Magnetic Poles. Essays on Modern Polish and Comparative Literature by George s> G�m�ri (review)

Abstract

I26 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 Gomori, George. MagneticPoles. Essays on ModernPolish and Comparative Literature. Polish CulturalInstitute, London, 2000. I62 Pp. Index. C8.oo (paperback). CONSISTING of thirteen essays written between i969 and 2000, this volume representsa personal view of selected Polish literaryfiguresof the twentieth century.George Gomori statesin hisIntroductionthathe easilyrealizes'some of his omissions' citing the Modernist experimentalistKarol Irzykowski,the interwar playright S. I. Witkiewicz and the recent Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska.Two questions immediately springto mind: first,why there are so many other omissionsfromthe potentiallistof 'modern'Polishwriters,and secondly, the use of the word 'modern' itself,which appearsto mean nothing more precise than 'twentieth century'. 'Modern' certainly does not mean 'contemporary',as scarcely any contemporaryfigures are mentioned except those who were already writing in the sixties or before (Czeslaw Milosz, Tadeusz Konwicki,the New Wavepoets) orwho emerged in the earlyeighties (JaroslawMarek Rymkiewicz,Janusz Anderman). It is even regrettablethat Gomori without mentioning other fiction writers of the past decade takes such a negative line on a few 'post-modern' writers such as J6zef Lozfiski, Marek Bukowskiand Dariusz Bittner (p. I2 I) who may indeed be obsessively sensationalist thereby painting a very biased picture of the whole of contemporary Polish fiction (what about Pawel Huelle, Stefan Chwin, the Nike prize winner Wieslaw Mysliwski,or 'newer' writerssuch as Dorota Terakowskaand Olga Tokarczukwho have received much critical acclaim?).It may be ungenerouslymissingthe point, however, to focuson the omissions, wishing as one constantly does for a well-balanced history of twentieth-century Polish literature in English which would encompass not only the important figures who started writing before World War Two (Gombrowicz, Milosz, Konwicki) and those who wrote to oppose the communist system, but all writers whatever their political and artistic persuasions,includingwomen. Perhapsit is inevitablethat any collection of essayswill be unrepresentative of the whole spectrum of writing, especially if they have not been commissioned in advance for a specificallyconceived volume but have been drawn together from a lifetime of critical writing. Dates are given in the current collection beside the titles of individual essays on the Contents page: but of writing or earlierpublication?(The essay 'Two EmigreJournals:Kultura and Irodalmiujsag'appeared recently in Dewhirst, Martin and Rogachevskii, Andrei (eds),EastandCentral European Emigre Literatures. InMemory ofIgorHajek, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, vol. 33, nos. 2-4, I999.) The criteriafor inclusion therefore need clarifying. The Introduction implies that this is a matter of personaljudgment of literaryworthiness,which is reasonableas far as it goes, except that Gom6ri's claim for the 'magnetism'of these particular individualssuggeststhatsuch ajudgment is the universallyacknowledgedone; whilstno-one would deny that Gombrowicz, Herbert or Milosz are important figures, he fails to convince on any scientific basis why these and lesser figures such as Marek Hlasko, Julian Tuwim, Julian Przybos, Janusz Anderman andJ. M. Rymkiewicz -but not others (thereis no R6oewicz or Mrozek) justifythe 'flatteringadjective"magnetic"' (p. 7). REVIEWS I27 Although the emphasis is clearly on the Polish writers, the comparative dimension provides a different and interestingperspective, the comparisons being mostlywith the Polishpoets' Hungariancontemporaries.Gomori'sown backgroundas a Hungarianpoet who experienced the events of I956 addsan element of authenticityand commitment, reflectedfurtherin his emphasison emigre writers. He often alludes also to the wider European philosophical context, especiallyin the essayson Herbert and Gombrowicz. But here again one is left with a sense of frustration; whilst on the whole Gomori's interpretation of these two writersat least does not provoke any serious disagreement, one feels a need for the arguments to be taken further and deeper. Several of the essays seem rather superseded now and would have benefited from some updating:'The Antimonies of Gombrowicz', written (or published?)in I977, forexample, providesa competent analysisof the cultural and psychological roots of Gombrowicz's theories about Form; it refers, however, to two early critics of Gombrowicz (Artur Sandauer and Bruno Schulz)yet it failsto acknowledgethe past quartercenturyof both Polish-and English-languagecriticismdevoted to thistheme. One is therefore led to ask for whom these essays are intended. They provide a sound introduction to a select few Polish literary figures of the twentieth century. Readers looking for a more balanced and incisive history of Polishliteraturewill have to look elsewhere. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies URSULA PHILLIPS University College London McMillin, Arnold (ed...