Tadeusz Konwicki - The Polish Complex

Tadeusz Konwicki's novel, The Polish Complex, describes a nation caught up in the paralysis of its history, its citizens reduced to waiting in line and spying on one another, their petty squabbles writ large over the constant present of their feeble state. Again and again, Konwicki shows us revolutionaries, either in deed or in thought, and the clear suggestion is that to revolt, to reject and denounce the framing of the Eastern European powers on the one side, and Russia on the other, is a Pole's only possible opportunity for freedom. Konwicki shows a Poland torn apart by conflicting ideologies, by religion, by the history of tribal groups and the desires of external forces which have sought, throughout Poland's history, to capitalise on these differences until there is nothing left to do but what the Polish have always done, which is endure.

The narrator, named Tadeusz Konwicki and possessing a largely identical biography to the novel's author, is waiting in line outside a jewellery store in Warsaw on Christmas Eve. The line, which seems more sinister that would be expected, is populated with surreal characters such as the man who admits to Konwicki he followed him around for years, waiting for the opportunity to assassinate him; the slovenly drudge who turns out to be fashionably dressed and even rich; and there are spies and anarchists, and everyone seems to have some abstract philosophical take on their situation both in the line and within Poland itself. Konwicki, as oddly tuned as the rest, allows himself frequent excursions into his own personal history and psyche, where he seeks to justify his existence as a writer and person. According to Konwicki,

There was a day, or a moment, at the very beginning of my flimsy literary career when I told myself that I would observe strictly only one commandment – Thou shalt not use thy words against foreigners. Thou shalt not use metaphors, emotional parables, or take a moral line against another person of another religion, another language. Thus, I have sinned against my own but not against strangers.

I steered myself toward universalism, one, naturally, which would include all humanity; I considered myself a carefully concealed cosmopolitan who, on the sly, tossed the sanctity of his own people onto the rubbish heap, who handed over the remnants of an epoch of religious and national strife to be ground in history's eternal mill.

Konwicki analyses his place within Polish history with the mordant glee of a gloomy watchmaker in a digital age, aware of his inadequacies whilst unable to do much about them. He attends to his life with the focus and concentration he provides his place in the line at the jewellery store, which is to say, not well at all. On several occasions he pulls back from the world, viewing the earth from a massive height, and his eye is critical and negative,

This earth of our resembles a blue-green porcelain pear overlaid with a tattered white layer made up of capricious powdery puffs, the clouds revered by poets, the storm clouds which usher in cycles and floods, and those terrible autumn low-pressure periods when people's hearts break, the ghosts of paralysing premonitions creep from the mist, and life sinks into lethargy in its yearly attempt at eternal sleep

Konwicki admits to a love of history, and it seems that his mind cannot remain anchored to the present (a present of lines, of surrealism, of spies spying on other spies, and madmen wanting to bomb any building, every building), and instead must seek solace in the intricacies of the past. At times, Konwicki's excursions are limited, consisting of references and brief contemplations, but on other occasions the force of the past takes over the narrative, such as a lengthy sequence involving the 1863 uprising. Here, Konwicki shows the truth of his earlier statement that “[o]n the whole, literature means abnormality, transcendence, aberration”. This virtual novella within a novel is written in the second person, which sees the 'you' of the narration overwhelmed with the responsibility of fighting for the good of the Polish against an implacable foe in uncertain times. Konwicki shows us this piece of Poland's history by immersing us within in totally – we become the insurgent leader. No longer simply observing, we are instead taken along the active path of one of Poland's great struggles.

The Polish Complex should not be confused as an overly cerebral novel, concerned with the good of the Poles and of people in an abstract sense while ignoring the stark physical difficulties of the country. No, Konwicki's novel is instead steeped in action, violence, the shouts of the revolutionaries, and the flowing lifeblood of the Poles. In fact, Konwicki rejects Poland being made into an historical oddity, and is not content with history's treatment of the country as simply a land of tragedy and destruction:

Like a bad pupil, like a dunce in the corner, like street hooligans, we are used as an example by the wise and bearded historiographers of our exemplary neighbours, who, instead of submerging themselves in freedom, making a god and a religion of it, built strong, despotic states based on tyranny, the staunch superiority of the state over the confused individual, a cult of crushing individuals in the name of the genocidal goals of mighty Molochs. Our history envies our beheaded neighbours with their lawless states, the ultimate captivity of the thinking beings called by biologists, our fellow historians, Homo sapiens.

Konwicki returns as always to the present, but never for long, and not in any concrete sense. The line never really seems to advance though the circumstances change (boxes are ordered – but they aren't right – but there are some things people might like – but they aren't Christmas presents), but it becomes an increasingly surreal experience, populated with all manner of strange characters. They are not quiet in their beliefs, either, leaving Konwicki to justify and explain himself as a writer, as a Pole, as a man, and as a failure. The back and forth between Konwicki and the characters, or the characters amongst themselves, is rich with Polish history, both in the larger sense (such as the Second World War), and the more local (such as the innumerable references to historical events, people, and locales that will undoubtably be unfamiliar to most readers).

The paralyses and confusion of Communist Poland's then-current (the late 1970s) situation can be understood from the following quote,

”...there is considerable suspicion that large numbers of agents and provocateurs have infiltrated the patriotic movement. Perhaps the line between a spontaneous and a provoked action, a noble deed and a base one, has been erased. So what to do, then, hide in passive suspicion, justify fatal inaction with a lot of noise about prudence?”

What, then? What to do, as a Pole? If everything is intangible then nothing can be done. Konwicki is tired of Poland playing the role of Europe's tragic son, or of being forgotten, or of being sliced into partitions unconscionable to its citizens. In World War II, Poland was the charnel house of the Third Reich, its skies belched dark with smoke from burning Jews. In the nineteenth century it was dismembered as a coherent nation, and only emerged properly following the first World War. As we have seen recently (the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash), Poland's familiar role is still, for better or worse, being played out. But just as disappointment and tragedy does not make up a human life, nor does Poland's embattled state constitute its entirety. At least, it shouldn't, though Konwicki fears that it does already to outsiders, and it threatens to be all that Poland is to its current citizens. He rages against the oppressive forces pounding his nation into the ground:

Power. Delight in power. The magic of power. The opium of power. To have power over an individual and a social group. To have power over objects and the spirit of a stranger. To have power over history and futurology. To subdue one's brother and go into ecstasies over one's own omnipotence. At every rung of the ladder – Party cell, metallurgical combine, television station, or the highest Party congress. To suit one's whims, animosities, and complexes, to be able to mobilize the apparatus of the state, the executive power of the Party, the editorial boards of newspapers, the police, the army. Dad by day sculpting one's own monument, every instant building a pyramid of unbridled pride, defying if only once the laws of nature and the laws of God. Will this apotheosis of petty tyranny endure a single day after your death? Perhaps it will. Perhaps for the first time in human history it will endure and rouse the admiration and envy of the species for all time.

Konwicki concludes his novel with bitter irony. Toward the end, it seems as though Konwicki has come to peace with his land and himself, and indeed the language turns redemptive (“The rightness of indestructible instinct. One must live”), but then, at the last, negativity raises its head and the last clearly defined image given to us is one of a red glow seen from the sky that looks like the maw of Hell. Konwicki recognises that the good in Poland is there, and that through the efforts of its intellectuals, its revolutionaries, and its citizens, the spirit of Poland will remain strong, and endure.

Author	Tadeusz Konwicki
Title	The Polish Complex (Original Title: Kompleks polski)
Translator	Richard Lourie
Nationality	Polish
Publisher	The Dalkey Archive Press
Published	1998 (English) 1977 (Polish)
Pages	211
Availability: ---Amazon (US)

See Also

List of titles by The Dalkey Archive Press under review