between “the anthropology of a city” and “anthropology in a city”. The first section includes theoretical sketches, as well as studies on the functioning of the city in discourse (e.g. that of Walter Benjamin, Paweł Huelle, Fernando Pessoa) and the iconographic-mythical sphere (a splendid sketch by Anna Pochłódka on the subject of Wadowice titled „Tu, w tym miejscu wszystko się zaczęło”. Znaki papieskości w otoczeniu wizualnym Wadowic (“It is here, in this place, that everything began.” Signs of papacy in the visual environment of Wadowice). The second section presents more empirically oriented studies of Warsaw’s Praga. The issues connected with this district of Warsaw seem especially interesting to me, and it is to them that I will devote the present discussion.
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The first description of Warsaw’s Praga was penned by Adam Jastrzębski as early as the 17th century. The author has shown Praga as Warsaw’s base for commerce, industry and services. It is there the distilleries, salt storages, and butcheries operated, and inns, stables, cowsheds, and jailhouses were found. Praga was also a the place where Jews were compulsorily settled. They were allowed to “sojourn in Warsaw only when the royal court was there, however they could not settle on the west bank of Vistula”. As Iwona Oliwińska makes clear in the article titled Genius loci Pragi i Szmulek (Genius loci of Praga and Szmulki ) [all quotations within this paragraph come from her piece], the image of Praga transmitted by Jastrzębski has been very durable. All in all, this district of Warsaw functions to this day in the minds of Poles as the “seat of all the waste of a large city”. It is associated with “streets of rather chaotic trajectories”, specific architecture, social issues (alcoholism, poverty, unemployment), shady dealings conducted by the demi-monde, and the urban folklore or Różycki’s bazaar. In spite of this tendency from the very beginning Praga was also associated with high life. It is here that “the representatives of the Polish and Lithuanian nobility built their residences so that they could make a pompous entrance into Warsaw for the deliberations of the Sejm or the election of a king”. And, more recently, it is here galleries, off theatres, artists’ studios, postsecondary schools have sprung, while Praga itself was presented for a moment as the Varsovian Montmartre. Praga is thus a multifaceted district of contrasts. Among its identities Oliwińska lists:
• Praga of trains and tramways, dissected by „embankments, partings of routes, train and tramway tracks”;
• Praga of commerce and crafts, „with numerous markets and the famous “Różyc” bazaar, small stores, and workshops”;
• Industrial Praga, the place of deportation of “those who did not fit in big-city Warsaw, a place treated as the backdoor through which, after proper grooming, one could enter the Warsaw parlors”;
• finally, the melting-pot Praga, “in which various cultures mixed through the ages: Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, Russian, German, and in contemporary times – Romani and Vietnamese”.
The Warsaw district of Praga is multifaceted, and this, according to Oliwińska, makes it dynamic, rowdy, restless, and interesting; moreover, it constitutes a complete universe marked by a specific flavour (one doesn’t need to “go to Warsaw” from Praga, as one can “buy, sell, and fix everything” on the spot). This is why Oliwińska insists Praga possesses genius loci. Her article, however, does not supply us with an in-depth look at the character of Praga’s genius loci. Also, it is not clear what exactly is genius loci itself. An extensive reply to this question can be found in Ewa Rewers’ article titled Od miejskiego genius loci do miejskich oligopticonów (From urban genius loci to urban oligopticons) [coming quotations are drawn from this study]. It is worthwhile to devote some time to this article, as it gives an interesting perspective of the issues connected with Warsaw’s Praga.
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Rewers formulates genius loci as a kind of an ontological metaphor, by which she means “one of the manners in which conceptual language adapts to a world not yet known, or those aspects of it whose constitutive traits are: opaqueness, polysemy, uniqueness”. As a metaphor, genius loci does not possess one meaning – rather, the term is understood in different, though complementary ways.
Firstly genius loci must be seen as an aura or atmosphere of a place. In this case one speaks of a “strong, one of a kind nature of a place”, which however does not allow for an exactitude of terms, instead determining “the basic traits of a conception of an environment carried by most of the people present in it”.
The formulation of genius loci as a municipal nostalgia seems to be equally important. The main conceptual role in this case is played by the reference to the spirit of the past understood in a very general manner, by way of which it belongs neither to history, nor to contemporariness, but becomes an atemporal spirit of sorts. Thus understood genius loci manifests itself in two strategies, which are connected by the obsessive desire to “preserve the spirit of that which is gone”. The first of these strategies relies on the relentless reconstruction and revitalization of old buildings, or the “masquerade of contemporary life of the city in the guise of historical architectural costumes”. The second tactic Rewers calls “armchair nostalgia”, since it is realized through an imaginary trip to lost “places, landscapes, and cities, in which our ‘armchair’ was not even present”. What is moreover important is the identification (or connection) of genius loci with the authenticity of a given place and the experience evoked by it.
All three ways of understanding genius loci can be found in the article devoted to Praga by Oliwińska, as she writes about the special character of this Varsovian district, fashioned through, among other factors, its multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism. She also writes about the nostalgia for big-city Warsaw, i.e. a place, which has been lost (the forced deportation to Praga of maladjusted people, Jews, etc.) and to which one aspires. Moreover Oliwińska stresses that in the general opinion the character of Praga has not undergone any change. Hence Oliwińska mentions the expectations of extreme sensations evoked by the way of life and the appearance of Praga’s inhabitants, coming from the “tourists” to this district (even if they belong to the so-called “warszawka” – which is a slightly derogative term for Warsaw’s so-called “elite”).
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The possibility of describing Praga with the help of the genius loci category understood as differentiated above testifies to the specific anachronism of this district of Warsaw. Rewers points out in her article that all three meanings of genius loci are already dead. This is because today’s cities cannot be called places. “Armchair nostalgias” are subject to numerous market manipulations: images once connected with a given place begin to be disconnected from their natural contexts and are created by popular culture. Rewers gives the example of the restaurant “Miasto Aniołów” (City of Angels) in Gdańsk. Its name is not a reference to Los Angeles, but to the movie “City of Angels”. The authenticity of places has been put into question by contemporary culture’s ever-present producing, reproducing, copying, transmitting, i.e. actions oriented toward the experience of newness, not originality.
Rewers maintains that the metaphor of genius loci can be revived, i.e. rendered operative for the anthropology of a city, by returning to its original yet forgotten meaning of a guard, or protector of a place. According to the author, the protectorship over contemporary cities is based on making the city visible. To this end we have “cameras, radars, sensors, monitors, computers, transmitters, [and] screens” connected by kilometers of cables. Their function is to “watch” municipal everydayness, to extract it’s precise fragments, to disseminate, transform and reproduce information. The micro-views thus obtained do not coalesce into a bird’s-eye view perspective. They are rather a matrix of “spontaneous tactics, logics, points of view, structures, events, rhythms, pulses”. In other words, they are conditions of social existence full of unsaid connotations. The devices, together with the images of municipal everydayness and individual tactics transmitted through them, create oligopticons – today’s version of genius loci.
This description in no way fits the characterization of Praga created by Oliwińska. It also doesn’t fit the other descriptions of Praga contained in “Konteksty”. Does this testify to the insularity and parochialism of Praga? Its backwardness? Or on the contrary – does it show Praga as a unique place? A one of a kind place? The remaining articles from the “urban” “Konteksty” will surely be an excellent help in searching for the answers to these and other questions.
Marcin M. Bogusławski
Translated by Maksymilian Kapelański
Discussed journals: Konteksty. Polska Sztuka Ludowa