It's a snowy day in Warsaw, the first of the winter where the snow hasn't melted by nightfall. I look outside towards the grey blackening sky, and hope that tomorrow there will be more snow. Warsaw is an unromantic place in the winter without it. I want to take this opportunity to look at a few quotes from a memoir I recently read about Poland. Michael Moran's experience spans from 1992 to 2008, when he published the book. He has many astute, intuitive, and piercing things to say about the country that he fell in love with and where he eventually dropped anchor. This will be the first of a few parts, or maybe even a running series titled "Quotes about Poland."
I turn around and see now that the light from the sun has disappeared, and what remains are the illuminations from the windows of the monotonous blocks of flats, suspended in mid-air like apparitions of portals that lead to separate unique worlds. They pattern the horizon like a vertical chessboard, and provide a fleeting sense of intimacy to the residential surroundings. Back to my bright monolithic, yet labyrinthine computer screen, I feel it's time to look at some quotes about Poland from the book A Country in the Moon: Travels in Search of the Heart of Poland by Michael Moran.
Moran-“Warsaw
brings into question the nature of memory itself and the responsibility one
owes to a fading past. The continued existence of this city is a miracle and it
would churlish to criticize its mostly unlovely appearance. Between the wars
Warsaw possessed one of the richest cultural and artistic scenes in Europe. The
writers Isaac Bashevis Singer and Czesław Miłosz, both Nobel Prize winners,
worked in the capital. The concert pianists Artur Rubinstein and Ignacy Jan
Paderewski performed in an atmosphere of champagne and cultivated
outrageousness. The most daring cabarets such as The Sphinx, the Black Cat and
the notorious Qui Pro Puo flourished in Waraw to rival the most risqué cabaret
in Berlin. Some considered it ‘the Paris of the north.’”
Sealth-It’s hard
to say the same about today, although Warsaw continues to be a center for
affluent growth. There’s a perennial feeling that something is developing along
the old lines of a cultural hub in Central Europe, but it takes decades to wash
away the stench and stagnation of communism. It’s easy to imagine that the
citizens of this phoenix have a desire to slowly return it to its former glory,
but more probable is the desire to transform it into something unprecedented
and unique. This is one of the charms about living in 21st century
Warsaw.
Moran-“In Poland
communism led to a complete erosion of ethics in almost all transactions of
life outside the family and the few other ‘closed’ social groups.…The communist
mentality of absolute distrust and veiled intentions will be difficult to
eradicate….The cultivation of Byzantine defensive strategies was an imperative
in Polish society if you were not a member of the Party….This is hardly
surprising considering the severe penalties imposed by successions of
totalitarian invaders if one ‘said the wrong thing.’ Most of my correspondences
during the course of the breakdown of the project remained unanswered,
telephone calls were not returned whether in English or Polish….Communism seems
to have created a permanent climate of fear.”
Sealth-Here he is
speaking about Poland in 1992, just 3 years after the fall of communism and the
lifting of the Iron Curtain. To tell the truth there are still small traces of
these practices. I was in touch with a potential employer who was half way
through the visa process, when they changed their mind unexpectedly, and
without an explanation. Eventually all communication ceased to exist, and they
stopped answering my phone calls. There is disconnection in communication in
the business world, and it makes even simple things like renting an apartment a testing experience. There is a major difference between generations
though, and the farther Poland moves away from communism, the more open,
communicative, collaborative, and ethical the country is becoming.
Moran-“The
present generation of young people raised in freedom are largely unaffected by
the communist upbringing of their parents. They could be on a different planet
to their elders, yet many could profitably relearn the charm, graciousness and
sensibility that Poles were famous for throughout Europe before the Second
World War. A completely different breed of young Poles is emerging who are excellent
at languages, highly skilled professionally, ambitious and hard-working, who
have a more cosmopolitan and internationalist outlook.”
Sealth-Move over Germany,
here come the Poles. They have energy, and youthful ambition. They are growing
into an elite European workforce, and maturing into their proud cultural
identities. I love the young generation in Poland, because they fight like they
have something to prove, and they fight well. They have an arcane and difficult
language that they can be proud of, and an emotional historical past. Their intelligentsia
can be credited in some of the most profound ways for music, literature,
poetry, anthropology, astronomy, chemistry, and military knowledge. It’s not far
off to imagine that western European women will be swooned by the intelligence and
charisma of a charming young Pole, as British women so collectively were by the
famous Polish pilots during World War II.
