When I got a proposal to write some kind of intellectual reportage about a Polish émigré magazine Culture and the Polish Literary Institute in Paris, I knew about it, approximately, as much as is necessary for the quiz: the most important Polish magazine of the 20th century, a monthly that was produced and printed in Paris from 1947 to 2000 and for which Witold Gombrowicz, Česlav Miloš, Gustav Hering-Gruđinski, Slavomir Mrožek, Wislava Šimborska, Adam Mihnjik wrote (for them I was sure, but for Culture was written by more than two thousand authors from Europe and the world). The painter and writer Jozef Čapski, a witness of the October Revolution and one of the surviving Polish officers executed in Katyn in 1940, was in the editorial office, Mihajlo Mihailov and Milovan Đilas collaborated from "ours", while I could not pronounce the name of the great editor Ježi Giedroyc correctly. But that could be learned. The more important dilemma was: why would a report about a primarily Polish matter be relevant for the local reader?
photo: ivan milenković…cabinet today…
DVA (DIFFERENT) EXPERIENCES
It didn't take much for me to find more than good reasons for this, above all, intellectual adventure: the story of the Polish Literary Institute (Instytut Literacki) in Paris, the magazine Culture (Culture of Paris) and Gjedrojć, touches deeply on contemporary Serbia, its civilizational decline and complete political disorientation, while at the same time offering road signs, conceptual tools and practices that are necessary for Serbia to win its freedom. The fact that it is a "Polish thing" is not an obstacle in this case because the actions and writings of Ježi Gjedrojć and his team, no matter how focused they are on Poland and its place in Europe, reach the kind of generality that the very fabric of civilization is made of. Finally, they offer a variant of attachment to their country that is completely foreign to the circumstances here. Namely, as early as 1947, in a devastated Europe, Gjedrojć and his team began to think about the future of Poland in a free Europe, and above all the relations with Germany and Russia. This fact alone is astonishing if we take into account that the Nazis and the German army killed eight million Poles in World War II, destroyed Warsaw and organized the biggest crime in history on the territory of Poland, while the Russians, on the other hand, killed more than 20.000 Poles in 1940 in the Katyn Forest and the camps where they were held as prisoners (of which about 8000 officers), and then, towards the end of the war, stopped at the Vistula River in order to - according to a darker version of the story - let the Nazis and the German army to quell the Warsaw Uprising in peace and raze Warsaw to the ground. In addition, at that moment, in 1947, Poland was under Stalin's boot, and Germany was split in half into the eastern and western parts. Not for a moment, however, did Gjedrojć and his collaborators even think that this could be a permanent state, and that the Soviet Union - an unparalleled tyranny - could survive.
photo: ivan milenković…and a winter garden
Now, what does this have to do with Serbia? Gjedrojć, therefore, who does not think of returning to the captured country, from the very beginning thinks politically in the best sense of the word: instead of fueling hatred towards Germans and Russians - and he would have every right in the world to do that - or to beg for the evil fate of Poland, which is not the first time in history to find itself between the Russian hammer and the German anvil (or vice versa), he thinks about the future of Poland precisely in relation to its "arch-enemies" and the biggest evildoers. Political, in this case, means finding Poland's place in a wider, free community, and not inciting hatred, looking for (and necessarily finding) enemies and excuses, and setting unattainable goals in order to - being unattainable - go towards them forever to the joy of populist bastards (all Poles in one state, for example). Serbian political opinion - to say nothing of practice - is far more problematic in this respect. In the last 40 years, it is not the consideration of political freedom that dominates here, but metaphysical muddling that does not pay attention to mundane issues such as relations with neighbors who are, at the same time, "arch-enemies" (Croats, Albanians, or Bosniaks) because, metaphysicians know, you cannot deal with them. Consequently, there is a lack of serious and systematic work on basic political concepts such as, for example, sovereignty, republic, or freedom itself. On the contrary, the Palanic sentiment and tribal passions dominate, which do not reach political opinion. Of course, the writer of the reportage does not ignore the irreducible specificity of the Polish and Serbian experience, as well as the difference between Polish and Yugoslav socialism, and, in the same way, it does not occur to him to underestimate individuals like, for example, Radomir Konstantonović, who, deeply immersed in culture, warned of the danger of nationalism in Serbia at the end of the 1960s, or the "Belgrade Circle" which opposes the palanquin consciousness of the Milošević era, but something like Kulture, those schools of political thought (as professor Slavomir Novinovski calls the unusual endeavor of a small group of Poles), Serbia did not have.
photo: i. Milenković"CULTURE" HEADQUARTERS: House in Maison-Lafitte
CRITERIA-LAFITTE
I tell my Polish friend that I will write with pleasure, but, I add, I see no immediate need to go to Paris. There is a lot of material, I immediately got Ježi Gjedrojć's autobiography from Zagreb, Autobiography on all fours, there are also recently translated books Culture of Ježija Gjedrojć - school of political thought, edited by professor Slavomir M. Novinovski, and the book by Bazil Kerski Europeans from the canton of Poland, along with the rich material offered by the website of the Literary Institute. Yes, says my interlocutor, but it's a legendary place, I believe it's good to feel the atmosphere. What an atmosphere, I mean, Gjedrojć left us 25 years ago, part of the house was turned into a museum, and in a museum you can expect a museum atmosphere, which I don't know what to do with. (I was bitterly mistaken, but more on that later.) Still, I didn't put up too much resistance: Paris is Paris.
I get off the commuter train (RER, red line) in Maisons-Laffitte, a beautiful town on the Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, famous for the castle built by François Mansard, the greatest architect of the French Baroque, but also for the hippodrome with the longest track in Europe. It's Sunday and the next bus arrives in about twenty minutes, which means that I don't think of waiting for it and I set off for the Literary Institute with everything in my suitcase. (Note: we are talking about Paris where, unlike Belgrade's, you can not only walk on the sidewalks without fear of breaking your leg, but also drag your suitcase.) As I walk away, I can easily imagine how complicated it was to get to this place in the fifties of the last century - in the old photos, for example, there is not a trace of asphalt - and not far from the house that became the home of Ježi Gjedrojć and his team, there was a dense forest (it is still just as dense today). Probably because of all that, the Poles, together with their negotiation skills and quality acquaintances (they were supported with all their strength by one Andre Malraux, and Gjedrojć himself was the holder of the French Legion of Honor), managed to lower the price and with the help of donors and readers Kulture buy a house. After a little less than half an hour of walking, I first saw a forest, and then a large shady yard with an old house in the background. Olga opens the gate for me with an antique key and, without unnecessary movements, leads me into the house, which, to put it bluntly, leaves me breathless: dark wood, a massive staircase, paintings and sculptures everywhere, the study of Ježi Gjedrojć, through which everyone who meant something in Poland passed, the famous winter garden (jardin d'hiver) all in glass and with a massive wooden table in the middle, those books, books everywhere, on shelves that reach the ceiling, on tables, above rugs, under windows, on the ground... In 53 years, 637 volumes were arranged here Kulture (at least 170 pages each) plus special issues, 379 volumes of literary and non-fiction, and 134 magazine issues History notebooks. And all that was done by a team of six people.
Continued in the next issue
