An Excellent Artistic Motif: Polish Writers on Sport

jerzy-pilch-2004-cracovia_fot-tomasz-wiech-ag_wit124.jpg, default, Jerzy Pilch in the Cracovia Stadium, 2004, photo: Tomasz Wiech / Agencja Gazeta, center, #000000

#language & literature

As Antoni Słonimski once said, ‘Sport draws away from vodka, but unfortunately only the contenders’. Amongst literary artists writing on the topic of sport, there are well-known and well-liked poets, novelists, playwrights, aphorists and songwriters.

After all: ‘Sport is an excellent artistic motif. To neglect it is to neglect an important element of life. If the pub is supposed to be a great topic for artists, why wouldn’t the sport pitch be one as well?’ rightfully asked Jan Parandowski.

‘Sport: a vent for eroticism’, asserted Stefan Napierski in Freudian style. ‘Sport is like radish: an occupation of few, a pleasure for many’, claimed the aphorist Bogdan Brzeziński. It’s worth taking a closer look at the thoughts of other creators involved in sport to a greater or lesser extent.

‘Discus Thrower’ by Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer (1896)

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Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, photo: National Digital Archives (NAC)

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The sonnet by Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer is chronologically the first significant sport-related work in our compilation:

Text

A crowd of spectators. Calmly he fixes on the finish –

Straightens, strains his arms

Raises his head, digs his feet in, his legs taut,

In his hand a round disc – the first of the swordsmen to rise.

One more moment – he swings the disc, before hitting –

Left arm moves, hips, turns, contracts,

On his right leg all his weight is placed –

He throws – and a fresh laurel on his temple will come.

On his marble, naked, slender body,

Rubbed with oil, golden, gleaming

Falls the radiant, smiling Greek sun.

He bends – the disc in his steel fingers gripped by ticks –

Women’s hearts in their white breasts skip a beat,

And go aquiver at the divine sweet thighs.

Author

Trans. Benjamin Koschalka

‘Ferenike i Pejsidoros’ (Ferenike & Pejsidoros) by Lucjan Rydel (1909)

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Lucjan Rydel with family, 1910, photo: Polona.pl

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Lucjan Rydel’s short story is a historical comedy scene from the life of the ancient Greeks, set against the background of the 428 B.C. Olympics. A mother, dressed as a man, arrives to the Panhellenic games in Olympia with her son. He’s meant to take part in the junior Olympic competition, and she wishes to be a witness to his efforts – despite the law forbidding women entry to the site of the games. Breaching the ban implicitly results the offender being thrown off the Typaion rock. On the last day of the games, Pejsidoros, the son, partakes in the pentathlon. When he emerges victorious, the delighted mother accidentally reveals her gender. However, her insubordination passes unpunished ‘for the glory of the parent, brothers and son, as Olympic victories have fallen to the lot of them all’ – noted Pausanias.

Rydel vividly conveys the scenery and atmosphere of the Olympics, along with thrilling depictions of individual sport competitions taking place throughout the consecutive days of the big event. His narration presents characteristic landmarks of Olympia and places eminent individuals of the times (Socrates, Alcibiades, Thucydides, Euripides, Aristophanes, Sophocles) amongst the audience. The fortunate conclusion of the incredible story displays the triumph of empathy and reason over rigour and the soulless letter of the law. After all, democracy and its rules need to be driven by humanitarianism and take into account exceptional circumstances. It’s only then that we, as a society of free individuals, can talk of beauty and the unity of body and soul (the ancient Greek idea of Kalos Kagathos).

‘Olympic Laurel’ by Kazimierz Wierzyński (1927)

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Kazimierz Wierzyński, 1928, photo: National Digital Archives (NAC)

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This poetry volume by Kazimierz Wierzyński was awarded the gold medal during the Olympic games in Amsterdam in 1928. Since then, the author has been dubbed ‘the best poet amongst sportsmen and the best sportsman amongst poets’. Olympic Laurel is a display of his fascination with movement and nature, as well as his enthusiastic attitude towards sport and broad knowledge thereof – the volume celebrates famous pre-war winners and champions: Paavo Nurmi, Ricardo Zamora, Charles Paddock and others. From amongst the 15 poems comprising the volume, we’ve selected the one concerned with the same competition – ‘The Discus-Thrower’ – that had been eulogised three decades earlier by the poet mentioned before:

Text

Momentum in the open palm that dies — no one knows where:

goal’s end, world’s end and on, my ducat shines in air.

The discus rises, glitters, dips,

chimes on the earth, ricochets to a new ellipse

and beats, a heart bound in a golden ring

whose hastening pulsations tense and sing.

Over the marking squares, as if it were a trout,

it flings itself on its own path, far out

like flying buttress or a bridge arched into space:

impulse that swells the world’s lungs and secures — each

in its place —

the evolution of the giant stars. In open hand

I clasp the throw that will expand

somehow, our limits and our measure

— I, discus-thrower, hero of the watchers’ pleasure.

Author

Trans. Clark Mills

‘The Olympic Discus’ by Jan Parandowski (1933)

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Jan Parandowski, photo: Edward Hartwig / National Digital Archives (NAC)

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The action of Jan Parandowski’s historical novel takes place in the ancient Greece. The text, concerned with the events of the 476 B.C., employs both the elements of a novel and of literature popularising history. The author closely connects the depiction of the Olympic games with history and customs of contemporaneous Greece. He presents the clash between an idealistic approach to sport with a professional and disciplined striving for victory.

In the novel’s epilogue, the author gives vent to the disappointment with the fact that the spirit of healthy rivalry and the idea of widespread physical activity started to give way to the spectacular efforts of the gladiators, meant for the gaze of a mouldering audience:

Text

A nation which half a century earlier had consisted more or less of competitors only, in which each citizen not a hopeless cripple was prepared to enter for any event in the stadium and preserved this ability up to the threshold of old age, suddenly renounced these ambitions to the advantage of a selected handful. A general opinion took root that, sport being such a complicated, such a difficult affair, because under ordinary conditions it was impossible to ensure in practice the irrational achievement of records, the best thing to do would be to remain on the bench of the spectators amidst passive emotions. The first effort made was to secure these benches, and the stadiums were enlarged by comfortable rows of seats.

Author

Trans. A. M. Malecka & S. A. Walewski

The author was awarded a brown medal for this novel in the Art and Literature Competition at the Summer Olympics in Berlin, 1936.

‘Trans-Atlantyk’ by Witold Gombrowicz (1953)

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Konstanty Jeleński and Witold Gombrowicz, Vence, photo: Bohdan Paczowski

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Trans-Atlantyk is a grotesque depiction of the beginning of Witold Gombrowicz’s life in Argentina. Invited for the inaugural cruise of the transatlantic MS Chroby, he arrived in Buenos Aires on 21st August 1939. Several days later, the cruise ship returned to Europe – but without the writer aboard. The novel is based on the author’s own condition of solitude and detachment from his war-bereaved country, yet simultaneously mocks the padding, showiness and presumption of the commonalty of the encountered Poles, fully disconnected from both their homeland and the reality within which they are forced to live. The constant game played by the characters permeates also the heroic game of palant [a Polish sport, somewhat similar to baseball]:

Text

Onto a meadow we came where a Palant court behind a fence, next to the Orangery. Having explained palant’s rules, the which not the same as for us (since a Ball, from hand hurled against wall, after twice bouncing on the ground, a second time from air against wall hurled and into Bat-Basket, only after two Bounced can be hurled back), at once Gonzalo ball from hand hurled against wall and a second time hurled from double Bounce against wall into Bat-Basket; and exceeding skillful. Ignac sprang and in Bat-Basket on the bounce received it, and Gonzalo at once sprang and low to the ground from Bat-Basket shot . . . whizz; but Ignac sprang, reached it, shot, so ‘tis whizzing but just a bit off; swerved! Swerved! Gonzalo after it ran and at Horatio shouted: ‘You idler, why are you standing about? Better to apply yourself to some Work . . . Such a Nuisance with this Lazy . . . take a Picket and those pegs pound in there, in that patch, for they loosen!’ Again the ball he hurls up, Ignac jumps and it from bounce into bounce, ergo Gonzalo aslant . . . curved, curved! . . . Whereupon Ignac makes a jump, slams from Bat-Basket into Bat-Basket, the other cut the ball off in the air . . . smack, ergo Ignac nigh nigh caught it not, and upwards as an Arrow straight; and then Gonzalo from a Bounce! Bat-Basket! Bat-Basket! Wham! Away they wham: bam, bam, bam bam. So it Resounds!

And here the Bajbak aside boom, boom, boom, boom the pegs in the patched with a picket pounds. Ignacy was losing. Gonzalo was winning. In vain Ignacy jumps, runs! Gonzalo, better trained, now Slices, now in Sprints hurls up, and past Ignacy’s Nose flies the ball. Bam, bam, bam, bam, Bat-Basket wang, Bat-Basket wham! And likewise Horatio aside boom, boom Pickets pounds. Enraged became Ignac and perchance with one last effort, red and sweating, boom that ball from a bounce; whereupon Horatio boom aside upon a picket! Whizzed, Gonzalo scarce could hurl back! Ergo Ignac again bam. When he bam, at once likewise Horatio to match Boom with a picket upon a peg . . . and so with this Boom-bam the ball whizzes, flies! Again Ignac Boom, Horatio Bam upon a picket, and with the Boombam the ball flashes so that Gonzalo almost misses it! Again Ignac bam upon the ball, Horatio boom upon a picket as if together against Gonzalo they did play; yet Ignac feeling that he has won an ally for himself ever the harder slams . . . And with the boom-bam playing they win! I at Tomasz look, and with those bushy eyes of his Tomasz looks and here boom, boom, bam, bam, bam and when Ignac boom, then Horatio bam, and so with the Boombam!

Author

Trans. Carolyn French & Nina Karsov

Tennis, in turn, appears in Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke – as sign of progress for the character of Młodziakowa, a middle-aged woman desperately attempting to seem modern (we can find similar ways of thinking in Possessed), and for a certain colonel of the Zouaves – as an opportunity to boast his shooting skills when, during a tennis march on a representative Parisian court, ‘unexpectedly fired his pistol and hit the ball in midair’ [trans. Danuta Borchardt], thereby depriving the players of the purpose of the competition. His deed sets off a series of progressively more and more surrealistic situations.

We can find more indications of Gombrowicz’s unprecedented attitude to sport on the pages of his Journal where he describes, for instance, a pianist playing a concert as a runner reaching the finish line of a punishing run.

‘Czerwona Czapeczka’ (Red Cap) by Kazimierz Brandys (1955)

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Kazimierz Brandys, photo: Danuta B. Łomaczewska / East News

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The short story by Kazimierz Brandys figured on the compulsory reading list for the seventh grade students for over a quarter of a century. Interestingly, its most thrilling fragments remained in textbooks up until 1984, having been read by the youth even in the times when the author was by no means favoured by the authorities. On the contrary, he was a council member of a conspiratorial quarterly Zapis (Record) and his own pieces were released by underground and emigratory publishing houses.

The short story was first released in 1955, and its reprint appeared two years later in a collection whose title, Czerwona Czapeczka, was inspired by this particular text. This volume may be somewhat surprising, as it contained an odd mixture of materials – from the stories explicitly following the conventions of socialist realism (‘The Glove of Pilawiec’, ‘Before He Is Forgotten’ – a notorious libel against the emigrant Czesław Miłosz) to those in the spirit of the Polish thaw (‘Roman Hotel’, ‘The Defence of Granada’).

Czerwona Czapeczka itself – with its protagonist, a ski jumper Stanisław Marusarz – doesn’t stand out from other stories in the collection, as it’s not exactly one of Brandys’s most prominent texts. Fortunately, a search for any propaganda in this story would be in vain, considering that it’s simply a praise of heroism, depicting the toils of rivalry, the laudable attitude of the ambitious sportsman and popularising the advantages of sport.

‘Disneyland’ by Stanisław Dygat (1965)

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Stanisław Dygat, Warszawa, 1962, photo: Janusz Sobolewski / Forum

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The main character of Stanisław Dygat’s novel is a young, successful, talented architect Marek Arens. His fame, however, was brought to him by his sport achievements, as he is also an extraordinary athlete. Despite his success and money, a celebrity status in his company and numerous erotic conquests, he doesn’t feel happy. He seems lost and lacking a purpose that would make his life meaningful. Seemingly uncompromising and confident, he’s in equal measure helpless, cynical and romantically rebellious – ‘neither this, not that’, as described by Dorota, a sprinter, his co-worker and lover. She doesn’t have much in common with Arens, and neither does Helena, his boss’ wife with whom he’s having an affair.

Everything changes when Marek meets a mysterious girl at a costume party. She introduces herself as Jowita. From that moment on, he can’t forget her magnificent, black eyes, her face tightly wrapped in a niqab. Meanwhile, he meets Agnieszka, a student of the Academy of Fine Arts, an earnest and ambitious girl who treats her future seriously. Love is born, perhaps a true love? Marek, however, doesn’t stop thinking about the surreal Jowita. He’s unable to break off the romance with Helena and he won’t give up on the casual affair with his colleague, the sprinter Dorota who, as it turns out, treats love matters like a sport as well.

Embittered by women, irritated by the world and people, Marek provokes a row in a restaurant and hands himself over to the militia. As he’s sweeping the street supervised by a guard in a prison uniform, Agnieszka approaches him to confess that she’s getting married. She also reveals the very simple secret of Jowita – he could easily recognise her if only he looked more closely into Agnieszka’s deep black eyes.

‘Mecz’ (The Match) by Janusz Głowacki (1976)

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Janusz Głowacki, 1989, New York, photo: Czesław Czapliński / FOTONOVA / East News

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Janusz Głowacki originally wrote this text as a film script for what was then Group X, after which he altered it for the purpose of the stage. A story about sportsmen and coaches, dribbles and passes, the amateurism of professionals and the professionalism of amateurs. About fans and hooligans, union members and directors, business trips and blackmail. About the passion for football, passions around football, and very large sums of money.

Text

Director: What’s with Włodarski?

Journalist: What do you expect? They tackled him, his knee went, then a cast, a surgery, and he imposed such a workout routine on himself… well, murderous. Because they brought his leg to a normal, human ability, and he aimed for a footballer’s ability. A punishing workout routine is what he enforced on himself… doing a triple jumper in a vest, and in this vest he had 15 kilograms of lead bars. He did hurdling with that load and started to play, he was just starting to play when it turned out that something’s not quite right. And another surgery, apparently 100% successful, but no one knows if he’ll be able to play. Well, you know… He’s recovering now, working out again, he added 5 kilograms of lead, but will anything really come out of it? We don’t know.

Director: He says he’s feeling great.

Journalist: What else is he supposed to say?

Treasurer: He clenches his teeth and tries to kick. The leg goes, the window shuts.

Vice President: He’ll be good again.

Journalist: Or not. He’ll be a soft player from now on. He’ll be careful so that no one nicks him with a shoe.

Author

Trans. AP

Apart from the match on the turf, we’ve got a much more involving match around the pitch. The world of sport is depicted as comprising mutual entanglements and deals. Next to social venom (one man drinks, another is cheated on by his wife), Głowacki denounces the mechanisms that rule a clique bound together by the members’ own interests (bribery, fixing matches). Meanwhile on the pitch, the Dutch are leading by 1-0 in the first half, whereas ours can barely breathe. What has seemed so far to be a sure chance for a promotion is slipping out of their hands. However, in the last seconds of the match they score a countervailing goal. Poland ties with the Netherlands, which qualifies the Polish for the final game with Argentina.

The decisive goal is scored by the football tearaway Migoń, admitted onto the pitch to save the day – who’s de facto the author himself, more familiar with the goings-on around the stadium than with kicking the ball. Janusz Głowacki’s The Match is largely concerned with what troubles Polish football today.

‘The Secret of the World Cup’ by Stefan Rembowski (1982)

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Stefan Rembowski (on the left) during a performance with Kazimierz ‘Lopek’ Krukowski and Władysław Nowicki (on the right), photo: from family archives

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The composer Stefan Rembowski was sometimes the author of both the lyrics and the music for his pieces, including the famous The Secret of the World Cup (also known as Eenie Meenie, What Will Piechniczek Do). When the editors of Przegląd Sportowy (The Sports Review) decided to launch a contest for the best sport-themed song, it was The Secret of the World Cup that won. The hit was unanimously associated with the Poles’ great success in the tournament in 1982.

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Bohdan Łazuka – "Tajemnica mundialu" – "Od Opola do Opola"

Text

The wow of the World Cup was hummed in 1982 by the entire Poland The older generation of football fans, if woken up in the middle of the night, could still on this day cite the lyrics associated with the victory achieved despite the doom and gloom of martial law. Bohdan Łazuka’s repertoire includes many more well-known and catchy songs, but none of them made the artist so hugely popular. […] The song’s lyrics turned out to be prophetic: ‘I know a lane in Barcelona / Into the lane Boniek will hop / Long live Polonia / Long live this guy / In the stadium will resound’. These were our favourite lines after Boniek’s spectacular hat trick on Camp Nou. And we could then confirm that faith can truly move mountains.

Author

‘Eenie meenie…’ in ‘The Sports Review’, ‘PS: History’ supplement, 5th June 2019, trans. AP

The hopes of the author of the lyrics and the music were fulfilled:

Text

But I believe it’ll be okay / Eviva Espana Ole!

Author

Trans. AP

‘Bieżnia’ (The Treadmill) by Anna Pogonowska, from ‘Wiersze Wybrane’ (Selected Poems) (1987)

Thumbnail — Anna Pogonowska, photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

The topic of sport, evoked here only as an excuse, becomes pure lyric poetry under Anna Pogonowska’s pen. The poem can be read silently, but it’s worth listening closely to its rhythm:

on the wide white treadmill

I only meet whips of dust

sometimes sand breaks in

a wave of green overflows

candelabras of chestnuts lamps of roses

flames of daffodils

will flash like the eyes of exhorting darkness

but there

sharp gravel again

a naked trail

the prayer stake of the road

one must run so skilfully

it will play like a musical instrument

Trans. AP

‘Who Was David Weiser?’ by Paweł Huelle (1987)

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Paweł Huelle in Gdańsk, 2008, photo: Elżbieta Lempp

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Pisarz Paweł Huelle sportretowany w Gdańsku w 2008 roku, fot. Elżbieta Lempp

Paweł Huelle’s prose debut from 1987 was talked about in superlatives only: a masterpiece, the best novel of the decade, a literary triumph, and the author’s career was said to be the most promising one of the 1990s. None of the readers of this magical novel will ever forget the memorable football match played between a bunch of teenagers from a Gdańsk backyard and haughty strappers from a military district. After the former are defeated four to one in the first half, the novel’s protagonist, the inconspicuous David, appears by the pitch. ‘He said we would win the match if he played with us and we did everything he told us to do’.

Text

The fifth, tying, goal came off a free kick, and here Weiser showed what he could do, because the ball sailed literally a centimeter over the wall of army boys and flew between the wooden posts right under the nose of their goalie. Elka went wild, shouting and waving her arms, and Staś did a crazy dance beside her, giving us the thumbs-up. There were only five minutes left to the end of the match, but Weiser calmed us with a gesture. He was clearly waiting for the right moment, and the right moment came. Although he played with us only that one time, we talked about his feat long afterward. Piotr, unexpectedly finding himself on the left beside Szymek, dug the ball out from under the feet of an enemy and passed to center, but passed a little too hard, and Weiser, now matter how fast he sprinted, couldn’t reach the spinning ball; he was a good half meter short of it. So he curled up, sprang, and did a somersault in midrun. When his body reached the vertical—that is, his hands practically touching the grass and his legs straight up in the air like beanpoles—at that moment he let one beanpole fly and gave the ball a mighty kick, the gently fell to the grass, and that was our sixth, victory, goal. Elka bellowed from her place, and the army boys, to the end of the match, were completely demoralized.

When time was up, and nothing could save them, the biggest and brawniest one came up to us and said, ‘You’re still a bunch of stupid little shits.’ But we were looking for Weiser, to carry him on our shoulders. He was no longer interested in us, however; it was as if he’d never really cared about the match. He’d put his trousers back on and was walking away with Elka.

Author

Trans. Michael Kandel

‘The Holy Father’s Skis’ by Jerzy Pilch (2004)

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Jerzy Pilch, 2014, photo: Andrzej Georgiew / Forum

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In the play by Jerzy Pilch – a devoted sports fan, buried in an urn cloaked in the colours of his favourite football club Cracovia – sport is the starting point for showing ‘Poles’ own portrait’. The writer depicts Granatowe Góry, a village feeding off the myth of John Paul II, who used to come there as a young man to ski. According to rumours, he is said to be planning to settle there for good after resigning from the papal office due to health issues.

Despite their scepticism regarding the ‘confidential’ information spread by the local parish priest, small-town notables start willy-nilly to prepare themselves for the new situation. They’re particularly interested in various profits that they could gain thanks to the arrival of such an eminent visitor. They also consider certain difficulties, such as how the Holy Father will react to the way of life of the inhabitants, which unfortunately deviates quite a lot from the rules preached by the head of the apostolic see.

The author consciously refers to Gogol’s The Government Inspector. However, Pilch’s satire on the mores of contemporary Poland lacks a pronounced resolution. The comedy unexpectedly transforms itself into a type of a universal ‘Let’s all love each other!’ At the end, the structure of the play is altered for the second time with a deranged speech made by one of the characters, a professor who lost his mind in the course of events. His assessment of the country’s situation, which he likens to a match with John Paul II as a lone player against the representations of global economic-military powers may be spectacular, but it’s also deuced sad. After all, it’s difficult to treat the ramblings of a madman seriously, even if said madman has got a professorship.

Originally written in Polish, translated by Anna Potoczny, Jun 2021

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