Essay on the Polish soul

In an essay entitled “O duszy polskiej” (“On the Polish soul”), writes a noted Krakow philosopher: Poland is a country without qualities. This phrase – “without qualities” –perhaps the one Musil had in mind when he titled his opus major (connotations of expressions are surprisingly similar between German, especially Austrian German, and Polish, making Austrian German an honorary Slavic tongue, or perhaps Polish an honorary Germanic one) – the phrase – “nijaki” – is much stronger in Polish, or German, than it is in English. Polska jest krajem nijakim really means that the country has no flavor, it is dull, indifferent, run of the mill, devoid of any distinguishing characteristics, boring.

I am reminded of all those people in Asia puzzled and trying to search their brains for Poland. Sweden, they say, well, it’s Vikings; and Spain – bullfights; France is wine and cheese; Italy – Michelangelo. But Poland? What is Poland like? On their part it is of course pure ignorance and not to be marveled at; the interesting thing here is my own response: asked by my Asian friends to say something about Poland, I am confused: I don’t know what to say? Really, what is there to be said about Poland? What is special about Poland?

The author’s argument is that the country has been transformed so thoroughly by world war two, losing half its territory in the east and gaining another half in the west; having its population swirled around so that people from Lwow now lived next to people from Wilno and Pinsk and were obliged to give up their local patois in favor of the official tongue which was the only thing they had in common with their neighbors; often living in cities built by Germans to an architectural style completely new to them (so as not to say, foreign); and, anyway, most of its cities damaged beyond repair and rebuilt, like Warsaw, on another foreign – Stalinist – model.

The author’s intent here is vaguely Hutchinsonian and Hegelian (how else): that there are features of a civilization which define it (Patois? Architecture? Er – is the author really thinking this – Boden? -- as in Blut und Boden?) and their erasure erases the civilization, causes confusion, a sense of emptiness and loss.

Like all of Hegel and all of Hutchinson, it’s basicly nonsense. But the essay’s author does make one valid point.

Stalinist architecture – and more generally, communist one – was pronounced “functional”. This was of course a myth, for in truth it was anything but, as anyone trying to get around Warsaw today finds. In fact, the only part of its program which Stalinist functionalism did manage to fulfill was conscious avoidance of any gesture in the direction of man’s aesthetic needs (function was supposed to take care of that). As a result, Polish cities are relentlessly ugly. Before the war, the author says, the country was poor, but not ugly; now it’s ugly ug.

It is.

And just as the beauty of our environment has healing power; calms the raging beast; feeds the heart otherwise distressed by everything else; so its ugliness makes miserable every otherwise entitled to be happy man. Look at these people on the bus: it can’t be that they are all as miserable as they seem, but the ugliness of the city makes them so.