The Diary covers a whole era between the years 1962-1989; it is a long-awaited and exceptionally important book which until now has been missing in the already published collection of Mrożek.
Sławomir Mrożek at the Noir sur Blanc publishing house, Warsaw, October 1, 2009, photo: Marek Dusza
Over three thousand pages of manuscripts and eight hundred typed pages written in blood, bile, longing and anger, during troubled nights and happy days. In pen and on a typewriter. For several dozen years across more than thirty cities, more than a dozen countries and on three continents
Sławomir Mrożek's Diary" / "Dziennik covers a whole era between the years 1962-1989. It is not only an outstanding commentary and a supplement to the author's published works, but also a unique chronicle of that era. Sławomir Mrożek paints a remarkably rich and diverse picture of the events which took place during those four decades. It is at the same time a unique account of the present day seen through the eyes of this outstanding author and émigré.
Names of Polish figures famous in that time appear in the Diary: Lem, Miłosz, Jeleński, Herling-Grudziński, Błoński, Giedroyc, as well as Czapski, all of whom Mrożek met and with whom he corresponded. Witold Gombrowicz remains the main character. Mrożek's notes not only shed a new light on the relations between the author and these great personalities, they also create an insightful portrait of the bygone years. Sławomir Mrożek could very well be called a "master mémoire" and placed among other outstanding diary writers, such as Herling-Grudziński, Dąbrowska or Gombrowicz.
Excerpts from the Diary:
- October 26, 1962, Friday
I began to write this diary in September, fourteen years ago. Three years ago, in October, I burned a dozen or twenty-something volumes, each about two-hundred pages long, without regret. I lost feeling for this diary about three years before burning it, I kept it less and less frequently, and in the last years before the auto-da-fé I didn't keep it at all.
The monster had three motifs: the need to somehow find myself one-on-one with a clean sheet of paper (that was long before the debut); the need to sob in front of someone, even if it was only myself; to collect some kind of experience, read notes, opinions, etc. The three needs are a simplification, of course.
Neither were the boundaries between them clear, nor was their number final. The case was similar with the motifs for ceasing this action. The basic and the most superficial one was that I began to write professionally. Indeed, the more I published, the less I devoted myself to youthful writing. Although I did keep my diary long after I had become a "writer".
I burned several kilograms of my dear experiences, obviously fearing the future unauthorised reader. I realised that I could not save them from him after my Kraków room had been raided during my stay in America. Safes don't exist in our country, I think, and if they do I don't trust them anyway.
Still, this is not the only reason. At that time I was mostly gripped with fear of the graveyard, of who I no longer was, of the old junk. The issue whether I indeed became someone else or to what extent I had become someone else, and to what extent I remained the same, still remains open. Maybe I was ashamed of myself, wanting to deny the small yet hunchbacked ancestor, the one I was for myself. Besides, I don't want to expound on the excuses.
More or less three years after the date of the fire, which was supposed to mark the departure of my youth so neatly, and about six after the extinction of that instinct of self-complaint and talking to myself, I experience a similar impulse.
Of the three motifs mentioned before, four actually, one still remains: how to live.
It's about the bridge between what flies and what rolls - life, one could say - and career. It's about creating a connecting platform, as elsewhere and with other people it's about creating a connecting station in order to land on the Moon. I belong to the generation for which a plane appearing in the sky was a sensation. And this is why I am writing on a typewriter and not my favourite way, in pen on good-quality paper. Raw materials never got proper ratings from me. But why am I explaining myself and to whom?
- December 6, 1976
Yesterday, for instance, was crazy, wholly spent on a new idea: to buy a new car. As usual it is not about the car but about delusions. In an armchair, with a pipe: it should be a 2.7 litre sports Peugeot or Fiat 1800 GLS. Sweating, running around Champs-Élysées and car showrooms, new pipes and new delusions. Rubbish.
- March 2, 1977
I bought a car yesterday, while walking down Champs-Élysées. I'm exaggerating but not by much. Yes, after exactly twenty years I returned to that same place (maybe a 50-metre difference between the Peugeot showroom and that display on the same side of the Avenue where I once looked at the miniature Vespa car, which no longer exists and neither does the display). I walked in and bought a Peugeot TI with leather seats, beige colour métallisé, almost 2 litres capacity, 173 km/h maximum speed; I paid almost 40.000 F. I was ignored at first because of my awkward mumbling, then I received exaggerated bows, as only a madman or a sheik can buy this way. They don't know there is a third option: me.
I will be picking up the car in an hour.
- March 2, 1977
I left for Nanterre in mid-sentence to pick up my car. Three men in a car on their way to Nanterre, three grooms going for a wedding with the brides: each one getting a new car. Plus the driver, the Peugeot representative, dressed in a cardigan, grey-haired. Something of a pimp and of Mephisto, with indifference, friendliness and tact even, all professional. And the three shuddering. Their emotion (I am one of them) shamefully contained, and oh how deep it is. No woman could purchase a car like that. (Car: authority, speed, power, hunters, caves). I am one of them.
- March 15, 1977
My eternal pipe and coffee, the morning table my bedrock, I measure the future and past from there. Then like a withered bug I drop and lay bare.
A letter from Ms. Ela. She confirms that by getting rid of the old car I am protecting myself from many troubles, and the new car will be much more fortuitous. I cling to that assurance as if it were a small green twig.
I have one goal: on March 23 I want to find myself on the road in my new car, which can run up to 173 km per hour. The grudge of nineteen years, during which I was constantly passed by better cars, is behind me. Nineteen years of explaining to myself that it doesn't matter at all and that I am perfectly happy in the car I own: modest, poor, but nice nonetheless.
Nineteen years of pretending that I don't care about it, that I don't mind, and that I am above and beyond it. I want to get rid of this complex in a week.
Right now I care for nothing else, nothing else tempts me, nothing else amuses me. Tough luck.
- February 5, 1978
It looks as though there is going to be a flood; I can already sea the ships and boats on the Seine from my windows; you can see them higher than the roofs of six-storey buildings. I am worried about my car, my dear car which might get destroyed in the flood. This is the right of egotism and it can't be helped. All other consequences of the flood come to my mind only later.
- September 15, 1964
One time I really wanted to smoke the pipe. Next to the window, sit on the balcony, cross my legs, stare into the space when it is just starting to grow dark, let out a mighty smoke, and so on. I was on my way to not resisting this temptation when I thought about changing something in the stage set, take off my pants, sit down with my back to the window instead of facing it. And suddenly it turned out that I didn't feel like smoking the pipe anymore, that I only want to sleep and nothing more. What does this imply?
First of all, that the willingness to smoke the pipe is for the most not part a result of the need of the body - which is already used to nicotine - but the habit of some sort of ritual gesture which, as any other ritual, stabilises actions and through this has a soothing effect on the state of consciousness; all these known applied psychology stories, I'd even say: homeopathic psychology.
Secondly, we are ruled by the situation, by the costume, by the stage set. If we only manage to destroy this situation, either literally or mentally, we are saved from it, and what looked like necessity turns out to be mere circumstance.
Source: Wydawnictwo Literackie
