Quotes about Poland #1 "A Country in the Moon."

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 21^st 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.