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March 19, 2007
Absurd Drama
“Unknown Man: I'll be around for some time. I have a mission to accomplish.
[...]
Unknown Man: And all the time the volcano beneath our feet is seething and boiling. We are riddled through and through with conspiracies, secret societies, plots...
Onek: Yes! The dirty bloody hunchbacks are plotting!
Unkown Man: What hunchbacks...
Onka: My husband has been feeling unwell for some time. Please pay no attention to him.
[...]
Student: Do you suspect us? (Everyone turns to the student. The student stands up.) Mr. Onek, I call on you in the name of the law. Is it your opinion that the law permits insinuation? Either charges are to be brought against us – in which case we are entitled to legal defence and I nominate you as my solicitor – or we are free of suspicion.
Onek: My speciality is inheritance cases...
Student: In that case I consider it inappropriate for me to remain any longer in this unclear legal situation.”
The above comes from Sławomir Mrożek's paranoia and suspicion ridden satire Garbus (The Hunchback) (act 2, scene 7) and was written in the 70s. O dwóch takich, co ukradli księżyc (About those two who stole the moon), a children's film, was made in 1962 and, as well as hunchbacks, also features Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński in starring roles.
I'm just saying, is all.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2007
Show Trials
Not a very good title, really, since according to the Guardian, the trial was held behind closed doors but there are similarities with the "confession" (the Guardian's inverted commas) of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the show trials of Stalinist Russia. The man, after more than three years under arrest quietly contemplating the error of his ways, has confessed to quite a lot: "nearly three dozen attacks - many of which were foiled - including the Bali bombings, the failed shoe bomb plot, the 1993 World Trade Centre truck bombings and plans to destroy Heathrow airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben."
Remember White Van Man who cut you off on the way to work last April? That was him too.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:36 PM | Comments (1)
More Principles
Andrzej Zybertowicz puts up a strong, if entirely illogical, defence of the law requiring journalists to swear to whether they did or did not cooperate with the secret services of communist Poland in Wednesday's Rzeczpospolita. Journalists should sign the loyalty declarations beacuse they are "the fourth estate." It's that simple. I have scoured the constitution of Poland and I have not found any reference to the "estates." In fact, I had always thought the division of society into the estates of king, clergy, nobility and scum was rather a medieval way of looking at things. And I'd love to see some of the privileges he claims journalists (remember that includes you if you hit the comments button) in Poland have. Nothing much - perhaps the occasional invite to an opening night or awards ceremony, free travel, access to politicians...
Zybertowicz also has recourse to principles. Refusal to declare whether or not you cooperated is not civil disobedience, which requires that at least two conditions be met: number the first -- but wait a minute, Zybertowicz is making these principles up off the top of his head. No one is obliged to recognise his "conditions."
As of today, the -- at least nominally -- independent courts no longer deal with the "lustracja" question. IPN, a government agency, does. Zybertowicz is a member of the IPN's investigative team.
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2007
The Chill Continued
Not all journos here are finding the legal requirement to pledge that you never informed under communism so irksome as those prima donnas who claim that this is mere humiliation, since in any case the archives are about to be thrown open to journalists (and that, as mentioned before, means nearly everyone -- including you, Mr. Marcin Klecel, writer of a letter to today's Dziennik excoriating those journalists who are calling for a boycott, so get your humble-pencil out and sign your declaration of loyalty before you are forbidden from writing to the papers for ten years for failure to comply).
With Ewa Milewicz (whose opposition credentials are impeccable) taking the lead, a number of prominent journalists are calling for a boycott of the new loyalty law.
The loyal opposition (mainly Fakt, Dziennik and Rzeczpospolita hacks), however, are finding the presidential winds bracing. They have responded with an open letter of support for the poorly framed and spiteful law (why make people sign declarations when in any case the names of informers and suspected informers are soon to be published on the internet by the IPN?) The fearless fourth estate agents write: "It is with surprise that we learn of the announcement of journalists who refuse to submit a lustracja [verification] declaration. Unfortunately, this raises many dramatic questions about their past." So no sleazy innuendo, professional back-biting or opportunism there, then...
My favourite argument for signing up is that the law is the law. I look forward to outraged condemnations of the Augustow blockade (held in protest against delays in building an -- illegal under EU, i.e. Polish, law -- ring road throught the Rospuda valley) on the pages of Fakt and Dziennik in the very near future. Fakt called the assorted Greens opposed to the road "terrorists" on their front page a few weeks ago.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:57 PM | Comments (2)
March 07, 2007
The Chill
From March 15th all journalists born before 1972 working in Poland will have to sign a declaration that they did not spy for the Polish People's Republic. That includes me: Polish law has a very wide definition of journalism and the bill makes no distinction between Poles and foreigners. Nor does it make any attempt to account for the dispersed nature of the internet: Shane Barry is also supposed to state that he was not nor never was a member of the co-- wooops, got a bit carried away there -- to state that he never spied for the communists. (I'm relying on Kontrateksty for this information.) If you send in a comment to me you will have to sign the declaration too.
Taking a leaf from the Irish anti-smoking ban, the Polish government is getting people's employers to do its dirty work. It is the responsibility of your employer to make sure you own up to not having been a spy. The courts will have the power to impose sanctions on publishers - including striking the publication of the national register (whatever and wherever that is) - if its writers don't sign up. The mighty legal department of Three Monkeys Online is - like the Polish government - on red alert.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:22 PM | Comments (2)
Conrad's Vocabulary
"Monachal" means pertaining to monks. The OED gives a citation from 1587. A "vaticination" is an inspired or oracular vision - attested in 1603. Perhaps Leavis was making fun of Conrad.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2007
Theatre of the Absurd
Wikipedia on dialogue in theatre of the absurd: “repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods.”
For example:
XX: I think that you people are under a curse.
[...]
AA: I like what you said just now.
XX: Do you?
AA: The great problem is to understand thoroughly the nature of the curse.
XX: That's not very difficult, I think.
AA: I think so too.
XX: A curse is an evil spell and the important, the great problem, is to find the means to break it.
AA: Yes. To find the means.
Beckett? Ionesco? Genet? No, it's Joseph Conrad in Under Western Eyes, beating the absurdists by nearly half a century.
F.R. Leavis pithily describes the importance of this novel: it is a work “which must be counted among those upon which Conrad's status as one of the great English masters securely rests.” Leavis on the subject of lunch: “it was undoubtedly a rissotto – created upon the basis of a recipe by Mrs. Beeton – which, deservedly, shall be remembered amongst the truly great – if minor – luncheons of our time, redolent as it was of peppers.”
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2007
Polish Universities Finally Getting With The Programme
Pay attention class. Up till now the primary degree in Poland was not a BA but an MA. This takes five years of study and is awarded on submission of an MA thesis. After the MA you can go on to do a PhD – also by research – and then a “habilitacja.” The consequences of this appalling system of education are to be seen at every step in Poland. Buildings fall down, doctors cut off the wrong leg, historians mix up dates, lawyers become ministers for justice… You can’t get a decent plumber for love or money. But all that is to change. The Polish higher educational system is about to be overhauled in order to – all together now – “bring it into line with Europe.” Dziennik (March 2nd) explains. From now on you will start with a three-year primary degree – just like in the west – and go on to do a two-year MA, if you want (read: if you can afford it). “As a result,” the (unnamed) reporter observes, “diplomas awarded by Polish universities will be accepted in all of Europe.” This no doubt will come as a great relief to Leszek Kołakowski (Berkeley, Oxford, Chicago), Zygmunt Bauman (University of Leeds) and maybe even Stanisław Barańczak over in Harvard.
As a matter of fact, in recent years something called a “licencjat” has crept in to Poland under cover of the Bologna treaty. This takes three years (often part-time, by some miracle of accelerated learning) and is supposed to correspond to a BA. Well sometimes, perhaps, it does. As the Poles say: “różnie bywa.”
The newspaper article suggests that the thesis requirement will disappear altogether and that Poland will no longer offer MAs by research (known sometimes by fuddy-duddies as “real” MAs). Why do away with independent research and presentation of one’s results at the lower levels of university education? Former minister for education, Krystyna Łybacka is disarmingly frank: because it’s too easy now to cog your MA thesis off the internet or pay someone to write it for you. In other words: we surrender. The cheats have won.
Another exciting development in the proposed overhaul is more input from employers. They will be able to order certain courses of study from the state – theology, one supposes, Latin, morphology, Semitic languages – that kind of thing. Andrzej Malinowski, of the Confederation of Polish Employers says: “Up until now our universities have been producing the unemployed.” He is entitled to his peculiar views on the causes of unemployment but it becomes alarming when the newspaper appears to accept them uncritically. On page one we read: “Thanks to this [employers ordering state-funded university courses to suit their desire for profits] the problem of finding workers will disappear and graduates will not be forced to spend month after month searching for work.”
It need hardly be said that universities will be forced to compete with each other for state funding. One of the criteria for gaining money at the expense of other universities is adjusting courses of study to the needs of the intellect -- sorry, that should read "market."
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:20 PM | Comments (2)