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June 30, 2006
Log Rolling
Congratulations to Witold Gadomski, economics features writer for Gazeta Wyborcza who has just won a prize for fearlessly upholding the general right wing status quo in economics. No, really, I mean it. The prize is funded by the avowedly apolitical Polish National Bank, the assuredly neutral Association of Polish Journalists and the totally objective Reuters Press Agency. He was awarded the prize (a cheque for 10,000 euros - about two years' pay for a non-economist) for "defending the principles of market economics independently of political circumstances" ("za obron? zasad gospodarki rynkowej niezale?nie od koniunktury politycznej").
Polish has a useful distinction between "dziennikarz" (journalist) and "publicysta" (columnist, feature writer, opinons guy). Gadomski is referred to in the laudatory article in today's GW as the latter. But should journalists - sorry, columnists - be getting prizes for defending a particular political position? Gadomski used to be an MP but, the article tells us, is no longer connected with any political grouping. I disagree with the none-too subtle implication that running an economy is apolitical. If economics is removed from the domain of politics, as GW, Reuters, the Polish National Bank and the Association of Polish Journalists seem to think it should be it means that the plebs cannot influence it. And they moan about low voter turn-out...
I look forward eagerly to an equally generous prize for a journalist in a major national newspaper defending state intervention in the marketplace to be awarded, naturally, by the avowedly apolitical Polish National Bank, the assuredly neutral Association of Polish Journalists and the totally objective Reuters Press Agency.
Afterthought: isn't giving large cash prizes to pro-market economics writers interfering with the free market? Should Gadomski not be content with waiting for the invisible hand of the market to reward him?
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2006
You make your bed...
Zyta Gilowska has been removed from the post of minister for finance because she is being investigated on suspicion of having lied when she declared that she had not worked with the secret services in Communist Poland. (The process is called "lustracja" in Polish.) She is feeling aggrieved. She has said that she has less rights in the matter than a someone accused of child molestation would have.*
Gilowska left her party in favour of Prawo i Sprawiedliwo?? (apparently she's not a card-carrying member), which incidentally made her a minister. The party is known for its devotion to "lustracja" and - if the party's name (Law and Justice) means what the dictionary tells me - due process, the supposition of innocence and fair trials. It would seem that PiS's devotion to lustracja was not a problem for her until she found herself in the target sights.
*Actually, she said "I have less rights than a paedophile or a murderer," the distinction between being accused and being guilty apparently lying beyond her ken.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:31 PM | Comments (1)
June 25, 2006
How to paint an unforgettable picture of a city in your novel
"He left the office and submerged himself in the crowds on Kampmannsgade, heading west across the Jorgen So and on to Danasvej. He turned right on Vodroffsvej before taking a left and winding up on Sankt Markus Plads where he bought a newspaper at a kiosk near the church. He continued up Julius Thomsens Plads, parallel to the river, until he came to the Bucking Bronco on the corner of Aboulevard and Balagardsgade where he stepped in for his usual espresso."
I've never been to Copenhagen but I can read a map.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2006
DH Lawrence
On the evidence of the almost readable Sons and Lovers, David Herbert Lawrence is a truly dreadful writer. You could argue that his constant contradictions and endless revisions are an attempt to capture the complexity of the subconscious or you could argue that he did not know what he was on about and never re-read his work to make sure it made sense. The book is about a sensitive young man called Dav -- errr, Paul Morel and the women who love him (or don't: it's quite hard to tell). In the following, "he" means Paul and "she" is Miriam:
"But he belonged to Miriam."Lawrence's concern with his hero's love life means that other things fade out of view. We learn early on and at some length that Paul's father is an alcoholic but once that has been established, there is little more on the subject, leaving you unsure if he has dried out as he got older or if Lawrence just lost interest. And pity poor Paul's brother, Arthur, also, like Da's drinking, dealt with cursorily to say the least.
"And Paul hated her"
"She knew he loved her. He really belonged to her."
"His eyes ... did not belong to her."
"There had never been anything really between them... And she had known."
Lawrence's attention to the detail of working class life (Paul is a miner's son) is less than hawky of eye. He often forgets that the Morel family is supposed to be poor, while Paul's personal life appears totally unhampered by the demands of work. It's a far cry from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
For carelessness, though, it would be hard to beat the scene in which Clara and Paul pass by Clara's husband on Woodborough road:
"At that instant, Dawes passed." [...]And they say this novel went through several drafts.
"[Paul] glanced around; then he saw again the man's form as it approached him."
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2006
Tadeusz Konwicki
Tadeusz Konwicki (80 years old today), author of Ma?a Apokalypsa (Minor Apocalypse, translated by Richard Lourie), is a very good writer indeed, on a par with DH Lawrence. Set during the war, Kilka dni wojny, o której nie wiadomo czy by?a (literally: A Few Days in a War About Which it is not Known if it Was) is about a man who calls himself Adam Karnowski and is escaping from the Germans. The book challenges facile notions of literature and experience. Here is a conversation between Karnowski and a boy he meets who is also on the run:
"It will be cold in the morning."In times of war, conversation rises above the petty babble of everyday life. The desire to touch on essential matters outweighs the peacetime habit we have of answering each other's questions. Instead, we respond to our own internal drives and motivations. In times of great mental stress we also dispense with the empty formalities normally used to end conversations:
"My friend used to live in these parts. We went to secondary school together."
"A lot of people who are known [literally: wielu znanych ludzi] live here. But now they are all equal. Few will survive."
"Do you think I will survive?"
The boy was silent for a long time.
"You know, I am an orphan. Everyone envies me. They say: it's well for you. You're an orphan."
"It's time to sleep," the boy repeated.And that's it: if they do say goodnight or sweet dreams, Konwicki does not waste our time with the banality of it. As was famously the case in telephone conversations in Miami Vice, no one says "goodbye": in times of stress you instinctively know that a conversation is over.
"I'll probably never fall asleep again. But before, before..."
"What before?"
"No, nothing. Not before or after. For ever."
The dog fell silent and waited to see what they would do. Karnowski returned to the cellar..."
As Hemingway shows, one is never so much alive as when one is close to death. And so a short conversation with a stranger can assume a much greater significance than would otherwise be the case. The next day Karnowski sees a boy "not much older than the one he had gone through the night with." In fact they only exchanged a few sentences and they did not sleep in the same place.
As you read Kilka dni wojny, o której nie wiadomo czy by?a it becomes clear that Konwicki has abandoned the conventions of realism in favour of absurdity. As in Beckett, action is inaction (Karnowski is on the run but he goes nowhere); in dialogue there is no dialectal exchange; normal animal needs are secondary and absurd (Estragon gnaws the chicken bones but Vladimir seems to feel no hunger; Karnowski eats berries and "potato tart"); people's actions are apparently inexplicable (Karnowski by turns avoids passers by and by turns greets them). There is much too of Pinters' Theatre of Menace: the Germans are a constant threat and yet in true absurd fashion, Karnowski at one point goes up to some German soldiers and greets them with impunity.
But Beckett's break with realistic narrative was rather crude. Konwicki is more subtle. He only abandons some of realism's tyrannical demand for versimilitude and plausibility. In Waiting for Godot the stage is set with a minimum of detail. Not in Konwicki. Beckett's sparse descriptions are countered by Konwicki's attention to the detail of Lithuanian life (sandy roads, villas). And where Beckett's characters rely on a small stock of vocabulary, Konwicki uses much better words than ordinary people. I'm thinking here of "lecz" instead of "ale" (but); "mnogo??" instead of, say, "mnóstwo" (large amount of); "raptownie" instead of "nagle" (suddenly); and "j??" (commence, set about) instead of -- well, most writers omit it altogether. Three of those four words are marked "bookish" in the dictionary.
Nor does Konwicki allow himself to get bogged down in the petty attention to detail that has made a mere story teller of many a great and important writer. Two Germans passing by (on this occassion Karnowski hides) "talked animatedly about their families or about the prostitutes..." Which were they talking about? Is this Karnowski's guess or Konwicki's deliberate withholding of evidence? We may never know. Consider also this description of a man and his bodygaurd and its contemptuous attitude to merely external reality: "The men passed by, tense, alert, not looking around." The men are alert (czujni: also means "vigilant") and yet they do not look around. This is an inner alertness. Or again, in Karnowski's daydream about having sex on the Orient Express with a woman (despite her rather unconvincing protests) he wakes up the next day to find her gone, with just a faintly visible smear of lipstick on the pillow. A plodding realist might first have asked his lover if she often goes to sleep sober with her lipstick on, thus ruining the beautiful image that Konwicki conjures up from the pillow stain: "a pink streak like the oft reflected reflection of the morning daybreak" ("ró?ow? smug? jak odbity wielokro? refleks porannej zorzy.")
Konwicki frequently skips from first person narrative to third person. Third person narrative dominates but, especially when Karnowski is fantasising about having sex with Ewa, the unwilling woman he meets at a roadside shop, the first person creeps in. It as if Konwicki wanted you to identify Karnowski with himself as he has sex with Ewa. (Konwicki/Karnowski is no crude, undiscrimating sex maniac though -- although he falls immediately under Ewa's spell, he does notice that her legs are not as slim as they should be.) Sometimes the change in narrative form is quite abrupt indeed, as in the following passage, a conversation between Karnowski and the boy mentioned earlier:
"What do you know?"Most radical of all, though, is Konwicki's use of second-person narrative, familiar to readers of John Fowles, David Malouf, Julian Barnes and Bill Manhire (The Brain of Katherine Mansfield). When Karnowski starts fantasising about having sex with the gently protesting Ewa on the Orient Express the narrative changes to first person but it does not stay that way:
"As much as you do. And maybe even more."
The dog lay down between us on the grass, in which were sparkling the first drops of evening dew. Another troop transport rolled echoingly down below in the dark. One should be on one's guard, he thought. Be careful of this suburban philosopher." (emphasis added).
Afterwards we would lie beside each other, sweaty and weak. I would listen to the slowing pulse in my temples and she would set about [j?laby] stroking my ruffled hair. [...] The next day we would get off the train and never see each other again. After all, you don't know me and I don't know you. Not true, you [masculine pronoun] would murmur into her ear, not true, though maybe it is true.Who says "though maybe it is true"? Konwicki? Karnowski? You? Ingenious, is it not?
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)
Plagiarism
Today's Gazeta Wyborcza has an extended advertisement for an anti-plagiarism service whose name I won't give here, since GW helpfully prints it several times in BLOCK CAPITALS. Why the irony? you ask. Why shouldn't the newspaper print the company's name in BLOCK CAPITALS since it is an advertisement? Because formally at least it is not an advertisement, but a news report, headlined "Tough Times Ahead for Plagiarists" and signed by ?ukasz Partyka. My eye was caught by the following statement, which, since no evidence is provided for it at all, gives the unfortunate and doubtless false impression of having been written by a PR company acting for the anti-plagiarism company whose virtues are extolled in the article/advertisement (and make no mistake: only one company is featured in this article about plagiarism). The sentence is "Academic teachers are unable to detect them [plagiarised papers] on their own." GW says teachers can't do their job so it must be true.
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)
Talent Without End
Bertie Ahern, Taoiseach (or "prime minister") of Ireland, has an article in yesterday's Gazeta Wyborcza. While it is too boring to read, one thing does stand out: the man's impeccable Polish (no translator is credited). Unless - perish the thought - a Polish politician or bureaucrat wrote it and Ahern just put his name to the end of it. But how could he know that his thoughts and those of the Polish speech writer would coincide? Could that degree of groupthink exist in democratic political elites?
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2006
Upbeat drumbeat misses a beat
Hardly do I open my yap about Gazeta Wyborcza's occasionally one-sided picture of how great it is everywhere in the EU except Poland than economist and journalist Waldemar Kuczy?ski chimes in (on the pages of GW) on the same note. In today's paper he writes "in the short term nothing can be done to stem the flow of departures but there is no reason to stimulate it and turn it into a fever." He refers also to the media's shunting of the failed emigrants to the margins of comment.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)
Donald Trump's Hair
On a recent visit to Empik, the chain of book shops which appears to be approaching monopoly in Poland, I saw a book adorned by the image and likeness of Donald Trump. I have not been able to find the book on the internet and it is already gone from the displays of Empik but I think it was called "Can you Over-Promote Yourself?" Unlike the Bible, there is a picture of its author (if the Donald is, indeed, the author) on the front cover. Where there is Trump, there is his hair, though it is hard to see why the two should be inseparable. There, I've done it. I've cracked wise about the thing on his head -- there I go again: "the thing on his head." It's unavoidable, inevitable, a force of nature. It's... it's... the elephant in the room, except everyone notices it and everyone comments.
No one talking about Donald Trump can avoid the subject of Donald Trump's hair. It's a beacon, a challenge:
"Cotton Candy Comb-over"
"Taj Ma-helmet"
"Windswept"
"Unbe-weave-able"
"Trump's hair has simply reached that SNL parody level of Bill Braskie."
"It's crazy! It's like looking at a car accident..."
"one of television's greatest mysteries"
"a travesty. I've given up on trying to figure out what it is"
"as puzzling as Donald Trump's hair."
"an official disaster area"
I was going to and I really should link to all these pearls but it's futile.
There is more to the challenge of Donald Trump's hair than is widely understood. Anyone can describe it with a funny, pithy or accurate phrase. The challenge is that there is no challenge. It's too easy. Open the dictionary, plunge in and pick a word at random: that's Donald Trump's hair. And yet Donald Trump's hair remains impervious. Norman Mailer (?) once described Don King as looking like he was falling down a lift shaft (the boxing promoter's hair goes straight up) but not even Mailer could fix Donald Trump's hair in a formulated phrase. Donald Trump's hair will always invite another description, another comparison, another slur. And it will always rise above mere words. It is inexhaustible. Words fail. There is only one thing you can say about Donald Trump's hair and that is: Look at it!
...
...
...
...
...
Pretty cool ending, huh? No! No, no, no, no! You cannot get the last word in on Donald Trump's hair, not even if you abandon language. Donald Trump's hair does not permit closure. You can no more conceptually encompass Donald Trump's hair than you can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Donald Trump's hair is longer, wider, taller, timelier than any comment that can be made on it. In fact, the only suitable way to "end" any statement on Donald Trump's Hair is in mid-se
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)
June 18, 2006
Free News is Good News
Back in January I took a look at a dodgy Irish Times article on Poles travelling between Poland and Ireland. Six months later (17-18/6/06) Gazeta Wyborcza takes on a similar subject in an article entitled "Warsaw-Dublin, flight nr. EI 363, departure time 12.15." It's shorter and more factual, with less of what was contemptuously refered to as "colour" in Scoop and fewer of the mistakes that were in the IT: Waterford is spelled wrong and the photograph is of a LOT airliner, although "EI 363" is an Aer Lingus flight identifier (though they may share flight numbers in a cartel -- errr, partnership arrangement).
The journalist, Iwona Bugajska, interviewed four people at Warsaw airport. Four very obliging people: each of them helpfully repeated her question, e.g.: "What will become of me? Hmm... I have always dreamed of..." and "You ask if I will return to Poland? Oh no!" All four are very happy with Ireland. This is to be expected: they are people flying to Ireland so if it is their first journey they cannot yet have been disappointed by the reality and if it is their nth journey -- well, they are probably not returning because everything there was a disaster. The result is an upbeat picture of Ireland. How much does it cost to go out to Warsaw airport and interview a few emigrants? About one euro in bus fares. How much does it cost to fly out to Dublin, visit a homeless shelter, interview some people sleeping rough, talk to the Gardaí, interview someone at the Polish embassy, hit the bus stations...? Iwona Bugajska is a Metro reporter. Metro doesn't cost anything at all.
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2006
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
As a westerner, it's hard not to feel cheated sometimes when a book goes Eastern European, as does Sándor Márai's A gyertyák csonkig égnek (Embers). The deep, abstruse contemplation on the Nature of Things is in full swing. You are following. It's difficult but somehow, with the help of your abundantly stocked classics library, you stay the rigorous intellectual course. With frequent pauses to ponder the metaphysics of it all, you feel you are on top of the material. And then -- the writer betrays his lack of faith in the possibility of communication. In Márai's case it goes like this: "Hunting -- real hunting -- was something else. You will not understand because you were never a hunter." All the general's talk is to no avail as he apparently believes that understanding can only come from first hand experience. That doesn't stop him talking though. Here he is a couple of pages later, describing an incident that took place years earlier, in the East (Baghdad, to be precise). His host has just brought in a lamb: "... our host took out a knife and with an unforgettable gesture, slaughtered it. That gesture can never be learned. It is an eastern gesture, from times when killing still had a religious, symbolical sense, when it was identified with something essential, a sacrifice."
You cannot understand hunting unless you hunt. You cannot copy a simple gesture unless you were born into the particular culture... The trouble with Eastern European literature is not that it is over-intellectual. It is that it is too mystic for westerners. It's the west's loss: Embers is a great book. The tension, the atmosphere, the careful unfolding of the story, the exquisitely timed release of information -- all make for a novel of suspense many's a more brutish western wordsmith would be envious of.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2006
Left out Right in
A few weeks ago I mentioned in passing newspaper reports that the president of Poland was displeased at the continued rule of a lefty in PZU, a state controlled insurance company. The incumbent was duly sacked and his successor was announced by treasury minister Wojciech Jasi?ski. The lucky man, whose appointment is still to be confirmed by some rubber stamping body -- sorry, the Insurance and Pension Fund Supervisory Commission, is Jaromir Netzel, who is threatening to sue Rzeczpospolita for their articles in the last few days which point to his -- and here presumption of innocence and Three Monkeys' battalions of lawyers forbid me from continuing. Rzeczpospolita has deeper pockets than the monkeys. As for Netzel, even "prime" minister Marcinkiewicz is looking for explanations.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
June 12, 2006
That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.
Two old soldiers meet again after 41 years to settle - it seems from the carefully built up tension of the novel - an old score of some sort. The first half of the book is an artistically faultless evocation of the Austro-Hungarian empire and then, exactly half way through, it goes all Eastern European: the two men come face to face with each other and (after gorging themselves on an obscenely extravagant meal, I might add) start to talk about Serious Things. What I mean by going all Eastern European is that the author spends a few pages explaining to you that you have been wrong about everything all your life. And - for good measure - changing the question just when you think you understand what he's getting at (supposedly an Irish trait).
You thought you knew what friendship was? "Greater love than this no man hath than to lay down his life for his friends," perhaps? Too facile. And don't bother checking in a dictionary either. Dictionaries are full of meaningless "facts" and senseless "definitions." An Eastern European is concerned with the truth. Facts are for the Gadgrindian west. A direct translation of one line (of dialogue - mind you): "The fact of your flight is easy to understand. Not the reason for it."
Does "understanding a fact" not carry within it the explanation of the causes of the fact -- or at least a very strong implication thereof? Newton would not have bothered to tell us he understood that an apple falling from a tree will hit the ground. His insight was to understand why the apple falls.
Another excerpt from the passage: "Friendship is of course not the same as the problem of people with sick tendencies, who seek some kind of degenerate satisfaction with the same sex." Who'd a thunk it? A man can be friends with another man even if both are heterosexual.
More enlightenment as to the nature of friendship: "Living creatures organise mutual help [...] I've seen hundreds of examples in the animal world. I see fewer such examples among humans." Hence the mighty civilisations, complete with progressive taxation, social welfare, and emergency services built up by numerous animal species.
The speaker in the above examples is the general and we should not rush to identify his currently modish (in Poland's ruling circles anyway) views on homosexuality with those of the author. Maybe the general (the son of an avid hunter) has seen less examples of disinterested self-help among humans than among animals because he has spent his life cosseted by paid lackeys and sycophantic junior officers. Perhaps the disquisition on friendship are to be read as the absurd ramblings of -- who knows? -- a man who never faced up to his homosexuality. Perhaps I should read the second half of the book.
The book in question is A gyertyák csonkig égnek by Sándor Márai. My translations are from the Polish (translated by Feliks Netz) but therein lies a tale. The Polish title is ?ar, or Embers, as is the English title and as is the German title (Die Glut). Embers was translated (by Carol Brown Janeway) from the German translation by Christina Viragh. I don't know where the Polish one came from but Netz does seem to know Hungarian. You can read all about it here.
Oops:
"Henrik's monologue is immensely moving and pertinent. He delivers profound meditations on the nature of friendship, domestic bliss and hopeless passion" (Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph)
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:45 PM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2006
Miej chwyt na jego spryt
So goes the slogan in a cack-handed ad for a credit card. It means, roughly, "make sure you're up to his tricks." The ad (I can't find a decent picture to link to) shows a dodgy looking guy in a tracksuit with a gold chain around his neck. Underneath the slogan (which is not in inverted commas) is written: "Zenon P. pickpocket." (In Poland you are referred to by first name and the intitial of your surname when criminal charges have been brought against you.) So it would seem the words are spoken by Zenon. But if that's the case, whose tricks? Not Zenon's, because then it would be "make sure you're up to my tricks." Maybe it's little Zenon warning you against the bank's tricks -- such as playing on (and inevitably stoking) people's fear of crime and disguising credit card ads as public service announcements. Another line at the bottom reads "be safe - use a credit card." Of course, there is no such thing as credit card fraud, or if there were, the banks would surely tell us.
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)
Verdicts
"The jury is out on Chávez" announces the headline of Denis MacShane's article on Venezuela in the Guardian. If only it were. Any reporter I read seems to have his mind made up to give Chávez a fair trial before execution in the court of public opinion.
Posted by hgrodsk at 10:29 PM | Comments (1)
An old hand
Ivan Klíma's Premiér a And?l (The Prime Minister and the Angel) - a note at the end of the book tells us - was written between April 2002 and January 2003 but Klíma writes with such ease that it gives the impression of having been written yesterday between a late breakfast and lunch with a rather good wine. The unscrupulous journalist, the philandering first (or second?) lady, the crooked soldier with his soldier's tongue, the young minister on the make, the potshots taken at greens, the youth of today and political PR flaks are all a little too casual. An earnest young writer (Klíma is in his 70s) might have spent months and years exploring and fleshing out these tortured characters, presenting their weaknesses, their agonising moral debates, their self-delusions and their compromises in a densely plotted narrative taking place against the epic sweep of the birth of a nation to democracy... Klíma dashes it all off effortlessly. The resulting lack of depth should not matter as this is a fable about a middle-aged man who is visited by an angel: the intervention of a supernatural being will show up all the political machinations for the petty affairs of mortals that they are, unworthy of serious development. The only trouble is the angel puts in his (her) first appearance more than half way through the book.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2006
More from the bus window
Another ad, this time for some kind of a quasi-bank offering loans. Among the lender's selling points:
no guarantor required
no need to get permission from your spouse
The Fatima Mansions used to sing "only losers take the bus."
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2006
Whose Streets?
Some months back (March 28th -- it fell down the back of the couch) Polityka had a promising article on the encroachment of public space by private property ("Wspólnie nie dla wszystkich"). It would be naive to think that the Polish reader would find in such a magazine anything about Critical Mass or Reclaim the Streets -- they have a long way to go before they reach that stage -- but even still, I expected better. You or I or any anarchist might suspect that capitalism is what lies behind the transfer of land from public to private hands. After all, the article itself talks of how "...ever more places are losing their public character: entrances, doormen and tickets are appearing." (This goes also for national parks.) But not in Poland. The author, Pawe? Wrabec, draws the conclusion that communism is to blame for this. It is a "sad legacy of the PRL [Polish People's Republic]... a form of reaction against the restraints of the earlier political system," in which the attitude was that what belonged to the state belonged to no one - and therefore was mistreated ("pa?stwowe, wi?c niczyje").
You can see his point (or you can if you live in Poland) but it seems kind of convenient to blame rapacious capitalism on communism.
Wroc?aw, Wrabec writes, earns five million zloties a year from renting out public space to beer gardens and so on. Wrabec describes this "river of money" as a gold mine (literally, a "golden vein"). About 40 lines later he gives some context to the figure of 5 million zloties. 480 million zloties represents one quarter of Wroc?aw's income. So if the city were to keep its public spaces public it would mean foregoing .0029%* of its budget. Not such a golden vein after all.
* Correction: it would be .26% of the budget. See comments.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:18 PM | Comments (2)
June 02, 2006
"S?owacki wielkim poet? by?"
Anhelli by Juliusz S?owacki tells of a mystic journey undertaken by the eponymous hero and his guide, a shaman, around Siberia, to which many Poles were deported after their failed revolt in 1830. It's an unintentionally hilarious classic of nineteenth century Polish romantic literature. At one point Anhelli and the shaman meet people carrying coffins from a Siberian prison. Anhelli entreats the shaman to work a miracle and wake one of the dead, whom he recognises. (The footnotes in my edition identify the man as Wincenty Niemojowski, brother of Bonawentura.) The shaman replies: "I shall raise him and you will kill him again. Verily, and I shall raise him twice and he shall receive death from you twice." (I did say it was mystic.) The shaman resurrects the man, who doesn't get to say anything before Anhelli unintentionally kills him by repeating lies spread by the Russians about the deceased after his death -- of which, of course, he had been unaware.
The shaman resurrects Niemojowski again, first saying to Anhelli: "and you beware not to cause him death again." Anhelli says to the resurrected man:
Forgive me, for I knew not that I was speaking calumny and slander. I saw you in the National Council with your brother and I saw your two heads always together with a whiteness like unto that of two doves that fly down together for millet [...] Oh unhappy brothers! One of you seeks eternal repose in a Syberian cemetery and the other lies under the roses and cypresses by the banks of the Seine. Unfortunate doves - separated and dead.The unfortunate dove cries out "My brother!" and dies again. The shaman says to Anhelli -- and here I will paraphrase lightly, rather than translate: What did you want to go and tell him his brother was dead for?
The title of this piece comes from Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke: "Dlaczego S?owacki wzbudza w nas zachwyt i mi?o??? (...) Dlatego, panowie, ?e S?owacki wielkim poet? by?!" ("Why does S?owacki kindle in us admiration and love? (...) Because, gentlemen, S?owacki was a great poet!")
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2006
Too much journalism
Here's a sign I saw on a bus today:
We will be buying hair on June 12th.
Hair to be longer than 35 cm.
Grey and dyed hair to be longer than 45 cm.
Price depends on length of hair.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)
Free Press
There's an interview with Bronis?aw Wildstein, new chairman of the state TV company, in today's Rzeczpospolita. Jaros?aw Murawski asks this champion of the citizen's right - nay, obligation - to be well-informed about democratic society's workings if Wildstein has not sacked certain people because they are protected by Samoobrona (coalition members). Wildstein fearlessly replies: "If you're claiming that I won't sack somebody because they are protected by Samoobrona or anyone else I will treat it as something like slander." Murawski quickly changes the subject.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
Won't somebody please think of the children? (II)
Today's Gazeta Wyborcza has a full-page ad for a car on its front page. Above it are the words (I'm quoting from memory as I did not buy it) "This ad makes childrens' dreams come true." As the sound of vomit splashing into the bottom of sickbags dies down, may I remind you that today is Children's Day in Poland.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)