Revision of classics, Polish-style
Many Polish bookstores are selling discounted works by Witold Gombrowicz, Gustaw Herling- Grudzinski, and Franz Kafka. They are being displayed in a special place in stores, alongside a sign saying “Giertych Index Books.” This is how Polish booksellers are expressing their protests against the decision by Poland’s Minister of Education Roman Giertych to establish a new “canon” of Polish and world literature for the school curriculum. The draft decree on this question has been placed on the Web site of Poland’s education ministry.
One of Giertych’s main arguments in favor of the proposed changes is that required readings should primarily arouse feelings of patriotism in Polish schoolchildren. The minister’s decision has sparked heated debates and protests among teachers, writers, booksellers, and intellectuals.
Since Giertych, leader of the radical nationalist party League of Polish Families, became deputy prime minister and education minister, he has often shocked the Polish and European public with his statements. He has never hidden his desire to “improve” the patriotic upbringing of Polish schoolchildren. His anti-Semitic and anti- homosexual statements have sparked resounding scandals throughout Europe. Last year Giertych’s radical efforts to boost discipline and a nationalist spirit in schools stirred up mass protests.
Now, the revision of Polish and world classics has sparked new protests. In the education minister’s view, the school curriculum should be free of not only the above-mentioned writers but also of such classics of world and Polish literature as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Joseph Conrad, and Stanislaw Witkacy. Compulsory school readings should include the biography of Pope John Paul II and books written by the late pope.
Giertych has always maintained that these changes were approved by educators. But Polish teachers do not agree with the minister’s decision and are raising the alarm. They are convinced that the problem is not about certain authors but about the life philosophy and system of values that they express. In an open letter to the education minister a group of teachers say that they are worried about the situation. “We cannot accept ‘the sole correct truth’ that is coming from the ministry,” they write, “all the more so as it is often based on pseudo-scientific theories, populist ideas, and insulting stereotypes.”
The vast majority of teachers, writers, and intellectuals insist that Giertych’s decision is a manifestation of totalitarianism. The Polish PEN-Club says that it is not about removing certain works but about rejecting an entire stratum of contemporary literature that criticizes the foundations of totalitarianism. The contemporary writer Stefan Chwin is convinced that “the proposed reform is aimed at educating Polish schoolchildren in such a way that they will know for which party to vote when they grow up.” These words are an obvious jab at Giertych’s aspirations to impose totalitarianism on Polish society.
Giertych’s decision on literature is generally associated with the maladies accompanying the creation of the Fourth Polish Republic. “The impression is that the Fourth Republic does not need any moral dilemmas from Crime and Punishment,” Adam Kalbarczik, a Lublin- based Polish scholar, comments in Gazeta Wyborcza, “and by all accounts we will cope without our most prominent literary creators who are critical of Polish complexes. In this way we will intensify our provincial attitudes and drown in the gravy of pious parochial complacency.”
Poland’s education minister insists that the new list of required reading is simply a proposal and open for public debate. Although Giertych has repeatedly said that discussions of this question are a good thing, he still maintains that he would personally choose Henryk Sienkiewicz’s The Deluge rather than Witold Gombrowicz’s Trans-Atlantic. In other words, he has no doubts that his decision is the correct one.
Poland’s Minister of Culture Kazimierz Ujazdowski has scathingly criticized Giertych’s decision, claiming that “a war between Sienkiewicz and Gombrowicz makes no sense.”
The question of whether Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Goethe will make a comeback in Polish schools will be resolved shortly. But it is not ministers who should decide what constitutes a literary classic.
Dmytro Shevchuk is a lecturer at the Rivne branch of European University.
