| About the book
Since the envoys had brought news of the arrival of the Emperor, Bolesław’s kingdom had been overwhelmed by an all-encompassing state of commotion. Aside from the settlers living deep within the deepest forests, there was probably no one who did not, in some way or other, (...)
more >> |
| | About the book
8
The phones are always going wrong, so my parents aren’t upset when there’s no dialling tone. They’re at the fortieth birthday party of a female friend from their class at high school. They say they’re going downstairs to the phone booth for a (...)
more >> |
|
|
Tadeusz RóżewiczDeath in Old Decorations
Most of the important poetic and dramatic works of Tadeusz Rozewicz, whose work has left a deep impression on the Polish literary landscape of the last fifty years, has been translated into German. His prose, however, has been neglected. The last translation of Death in the Old Trimmings appeared in Germany almost thirty years ago, and it has been out of print for a long time. Besides, it is a good idea to re-translate all important literary texts every few decades or so.
The book's philosophical message, which addresses the meaning of human life, "life in the old trimmings, or conventions," and the failure of a hero who has lost his faith, is still relevant today. What's more, its message about false gods and values has even greater currency...
Death in Old Decorations.
A good title should encapsulate a book and explain its sense. Is Death in Old Decorations a good title? I do not know, and that is why I wish to discuss the matter with my readers. All the more so, since the reviews have rather obscured the intentions and sense of the narrative.
... in this book, I tell about the life of old decorations or conventions that were constructed in the past and have survived down to the present in various social, customary, or political forms. Down to the present day. The decorators have changed few of their conceptions...these "decorators" include the so-called important people: political leaders, generals, teachers, cardinals, writers, artists... They appear in this book under various guises and frequently mislead the "protagonist" of the story. These decorations were painted and erected for people of another time, but they still stand there in spite of wars, disasters, inventions, revolution and counterrevolution, heart transplants, and walking on the moon.
And so, despite overwhelming changes in the "theater of life" (or perhaps the "operetta of life"), the everyday lives of us all are played out, or rather passed, among dusty old decorations. Only at the hour of his death does the "protagonist" of this novel feel that he has spent practically his whole life among commandments and prohibitions, concepts, ideas, and symbols, that amounted to nothing more than stage decorations. His struggle for dignity consists in the fact that he wants to understand the world that he lives in. The doubts that sweep over him are connected with the nineteenth-century "death of God," but also with the twentieth-century foreboding of the "death of man." The "protagonist" feels that this ultimate death is a real threat to mankind.
Before my "hero" dies, he understands that the "sphinx" he stares at is false, that it is a stage prop made by a many-headed director from plaster of Paris, rags, and paper. This is the true face of the world into which the dying man looks. Yet this is not only a view of the surrounding reality. It is also an insight into the eye of the "mystery." Into the mystical face of our life. This plaster-of-Paris "sphinx" is a symbol of mysticism and mystification, the true face of the final mystery before the eyes of the dying. The end. There are no mysteries. Death in Old Decorations is a narrative directed against mysticism in life and against the mysticism of death.
It is a narrative about the fact that there are no mystical doors through the "wall of life" or the "wall of reality" that make it possible to pass into another dimension, a "better life." One of my favorite writers, Aldous Huxley, writes about these "doors in the wall" in his essay The Doors of Perception.
Huxley opened his own mystical door in the wall of reality. He opened it with the help of experiments with narcotics, but this was only the most practical, easiest way of opening the door. He opened this door of his own through a profound knowledge of the religions of the Far East, and even through participation in the experiments of Far Eastern mystics. In his last years, he became something of a "secular saint."
The "protagonist" of Death in Old Decorations is a retired clerk, the former owner of a newspaper stand, a man who was a non-commissioned officer during the war, who never used narcotics in his life, who had no stigmata, who did not "hear voices," who had never even been drunk more than a couple of times. He is no Witkacy and no Huxley, and resembles the protagonists of their works not in the least. He is neither a "secular saint" nor a great sinner. His merits and his faults are modest. He lost his faith in childhood, stopped praying, and parted from God without any dramatic gestures, without any romantic exaltation, almost unnoticed. He passed over from naive faith to what might be called naive rationalism, but he did not want to turn back. He is one "little realist" among many, and yet he does not panic at difficult moments in his life. He behaves with more dignity than the famous writers and philosophers who keep calling on God the same way they would call on an Institution, among the uproar of advertising, in the glare of the spotlights. Their conversions are like film premieres.
My poor man "lost his faith" and stopped praying, so that there are no doors to the mystical world for him. In a word, my poor man sees no way out. Neither a door, nor a wall. For him, reality is not a wall, but a river in which he floats and swims. Even as he drowns, he does not clutch at what he does not believe in. He may be a limited person, but he maintains his dignity.
Death in Old Decorations is not a story of an existence directed towards death, but of an accidental death devoid of all meaning. It is a story of a "meaningless life," of the life of an anonymous passerby. And yet it is a life that defies and conquers death. Not through love, but through the very fact of existence. In this sense, my "protagonist" is no protagonist, which is why the word appears in quotation marks here. He is not a protagonist from a book by Hemingway or Camus, but a man who passed us a moment ago in the streets of Warsaw or Budapest... a man who died yesterday, perhaps today, who will die tomorrow on a nearby street - and no one will pay any attention to his passing. He will die, but he will never be resurrected.
Translated by William Brand
Tadeusz ROZEWICZ (b.1921) - poet, playwright and novelist, he studied art history at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, but has been associated with Silesia since the late 1940s and has lived in Wroclaw for thirty years. Rozewicz is a precursor of the avantgarde in poetry and drama, an innovator firmly rooted in the unceasing re-creation of the Romantic tradition, and an independent artist.
Polish edition by Wydawnictwo Literackie
German edition by Carl Hanser Verlag: München 1973; transl. by Peter Lachmann
Tadeusz Rozewicz Smierc w starych dekoracjach
Back |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
|
|
|
|
