Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine

After the years of whinging about lack of recognition, low status and how people think that anyone who knows two languages can translate translators – at least in Poland – are finally gaining some ground on their mortal enemies: original artists.

Today’s Gazeta Wyborcza reports how a translator, Hanna Szczerkowska, forced (by use of the courts) a theatre group to take their production of a play she translated off the stage. They had broken her copyright by – oh perfidy! – adapting her translation of a play by Adam Rapp. The production that took to the boards had rude words in it that were not present in her translation. They call it “ochrona praw autorskich” here: “protection of authors’ rights.” Asked for comments, one Dariusz Kosiński of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków described it as an ominous sign of the domination of authorial rights over all others. But no discussion of a matter that concerns the Polish intelligentsia would be complete without a put down of the Unqualified. Tadeusz Słobodzianek of The Drama Laboratory in Warsaw says “The improvement of plays is taken on by amateurs who have no idea about the written [sic] word.” Best leave things to the professionals, eh? Like Hanna Szczerkowska, who has demanded of another theatre group a 10,000 zloty forfeit if she is not given the script 10 days before the premier or if there are any changes in the script not previously agreed with her. Finally, the professionalism that translators have always dreamed of.

Last year I saw Michael Glawogger’s documentary Workingman’s Death and it occurred to me to wonder what was the toughest of all professions. Mining coal? Looking after the terminally ill? Smelting steel? Sitting at a cash register for ten hours without a break? The answer is none of the above. When it comes to being tough you cannot match the life of the Polish intelligentsia. That’s where the real ball-breaking goes down. Take an article in this week’s Polityka — if you can take it, that is, you soft-soaped milk-sop. The article concerns one Izabella Cywińska (“Iron Cywa”), who has just taken over some theatre or other in Warsaw. Of herself she says she always had leadership tendencies. In 1970 she took over a theatre in Kalisz (where?) and sacked the entire crew. Tough but fair, I think you’ll agree: she says she found work for them all elsewhere. One Wiesław Komasa says of her that she likes talented young actors who require a heavy investment but give good returns. Of course if they require too heavy an investment you just fire them and get better ones. The journalist (Aneta Kyzioł) informs us ominously and inevitably that Cywińska is not afraid of “mocne teatralne środki” (powerful theatre means – sorry about the poor translation).

For a time Cywińska was even minister for culture. She caused a furore by saying that theatres under construction (for many years) in Lublin and Kielce should be turned into toilet paper factories. Needless to say, she’d do it all again, only this time “…I’d be harder.” What? Even harder then she already is? By my calculations, that would fall under the category of “well” hard, possibly even “well hard with a sarf London accent.” One of her protégés, Hanna Śleszyńska, supplies the obligatory compliment: “She is demanding but actors treated seriously give their all so as not to let her down.” The only question is who is being complimented? Even when Cywińska is wrong she’s tough: For a time she headed some cultural foundation some of whose funds were dodgily invested, mainly by members of the foundation. As a result she was forced to resign because that’s what being the boss means: taking responsibility for things that aren’t even (directly) your fault. That’s how goddam tough it is in the hot seat.

Today’s Rzeczpospolita has a mercifully short report on a conference organised by the Szkoła Główna Handlowa (literally: Main School of Trade) in Warsaw. A picture of its former rector Marek Rocki is captioned “Free Education is a Fiction” - a quote from the man himself. What does this intellectual titan mean? “Two thirds of students pay for their studies and the remaining third do not get free education because it is funded by the taxpayer.” That’s right: Rocki has discovered that so-called “free” education is in fact funded. And you thought professors and teachers just came in every day out of the goodness of their hearts, that laboratories and lecture theatres just grew on trees or burst forth from the ground without any capital input and that exam papers marked themselves.

But let’s take a look at the distinguished professor’s argument concerning the two thirds of students attending private colleges and paying their own fees. The argument is that the state should stop funding education because so many people already pay for it themselves. Why do people attend private colleges? Because there is no room for them in state colleges. And why is there no room for them in state colleges? Because the state underfunds education. So Rocki’s argument is: the state should stop funding education because it underfunds education. Genius! There Is No Alternative.

Sometimes you have to laugh (or if you’re Henryk Grynberg, sneer) at decadent Westerners who have never experienced totalitarianism. In Gazeta Wyborcza (May 6th) a page (actually, many pages) is given over to the threat to democracy posed by ignoramuses Andrzej Lepper and Roman Giertych, the coalition partners. Some choice quotes from Lepper and Giertych are also given (Giertych, in particular, seems rather unbalanced when he gets to the subject of foreign affairs).

Fortunately there is some bracing intellectual comment at hand. On the facing page is an article entitled “Polish Stuffiness” by Tomasz Wołek, head of a television station (showing tonight: “Bodily Sanctions, erotic film, USA 2001, starring Jacklyn Lick”). The sub-head runs: “Observing today’s anti-intelligentsia campaigns I have the impression of a mental smog arising before me, smearing successive stretches of public space, polluting our spiritual lives.” Three paragraphs in comes the bit that degenerate Westerners just won’t understand:

I regard General Franco … as one of the most outstanding statesmen of the twentieth century, as a politician who saved Spain from the threat of communism, while eluding Hitler’s snare and in the long term lead his impoverished country to relative wealth, simultaneously opening the way to democracy.

At least there’s nothing stuffy about Jacklyn Lick.