The Voices from the House of the Dead

Marek Zaleski

The Voices from the House of the

Dead

Literary Studies in Poland 19, 123-131

The V oices from the H ou se o f the D ead

The Jewish them e has for a long tim e the right o f citizenship in Polish literature which b ro u g h t to respect the presence o f “the elder b ro th er Israel,” as M ickiewicz p u t it, in the m ultination al culture o f the P olish R epublic at the tim e when nationalism s were raging aro u n d E urope. It happened so in the do m ain o f literary culture, especially o f creative writing, and no t necessarily in political journalism , where the triu m p h belonged to the destructive dialectis o f the “o u r” and the “alien” fed on ill feelings o f the society deprived o f its n ation al existence and threaten d in its n atio nal identity.

This positive trad itio n is p re d o m in a n t in the best w orks o f Polish writers, beginning with M ickiew icz’s Pan Tadeusz up to Vin- cenz’s m ultivolum ed epic N a wysokiej połoninie (On a High Pasture). It m ay be added here, w ithout any risk, th at only in the atm osphere prepared by M ickiew icz’s ideals o f the m utual acceptance o f bo th Jewish literature w ritten in P olish and Polish literatu re w ritten in Jewish, as Jan Błoński has p u t it recently in his essay “A u to p o rtre t żydow ski” (A Jew ish S elf-P ortrait) published in Tygodnik Powszechny, Julian S tryjkow ski’s writings and the pheno m enon o f his popularity could com e into being.

In the 19th-century novel and sh o rt story it was stressed th at the Jews were different, b u t n o t alien. N evertheless, as A leksander H ertz w rote in his fundam ental w ork Ż y d z i w kulturze polskiej

(The Jews in Polish Culture, P aris 1961) and as H enryk G rynberg

has recently rem ined in his collection o f essays Prawda nieartystyczna

(N on-Artistic Truth, Berlin 1984), the Jewish presence show n as an

elem ent o f P olish spiritual and physical environm ent was n o t regarded as an auto n o m u s value, a p a rt o f the organism o f national culture,

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bu t it was ju dged as an exotic pecularity and m ost often from the p o in t o f view o f the Jewish m inority and its co n trib u tio n to Polish cultural and political life. This m ight have been a consequence o f the pred om inance o f the n atio n al perspective in Polish literature, and also o f the pro g ram created by the positivists who p ostu lated the equality o f rights for the Jews th ro u g h p o lo n iz a tio n —gaining them for Polish culture th ro u g h bringing them over to the Polish side—and no t th ro u g h m u tu al assim ilation and exchange. A ttem p ts to p enetrate the Jewish com m unity were practically non-existent (and the o ther way roun d). A s a consequence, in literature the p o rtra it o f the Jew abstracted from the realities o f his family, religious and co m m unal life was one-dim ensional, though often presented with w arm feelings. T hus the stereotyped, non-descript ap p ro ach dom inated in letters. But, as H ertz stresses, this does n o t apply only to literature, b u t also to the com m o n image o f th e Jew. T here were also hardly any testim onies com ing from within the Jewish com m unity th a t could be accessible for the Polish public in original. H ow ever, there arises a question w hether such testim onies were aw aited at all. B oth the anachron ic m odel o f Polish society with its relatively closed, hierarchical, class ch aracter and the caste system o f the Jewish com m unity with its inclination to isolation i ghettos, the inclination intensified by differences in religion and custom s and, finally, by the four-thousabd-year-o ld m em ories o f defeats and persecutions. The chosen natio n, says Old Tag, the hero o f S tryjkow ski’s Austeria, “can be co m p ared with a m ouse in co stan t search for a shelter.” The existence o f the b arrier o f m utual cu l­ tu ral strangeness, the accum ulation o f injustices, resentm ents and prejudice inevitably result in either v olun tary o r forced isolation. “The belfry clock started to strike hours. F ath er tau gh t him n o t to cou n t these church h o u rs; a Jew o u g h tn ’t to d o this. Thier tim e sh o u ld n ’t be confused with o u rs ,” we read in S tryjkow ski’s novel

Sen A zrila (The Dream o f Azrit). Sim ilarity, in Stryjkow ski’s earlier

novel, Glosy w ciem ności (Voices in Darkness), the sheepish trips o f little A ron ou t o f his fa th e r’s w orld, the w orld o f the orth o d o x Jewish religion, eventually m ake the boy gain the family nicknam e o f “a foe o f the Jewish n a tio n .” His ad u lt sister’s attem pts to escape from this w orld are sealed by her fa th e r’s curse which equals the banish m ent from her com m unity, the d ra m a o f up rooting.

T he distinctness, dissim ilarity o f the w orlds which existed on the periphery o f the 20th century was characteristic o f pre-w ar Europe. B ut this tu rn ed into estrangem ent and enm ity in the face o f the grow ing aw areness o f aggressive nationalism s, the trium phs o f ra ­ dical political ideologies p ro p a g atin g the necessity o f setting the w orld to the rights. N ew hostility was often d em o nstrated in the street, in shops, offices and universities an d it co n trib u ted to the rise o f the wall o f prejudice, hatred and, at best, indifference. T he oppo rtu n ities created by the n atu ra l coexistence o f the two cultures were ruined. In the sh o rt story L ato {Summer, 1938), A d o lf R udnicki shows “the triu m p h o f the g h etto ” where “prodigal sons” com e back from P olan d an d thus escape antisem itism which was very stro n g in the twenties. This new, om inous perspective turned out to be surprisingly vital. It survived even the shock o f the greatest w ar in the histo ry o f m ankind, the war which changed political, m o ral and social reality in E u rope and all over the world. The tragedy o f “the rejected” was to be the central issue o f the post-w ar w riting o f H enryk G rynberg. H e was b o rn in 1936 and survived the war and o ccupation concealed from the G erm ans by Polish peasants. He left P o lan d in 1967, th a t is, a year before the tragic antisem itic cam paign in P oland, which m ade the rest o f the Jews who h ad escaped the holocaust leave P oland.

T he m o ral consequences o f “the m ass destruction and m ass enslavem ent organized legally by the state and therefore un p u n ish ed ,” as Stanisław Vincenz w rote ab o u t the holocaust in his rem iniscences a b o u t Jews from K ołom yja, create d o u b t a b o u t the correctness o f historical caesuras adm itted after the final, as it w ould seem, events. “T he holocaust was the beginning o f an era, and no t its e n d —the e ra o f disruptions, convulsion, folly and unreason, the era o f A uschw itz. N ow we are in the 29th year o f this era, “ w rote A leksander D o n a t in 1970. The present day proves th a t the above statem ent contains a w orrying grain o f tru th : the holocaust was no t the last hum icide sanctioned by the state.

Jewish experience could n o t find an ap p ro p riate expression in post-w ar P olish literature for a long time. This was caused by com ­ plicated an d painful m echanism s o f cultural assim ilation, sham eful injuries an d finally, w hat is p ro b ab ly the w orst, by difficulties co n ­ nected with living in the century in which antisem itism was the

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m ost poisonous “ism ” am ong m any o th er “ism s.” “O th ern ess” was not w ithout consequences. A fter the nightm are o f the war the very existence o f differences am ong people seems highly d an g ero u s and om inous to the hero o f Ż yw e i m artwe morze (The Alive and the

D ead Sea) by A d o lf R udnicki.

A n d w hy are y o u startin g w ith this U S and T H E M ? A fter all, this is the “u s” w h o sh o u ld be interested in b rin gin g ou r sufferings to an end. E ach U S and T H E M will end up in the w ay we had already seen. A fter w h at w e went through this is the “u s ” w h o sh o u ld d o ev ery th in g to o v e r th o w barriers betw een p e o p le , this is the “u s ” w h o sh o u ld a lw ays and everyw here act a gain st everyth in g that d iv id es p eo p le and act for that w hich brings them to g eth er [ ...] U S and T H E M ! T h ese are d ead w ord s at the m o m en t and th an k s G o d they are dead. T h ese are the w ords w ith the c o a tin g o f ages u p o n them , but th a n k s G o d that their tim e is c o m in g to an end, b eca u se w hat w as the use o f all these d ifferences?

This attitu d e (which leads the hero to C om m unism ) can be u n derstood when it com es from a person who was a victim during the w ar because o f his origin, nose or conviction, altho ug h to d ay the naïveté o f this reasoning can be surprising. It is ra th e r difficult to classify it otherw ise th an as a result o f neurotic esch ato lo g y —the belief in the m ythical happiness o f universal b ro th erh o o d . C ulture, however, has its basis in the right for dissim ilarity.

“ F o r Polish cu ltu re ,” w rote A leksander H ertz, “it w ould be m uch better if its creators o f Jewish origin b ro u g h t with them m ore specifically Jewish values [...] Exam ples o f such a process can be observed in A m erican culture where a Jewish c o n trib u tio n is m ore original and very strongly tied with Jewish tra d itio n —th ank s to this Jewish contrib u tio m is m uch m ore enriching.” T he last issue was also dealt with in A d o lf R u d n ick i’s sho rt story, “ Wielki Stefan K onecki” (The G re at S. K .) published in the volum e Szekspir

{Shakespeare). D uring a discussion with the w riter Stefan K onecki

(O stap O rtw in) who is hiding from the G erm ans, the n a rra to r and the m ain hero o f the story says:

It’s im p o ssib le that y o u d o n ’t k n o w the result o f w ritin g u n d er p seu d o n y m s, the result o f these en d ea v o u rs to be m o re P o lish than the P o le s th em selves. Y o u sh o u ld h ave b een w riting a b o u t u s, first o f all a b o u t us. Y o u sh o u ld h ave had n o m ercy for you rself. Y o u sh o u ld h ave lived at the price o f sa y in g and not at th e p rice o f silen ce. Y o u w o u ld ’ve w o n as a w riter an d p erh a p s we w o u ld ’ve w on as p eo p le. O ur b elo v ed w o u ld be d y in g n o w in a different way. N o t in the m ud , sp ittle and d esp ise.

It m ight seem th a t after the holocaust the possibility o f a creative co o p e ratio n was lost forever. P oland, the co u n try which had 3 m illion citizens declaring their ties with the Jew ish language and religion, the co u n try in which there h ad existed a very specific, un ique Jewish culture, b o th sacral and secular, becam e practically a co u n try w ithout Jews after the N azi action. O u t o f 200 tho usan d o f those who survived o r retu rn ed from the Soviet U nion, after several waves o f em igration from the co u n try which had becom e the cem etery o f their n atio n , there were only several tho usan d Jews left and they were entirely absorbed into P olish culture.

D espite these d ram atic changes, we deal here with “the m ost atrocious p a ra d o x ,” as Ja n B łoński p u t it in his essay (see above). “T he Jewish presence in the P olish novel (and perh ap s in Polish lite ratu re in general) has never been m ore visible th an after the h o lo cau st,” he writes. W h at is m ore, “conditions for creating ‘Jewish sch o o l’ in literatu re were gathered. Polish becam e the language o f inner life, b u t life was m arked, in an unexpectedly stro ng way, by the sense o f Jew ish distinctn ess.”

B efore we consider this Jewish experience in post-w ar Polish literatu re, we have to d em o n strate the reasons for the change o f perspective. W hat is m ore, it m ay be argued th a t these reasons reflect certain deeper processes in Polish literary cu ltu re after 1945. We shall also try to answ er in w hat these subjects ap pear in Polish prose and w hat we learn from them a b o u t ourselves.

A lot o f Polish w riters becam e also Jewish writers as a result o f tragic w ar experience. This experience helped them find their ow n voice an d m ade them choose the subject o f m oral responsibility for history and for all sufferings o f the Jewish n atio n, for the m em ory a b o u t the victims o f the war crim e. T his issue was expected and d em an ded from w riters, and this need was m et by Julian S tryjkow ski, Stanisław W ygodzki, A d o lf R udnicki, K alm an Segal, A rtu r S a n d a u e r—to m ention only those who w rote ab o u t it m ost extensively.

T he co m pulsion to w rite a b o u t Jewish experience w orked som ehow differently in the case o f the younger writers B ogdan W ojdowski (born 1930) and H enry k G ry n b erg (see above). H ere the need to give a testim ony already coexisted w ith the necessity to defend the m e­ m ory a b o u t victims, with the desperate fear th a t the w orld is slowly

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forgetting ab o u t w hat happened, w hat is m o re, th a t the world prefers n o t to rem em ber.

M y relatives were rather y o u n g . A t fa m ily reu n io n s there u sed to be up to 90 p eo p le. T o d a y I w alk a ro u n d and lo o k for v estig es a m o n g g ra v es in the fields, at all ex e c u tio n sites. T h ey filled up all gas ch a m b e rs, all m a ss graves, they m a d e th e h o les o f gun barrels lo ck at them to avert them fro m m e. There w as n o t e n o u g h tim e and sp ace. I w as o n ly 6 an d it w as p o s s ib le not to n o tic e m e,

w rites G rynberg in the sho rt story “ E kipa A n ty g o n a” (A ntigone Team ). In an o th er w ork o f G ry n b e rg ’s, the novel Ż y c ie ideologiczne

{Ideological Life), the hero and n a rra to r says: “S om ebody should

be on guard and w atch even over this v o id .”

In additio n to all the above factors determ ining th e presence o f Jewish them es in po st-w ar lite ratu re som e less subjective ones should be m entioned here. Jerzy Jedlicki in his excellent work “D zieje dośw iadczone i dzieje zaśw iadczone” (H istory Experienced and H istory D ocum ented) published in the m o nthly Twórczość in 1977 was the first to pay atten tio n to such factors. O u r “h istorical” know ledge a b o u t the h o lo caust becam e m ore or less com plete in the 1960s. F ro m tim e to tim e (but n o t very often) new docum ents were discovered and (m ore and m ore) new m o n o g rap h s were published. B ut, as a m atter o f fact, they did n o t change the overall image o f the ho locaust considerably. T he m echanism s o f fo rg ettin g and selection started to operate. O n the one hand, the m assive ch aracter o f this d eath m ade the p o p u lar know ledge a b o u t the holocaust becom e m ore and m ore abstract. On the o th er h and, this tragic adventure o f m ank in d acquired alarm ingly p artic u la r aspects beco­ m ing the history o f the Poles, Jews, R ussians, G erm ans, etc. The divisions an d labelings were grow ing m o re and m ore detailed and the general im age blurred. The problem o f m em ory, o r ra th e r the lack o f it, appeared in a new shape in literature, which is, after all, by its very natu re, a com m u nion o f the dead w ith th e alive. T his challenging p ro blem proved the superio rity o f lite ratu re over purely docu m entary relations, purely m atter-o f-fact re p o rts and histo­ rical sources. L iterature, as a b ra n ch o f art, realized the need, or rather the necessity o f the tran sp o sitio n o f this m ore an d m ore “objective,” petrified know ledge into the universal reality o f art. Only literatu re (art) co uld tu rn this testim ony and historical know ­

ledge into a m etaphorical figure; the figure o f h u m an fate. A nd only literatu re could avoid depriving this know ledge o f its individual burden which is capable o f m oving the re a d e r’s im agination.

It is w orth m entioning th at tim e played its role here also in an o th er way. Some au th o rs needed m ore time to take up the subject. K ry sty n a Żyw ulska, for exam ple, the a u th o r o f the fam ous book

Przeżyłam Oświęcim (I Survived Auschw itz) which appeared ju st after

the war, published the auto b io g rap h ical novel Pusta woda (Em pty

Water) only in 1964. In the latter w ork she decided to reveal

her origin an d to delineate b o th the ghetto and the “a ry an ” side from the p o in t o f view o f teenagers who, in search for food for them selves an d their families, u n d e rto o k risky trips o u t o f the ghetto, or tried to find there a shelter and save their lives, which they som etim es m anaged to do.

All the above conditions (one h as to rem em ber th a t they worked sim ultaneously) do no t m ake up a com plete list o f reasons for which Jew ish them es found such an original and authentic expression in post-w ar prose. This “m ine field,” as K azim ierz W ierzyński in his poem “Lekcja konw ersacji” (The C onversation Lesson) described the touchily experienced history o f coexistence in the m ultinational Polish R epublic, called for disarm am ent b o th in the nam e o f historical tru th and o f psychological hygiene. A leksander H ertz jux tap osed “the Jew ish q u estio n ” in P oland with “the N egro q uestio n” in the A m erican S outh. This latter issue was analyzed by G u n n ar M yrdal prim arily as “the problem o f the w hites,” as G rynberg rem inds in his essays.

The history o f Jewish experience, which used to be beshfully cam ouflaged and distorted, can be read as a record o f ill feelings, feat and fascinations, frustrations an d com plexes and o f the attem pts to relax all the above tensions. T his traum atic experience very often found drastic rendering in fiction. A lthough a sim ilar p h en o ­ m enon is know n in psychotherapy, a lot o f critics could n o t u n d er­ stan d this m echanism and tried to solve the problem o f “objectivity” o f ju d g em en t by consulting a u th o rs ’ brith certificates.

T he drastic character o f the literatu re which justifies the above argum ent is even stronger and m ore startling because these were m ainly confessions o f people who (as in the case o f W ygodzki or G ry nberg) belonged to P olish p ost-w ar intelligentsia, were deeply

130 M a r e k Z a le s k i

ro o ted in Polish culture and entirely identified whit it only to learn one day th at they are strangers, th a t they have no chance for public life in the future. The above controversies shaped editorial policies and often influenced lives o f authors.

O bviously, all this was very harm ful for P olish cultu re and literature. “ F rom the history o f those m utual days, the Poles can learn a lot o f im p o rtan t and useful things ab o u t them selves, and this know ledge can tu rn p u t to be m uch less threaten in g th at the lack o f it,” rem arks G ry nberg in his essay “H olocaust w literaturze polskiej” (The H olocaust in Polish L iterature).

The last factor co n trib u tin g to the osm osis o f P olish and Jewish experience, b u t also o f P olish-W hite R ussian, Czech, U k rain ian and G erm an experience, was the tu rn to the past very stro ng in the Polish literature o f the 1960s and 1970s. This tu rn did no t originate ju st from the interest in historical exotism and it was no t dictated by the need to escape the present. T hus the attem p ts to bring to life the m urdered w orld o f Jewish tow ns in S tryjkow ski’s work are n o t only to co m m em o rate victims, but also to save the recollections o f the dead w orld we shared not so long ago. This strong preoccu­ p atio n with the past, with the w orld which used to be governed by vivid trad itions, is also a strong reaction against those processes in m odern societies th a t lead to the situatio n in which, as Czeslaw M ilosz writes in his co m m entary upo n V incenz’s work, “people long for m otherlands, bu t are granted with states in stead.” Looking back to the past is thus b o th an expression o f nostalgia for old Europe in which people o f different races, cultures and religions lived in q uarrelsom e agreem ent, and also an attem p t to revive the trad ition o f cultural tolerance and d ialo q u e— dram atic search for the roots in the century in which, as M argaret M ead pointed out in her Culture and C om m itm ent. A Stud y o f Generation Gap, because the world and the face o f civilization have changed so m uch all people b o rn before W orld W ar II are to d ay expatriates from the soul.

The message o f S tryjkow ski’s, B uczkow ski’s o r V incenz’s prose is even m ore com plex. T heir novels record a m odern reflection upon the fate o f an individual in history, upon the presence o f a logic in historical processes. A gain and again the w riters try to show th at the last word on the subject o f hum an values does not belong

to history. In this respect the Jewish experience depicted in Polish literatu re contributes to the above task p robably m ore th an anybody else’s. "C ursed be the man that trusteth in m a n ,” w arned Jerem iah a long tim e ago (17: 5), but hum anism has n o t avoided this error. P ost-w ar, post-A ushw itz hum anism should be based upon a distrust o f m an [and, by the sam e token, o f h isto ry — M . Z.]. We the Jews, used to bear grudges against G od, and we still often accuse him o f letting us dow n, bu t certainly, it is m uch better to tru st G od th an to tru st m an. Especially now, when it is so easy to brin g ab o u t a holocaust involving all m an k in d ,” H enryk G rynb erg says in his essay “ M oj tem at” (My Subject).