Smell has memory. It was proven by Marcel Proust in his In Search of Lost Time where smell and taste of tea dipped madeleine evoked vivid memories of childhood. This ‘Proust effect’ can be found also in domestic literary works, e.g. in Andrzej Bobkowski’s Szkice Piórkiem (Feather Penned Drafts): ‘Nie wiem dlaczego, ale ten zapach suchych liści i wilgotnej ziemi działa na mnie podobnie jak mgła: budzi wspomnienia dzieciństwa: wspomnienia lasów koło Lidy i Nowogródka, kontury zamku Gedymina’ (‘I don’t know why but this smell of dry leaves and wet soil affects me in the same way as fog: it awakes memories of childhood: memories of forests near Lida and Navahrudak, outlines of the Giediminas’ castle’). Exile literature is full of such ethereal reminiscences. There are lush scents that cross borders of time and space, with their intensity shading breath of the present; as Józef Wittlin wrote in his Mój Lwów (My Lviv): ‘Doprawdy nie wiem, czy to już starość, że straciłem węch na uchodźczą woń kwiatów i drzew, czy rzeczywiście tutaj nic nie pachnie? A przecież lwowskie parki przywędrowały tu ze mną z wszystkimi drzewami, kwietnikami i rabatami. I lwowskie apteki, szynki i owocarnie przepłynęły ocean i po tylu latach trwają jeszcze we mnie, wciąż żywe i błogie’ (I don’t really know whether it’s already old age that I’ve lost the sense of smell for foreign fragrances of flowers, or maybe nothing really smells here? But parks of Lviv with all their trees and flowerbeds have rolled up here with me. And Lviv’s pharmacies, saloons and fruit shops have crossed the ocean and, after so many years, they’re still alive in me, vivid and serene’).
Adam Mickiewicz had no doubts what the smell of homeland is, however his poetry is rather scentless. Meanwhile it’s a marvellous smell of bigos puffing from the pots, especially strong after the bear hunt, that reigns in Pan Tadeusz; and nearly equally strong aroma of coffee that’s ‘fragrant as mocha, and thick as honey’. Those notes of fragrances used by Mickiewicz complete the picture of the country perceived as the most beautiful in the world. Adam Zagajewski in his poem Gorączka (Fever) opposes this idyll, the romantic myth. In the poem, written during the time of martial law, the poet looks at enslaved Poland hard-headedly, and everyday life, described in a sensual way (aroma of moist lime trees, taste of the first strawberry) transforms into tender intellectual irony with concluding warning against a severe smell of spring. Zagajewski, one of the poets from Nowa Fala (New Wave) poetic movement, judges the martyr-like attitude of his compatriots and their inaction bitterly; he calls for defiance and independence, the artistic one as well.
Different smells create atmosphere of girlish worlds of Wioletta Grzegorzewska and Weronika Gogola, becoming parts of rural and much missed but not idealised past. In Guguły there are a mellow smell of cocoa, sweet rush, soil smelling of sludge and cardamom, August stuffiness of rotting straw and starch, jasmine and caramel scents of May. On the other hand, Gogola’s Po Trochu (Little by Little) provides more gustatory than olfactory experiences. One, though, is pretty expressive – it’s something about a person captured in a smell: ‘Babcia Klimcia przynosiła ser co tydzień. Pachniał jak każdy taki ser: trochę jej domem, a trochę babcią Klimcią’ (Granny Klimcia would bring cheese every week. It smelt like any other of such cheese: partly of her house, partly of granny Klimcia herself’). Other fragrances of little homelands are spicy aroma of cake being baked [Uśmiech Dzieciństwa (The Smile of childhood) by Maria Dąbrowska] and vanilla milk and roasted coffee [Zapach Szczęścia (The Smell of Happiness) by Julian Tuwim].