 | | Biblioteka Narodowa
Warsaw 2001
© Marian Pankowski
146 x 207
204 pages
paperback
ISBN 83-7009-349-3
rights available |
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Marian PankowskiLove's Way
see also From Auszwitz to Belsen
Marian Pankowski's later prose makes a show of being the work of old age, is patently autobiographical and, strange as it may sound, in its own way joyful. The author constantly refers to a particular, though rarely exploited privilege of old age, which could perhaps be expressed as follows: "I no longer have to pretend or indeed, to prove anything." By this token, the old age he describes also has a liberating quality, which is what makes it joyful. The old writer, suggests Pankowski, is someone who has seen through the bogusness of literature, and if he does ever surrender to fiction, he is always fully aware of the humbug.
In the story that opens Pankowski's latest book there is a good deal of coquetry. A retired professor of literature, with - what a surprise! - the same name as the author, spends the winter holidays in Ostend. He is tracked down there by Henrieta, a Polish journalist. They converse with each other in an odd, extremely literary way, a style both mannered and eccentric; in addition, Henrieta is a suspiciously shrewd individual. In the end, it turns out that this consummate expert on Pankowski's works is also the daughter of a woman who was once the hero's great love. The sorrows of young Werther? Of course, especially as the same story is interlaced with an amusing apocryphal text - fictional notes from Goethe's actual journey of autumn 1790 from Silesia to Cracow and Wieliczka.
Marian Pankowski's prose has always been provocative and spectacularly lacking in humility, but the work of his latter years takes this to its limits. I am thinking chiefly of his merciless, extremely ironical attitude to himself and his own work. There are no qualifiers here, no makeover, nothing that could be classed as a writer's concern for his own literary reputation or for the future success of his work. Quite the reverse - it is as if Pankowski wanted to convince us that he doesn't take himself or his art seriously, or in any case not to excess.
Dariusz Nowacki
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