Sinko: Greek Literature (2 vols)
The chapters about Homer, particularly about the Iliad, I found very rewarding; above all, they enabled me to think about the Iliad for a couple of days and nights.
What Sinko writes about ‘the atmosphere of the Iliad’ and ‘the charm of the Odyssey’ – the comparisons he draws (to the advantage of the Iliad) – is beautiful and to the point, but does not appear to me to exhaust this enormous topic. The atmosphere of the Iliad is not only sunny, it is above all heroic. Reading the Iliad is not only a ‘sun bath’ for the spirit and does not only ‘transport us to some kind of paradisiacal dawning of the world and mankind’, it is first and foremost a beautiful epic, refulgent with heroism. Everyone who has read the Iliad will – consciously or not –
have had his conception of heroism affected by the radiance of the shield of Achilles and, possibly even more, by the aureole surrounding the sacrifice of Hector. The Iliad elevates us above ourselves and that is why idealists by nature will always prefer the Iliad to the Odyssey – the epic of heroes to the adventures of andros polytropou,¹⁴ the heroism of shrewdness. Sinko is mistaken if he says that the young love the Odyssey, and their elders the Iliad.
Speaking subjectively, I may say that in my own case I read Homer for the first time when I was 15 and my immediate impression of the Iliad was like a thunderbolt, only to be compared with the impact I experienced three years later in Florence at the sight of Michelangelo’s David. But of the Odyssey I remember nothing!¹⁵ I do not in the least believe, by the way, that age changes one’s attitude to works of art. Equally, I do not believe that a work of art that makes a great impression on one in youth will pall as one grows up. In the same way, youthful ideals do not pall. They develop and mature with the individual. He who vows allegiance to them in youth will always try to realise them, even if only in part, but he who, when young, swears fidelity to nothing and nobody does not suddenly later discover ideals for life, because he has none. One who is born blind does not become sighted with age.
Returning to the Iliad, it has surely been noticed that on the thresholds of Greek culture and Italian culture stand two epics that are the highest peaks of their respective cultures – the Iliad and the Divine Comedy. Like every masterpiece, these two epics not only mark the beginning of a new phase of mankind’s development, but also the close of the preceding phase. The dispute about whether the Iliad belongs still to Mycenaean culture, or is already part of Greek culture, is just as fruitless as the dispute about whether Dante is the greatest poet of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. The boundary posts, seen from far away, belong to both sides.
What is striking about this comparison is that neither in the Iliad nor the Divine Comedy – at least for the layman – are there signs of the previous culture starting to wither or of immaturity in the successor. The genius of Greece and that of Italy are born in these works already fully armoured
with the Divine Spirit, as did Minerva spring from the brain of Jupiter.
Events taking place around me in the prison on Łącki Street are only indirectly reflected in these notes, which were never intended as a diary, but rather just as a soliloquy on matters of importance. Besides, I was counting on the cell being searched at any moment, as indeed happened once. However, the search was remarkably brief because the first thing the SS man came across was the Greek dictionary. He took one look, gazed in awe, then stopped the search and left.
¹⁴ The wanderer.’
¹⁵ Obviously, we knew all classical literature only in the original (K.L.).
The man in charge of the showers (that is to say, controlling the flow of hot water) was a Ukrainian, an engineer from Kiev, with whom I managed to strike up a longish weekly conversation, thanks to the wardress as a rule ‘forgetting’ to take me straight back to my cell. The engineer’s name was Tymon. He was young, sprightly and had a remarkable thirst for knowledge. Someone had told him that I was a scholar, so he behaved very nicely towards me, a little as though I were someone in possession of treasures, who wouldn’t begrudge a share to anyone else. He confessed to looking forward all week to our conversation, from which there was always something new to be learned. So I would tell him during these twenty-minute sessions something about a subject that interested him and, in return, he would pass on to me scraps of political news that he picked up from the most recently arrested prisoners. He said it would take a long time yet, but not for an instant did he doubt that Germany was heading for catastrophe. Obviously, we did not discuss ‘What then?’ Instead we talked – or rather I told him – about what I was reading at the time. He listened as though to the Gospel and thanked me like a child. Sometimes, when it was hard going, we didn’t have time for a chat, because the engineer had to tell me what had been happening during the week. I could see clearly that talking in this way helped him to relax and calm down. He spoke like a man who had something vile to spit out.
There had been another execution, Tymon said. Usually, if there had been an execution, he knew how many had ‘gone to the sands’. Often he even knew who they were, especially if it was someone well dressed. All the suits taken off the dead were brought to him in the bath-house for ‘disinfection’. There the SS men shared them out among themselves. A really stylish suit would not get as far as the bath-house because the SS men pounced on such items at once. There were often men’s or women’s fur coats – mainly those of Jews, in which they found gold or dollars sewn into the lining. That led to regular battles between the executioners. As more and more articles became available, the greater grew their lust for loot. In this connection, I was increasingly troubled by fear when I said the Lord’s Prayer. My problem was the phrase ‘. . . as we forgive those who trespass against us’. To forgive what was happening around me was a sheer impossibility. I was not at all concerned with my own case – but with the suffering of thousands! I could not lie to God. Finally, after agonising for ages and biting myself terribly in the process, I cut those words out of the Lord’s Prayer and recited my mutilated version till the end of the war. After I was freed from prison, I told a priest about this. He replied: ‘A lot of people did the same.’
**
Anyway, supremum nec metuas diem nec optes – death must always be present with us, so that we may despise life when higher values are at stake, but also, so that we may love this life, which we may lose at any moment, but which enables us to serve our ideals and bear witness to others. The timing of life’s end is in itself a matter of no consequence. I myself not long ago experienced this proximity of death, which I do not fear, but I love life even more intensely than I did a couple of months ago.
**
24 IX: A fortnight ago, at my request, I was sent Shakespeare. That for me has been the most significant event of recent times. My life in prison has been totally transformed. I have read Shakespeare before and read a lot, but in my present circumstances the mind’s apperception is weaker, so I did not gain as much from it as I ought to have done, whereas my sensitivity to an artistic masterpiece has decidedly increased. I have read and am reading. I note down extracts and re-read, but it is as though I had never before heard of Shakespeare. I cannot compose myself.
The whole world is probably created so as to enable genius to interact with creation. Nothing counts but the genius and his work – all else is pulvis et umbra,¹⁸ unless it is of service to genius. Anyone who wants to be an educator of the people must try to gain access to the works of genius because only he who knows such works, if only in part, can know what life is really all about!
Shakespeare was born in the year that Michelangelo died. The date is, as it were, a symbol, a boundary stone. This coincidence bears eloquent testimony to the fact that, after this date, Italy no longer retains her intellectual hegemony over Europe, that the fine arts cease to be the major expression of the epoch, and that the new era stops aspiring to classicism, that is, to the triumph over nature of idealisation and sublimation. Shakespeare creates portraits of individual souls and knows that all the ills of mankind, and his destiny in general, derive from the newly discovered ananke or moira¹⁹– not from external causes, as in Sophocles, but only from within man himself, surging relentlessly up from the depths of his still unexplored inner being.
18 X: Yesterday I received Thucydides and, for the first time in my life, I have read in its entirety the speech of Pericles in honour of the dead in battle! On the one hand, I am ashamed of having lived 44 years and having waited to find myself in prison before reading this great speech; on the other hand, however – and this second consideration predominates – what a wonderful life it is that can bestow such a treasure even on a person in my present circumstances.(...)
The new cell was in the same corridor as my old one. This was very important for me, as I knew the SS men and I knew the neighbours – that is, those who could safely be given food to distribute, and who ‘lived’ where. There were various types among the SS men. Some were Austrians, some ethnic Germans. There was even a student from Lwów Polytechnic, who knew me and was obviously ashamed. The cleaners also included one eccentric, a German who said he was a priest. It was possible to give these persons small packets for the various cells, provided they were given a sizeable portion for themselves. They were usually fairly conscientious about distributing the food. To acknowledge receipt of their parcels, the neighbours would hammer on their walls. A Lwów theatre artiste living above me used to stamp his feet, and people living further away would whisper through their Judas windows as I was on my way to or from the bathroom (always on Thursday), to tell me whether or not they had received the food and how many times. When I was with the Polish wardress, I would often be allowed to pass ready-sliced quarters of onion or a cube of sugar through the Judas windows, provided, of course, there was no SS man on the look-out in the upper corridor.
11 XI: Today I am reading and translating the words of Pericles. I suppose, out of the many thousands of Poles who, in 1942, spent Independence Day in prison, I was the only one so privileged as to be able to translate in honour of that day such extracts as (11.37):
‘. . . in public affairs, we do not dare flout the laws or refuse to obey those who exercise authority for a certain time, nor do we refuse to be bound by common laws, especially those on which the defence of the wronged depends, but, above all, those moral laws whose transgression brings with it public disgrace.’
Or this, from the second speech (11.61.4):
‘You are citizens of a great Republic brought up in traditions worthy of her. It is therefore your duty to suffer the greatest misfortunes, rather than suffer any slur upon her honour. You must endure your personal misfortunes and marshal all your forces for the protection of the common cause.’
**
I came to the conclusion that my four-and-a-half-month stint in the Łącki Street prison, Lwów, had been time decidedly well spent. Having narrowly escaped ‘the grave-digger’s spade’ as we say, in Stanisławów, I had regained my physical strength. I had been able to renew and remain in contact with the great, eternal values, while being immensely privileged in comparison with so many thousands of Polish prisoners, who were starving to death or perishing in hopeless, idle solitude or amid the hubbub and squabbles of the communal cells. I had been receiving more food than I needed, and intellectual nourishment in still greater quantities: Homer, Shakespeare, Thucydides . . . I had even been able to write about Michelangelo.
Furthermore, my present deportation was being carried out under unusually favourable conditions. For very many people, the journey from homeland to prisons or concentration camps in Germany was the beginning of the end, particularly from the psychological point of view. On the other hand, I had a strictly defined task and, above all, my role for the time being did not have to be passive (the most difficult thing of all), but active. I knew that, as soon as this journey was over, the STRUGGLE was waiting to be resumed. Awareness of that was enough to give anyone renewed strength.
**
One day the cell door opened and the Wachtmeisterin announced a visit by the Herr Direktor, an elderly German in civilian clothes, who now stood in the doorway with the Frau Vorsteherin behind him. The Director asked me whether I wished to make any requests. Having had no success with my plea for a washbasin, I decided to try another category. I asked for the works of Goethe. After a few moments’ silence, the Herr Direktor finally exclaimed: ‘Are you not a Polish national!?’
I bridled. ‘That is so.’
‘Yet you want to read Goethe?’
‘I fail to see any connection between one and the other,’ I retorted.
The Director shook his head and walked out. The following day the old Vorsteherin called in and declared that she would be bringing me Schiller and Goethe, as she possessed the works of both authors. This, however, would take a day or two because the books did smell strongly of mothballs. True enough, two days later she brought the books, to my great delight, though they smelt strongly of the mothballs. I launched myself into the reading right away, but very soon made a most painful discovery. Not only Goethe, whom I never understood very well, but even Schiller, whom I once admired, I now found very difficult to fathom.
It was as though there were some kind of obstacle between them and me. That obstacle was the German language. That same language in which I had formerly received so many cultural treasures had today become for me, as it were, contaminated. The experiences of recent years had dishonoured it. So strongly did I feel this aversion that it was no use trying to persuade myself that only I would suffer by restricting my cultural horizon. I did, of course, read a great deal, but without deriving any real spiritual benefit.
¹⁸ Ashes and shadow.
¹⁹ Ananke: circumstances, needs; moira: fate.
Michelangelo in Ravensbruck
Karolina Lanckorońska
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