Polish Queer Modernism

254 Pages·2015·1.339 MB·English

by  Piotr Sobolczyk

Piotr Sobolczyk

Polish Queer Modernism

Polish Studies -

Transdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Krzysztof Zajas / Jarosław Fazan
Polish Queer Modernism
Polish Studies
Transdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Krzysztof Zajas/Jarosław Fazan
Volume 14
Piotr Sobolczyk
Polish Queer Modernism
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sobolczyk, Piotr.
PolishQueer Modernism / Piotr Sobolczyk.
pages cm – (Polish Studies -Transdisciplinary Perspectives,
ISSN 2191-3293 ; Volume 14)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-3-631-66276-2
1. Polish literature–20th century–History and criticism. 2. Homosexuality
and literature. 3. Modernism (Literature)–Poland. 4. Queer theory.
5. Psychoanalysis and literature. I. Title.
PG7053.H66S63 2015
891.8'509353–dc23
2015026975
ISSN 2191-3293
ISBN 978-3-631-66276-2 (Print)
ISBN 978-3-653-05442-2(E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05442-2
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2015
All rights reserved.
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Contents
Introduction: Modernism. Queer. Polish .................................................7
Chapter One: Sexual Fingerprint Queer Diaries and
Autobiography .......................................................................17
Iwaszkiewicz: sublimation and shit ..........................................................................29
Andrzejewski: wife, son, lover – and shoes ............................................................33
Białoszewski: loving and/as writing against proper definitions ..........................41
Gombrowicz: intellect is not sex(y) ..........................................................................44
Chapter Two: Julian Stryjkowski: Jewish
Vis-A-Vis Queer ....................................................................49
Gazing/looking queer/Jewish....................................................................................49
Interlude: looking Jewish / looking queer as a Polish stereotype .........................61
Unproblematic sexuality and problematic religion ................................................66
Queer closet / Jewish closet? .....................................................................................74
Chapter Three: Two Psychoanalytic Scenarios In Witold
Gombrowicz ........................................................................81
Pupa is being beaten in papa .....................................................................................81
Giving oneself a homo-birth .....................................................................................98
Chapter Four: Queering The Warsaw Uprising (With
A Little Help From Miron Białoszewski) ...............107
Make (queer) love not war .....................................................................................107
Queer reader, or the cognoscenti ...........................................................................113
A web of queer acquaintances? ..............................................................................116
5
“Romantic friendship” and its slippages ...............................................................121
Embodied map and the picaresque .......................................................................128
Subversiveness or misfire? ......................................................................................133
Chapter Five: Straight Yet Queer ..............................................................135
5.1 Homoinfluence ...............................................................................................135
5.2 Straight Gay Story ...........................................................................................157
5.3 Queer Fable......................................................................................................171
5.4 Between Materiality and Symbolicalness of Skin:
Sławomir Mrożek’s THe Tailor .......................................................................195
Chapter Six: Central European Communist Camp .........................207
Historizing, localizing camp ..................................................................................207
High-low, deliberate-naïve .....................................................................................212
Camp and fetishism ................................................................................................218
Miron Białoszewski’s reparative objects ...............................................................228
Grzegorz Musiał: Western rags and local rags .....................................................238
The power of lack: Michał Witkowski’s phantasmatic queens ...........................244
Coda: capitalism, postmodernism, transformation, camp .................................248
Bibliographical Note ........................................................................................251
6
Introduction: Modernism. Queer. Polish
Has there been a queer modernism? Or: has modernism been queer? Are these
two questions even-steven? Was there a ghetto-like space inside “modernism”
where queer themes could be spoken aloud for the very first time in cultural
history in such intensity? Or perhaps the whole body of modernist discourses
and practices was queer, especially by comparison with the previous periods? It
is common practice now to speak of “modernisms”, not “modernism”, and this
tendency encompasses national modernisms, but also “reactionary modernisms”,
“Marxist modernisms”, etc., “queer” one included; on the other hand, the majority
of English-language research that uses “modernism(s)” as general formula(s),
cover mostly Anglo-Saxon modernism(s), at times with the reference to French
one. At first glance it might appear that since “queer” deals with sexuality, a glo-
bal “queer modernism” might be easy to define: people’s genitals are not that
different (questionable!), the uses of these genitals, which is what “sexuality” is
(questionable!), are quite similar regardless of localisation (questionable!), and
on top of this, the discourses on sexuality which are the base for the medical
and judicial understanding of human sexuality come from the same root. Queer
theory, however, went far beyond understanding sexuality as genital activities or
bodily pleasures. The view that I share sees “sexuality” as quite a unique individual
complex of preferable bodily activities, mental fantasies, but also social attitudes,
political views, and structural (socio-political) conditions which affect the pos-
sibilities – and impossibilities at times – of performing “sexualities”, not to forget
the economical, racial, and linguistic aspects (if we agree that language forms
worldview, then “Polish” sexuality via language can never be the same as Spanish
etc.). Furthermore, in this project queer theory reads sexuality in literature, i.e.
in the discourse where the use of language is intensified and embroiled in local
literary conventions. I develop this idea in the first chapter on the “sexual finger-
print” in autobiographical writings. There is no general “queer modernism” and
general “Polish modernism” whose overlapping would produce “Polish queer
modernism”, although the latter might be perceived as part of them both. It is
true that much of the theoretical language on different aspects of sexuality has
been developed outside Polish context. My aim is not to copy and apply them
unidirectionally. Many aspects of Anglo-Saxon theories with some references to
French poststructuralism and psychoanalysis, simply “don’t work” here. I believe,
however, that there is a possibility of exchange, i.e. the studies in Polish queer
modernism as a unique and distinctive phenomenon might enrich also the ways
7
that (queer) sexualities are described elsewhere. In chapter one on “secret dia-
ries” I aim at describing the conditions of a “sexually paranoid” culture. Polish
culture definitely has been one. But it would be exaggerated a claim that the most
paranoid one. The mechanisms I analyse and the theory I introduce (“sexual
fingerprint” combined with “enigmatic signifiers”) might be used in reading less
paranoid cultures. The last sixth chapter is an attempt to describe the unfathom-
able phenomenon of camp aesthetics and performativities which seem to have
existed long before the word “camp” was coined, and also in the societies (such as
the Polish one) which had no clue that the word existed and some discussion of
it took place; nonetheless, “Polish”, or “central-European” perhaps, camp perfor-
mances especially under communism require new definitions and many distinc-
tions to be made. Precisely, as I show, camp’s entanglement in capitalist economy
is an overlooked phenomenon in “Western” (capitalist) theoretical discourses on
camp. My new specifications of communist economy and camp might bring out
the aspects in “Western” camp practices that have not been touched upon yet.
In the chapter two on Julian Stryjkowski, Jewish and queer, I point out to the
differences between the American queer theory and Polish (and to some extent,
European) experience. If the American gay rights movements partially formed
their agenda following Black Power movements, i.e. an ethnical model, a gesture
that was justly criticized later in queer theory, then the Polish overlapping of
Jewishness and queerness might seem a similar gesture. However the American
context of Jewishness is very different from the history of Polish Jewishness and
in the American context the metaphor of “queer as a Jew” means something very
different. In the Polish context this metaphor has been more productive – and
differently. In chapter three on Gombrowicz I offer a reading of a psychoanalytic
scenario and phantasms of “second birth”. Although my interpretation should,
I guess, generally work for any expatriate literature, Gombrowicz plays on the
“universal” and very specifically Polish notions of “fatherland” which cannot be
simply “translated” into different literatures. This is, by the way, Gombrowicz’s
programme: to oscillate between “universal” notions and show Polish specificity’s
potential to reshape or enrich “general” notions formed elsewhere. This is the
queer agenda for my book as well. German Ritz, a Swiss Slavist, stated in his
pioneer studies on gender studies in the Polish context: THe chances and tasks of
Polish gender studies consist in the recognition and employment of the specific cul-
tural situation of Poland. Poland situates between Western and Eastern Europe. Its
traditional culture has been fuelled by the co-existence of different nationalities and
8
cultures, among other factors.1 In the text on homosexuality and Polish literature
Ritz specified the Polish “distinctiveness” as an apparent “delay” by comparison
with the West; “apparent”, because Polish modernisation and history of class stra-
tification were quite different before and during the communism.2 As for the
Polish modernism(s), Włodzimierz Bolecki’s book Modalności modernizmu opts
for the plurality of modernisms and seeks to mark the differentia specifica of
the Polish modernism, certainly without neglecting the traditions from diffe-
rent contexts. Modernism is an international (European and American) pheno-
menon, but it is the national cultural traditions, language, artistic, transnational,
regional and policultural contexts that decide on its local determinants, problems
and interpretations.3 Certainly the consequence of my avoidance of “ghetto”
vision of queerness implies that a book on Polish queer modernism contributes
and reshapes also the vision of a “general” – if “general” in this case equates with
“sexless” – Polish modernism.
Benjamin Kahan offered an analysis of “queer modernism” – i.e. “queer An-
glo-Saxon modernism with a reference to French decadentism” – and speci-
fied several features and discourses of it. In his view, “queer modernism” was
shaped by three main discourses (he uses the word “grammars” interchange-
ably): the emergence of sexology, the French artistic decadence, and the Oscar
Wilde trials.4 If these “grammars” were to be taken to describe the foundations
of Polish queer modernism, then they should be read quite apophatically. Let
me offer just a brief commentary on each of these “grammars”. Homosexuality
was made legal in Poland in 1932, during the period of independency. In the
XIXth century it was persecuted according to the laws of the three countries
that had effectuated the partition of Poland: Prussia, Austria and Russia. The
legal and medical attitudes in these three countries were different and that af-
fects also the construction of sexualities in “Poland” and Polish early modernism,
yet this is a wide and fascinating phenomenon that has not been studied yet by
literary researchers. The act of regaining freedom and “unifying” back Poland
1 G. Ritz, Granice i perspektywy gender studies, transl. M. Łukasiewicz in: Nić w labiryncie
pożądania. Gender i płeć w literaturze polskiej od romantyzmu do postmodernizmu,
Warszawa 2002, p. 19.
2 Idem, Literatura w labiryncie pożądania. Homoseksualność a literatura polska, transl.
A. Kopacki in: Nić w labiryncie pożądania, op. cit., p. 53–54.
3 W. Bolecki, Modalności modernizmu. Studia, analizy, interpretacje, Warszawa 2012,
p. 10.
4 B. Kahan, Queer Modernism in: A Handbook of Modernism Studies, ed. J.-M. Rabaté,
Hoboken 2013, p. 347–361.
9