Kings and Spirits in The Eastern European Tales [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 183-206]

KINGS AND SPIRITS
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to its patron, the nineteenth-century Czech historian Frantisek Palacky,
is "a family of equal nations," "a condensed version of Europe in all of
its cultural variety, a small arch-European Europe, a reduced model of
Europe made up of nations conceived according to one rule: the greatest
variety within the smallest space." ["The Tragedy of Central Europe"]
The Wilno of Milosz's youth is a fairy-tale land. Good contends with
evil, truth vies with falsehood. Nature is an indifferent devil who awaits
unwary souls calmly and indolently. History is a dragon with gaping jaws,
demanding poets, students and little soldiers for victims. The people of
this land pray to various gods, speak many languages, revere the watersnake. The past lives in legends and books. Poets imbibe these teachings
and then write poems, each in a different language, although they all
graduated from the same university of ancient fame. This world also has
different dimensions, notes Venclova: it is ruled by beauty and ugliness,
sky and earth, East and West, North and South, past and future. "These
axes comprise a multidimensional figure, and the collapse of any one of
them leads to absurdity and chaos." ["Poetry as Atonement"] It would
mean the end of the world, for this is a world of established, age-old order,
hieratic and sacral. It is the same as the mythical "Huzul-land" of Milosz's
friend Vincenz, which shared the aura of Wilno. These are "border"
worlds-"crossroads of languages, cultures and beliefs." ["A Dialogue
About Wilno"]
Vincenz dreamed of a "Europe of homelands," and this is a dream
consonant with the longing of Milosz and Kundera. What was most important in it, observes Milosz, is what Simone Weil called enracinement
["enrootedness"], which is impossible without a homeland. "But the
concept of a homeland-nation was too large, and when Vincenz dreamed
of a 'Europe of homelands,' he had in mind small territorial parcels like
his beloved 'Huzul-land' populated with Ukrainians, Jews and Poles...."
[ibid.] What "Huzul-land" was for Vincenz and Wilno was for Milosz,
Kundera finds in Austro-Hungarian Vienna and Prague. The generation
reared in the shadow of Yalta has no such homeland. But the imagination
takes root, as with Vincenz, "in something smaller than a state." Adam
Zagajewski undertakes a poetic journey to Lw6w-which he left when
he was two years old, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union-and creates
a luxuriant, sensuous and beautiful image of his ancestral city. The generation of his contemporaries is also "journeying to Lwow." They are creating
their own spiritual cites on the spot, in "independent Poland." They erect
these cities by dint of imagination, by the force of their longing and daily activities. This generation was born in the ashes-without a past, among the
ruins. They recognize "the gardener's shears" in Zagajewski's poem. The
legends of Wilno, Prague, and "Huzul-land"-their "fatherlands by choice"are incarnated in their lives. "Lwow is everywhere." [Adam Zagejewski,
"Jechac do Lwowa," (Journeying to Lwow), Zeszyty Literackie, 1983, no. 3].