FROM BEHIND THE BARBED WIRE:
NEW POLISH WRITING
Outside observers often note that Polish literature thrives
on national catastrophe. Whenever people's hopes are shattered,
waves of literary creativity swell almost immediately; poets, novel–
ists, and playwrights are the first to scrutinize the causes of the
defeat and bitterly describe the landscape after the battle. Oddly
enough, instead of discouraging people's strivings, such literature
usually becomes a core around which some new coll ective conscious-
\
ness slowly begins
to
form. And sooner or later people hope against
hope again.
This pattern has been repeated by Polish literature since the
eighteenth-century partitions, through consecutive insurrections ,
wars, and occupations, to the present day. The aborted uprising of
1831 begot the great era of romantic poetry and drama. The tragic
insurrection of 1863 gave rise to the positivist novel. The Nazi occu–
pation between 1939 and 1944 resulted not only in the martyrdom of
many writers, but also in a multitude of brilliant literary debuts.
This perpetual paradox was never so striking as in the recent
seven months. Logically, the generals' crackdown on Solidarity
should have brought as an additional effect a total sterilization of
cultural life. The reason for such an expectation is simple: the mili–
tary regime reacted not so much against an independent trade
union, in a narrow sense, as against some broader phenomenon of
the people's growing spiritual independence. The late seventies, and
especially the sixteen months between August 1980 and December
1981, were a period of rapidly progressing, unofficial self-education
of society, which finally resulted in its liberation from under the yoke
of propaganda lies. The uncensored literature, circulated by inde-
pendent publishing houses, played an essential role in that process.
Poems by Wiktor Woroszylski and Adam Zagajewski were published originally in
Polish in
Kultura,
the monthly, by Institut Lilterairc in Paris.
M~rek
Nowakowski 's
short stories were included in his book,
Raport
0
stanie wojennym (State-oJ-l1kzr Report),
published recently also by Institut Litteraire. Essays by Andrzej Zagozda were
published by
Aneks
quarterly in London.
