Artur Pałyga
KOŁCHOZ IMIENIA ADAMA MICKIEWICZA
Reportage from Belarus
design Maciej Buszewicz
160 pages
format 125 x 197 mm
softcover
ISBN 83-88279-07-6
list price PLZ 24,90 zł
A journalist's tale of Belarus, where the author seeks the last traces of Polishness.
Poland's former eastern borderland is today a world on the other side of a wall,
about which we know less than about distant countries. In two long essays
we discover the history of this land, the entwined histories of several nations,
human dramas, and the everyday life and mentality of the inhabitants of Belarus. Journalistic objectivity is combined with literary style and skill. This sentimental journey compels reflection on the past as it tells what is happening so close by, across the eastern border. Published on the 150th anniversary of the death of Adam Mickiewicz and the 25th anniversary of the birth of Poland's Solidarity movement, this book is an important voice in the debate about freedom and the solidarity of nations struggling for it.
Kołchoz imienia Adam Mickiewicza ("The Adam Mickiewicz Collective Farm") is the story of a journey to the end of the world - just over the fence. A world as near as only the homeland of the greatest Polish poet can be, and as distant as only a country to which access is barred by the ruling tyrant can be. The face of Belarus that emerges from this narrative is the face of sympathetic, friendly, good people - people who are also helpless, resigned, and ridden with fear.
The author takes the reader along paths remembered from the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz: to Lake Świteź, Zaosie, Tuhanowicze, Płużyny, Soplicowo and Nowogródek. Sadly, time has not stood still there. Gone are Adam, Maryla, and the Wereszczak manor. At Lake Świteź there has long been no place for the romantic raptures of lovers, but the girls working in the fields around Nowogródek still gaze at the visitor with Zosha's eyes, and the romance that joined the lady of the manor and the poet almost two hundred years ago still smacks of scandal in the stories of old people. Artur Pałyga brings back the best traditions of Polish reportage in his book. He knows how to listen and, if he needs to, how to help people open up. The Belarusan end of the world comes much closer thanks to him.
Mariusz Urbanek
"This
Pałyga offering is part of a current of reflection that is
important particularly now (in the first years of European
integration) - reflection on a common regional homeland and on
the fortunes of uprooted people afflicted by nomadism. The
gloomy, sentimental story of "Polish" Belarus reads in a single
breath. It is a book of substance, well composed, written in
beautiful Polish."
Anna Węgrzyniak, Relacje Interpretacje, 1/2006
"Pałyga's
book helps us understand the phenomenon of the country
of our neighbors, some of whom have freedom on their minds, and
some of whom do not perceive that they are living in a
totalitarian state. From his travels Pałyga creates a gripping
depiction of Belarus. A tiny country, forgotten though it lies
in
Europe, in which people live the way they did at the beginning
of
the last century. He creates brief portraits of them which are
diverse, and which say much about the nation and what is
happening to it."
Małgorzata Nocuń, Tygodnik Powszechny, 3/14/2006
"Pałyga's
reportage is difficult and disturbing reading. It
shows the nightmare of a country that should not exist in the
21st century ... of course there are good people and engaging
stories, but it is hard to avoid feeling dispirited as we become
aware of the gulf dividing Belarus from the rest of the world.
It
is not a matter of the economic backwardness or the collapse
of
agriculture, but of profound differences in mentality."
Grzegorz Sowula, Rzeczpospolita, 9/21/2005
"Thanks
to Adam's footsteps on Belarusan soil, thanks to
Pałyga's peregrinations, the drawing power of that despot-cursed
region only intensifies. This land which swells with great
literature, this locale infused with the spirit of "its names
forty and four, its names heroes and gore"* beckons us to make
a
visit, publicizing itself by means of contemporary poet-
reporters, one of whom is author Artur Pałyga."
Marek Włodarski, Lampa 5/2006
*quote from Forefathers' Eve by Adam Mickiewicz
