![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThoughts and comments will be happily welcomed.
A. Notes on Orientalism as a Generally Applicable Concept
B. Poland as an Actor
i. Poland is generally seen as a subject of empire, whether under the first partition (1772-1918), Nazi occupation durnig the Second World War, or under the 45 years of Soviet occupation which followed. It has generally been seen as an imperial subject; often, it has been conceived of (by western Europeans and North Americans) as "eastern." However, Poland has an imperialism history of its own; for four centuries before the partitions, and to a lesser degree in the Second Republic, Poland acted as an imperial power towards its eastern neighbours. Modern Lithuania and Belarus formed the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an autonomous state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that was heavily polonized, while the core of Ukraine was directly subject to Poland despite numerous rebellions; Joseph Conrad, a famed chronicler of the impact of colonialism, traced his ancestry from a Polish magnate family.
ii. The Polish east-- traditionally known as the kresy--has generally been described in very Orientalist terms, like the frontier or perhaps the South for America. The kresy has been identified with nostalgia for the past, a national and familial myth, often a private reflection about a world gone with the
wind, of glory once possessed and lost. (Most of the top ten Google references in English to the keyword "kresy" refer to Stalin's deportations.) The kresy mythos identifies the region with ethnic and religious diversity, with exoticism and orientalism. It is the frontier of Western Civilization, the eastward influence of Polish culture and the test of its national identity.
C. Three Writers
The kresy is a theme present throughout Polish literature. In three authors which belong squarely to the Polish canon--19th century poet Adam Mickiewicz, turn of the century novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, and 20th century poet Czeslaw Milosz--the development of this theme can be traced.
i. Adam Mickiewicz was born in the first generation of Poles following the 18th century partitions. Born in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in modern Belarus, Mickiewicz was strongly attached to a vision of a Poland reunited within its former boundaries. In his most famous work, the epic Pan Tadeusz, the protagonists--members of Lithuania's Polish nobility--lead a successful national revolt against Russia. However, the peasants on the ground (almost all non-Polish, whether Eastern Slavs, Jews, or Lithuanians) are treated as ciphers, while Russians (who probably bore a closer relationship to the peasants than their Polish rulers) are Orientalized.
ii. Henryk Sienkiewicz was born in the mid-19th century, after the suppression of the last Polish revolts. One of Poland's first Nobel Laureate writers, he is famous in the West for his novel Quo Vadis?, set in the Roman Empire. Inside Poland, however, he is most famous for his Trilogy dealing with the wars of mid-17th century Poland, against the Cossack rebels of Ukraine and against foreign threats (Swedes, Turks, Tatars). Polish identity is defended in terms which inadvertantly exclude the Ukrainians and many other easterners from the political nation, particularly in terms of the relationship to the Catholic Church and the hegemony of the Polish magnates of Ukraine and elsewhere in the kresy. Where Mickiewicz assumed the existence of a broad imperial identity centered on Poles but including non-Poles, Sienkiewicz' vision is narrower.
iii. Czeslaw Milosz reached adolescence in the Second Republic (1918-1939). Born in the city of Vilnius in what is now Lithuania, Vilnius in Milosz' first thirty years was known as Wilno, as a chief Polish city in the east, with a mostly Polish and Jewish population. Milosz lived long enough to see the destruction of the kresy, between the Nazi genocide of its Jews and the Soviet expulsions of its Slavic populations. This experience has created in him and his poetry a profound sense about the fragility of all things: Whenever he looks back to his childhood and his early adulthood in Wilno in his poetry he always considers its transience, while in his essays he reflects on how, in the age of 20th century nationalisms and totalitarianisms, the experience of the kresy in the Second Republic was limited.
D. Conclusion: Orientalism as Applicable to the Polish Canon
A. Notes on Orientalism as a Generally Applicable Concept
B. Poland as an Actor
i. Poland is generally seen as a subject of empire, whether under the first partition (1772-1918), Nazi occupation durnig the Second World War, or under the 45 years of Soviet occupation which followed. It has generally been seen as an imperial subject; often, it has been conceived of (by western Europeans and North Americans) as "eastern." However, Poland has an imperialism history of its own; for four centuries before the partitions, and to a lesser degree in the Second Republic, Poland acted as an imperial power towards its eastern neighbours. Modern Lithuania and Belarus formed the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an autonomous state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that was heavily polonized, while the core of Ukraine was directly subject to Poland despite numerous rebellions; Joseph Conrad, a famed chronicler of the impact of colonialism, traced his ancestry from a Polish magnate family.
ii. The Polish east-- traditionally known as the kresy--has generally been described in very Orientalist terms, like the frontier or perhaps the South for America. The kresy has been identified with nostalgia for the past, a national and familial myth, often a private reflection about a world gone with the
wind, of glory once possessed and lost. (Most of the top ten Google references in English to the keyword "kresy" refer to Stalin's deportations.) The kresy mythos identifies the region with ethnic and religious diversity, with exoticism and orientalism. It is the frontier of Western Civilization, the eastward influence of Polish culture and the test of its national identity.
C. Three Writers
The kresy is a theme present throughout Polish literature. In three authors which belong squarely to the Polish canon--19th century poet Adam Mickiewicz, turn of the century novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, and 20th century poet Czeslaw Milosz--the development of this theme can be traced.
i. Adam Mickiewicz was born in the first generation of Poles following the 18th century partitions. Born in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in modern Belarus, Mickiewicz was strongly attached to a vision of a Poland reunited within its former boundaries. In his most famous work, the epic Pan Tadeusz, the protagonists--members of Lithuania's Polish nobility--lead a successful national revolt against Russia. However, the peasants on the ground (almost all non-Polish, whether Eastern Slavs, Jews, or Lithuanians) are treated as ciphers, while Russians (who probably bore a closer relationship to the peasants than their Polish rulers) are Orientalized.
ii. Henryk Sienkiewicz was born in the mid-19th century, after the suppression of the last Polish revolts. One of Poland's first Nobel Laureate writers, he is famous in the West for his novel Quo Vadis?, set in the Roman Empire. Inside Poland, however, he is most famous for his Trilogy dealing with the wars of mid-17th century Poland, against the Cossack rebels of Ukraine and against foreign threats (Swedes, Turks, Tatars). Polish identity is defended in terms which inadvertantly exclude the Ukrainians and many other easterners from the political nation, particularly in terms of the relationship to the Catholic Church and the hegemony of the Polish magnates of Ukraine and elsewhere in the kresy. Where Mickiewicz assumed the existence of a broad imperial identity centered on Poles but including non-Poles, Sienkiewicz' vision is narrower.
iii. Czeslaw Milosz reached adolescence in the Second Republic (1918-1939). Born in the city of Vilnius in what is now Lithuania, Vilnius in Milosz' first thirty years was known as Wilno, as a chief Polish city in the east, with a mostly Polish and Jewish population. Milosz lived long enough to see the destruction of the kresy, between the Nazi genocide of its Jews and the Soviet expulsions of its Slavic populations. This experience has created in him and his poetry a profound sense about the fragility of all things: Whenever he looks back to his childhood and his early adulthood in Wilno in his poetry he always considers its transience, while in his essays he reflects on how, in the age of 20th century nationalisms and totalitarianisms, the experience of the kresy in the Second Republic was limited.
D. Conclusion: Orientalism as Applicable to the Polish Canon
