More on patriotism

Lately I have been thinking again about patriotism confronted with sensitivity of one of my friends whose views I often share and always respect. I realised that my approach to patriotism is lighter and more pedestrian than it can be accepted by some who may think of patriotism as something sacred and not to be treated lightly or in a practical manner.

Some think that a holy things should not be soiled and patriotism may be considered a sacred idea. My Polish literature teacher in the high school used to say something opposite – nothing serves better  holy things than to be sometimes besmeared a bit. I liked that.  Maybe this stayed somehow in my memory and made my approach to patriotism lighter than many Poles.

Polish history has been a difficult one. After its glory days prior to the XVIII century, Poland got divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria and disappeared from the map of Europe in 1795 for over 100 years. During that time there were tragic, unsuccessful uprisings attempting to regain independence. They never had any chance to succeed. Many lives were lost as a result. Those events were considered in the time of Romanticism to be acts of patriotism. Polish people often thought that the best way to love the country is to die for it. I think many still consider it to be the best form of patriotism. I always had a problem with it. To me the Polish uprisings were futile and lives wasting. I object to such type of patriotism based on romantic ideas.  Positivism in Polish literature, a part of socio-cultural movement, was much closer to my heart and still is. Working for the country, having positive input to its economical successes, its beauty and cleanness is much more important to me than celebrating endless and sad Polish anniversaries of unsuccessful uprisings, Polish history is full of.

When I come back ...

 

In the last couple of months, I often started my sentences with When I come back... in conversations with my friends in Sydney. I was about to go to Poland for few months and I was not looking forward to the trip. I wanted to have something positive to look forward to when I come back. As I am a project manager by nature, I soon realised that there was an opportunity here to form a When I come back programme –with a set of projects under such umbrella. I moved back to Sydney not that long time ago, and I want to do many improvements related to my Sydney home. I want to improve my kitchen, bathroom, garden, get a great bookcase to be able finally unpack my books, coach seriously, get fit, do a creative writing course, read a number of books, meet regularly with friends and many more.  One of the ideas which was coming to me regularly in the last couple of years was Thursday dinners.   What I would love to make happen is to have regular get together with my friends sitting and talking around the table. Friends, good food, wine and stimulating conversation always been my idea of bliss.

It came to me from events organised by the last Polish king Stanislaus.  I realise the difference between me and the king, my home and The Water Palace, royal menu and mine or the number of guests  but what  we could have in common is regularity of the meetings and maybe the name.

This is what Wikipedia says on the subject of the Royal Thursday Dinners

The Thursday Dinners (Polish: obiady czwartkowe) were meetings of artists, intellectuals, and statesmen held by the last King of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski in the era of Enlightenment in Poland.

Neoclassical Water Palace in Royal Baths Park in Warsaw

The dinners were held first in the Royal Castle in Warsaw and later in the Water Palace between 1770 and 1784. During the dinners, which typically lasted three hours and resembled French salons, the King dined with his guests and discussed literature, art and politics.

The number of guests fluctuated over the years, but there were about thirty regulars.

When I come back I will tell you about my dinners.

 

About patriotism and Ray from Mummulgum

Ideas of patriotism vary widely from person to person, and from country to country.  Our definitions vary a lot and we store them in our hearts or our minds. The way how we relate to the issue depends on the type of storage we choose. If I was conforming to the most accepted Polish definition it would be stored in my heart and I would consider that any patriotic person needs to die for the country without hesitation. I always had a problem with such an approach, maybe because in my times this was not necessary. I thought that to love the country was to work for it, do something  to make it better. I had the definition stored in my mind rather than in my heart.

But still, there was something also in my heart storage because I remember a fiery discussion, not to say a fight about patriotism with one of my IBM colleagues - Ray of Mummulgum. Ray was a young guy straight from the Uni and the township of Mummulgum. He claimed that the population of the place in the 80ties was 11 and dropped by 10 percent when he went to Uni. I am not sure how true it was but I liked it. Ray was a cheeky person with violently red curly, hair and freckles. In the discipline of freckles we would have a problem to decide who had an upper hand – he or me. I really liked the guy and we had frequent discussions on various subjects. At that time I was a very serious person and Ray, to keep a proper balance between us, was not serious about anything. Maybe a bit about educating Anna in Australian type of life. He even brought some meat pies from his mother from Mummulgum and I had to eat it in Aussie way, or a right way according to Ray – it had to dribble down my elbows or otherwise it was not eaten according to the savoir vivre. I am not sure I really mastered the required etiquette, but I tried  and it was messy but fun.

Back to patriotism – I do not remember how it started but Ray expressed the view that patriotism was a vice not a virtue. My definition stored in the heart kicked in and I got seriously upset about the whole thing. Now I think that Ray’s definition must have been close to nationalism and in this sense I am totally with him.

Poland and the 3rd of May

Poland and the 3^rd of May

So I am in Poland, came yesterday and am still going through adjusting to the new time, the new place, new customs, new language and a new situation all together. I woke up at the proverbial 3:00 am but for me it was still Australian 1pm, the time difference is 8 hours now. And a nice surprise, at least for me as I like white nights. It was light already! This will be improving, meaning the light will last longer and longer till 23^rd of June.

Sometimes my important life events coincide with globally important days of my nations Poland and Australia. I arrived in Australia at the Australia Day, some years later I became an Australian also on the 26^th of January, returned to Poland on the day when the country joined European Union and this time I arrived on the very long weekend of the 1^st of May, The Day of Polish Flag and 123rd anniversary of Polish Constitution. Some more history  on the subject from Wikipedia.

The Constitution of May 3, 1791 was drafted between October 6, 1788, and May 3, 1791, when it was adopted as a "Government Act" by the Great Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch).

The constitution sought to supplant the prevailing anarchy, fostered by some of the country's magnates, with a more democratic constitutional monarchy. It introduced elements of political equality between townspeople and nobility and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. It banned pernicious parliamentary institutions such as the liberum veto, which had put the Sejm at the mercy of any single deputy who could choose, or be bribed by an interest or foreign power, to undo all the legislation that had been passed by that Sejm.

British historian Norman Davies describes the document as "the first constitution of its type in Europe"; other historians call it the world's second oldest codified national constitution after the U.S. Constitution, which had come into effect on March 4, 1789. The 1791 document remained in force for only 14 months and 3 weeks. Yet, despite the King's capitulation, the Second Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1793), and the 1795 demise of Poland, the Constitution of May 3, 1791, was seen over the next 123 years as an important step toward the eventual restoration of Poland's sovereignty. In the words of two of its co-authors, Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, it was "the last will and testament of the expiring Country."

I woke up this morning in an unfamiliar,familiar place, straight to the kitchen to switch my small TV on and: YOU GET UP, WE INFORM! My favorite TV channel TVN24 and my favorite journalist Jarosław Kuźniar, even dressed the way I like it, sports shirt and a jacket, relaxed and suave. This morning he is sporting Polish colours in his lapel, it is the 3^rd of May after all. The day started well!

Next to me a big bunch of tulips and a cup of tea, life is good even when I am in Poland.

Sea Change

Sea change

I was walking home few hours ago down one of Sydney suburban streets. The weather is magnificent today, sunny and warm. I was deep in thoughts when I suddenly noticed sound the autumn leaves were making under my steps.  Trees in Sydney are mainly evergreen and this is not that often I hear this shoo, shoo, shoo sound while walking. And a reflexion came up related to going the next week to Gdansk again. I will stay there till end of September. I do not have much to look forward regarding the trip. It will be a trip which, I hope, will move me from The End of a Chapter to A New Beginning.  For now I am in limbo, in no-man’s land, in transition.

                                           

On reflection, there is something to look forward to and I am starting to focus on My New Beginning rather than likely problems. The future is unknown, but this is fine with me, a bit of mystery is quite exiting.

I am going into Polish spring which is a wonderful part of the year in any country but in Poland after the long months of bad weather, cold, snow, blizzards, frost, icicles, spring explodes in its full beauty. Everything starts to bloom. Beautiful Polish girls who turn their faces to sun whenever they can catch a moment of sunshine. They bloom... I find Polish young girls very beautiful. They are elegant, stylish, boldly dressed sometimes or even looking sporty these days. This is a new European and worldly version of Polish people. Sporty is new to the country. They are like a bouquets of spring flowers.

The nature competes with beautiful girls in its magnificence; so many spring flowers are in abundance now. My favourite lilacs, growing in Gdansk garden wild and profusely, lily of the valley I will be buying in big bunches soon, tulips in all colours which one buys not less than 20 at a time to show them off to their full glory. Polish buy flowers often and not only well to do people think flowers are essential. I have seen people not looking affluent at all buying flowers in big bunches when I was hesitating if I should indulge myself buying a small bouquet of violets or sweat pea.  I have learned to behave like a Polish person who I really am, at least some of the time.

                                        

I can see clearly now how lucky I am to be able to travel from autumn to spring and then back to spring again. This makes me look at the trip’s positive, uplifting sides rather than the reverse. And maybe it will not be that bad after all?

Waking up with Polish feelings

I live in Australia by choice, I am not Jewish and I was not born yet when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was going through its tragic days of Jews fighting for their choice of death.

This morning I woke up too early to get up so I recorded yesterday’s programs from the Polish radio podcasts and went back to bed listening to my Sony Walkman. I fell asleep few minutes later without turning the Sony off. After some time I suddenly woke up hearing a very sad lament song from the days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbTwpLulfSk&noredirect=1

Yesterday was the 70ties anniversary of the start of the upraising. As a person brought up in communistic Poland where the Second World War education was very comprehensive and the messages frequently repeated, I knew the song and its origins rather well. This is a very touching song and I always had problems listening to it and feeling OK at the same time. I usually protected myself from unwanted emotions by not listening. This time the tune came unexpectedly waking me right up. I stayed in bed motionless listening to it and suddenly I started to sob not knowing even why. This was not a welcome reaction and I tried to shake it off as too sentimental.

I realised that my Polish roots are deep even if I love Australia, consider it my country and  myself an Australian.

The leaders of the uprising knew perfectly well that it was fated to be a military disaster. But they could not wait. And it was not they who chose the date. They retaliated in response to the Germans’ entry into the ghetto. It was a battle of heroism and despair, bravery and rage, a thirst for revenge and a protest against indifference. Contempt for the Germans and contempt for death. Defiance and revolt. And the sense that they were utterly alone. This was a battle to awaken the world’s consciences.

 

Weapons were few. Those which they managed to obtain from the Polish Underground Army (Armia Krajowa – AK) were inadequate for the needs of such a battle. And so they procured them by all possible means from the Aryan side and smuggled them into the ghetto. In underground factories they produced Molotov cocktails, light bulbs filled with sulphuric acid and hand grenades.

On 16 May at 20:15, the Germans blew up the Grand Synagogue on Tłomackie Street. This symbolically marked the end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The final liquidation of streets, houses and people. The ghetto was laid to waste in a sea of rubble and ashes, beneath which, hidden in the bunkers, the last embers of life still flickered.

Excerpts from the book: ‘A look at the Warsaw Ghetto’ by Jacek Leociak,  DSH, Warsaw 2011

Recently I spent few years in Poland. Watching Polish political TV programs I got to know  Mr. Marek Edelman one of  “lives still flickering under the rubble of ashes” remaining after the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. He was a  very wise man commanding respect and awe. I learnt a lot about modern Polish politics listening to him. He is not with us anymore and today I want to pay, in my small way, a tribute to the man who at 24 was one of the leaders of the Ghetto Uprising.