Fantastic lecture today in our culture class on undergound culture in Poland under Communist rule. The professor who lectured today and will also lecture tomorrow is mom and dad's age, so grew up, studied, and began her career under Communism. Most of her father's family was murdered during the Holocaust and most of the survivors fled to Israel. She remembers the letters her father would receive from them once a year or so, and the hiding places where they were secreted because possession of letters corresponding with the West could lead to imprisonment or death. As a literature student, her only access to real literature, East or West, was through illegal underground publications. She still has some of those formerly illegal copies, which she brings into class for us to take a look at. It's incredible to learn about twentieth century Poland from people who actually experienced it and can deliver it to us in such a hands-on way. She also brings in samples of socialist realist art and "literature," all basically straight up propaganda. I now have an incredibly long reading list and, as always, not enough time in which to read!
Also, learning about censorship and underground publications in Poland during the twentieth century led into what promised to be an exciting conversation about modern-day censorship in the US but then we left that tangent and got back to the topic of discussion. Yay for focused classes but I really want to discuss differences in censorship with somebody now (ie. censorship from the top-down acting prior to publication as in Communist Poland, and censorship acting after publication with bottom-up elements as we have in the US. At least, that's how I boil it down into points.).
The one book I've managed to finish since I got here (besides some Jane Austen books I picked up during my Germany tour to while the times spent by myself on trains and in hostels late at night) is a short historical survey of eastern Europe from 1740-1985. It was a good read, more interesting and less dry than history books often are, but all I got out of it was an idea of the overall trends in eastern and central Europe during the time period covered and the realization (kind of an obvious one) that I know absolutely nothing about European history in general and eastern and central Europe in particular. Also nothing about Russia and Turkey, which were/are both major players in the European arena. Nothing like reading to make you realize how ignorant you really are.
The book I'm currently in the middle of is The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz. Read it. It's fascinating. From the back of the book: "Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it." Miłosz was a Polish emigre who lived in California until the end of Communist rule in Poland. I think he's primarily a poet, and came back to Poland in the 1990s to live in Krakow until his death within the last few years. Krakow is really proud of him because there was a period of a decade or so when he was one of two Nobel laureates for poetry living in Krakow. The other is a woman (yay!) named Wisława Szymborska. Haven't read any of her work yet, but I intend to...thank goodness for the English language bookstore downtown!
Okay, so I posted what I have so far but then I couldn't resist adding a little bit of Szymborska's poetry now that I'm thinking about it. All I've read of her so far is 2 poems that our literature professor gave us in a handout in the first day of class 3 weeks ago. Here's the one that really grabbed me, pretty obviously fitting in with peace-studies Me.
The End and the Beginning by Wisława Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
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