Ikona mojej matki / My Mother's Icon, Nasz Wielki Sąsiad / Our Great Neighbour and Demokrytejski szlif / Democritian Polish - each of these essays contains a personal experience that is a kind of "initiation into fate". Attempting years later to "extract the existential core" of each experience, Ryszard Przybylski, a seasoned hermeneutist and erudite, has taken it upon himself to interpret the text of his own life. In his book, Democritus of Abdera becomes a symbol of the fate of an inhabitant of our part of the world in the 20th Century - one sorely tried by historical circumstance.
Source: www.wydawnictwo-sic.com.pl
The book has been nominated for the Nike Literary Award 2010.
- Ryszard Przybylski
Uśmiech Demokryta. Un presque rien / Democritus' Smile. Un presque rien
Wydawnictwo Sic!, Warszawa 2009
135 x 205, 148 pp., hard cover
ISBN: 978-83-60457-79-5
www.wydawnictwo-sic.com.pl
"Gazeta Wyborcza" presents the books nominated for the Nike Literary Award 2010:
Memories Like Bats
Ryszard Przybylski's Uśmiech Demokryta / Democritus' Smile is an autobiographical essay written that addresses the true nature of memory.
When an Old Writer reminisces, we usually receive an apotheosis of memory - powerful, preserving faces, places, and objects at his command. Things are completely different in Ryszard Przybylski's essay Uśmiech Demokryta / Democritus' Smile. The memories appear of their own accord, uninvited, like unwelcome guests, devouring the Old Man's "priceless remnants of life". With them returns all that is unpleasant and painful. Przybylski compares them to bats "flying out of the black cave of memory in the middle of the day, to disturb current thinking".
This autobiographical novel targets the accidental, arbitrary, and autonomous nature of memory. It is "an attempt to extract their existential core", to bring order to their chaos, to fish out a few important - maybe decisive - situations, meetings, texts from the well of time. The years 1935, 1943, and 1945 are three stops intertwined in time with key historic events: the death of Piłsudski, which symbolises the end of an era and the impending political catastrophe, the tragic times of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine (Przybylski spent his childhood in Volhynia), the relocation to the Regained Territories, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The artistic and intellectual fascinations corresponding to these dates are Orthodox icons, Maurycy Mochnacki, and Democritus of Abdera.
What puzzles Przybylski about Eastern iconography is St. Joseph, who in the West is pushed beyond the horizon of the Gospel once he fulfils his role as guardian to Jesus. This theme - incompatible with Catholic orthodoxy - leads the writer to ponder disturbing religious questions on divine omnipotence and goodness. Mochnacki's writings are an initiation into the problem of Russian despotism, pointing to the distinctness of Russia's historical path and dispelling any delusions that this country can become a Western-like democracy. They also show Poland's tragic location - between Russia and the West whose belief that Russia is invincible leads it to turn a blind eye to unlawful conduct. Finally, the philosophy of Democritus - proponent of an atomistic view of the world, materialist and sceptic, but also a thinker with a sense of humour - becomes a remedy for times of historical disasters, ideological raptures, tyrannical conformism.
"Since you can think, you should accept a good life. Never let anyone harm you, but don't harm others either. Fight against injustice towards yourself and towards others. Be brave, as courage can reduce the losses of which you will have many in your lifetime. If you are cautious, you will save yourself from the arrogance that will inevitably turn you into a trivial mediocrity" - this is how Przybylski summarises his views.
The subtitle of Przybylski's book is "Un presque rien" - almost nothing. In reality, it expresses an elitist faith in the power of culture which is more like almost everything. It allows us to find our place in the chaos of existence, to understand history, ourselves and our lives.
Text by: Juliusz Kurkiewicz - wyborcza.pl, 17 July 2010.
Translated by: Joanna Dukiewicz, July 2010.