Postmodernism in the Polish Mode
Krzysztof Uniłowski
0000-00-00Some of the new writers who appeared in the Eighties displayed affinities with postmodernism. This was not, however, the most favorable time to begin one's career. Readers were seeking ethical support for the social and political protest movement, and therefore tended to read books published underground. Young writers whose books came in the official publishing houses were criticized for aping western writers, and for being political conformists. As a result of these unfortunate circumstances, postmodernism came to be associated in Poland with attacks on the national and European traditions, and with the devaluation of the literary art by reducing it to the juggling of styles and conventions. Even today, under wholly changed conditions, postmodernism is still associated with a variety of dangers (homogenization, americanization, the 'dumbing down' of values, etc.). This has led to paradoxes. The Polish public reads Barth and Eco, critics and intellectuals use Derrida and Lyotard, dozens of articles and books on postmodern aesthetics and philosophy come out-and yet, at the same time, there is a dominant belief that postmodernism is out of place in Poland because of cultural differences and the backwardness of Polish civilization. The 'new regionalism,' with its return to 'local patriotism' as a way of rebuilding the community and individual identity, is held to be the best antiodote to postmodern 'rootlessness.' Numerous literary journals support the idea of counteracting a single 'official' history through the multitude of individual narratives. Acceptance of this concept is shored up by the popularity of writers regarded as 'new regionalists': Chwin, Tokarczuk, and Magdalena Tulli. The vision of humankind and the world found in their works fits into the contexts of such Polish traditions as respect for the individual or the multiculturalism of what used to be eastern Poland. Yet the idea of 'local patriotism' also has, surprisingly, a great deal in common with postmodernism. The postmodern aversion to thinking in categories of totalities and history is ideal soil for 'local patriotism.' In the view of some critics, such works by Stefan Chwin as Krotka historia pewnego zartu, Hanemann, or Esther can be regarded as examples of the 'historiographical metanovel' that is so typical of postmodern literature. It is also easy to discern an inclination to pastiche in books like Olga Tokarczuk's Podroz ludzi Ksiegi, E.E., and Prawiek i inne czasy, or Magdalena Tulli's W czerwieni. Such postmodern elements as ingenious games with literary and historical conventions and criticism of the narrative concept of history can be found in Jerzy Limon's intriguing but underappreciated novels Kaszubska Madonna, Wieloryb, or Koncert Wielkiej Niedzwiedzicy.
The Slovenian scholar Ales Erjavec identified the hallmarks of Eastern-European postmodernism as a stubborn attachment to the legacy of the Great Avant-Garde, combined with a mockery of faith in the transformation of the world. Authors typical of this school assign great importance to the political mission, usually identify themselves with the Right, and use the symbols of nationalism or radical ideological movements to try to provoke their readers into re-thinking the past. Erjavec's diagnosis accords perfectly with the literary cirlces grouped around the Polish magazine Fronda, or, even better, with bruLion, which was proclaimed to be the standard-bearing magazine of the young in the early Nineties.
A similar taste for mockery and provocation can be seen in authors who have emerged from the youth subculture, no matter how uninterested they may be in ideological matters. In like manner, they obstinately proclaim a lack of any artistic ambition. Their 'banalism' has more in common with the cabaret than with highbrow art, but in its own way it represents a coming to accounts with the 'high modernist' program. Authors identified with this tendency, such as Pawel Dunin-Wasowicz, Marek Sieprawski, and Jacek Sobczak, renounce formal innovation in favor of sophomoric literary pranks couched in the conventions of mass-market prose. Poets, in their opinion, should rhyme their verse, and the closer that verse comes to doggerel, the better. Many authors not usually counted as belonging to this trend, such as Tomasz Mirkowicz, are distinguished mainly by the fact that they use more 'correct' language than the 'banalists' while piling up the absurdities and paradoxes, spinning out self-referential shaggy-dog stories, and exploiting such timeworn literary conventions as the picaresque.
Nor are games with artistic conventions or ironic celebrations of the narrative act foreign to Marek Bienczyk in Terminal or Tworki, Zbigniew Kruszynski in Schwedenkräuter and Na ladach i morzach, Natasza Goerke in Fractale, Anna Burzynska in Fabulant, or Cezary Keder in Antologia tworczosci postnatalnej. What we find here above all is the intriguing celebration of the outsider, the rootless person free of any need to seek indentity with his or her place of residence, cultural tradition, or social role, while at the same time renouncing all cynical or nihilistic games involving the donning and taking off of masks. The works by these authors are a counterweight to the 'local patriotism' trend, and these books also constitute a textbook image of the postmodernist condition. Postmodernism assumes a plethora of shapes in contemporary Polish fiction. It is marked by unpretensious fun, stylistic fireworks, and bows towards narrative forms out of the distant past. Yet it is also marked by a different way of thinking about the task of literature and a different way of looking at human affairs: a way that affirms diversity, rather than identity.
Krzysztof Uniłowski
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