Wednesday, November 20, 2002
THE LORDS OF CENTRAL EUROPE
III: The Return of the King
How? With so much said and digested, so much ranted and raved, so many tears, so much vitriol expended, how can I hope to offer anything of value towards redemption? And how could anyone think I have anything of value to offer? How could I expect anyone to listen?
Arrogance, that’s how. This is the curse and the blessing of being a writer. So let’s plow on, shall we?
1 - Here and There
My fiancée’ Gosia and I recently concluded a tour of Western Europe - plus a few select Central European spots thrown in for good measure. I've also been to Prague in the Czech Republic. Overall it’s just as expected - much better than in Poland. But there are a few things noticeably worse and enough things approximate to Polish life that it can’t help but make one wonder if all this posturing and pontificating - by both the traditionally-minded Poles and their detractors - is academic.
Bad trains? Really bad trains? Try Spain and Italy. Toilets? Ditto. Lots of those holes-in-the-ground. And when you flush, bring your bathing suit. One in particular, in Italy, damned near threw me out of the stall. Another looked like a horse had been backed up into it. In fact, you can say the same about the dirt and pollution in the large cities of these two countries. Lots of haggard people in Spain, looking like they were ready to pounce on anyone and wrestling with themselves whether or not they really needed a valid reason to do so.
My whole life, I never encountered a pickpocket or a bathroom pervert. But in one day in Madrid, I met up with both. Perhaps it was just luck of the draw. But after months of being warned of pickpockets and thieves of all stripes lurking about in Polish cities and train stations and not encountering a single besotted one, Madrid couldn’t help but leave an indelible stain upon me.
How about recent war-torn countries? Ethnic strife? And can we talk about unexploded land mines while we’re on the subject? Croatia and Slovenia, anybody? No? Then how about Northern Ireland?
So what I’m saying here is everything is relative. Everywhere we went we were met with smiling faces and warm personalities... Even in France. Yet we’d both been warned from friends and media of anti-American fervor in many quarters. Yet we didn’t see any fervor. Oh sure, there was the occasional rude dorkhead, but one person cannot represent a village or town or city or district or nation. I kept expecting to run into that fervor somewhere in my travels, but no fervor. Huh! And I really expected it in France. And that got me to thinking....
What was the distinction between me touring around all those European countries and me living in one - in Poland, to be precise? In one I am a resident, in the others I was a tourist. And tourist dollars are always welcome.
Would my experience of Warsaw be much different if I was here for only a few days instead of 10 months? Absolutely. Warsaw is peopled with dour conformists - and I don’t think such a description applies to any Western European country. How could it? In Eastern Europe for decades upon endless decades, conformity saved your hide. The Westerners were just decadant, damn them all. So as long as I come from decadance and have a warm spot in my belly... er, heart, for decadance, I will always prefer West to East. But it took those 10 months to truly appreciate how dour the East can be.
And if I lived say, in Paris or Stockholm, for 10 months and visited rural Poland for a few days, would I had then had had a hankering to move to the land of kielbasa and pierogi? Probably. Why not?
But the natives put on their best faces for the tourists, don’t they? Yeah, those of us whose jobs don’t depend on the tourist dollar, we can complain about busy-season traffic jams and moronic questions (my favorite: "what time does the sun set tomorrow morning?") and the like. But many of us do depend on the foreign cash flow - and entire countries, like Poland, can’t afford to antagonize. So turn on the charm, give us your money and get out - unless you want to stick around for a spell and invest even more of that precious green stuff into our flagging economy.
Besides, there’s a plus to being here I’ve never mentioned: I’m kind of special here. Warsaw does not attract many tourists, let alone ex-patriots. We’ve all been there - on one side of the equation or the other. How many times have we noticed the sexy foreign girl or boy precisely because of their foreignness, or maybe more specifically, their accent? Well, now I’m the sexy foreign boy. If I’m persistent enough to barge through the layers of defense most Poles have built up against humanity, people find me interesting because of my nationality. Or because I’m persistent enough to want to talk to them. And as a teacher, my students naturally find me interesting. In the social structure of this country, they’re even allowed to initiate a conversation with me. This specialness would probably be a factor anywhere in Europe. But moreso, I think, in Eastern and Central Europe because we don't top many international must-see lists. 'Cept for Prague of course. (Which, by the bye, is a bit strapped for cash these days itself).
So, yeah - everything is relative. Profound of me, huh? What that means is Poland ain't as bad as it once seemed. I remember when I first waited for the plane out of JFK last December and I chatted up the well-heeled lady sitting next to me in the airport. She fixed up my Western sensibilities in a moment and promised that I'd be "running and screaming" from Poland in less than a month. Well, after a month I had no desire to do anything of the sort. I smirked everytime I thought of her. But after two months I was seriously contemplating getting the hell outta there.
But times have changed and so have I. Poland ain't that bad. Now I'm back to smirking.
Sexy is always good.
2: Now and Then
It is by understanding the differences between nations we can perhaps hope to understand and appreciate ourselves and each other. Western Europe were the victors of the last 60 years of history. Even Germany came out big winners in the long run from American post-war largesse. Eastern (and Central) Europe lost big time. Western Europe believes in itself, Eastern Europe does not. Western Europe has bucks and military and economic might in the eyes of the world, Eastern Europe does not. So the Western nations are nice to each other (more or less) and believe in themselves, and that my friends, more than anything else, is what Poland needs to do. Come out of their shells and join both the European Community and the world (and they've only recently been approved to join the EU Community in 2004. Congratulations!)
I’ve seen this kind of thing again and again throughout my years: historically beleaguered populations beaten down so much they lose hope in themselves. And I’ve also seen historically beleaguered populations defy all odds to maintain faith in their community and in their God. Infused with a sense of purpose, they soldiered on past all manner of torture and turmoil. Poles have part of that.... 95% Roman Catholic, they love their church and love their Polish Pope. They believe that their incessant manhandling by the devils of history will usher them to a special dispensation in the afterlife. Ask your average Pole-in-the-street why their nation is fated to suffer so (and they’ll agree with that “fated” bit without even a blink of an eye) and they’ll answer that it’s just part of being a Pole. But all will be repaid when the King of Glory comes...It’s just in the here-and-now they have problems coping.
What else is so different about West and East? It goes much farther back than World War II or the Twentieth Century. Harbinger of civilization, Western Europe long ago became the international standard of that “civilization.” They got all the breaks... all the right people settled there, wrote all the right books, sculpted all the right sculptures, had all the right political movements. Russia had its share too - and even Poland had Copernicus and Chopin and a few others - but somehow these small, mighty voices were overshadowed by the juggernaut of the West. And it wasn’t long before the greatest voices either migrated West, or were suppressed by the Tsars and the Communists and the dictators and were muffled, exiled, or killed.
So if we are to understand the true difference between West and East we must venture far, far back. Back even before the Catholic Church reigned supreme (which did so, interestingly enough, from both Rome and Byzantine - or modern-day Turkey, far southeast of Poland and which is really in Asia, but that’s another story). As far back as ancient Greek, cradle of modern civilization (which is also, geographically speaking, in Eastern Europe. Geeze, history can be so damned unfair.) Let’s go back to when Europe was up for grabs.... invading Visigoths, Celts, Balts, Huns and the Dallas Cowboys sliced and diced to their hearts’ content. After all the hubbub died down, three main groups emerged from the rubble, expressionable as three main language groups: Romantic, Germanic and Slavic.
Romance is from Rome. Germanic from Germany. And Slavic? Wherefore Slavic? People first started arriving and setting up shop in Poland some 4000 to 2000 years before the birth of Christ. Bet your sweet boopie that the Slavs were among them. They started making themselves known as BMOC (Big Man on Continent - to which all the other BMOCs “tssed” sanctimoniously) somewhere around the 4th Century B.C. By the year 966 the Polanie Tribe, also Slavs, united all the groups in the region, called it Polska, and converted to Christianity. A nation was born.
And a nation was crushed. From their very genesis they sewed the seeds of their own stagnate development over the millennia - and thus their own destruction. How? What was the seed and where did it take root? The answer is simple: it’s the language.
Recently my best bud Ion Freeman (yes, that Ion Freeman) remarked of a small child crying out to its parents in Prague: “my, but that child is terribly frustrated trying to express itself in the Czech language.” His tongue as always was firmly in his cheek, so much so that he has a permanent niche carved in there (don’t ask me how I know), but that little gal cried, burbled and gaggled, fighting valiantly to sputter a few fundamental syllables. Slavic expression is a struggle worthy of the most noble heroes. Poems and songs should be crafted (in some other language group, no doubt) to extol these brave feats. And it is only by indoctrinating the citizenry at birth that any hope of victory can be realized.
Do you know how many declensions (word endings) there are in Polish? Huh? Do ya? A gazillion, that’s how many. Then there’s case, and number, and gender - for every noun, pronoun, adjective and verb. That’s another gazillion zillion. So do the math. That’s a gazillion zillllloned gaz.... a gazzed zillioned.... a glazed bouillon.... a honey-glazed donut with chocolate sprinkles and cream filling.... NOT! It’s a disaster, that’s what it is. Or have I already alluded to that?
But that’s not the initial problem with this language group. The first thing anyone from outside the region will encounter is the pronunciation. It’s killer. Check this out: ch according to the language books is supposed to sound like the end of loch in Loch Ness but it doesn’t; sz is supposed to sound like the beginning of show; rz like a quick shh; dz, dz', and dz* all sound, I think, similar to sz, but the differences are at once both subtle and gross. If you get it wrong you’ll either be laughed down or will utterly confuse the person you’re trying to speak to. (By the way, the "z*" is actually a "z" with a small dot overhead, but you know how these accursed American web servers are....! )Then there’s the nasal vowels, " a, " and " e, " or “awwwww” and the way the smarmy New-England-nursing-home-aid with the cranberry up her butt recites by rote to her long-suffering clients “and how are you today?” Then there’s the infamous consonant clusters, such as the mono-syllabic szczand chrzm. Don’t even ask.
How is anyone supposed to feel joyous or safe or secure or anything when you’ve got all that garbage to learn? Poles have to do all they can to keep this stuff fresh and clean in their minds. tThey do a bang-up job and I am consistently impressed by their linguistic acrobatics. That’s one of the most lovely things about them, to tell you the truth. ‘Cause they sing when they speak - just sing, and it’s a beautiful thing to hear. All while keeping the declensions and the tenses and the pronunciations tight. Wow. You know, man? Just wow.
But that’s it. They don’t have time for anything else. Like branching out to the world and learning to trust their neighbors or even themselves. Hell, if their language is this hard, then how daunting navigating all the cultural and economic tics of the world must be to them!
Just consider, with no language hurdles to overcome the Gentiles could understand and talk to the Jews. The Nazis would have realized that the Poles weren’t such bad guys after all and left them alone. All the invading powers that besot and buggered this fine people over the centuries would have had reason to leave them alone. Shoot man, they were only laying siege to Poland and carving it up because they were sick and tired of trying to communicate in Venusian. It’s plain as the nose on my face that they ultimately pillaged and plundered to remove the agony of stumbling about in the Slavic languages. That over the years other Slavic groups, most notable Russia, also invaded, only proves my point. They’re all so frickin’ similar it just added to the confusion. They wanted one variation, one notion of SC (Slavic Correctness) to dominate, nay to exist in their pristine little world of melodic, marble-stuffed utterances. The Prussians, Germans and Austrians didn’t want to deal with any of it. Think of how different world history could have played out.
And the vast chasm between Polish Jews and Polish Gentiles? Believe it or not, Poland boasts a rich history of being the most liberal country toward both Jews and members of all races and creeds. That’s why the highest quantity and the most barbaric of concentration camps were erected in Poland. This country simply had the highest Jewish population - by far. Poles today seem to forget that. Hell, I finally learned myself when an American ex-pat told me about it; I doubt anyone else would have volunterred that information. So when the Jews first settled here in the 13th Century they first had to learn that crazy language! (And Yiddish, you know, is no picnic either.) It took ‘em centuries to get it right but the immigrants kept arriving and having to put up with the same linguistic barriers. Jewish parents and teachers, bastards that they were, expected their progeny to be proficient in both languages. The Gentiles were walking around, mumbling to themselves, trying to remember all those blasted declensions, just to keep it straight enough so they could ask the hottie who lived down the street to the big dance on Saturday night, while at the same time their priests were expecting them to do more than mutter the Latin during the Mass and their nuns were rapping it into their knuckles daily at school. And in the meantime the Jews were trying to remember to pronounce the declensions of both languages with the proper Yiddish accent. It was madness! No wonder it all went to hell.
Maybe they all could have gotten together and told Hitler and Stalin (and Roosevelt and Churchill, for that matter) to go to hell. Or at least stuck together and found some solace in each other’s company when each of the four hotshots mentioned above took their own sweet time in plotting his respective course to the underworld. But Stalin - come on now? His Iron Curtain was draped (clunk!) over Slavic and near-Slavic nations. It’s that same “our Slavic is best” argument I’ve already mentioned. Am I the only one who sees this?
As good as things could have been, so much moreso today.. could it have been.... if would that.... uh, be better......
The European Union? Well, if Stalin had kept his grimy sperm-encrusted paws off Eastern Europe, there wouldn’t even be any contemporary talk of who deserves to join and who doesn’t. But let’s imagine that the Poles and other Slavs had committed to de-Slavinizing since the fall of Communism. Actung, baby! Viva la Polska! The barriers would fall, wheat prices would stabilize, GDP would rise, the Catholics would let the Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and tree-huggers in, and prostitutes would no longer ply their trade while big-muscled Russians lurked in the shadows (then again, maybe they would).
Money would flow, jobs could be had, bureaucracy would work (then again, refer to the concluding sentence of the above paragraph), trams would be brand spankin’ new, the snow wouldn’t fall on the train lines, all the pollution would drift off towards Russia, and the sewers wouldn’t leak while the streets would. People would smile in the trams, seek out solutions to problems, and there would be copulating in the streets. I mean dancing.
There would be understanding. And where there’s understanding, there is unlimited room for friendship and growth.
So I propose that this vast, populous, splendid nation phase out their declensions. Gradually, so the current generations will barely notice its passing and the next generation after the next will be fully indoctrinated in the ecumenical spirit of the times. Eliminate the distinction between dz and dz' and dz*, first and foremost. Then over time, get rid of the z* all together. That’s the easy part. Then teach all with eyes to see and ears to hear that strings of consonants need to have frickin’ vowels between ‘em! That may use up an entire generation in and of itself. There’s more to be done after that, but the last thing should be to get rid of the "a," and "e,". The most experienced Slavic speakers sling their nasal sounds the way Bert slung hash at the Market Street Dinner in Philly. Which is to say it’s nothing special: they just drop em’ all together. (Yeah, Bert used to do that, too.)
So, as these nasals are the most cherished of the Slavic anomalies - and therefore the most dispensable - I say save the easiest for last to both psychologically ease the transition and to preserve their sentimental value. They Poles can keep the genders and cases - hell, a lot of fine, fine nations do just that and look where it got them. Just look, I say. As for the persons, it can be just as confusing as the declensions - ‘cause singular and plural work of a kind with the declensions and word-endings are constantly changing. I propose they just add “s” - and catch up with that fat bastard of a country that’s always trying to dictate international policy to the rest of the pestered world.
Oh, by the way - Slavs don’t bother with definite and indefinite articles. Nice touch. I like that. For example, nobody else talks about "the" Ukraine or 'the' Czech Republic. Who needs those meaningless “the’s” anyway? Christ, we are fat bastards!
There you have it folks: my blueprint for domestic bliss and international harmony. That’s what I’ve learned in the past year. Take it or leave it. I’m not suggesting a global village by any means, just a trifle more common ground, is all. But whether I stay or go from Poland anytime soon, I’m sure to return in 10 years when the EU (uh, I mean “EU”) membership is in full swing and this country will be well on its way to adopting standards that transverse its borders. For all the hardships and grime I’ve waxed semi-poetic about in these installments, there’s a lot about the Poles to suggest they’re ready no matter what the world throws at them next. Because thrown they will be, thrown into the world-at-large. They’ll be just fine come-what-may. The best and most vivid among them recognize that the suspicion and fear and wariness begins to fall away when you find a way to communicate.
After all, love will save the day. But you’ve got to know how to say it first.
posted by mark 9:02 PM
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