Great predecessor of the post-war school of Polish reportage
Great predecessor of the post-war school of Polish reportage
Translation rights: Elkost International Literary Agency, klimin@gmail.com
The Rojsty Rebellion is a collection of reportages published by Józef Mackiewicz in the Vilnius daily Słowo in the years 1936–1937 and subsequently published in a single volume in 1938. According to Włodzimierz Bolecki the book is the “mother” of all of the author’s later writings. It is also a predecessor of the post-war school of Polish reportage. The Rojsty Rebellion transcends the framework of generic writing, becoming a new, fecund form of modern literature. In the centre of the text is the reporter himself in various roles: narrator, keen observer, critical commentator, subtle landscapist and, finally, a traveller by ship on a river, for instance, or on a crowded bus or country wagon. The eponymous rojsty is a regional name for describing swampy terrains and simultaneously a synecdoche for the north-eastern terrains of the Second Polish Republic. These are the Kresy, that is the eastern borderlands, which impress the author with their wilderness and the diversity of the national minorities who inhabit them, but also lead to a feeling of uncertainty connected with the economic and social processes that Mackiewicz observes visiting its villages and towns. Their exotic periphery (“We go to Mistrycz as if we were going to Zanzibar or Tanganyika”) is a result of civilizational backwardness, but also the neglect of the central authorities. The reporter records the conversations of simple people, creates empathetic portraits of them, confronts the optimism of the state propaganda slogans with the uncertain reality, contrasts the natural order with the chaos of human endeavours. Delight is mixed with anxiety: the stagnation of the Kresy is contrasted with the dynamism of the neighbouring Soviet Union, bureaucracy and superficial modernisation destroy a traditional way of life, nationalism breaks up local social ties. The Rojsty Rebellion is thus a polemic with a vision of the Kresy as a “very happy idyll”, as well as a defence of a different “native land” and the first testimony to Mackiewicz’s unique patriotic landscape.
Maciej Urbanowski
Translated by Christopher Garbowski
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
