Jolanta Brach-Czaina

The Cracks in Existence

We usually expect philosophy to provide analyses of reality, observations which, abstracted from the concrete lives of individuals, range over our heads into spheres of higher knowledge, and command us - after Plato - to scorn individual existence as the mere reflection of an unattainable, primordial image, of an idea. This form of vivisecting the present employs a definition-saturated language that can, it seems, be mastered only after years of initiation. So much for the stereotypical point-of-view of philosophy. Jolanta Brach-Czaina's The Cracks in Existence is a different case altogether. Instead of focusing on higher planes of being, the author examines the concrete details of life all around us, viewing them with affection or disgust. In this lyrical treatise on humanity, the world, good and bad, suffering, death and transitoriness, happiness and perfection, she manages to write, in language that is grounded in the world, about the magic of existence without destroying it; about the wounds that life inflicts as if they were one of its indispensible features, without making any attempt to console. Brach-Czaina takes each and every life on this planet seriously; she writes about love, origins, daily life, death and transitoriness in language that is sensual, lyrical, and that allows the reader to forget that he or she has a work of philosophy in hand. Admiring critics point out that the book's understanding and knowledge of the world, and its unpretentious, figurative language are rooted in a woman's point-of-view, proximity to the earth, and existence. So too are its unrelenting, open-minded reflections, which can help a person in hard times, providing support and the possibility of articulation. All this has made The Cracks in Existencea cult book for many.

The Cracks in Existence The Sour Cherry and the Mind

What I want to speak about concerns existence - in the form of the existential concrete. A stone that we kick is existentially concrete; so is each of us. I could also say that this is a matter of being, and therefore of everything that is, and that possesses the power of being fully present, which is expressed in the verb TO BE. Can anything possess more power than what is? And should we not direct our attention to what is, to the existence around us, which exists in the same way that we do? However, I do not want to think about being in general. I will leave such considerations to the philosophers who have no love for the existential concrete that surrounds us and with which, I believe, we have every reason to identify. Nor do I want to speak about being in its totality, since we do not encounter it in such a form, but only embodied in the existential concrete: facts, phenomena, and events. The fruit of the sour-cherry tree. Shiny. Ripe. Juicy. The skin tight and glistening. Bright red. Dense brown. Unsettling reflections of black. If we should happen to think of comparing the sour cherry to the watermelon, we would have to say that it is small - and in doing so, we would degrade it. Yet the sour cherry does not permit this. When we look at the dazzling red fruit of the sour-cherry tree, there are no grounds for making comparisons with any sort of heavy, matte-colored watermelon. Then take the stem, the remains of a previous form of existence, losing its green color and turning brown. It no longer has any meaning and does not attract our attention, even though we know that the fruit once owed a lot to the stem. Yet in comparison with the fruit, the stem is poor and uninteresting, like the desiccated past. It can be discarded. I think that when philosophers speak despairingly of the silence of being, this results from a misunderstanding of the language of existence, which does not address itself to us as a totality, but through the existential concrete. Details are telling. The voice of the whole may be suggested, but that voice is always heard in the details of existence. The silence of being - or rather the false impression of silence - also comes from the deafening buzz of human thoughts and the noise that we make on our planet. The sense of our words is incomparably sharper, more aggressive, more distinct than the barely apparent signs that glimmer on the surface of the sour cherry. In comparison with other fruits, the sour cherry has a particular capacity: it catches the eye. It provokes. Wherever it is, it draws attention to itself: on white cream, in the grass, on the tablecloth that is suddenly threatened with a stain, on the sidewalk and amidst the filth of the gutter, and on the branch of the tree where it ostentatiously differentiates itself from the background of leaves. Despite its small dimensions, it is capable of dominating the space around it. A plum can be ignored, but it is hard to allow oneself to miss a sour cherry.

Translated by William Brand

Jolanta BRACH-CZAINA - Ph.D in philosophy from Warsaw University; professor, author and co-author of numerous books on aesthetics, philosophy, art, culture, and anthropology. Her books include: On the Pathways of Twentieth Century Dramaturgical Thought (1975); The Ethos of Contemporary Art (1984); The Aesthetics of Longing (1988); From Woman to Man and Back: Reflections on Gender in Culture (1997). Polish edition by Wydawnictwo eFKa Jolanta Brach-Czaina Szczeliny istnienia