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Tales of Galicia
Seemingly a set of prose ballads about the southeastern tip of Poland, Tales of Galicia brilliantly blurs the line between the short-story genre and the novel, while giving a vivid, poetic portrait of an imaginary village that was once part of a vibrant collective farm system. It is a part of Poland that — once inhabited by Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews — suddenly became homogenous after the war. Those who came to live in this region formed their own peculiar culture that lacked any sort of historical connection to what had preceded it. In the early 1990s state farm subsidies were abolished as Poland moved to rapidly implement political and economic reform. The village became depressed, its inhabitants largely unemployed and spending most of their time drinking in the pub. But rather than dark, naturalistic dirge, Stasiuk exhibits a Hrabalian flare for language and description that turns the banality and drudgery of these lives into poetry, with a final redemption scene that is at once comical, moving, and starkly beautiful.
138 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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1132 people want to read
About the author
Andrzej Stasiuk
65 books314 followersAndrzej Stasiuk is one of the most successful and internationally acclaimed contemporary Polish writers, journalists and literary critics. He is best known for his travel literature and essays that describe the reality of Eastern Europe and its relationship with the West.
After being dismissed from secondary school, Stasiuk dropped out also from a vocational school and drifted aimlessly, became active in the Polish pacifist movement and spent one and a half years in prison for deserting the army - as legend has it, in a tank. His experiences in prison provided him with the material for the stories in his literary debut in 1992. Titled Mury Hebronu ("The Walls of Hebron"), it instantly established him as a premier literary talent. After a collection of poems Wiersze miłosne i nie, 1994 ("Love and non-love poems"), Stasiuk's bestselling first full-length novel Biały kruk (English translation as "White Raven" in 2000) appeared in 1995 and consolidated his position among the most successful authors in post-communist Poland.
Long before his literary breakthrough, in 1986, Stasiuk had left his native Warsaw and withdrew to the seclusion of the small hamlet of Czarne in the Beskids, a secluded part of the Carpathian mountain range in the south of Poland. Outside writing, he spends his time breeding sheep. Together with his wife, he also runs his own tiny but, by now, prestigious publishing business Wydawnictwo Czarne, named after its seat. Apart from his own books, Czarne also publishes other East European authors. Czarne also re-published works by the émigré Polish author Zygmunt Haupt, thus initiating Haupt's rediscovery in Poland.
While White Raven had a straight adventure plot, Stasiuk's subsequent writing has become increasingly impressionistic and concentrated on atmospheric descriptions of his adopted mental home, the provincial south-east of Poland and Europe, and the lives of its inhabitants. Opowieści Galicyjskie ("Tales of Galicia"), one of several works available in English (among the others are "White Raven", "Nine", "Dukla," "Fado," and "On the Road to Babadag") conveys a good impression of the specific style developed by Stasiuk. A similar text is Dukla (1997), named after a small town near his home. Dukla achieved Stasiuk's breakthrough in Germany and helped built him the most appreciative reader-base outside of Poland, although a number of Stasiuk's books have been translated into several other languages.
After being dismissed from secondary school, Stasiuk dropped out also from a vocational school and drifted aimlessly, became active in the Polish pacifist movement and spent one and a half years in prison for deserting the army - as legend has it, in a tank. His experiences in prison provided him with the material for the stories in his literary debut in 1992. Titled Mury Hebronu ("The Walls of Hebron"), it instantly established him as a premier literary talent. After a collection of poems Wiersze miłosne i nie, 1994 ("Love and non-love poems"), Stasiuk's bestselling first full-length novel Biały kruk (English translation as "White Raven" in 2000) appeared in 1995 and consolidated his position among the most successful authors in post-communist Poland.
Long before his literary breakthrough, in 1986, Stasiuk had left his native Warsaw and withdrew to the seclusion of the small hamlet of Czarne in the Beskids, a secluded part of the Carpathian mountain range in the south of Poland. Outside writing, he spends his time breeding sheep. Together with his wife, he also runs his own tiny but, by now, prestigious publishing business Wydawnictwo Czarne, named after its seat. Apart from his own books, Czarne also publishes other East European authors. Czarne also re-published works by the émigré Polish author Zygmunt Haupt, thus initiating Haupt's rediscovery in Poland.
While White Raven had a straight adventure plot, Stasiuk's subsequent writing has become increasingly impressionistic and concentrated on atmospheric descriptions of his adopted mental home, the provincial south-east of Poland and Europe, and the lives of its inhabitants. Opowieści Galicyjskie ("Tales of Galicia"), one of several works available in English (among the others are "White Raven", "Nine", "Dukla," "Fado," and "On the Road to Babadag") conveys a good impression of the specific style developed by Stasiuk. A similar text is Dukla (1997), named after a small town near his home. Dukla achieved Stasiuk's breakthrough in Germany and helped built him the most appreciative reader-base outside of Poland, although a number of Stasiuk's books have been translated into several other languages.
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February 16, 2017
Andrzej Stasiuk, leaving to others charms and glamour of all Londons, Romes or Parises, is a bard of the other Europe, this minor and poorer one, with its provincial towns, petrified silence and bygone glory. Instead of popular places he chooses small corners of the world which modernness never fully touched and where time seems to stop in some other era.
Stasiuk likes to roam the dusty roads and impenetrable off-roads; he can enthuse about play of lights, fogbound mountains and cavernous darkness falling over the earth; he likes to watching people, but not with the curiosity of a scientist observing a savage, not condescending superiority of someone from a big city, not with greed of the conqueror but with this ancient attitude that makes wanderers to sit by the fire and listen to the local legends. His sensitivity to the surrounding world can not be overestimated and his admiration for the beauty of the landscape infects the reader.
Galicia from Stasiuk‘s writing feels like a place beyond the time, like a country forgotten by God and civilization. Small villages or maybe hamlets with ruined habitations and neglected farmyards, where even crows would turn around and fly back where they came from and people, marked with poverty, drunkenness and helplessness, more or less trying to deal with post communist reality, form a new tribe after all, a people who hadn’t been reached by any good news or apostle Paul . Life takes its unchangeable course and concentrates around invariable landmarks church and shop, pub and bus stop.
This collection could easily be read in one evening but instead I preferred to dose myself the pleasure of staying in the Galician little town, in a place where the earth and the sky seem to be stitched with invisible thread; to know the locals and experience that something what makes a color and spirit of this land.
Look at Józek, as innocent as an angel, like a child, like a creature from the time when God had only begun to contemplate the notion of sin ; he often sleeps in places when sleep just found him and when he goes off the pub does not part with a knife since one can not know everyone there. Here is Władek, whose soul seems to be too light to help him in the fight with heavy matter. And there again is Janek, looking like a forest kobold with dark, nomadic essences flowing under his skin, every year leaving behind house and village, that turbulent kingdom of women and children to get lost in the woods for some months. There is Kościejny, pallid, anguished creature who killed his wife’s lover and froze to death some years later to wander now about and be visible only to nonbeliever policeman. And there ...
Tale spins lazily like a smoke over autumn fields leaving in your nostrils scent of wind and damp soil, conjuring images of green pastures, distant hills and an old Greek church which used to stay there. Tales of Galicia is a small collection of miniatures where lyricism naturally interweaves with brutality. It's beautiful evocation of people and places, meditation on nature of time and memory because as writer said himself time and memory were his homeland.
June 20, 2024
Der Erzählband "Galizische Geschichten" von Andrzej Stasiuk stammt aus dem Jahr 1995. In 15 Geschichten wird das Leben in Polen an der Grenze zur Slowakei beschrieben. Im Zentrum steht die Welt der Arbeiter in der Landwirtschaft nach dem Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus.
Alles neigt "ganz natürlich zum Verfall". "Die Häuser sind vom Gebrüll der Kinder erfüllt. Es ist noch kein Hungergeschrei, aber keiner weiß, was die Zukunft bringen wird." Die Kneipe ist der Mittelpunkt der Männer, Ort der "mystischen Kontemplation" und zugleich "stinkiges Fegefeuer". Der Traktor, ihr wichtigstes Arbeitsgerät, ist immer am Rande des Zusammenbruchs. Die LPG ist bereits zusammengebrochen. Nur eine der 15 Geschichten beschreibt einen wirtschaftlichen Aufstieg. In zwei Geschichten gibt es weibliche Protagonistinnen. Ansonsten ist es eine Männerwelt, die Stasiuk hier schildert.
Die Geschichten beschreiben alle eine spezifische Welt. Heute würde man das Buch vermutlich als "Roman in Geschichten" bewerben, da sich Romane in Deutschland besser verkaufen. Ganz falsch wäre das nicht. Die Konzentration auf eine spezifische Welt und das Auftreten einiger Charaktere in mehreren Geschichten würden dieses rechtfertigen.
Obwohl das hier beschriebene Leben trostlos und monoton ist, habe ich die Geschichten gerne gelesen. Nach der Bewertung der einzelnen Geschichten (Details s.u.) komme ich auf einen Schnitt von 3,9 Sternen.
1. Józek ****
2. Władek ****
3. Kruk, der Schmied ****
4. Janek *****
5. Der Ort ***
6. Kościejny ****
7. Lewandowski ***
8. Die Kneipe ****
9. Die Oma ****
10. Der rotblonde Feldwebel ****
11. Die Nacht ****
12. Maryśka *****
13. Die Beichte ***
14. Die zweite Nacht ****
15. Ende ***
Alles neigt "ganz natürlich zum Verfall". "Die Häuser sind vom Gebrüll der Kinder erfüllt. Es ist noch kein Hungergeschrei, aber keiner weiß, was die Zukunft bringen wird." Die Kneipe ist der Mittelpunkt der Männer, Ort der "mystischen Kontemplation" und zugleich "stinkiges Fegefeuer". Der Traktor, ihr wichtigstes Arbeitsgerät, ist immer am Rande des Zusammenbruchs. Die LPG ist bereits zusammengebrochen. Nur eine der 15 Geschichten beschreibt einen wirtschaftlichen Aufstieg. In zwei Geschichten gibt es weibliche Protagonistinnen. Ansonsten ist es eine Männerwelt, die Stasiuk hier schildert.
Die Geschichten beschreiben alle eine spezifische Welt. Heute würde man das Buch vermutlich als "Roman in Geschichten" bewerben, da sich Romane in Deutschland besser verkaufen. Ganz falsch wäre das nicht. Die Konzentration auf eine spezifische Welt und das Auftreten einiger Charaktere in mehreren Geschichten würden dieses rechtfertigen.
Obwohl das hier beschriebene Leben trostlos und monoton ist, habe ich die Geschichten gerne gelesen. Nach der Bewertung der einzelnen Geschichten (Details s.u.) komme ich auf einen Schnitt von 3,9 Sternen.
1. Józek ****
2. Władek ****
3. Kruk, der Schmied ****
4. Janek *****
5. Der Ort ***
6. Kościejny ****
7. Lewandowski ***
8. Die Kneipe ****
9. Die Oma ****
10. Der rotblonde Feldwebel ****
11. Die Nacht ****
12. Maryśka *****
13. Die Beichte ***
14. Die zweite Nacht ****
15. Ende ***
December 10, 2015
[4.5] The darker side of the beautiful nature-writing and psychogeography of Dukla, perhaps. A slightly earlier book set in Stasiuk's adopted home in the Beskid mountains near the Polish-Slovak border, where Dukla concentrated on place, Tales of Galicia is about people. Before writing about the ethereal sense of place two years later, he based this novella on the lives of locals, people with tougher, less mobile existences than his own. This was the mid-1990s after the collapse of Communist collective farming - probably near rock-bottom for villages like these, before capitalism and tourism improved prospects again. (There are some gorgeous recent photographs of the area, here, the title a pun on the original Polish title of this book).
I'd been interested in this book for a long time; it's been out of print for years and the second hand price has now shot up to £100. Kicking myself for not getting it when it was nearer £20, I'd accepted I may never read it. Then after reading Agnieszka's post, I was browsing the publisher's website and idly clicked the link to their official Scribd page: and there was Tales of Galicia as a free PDF download. (I'm a subscriber on Scribd, but it looks like you can get this PDF without subscribing to the main ebook service.)
I loved Tales of Galicia in much the same way as I loved Dukla, though when the narrative was in close third-person, I wasn't always sure the intense, metaphysical style rang true to some villagers' personalities. With some it does, whilst with some characters Stasiuk uses simpler phrasing; but others I imagined them having the same ideas in different words, or feeling these things almost wordlessly. The kneejerk contemporary reaction might be to call the characterisation essentialist or romanticised - an author from the city - albeit a self-taught author without a degree - moves to a rural area and sees people as having simple, hard lives only partly touched by technology. Yet these places were certainly more isolated and less mechanised than West European rural areas at the same time; and it would be impossible to judge without knowing them (and the period) for oneself...I get the feeling he's pretty accurate, except, crucially, humour is almost absent. But I would love to know the opinions of people who grew up in villages like this one.
There was a phrase either in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, or the Penguin introduction - a quote I spent hours trying to find again in my teens - that succinctly and perfectly described something about remote places that seem always to have been as they are, for good and bad. In some ways beautiful, others awful. The village in Tales of Galicia is like that, a beautiful place with little of the noise of city life, more or less close-knit, but but with undercurrents of violence and abuse, more recent norms more established in cities not having spread to somewhere so isolated, where no-one can hear you scream.
It was a village like any other. A snaking three-kilometer chain of buildings scattering, splitting off, and then clustering densely together again. The concrete, wood, sagging roofs, relics of fences, and iron balustrades produced a fallen cake of poverty and a yearning for the world as seen on tv. The asphalt road barely grazed the outskirts of the area of densest settlement, barely brushed against it. Which was probably all for the best, since kids and dogs had taken possession of the pot-holed gravel road that served as the main artery.
his fertility was of almost biblical proportions, although not too much out of the ordinary around here.
About the guy who had been sleeping with his own daughter for years, and how people had already gotten used to it and forgotten about it. He told me who had bought himself a fourteen-year-old girl for money and was waiting for the girl to grow up so he could marry her and for now he was just keeping her in the house for work of one kind or another.
The fall of communism has allowed that yearning for the world as seen on TV to manifest physically; now everything is changing so much now that you wouldn’t recognize it a week later. As the afterword says, The action of the book takes place a few years after 1989, and this peripheral setting offers a prime vantage point from which to view the effects of transition spreading out from the center.
In the pub they are all ears listening to Edek’s niuyorks, grinpoynts, djobs, blaks and kadylaks
the waitress appeared from behind a curtain of colorful plastic strips in makeup, jewelry and stretch pants covered with clusters of grape vines, her gold earrings in a duet with the tape player, just like the dreamily yawning, final lazy aamoorree.
The girl looked at his broad shoulders in a parrot-green American Kick Boxer jacket, at his rear end in purple Gladiator sweat pants, at his whole figure, which iridesced and phosphoresced from his feet on up to his lemon-colored Yellowstone cap.
Whilst Stasiuk has an eye for the metaphysical and for the beauty of nature, I think he realises that what most middle-class outsiders regard as tackiness is also an essential part of working-class and rural life: surely it comes from the same impulse which has always led people to innovate regardless of poverty or of not having all the same information sources as "tastemakers". (Around the same time I was reading this book, I browsed a website for something I'd regard as pretty much a dream holiday if I were fit & healthy - working holidays on traditionally run E. European farms - and noticed here an aesthetic criterion for traditional, touristique villages. Essentialist, yet likely also sensible and realistic in order to keep the greatest number of customers happy and therefore to break even: Unfortunately and relatively counterintuitively for those not closely acquainted to the Romanian village situation, our criteria are not easy to meet, mainly because of a recent invasion of kitsch in rural areas.)
Describing the new consumerist novelties, Stasiuk's writing edged towards the pseudishly earnest. I'm reminded of a friend's opinion that English is worse-suited to poetic seriousness than continental languages, and that may be the problem here. Although I like the underlying intention, blending old religious fervour with the idolisation of these new products, I think it could do with a dash of humorous exaggeration or irony:
Blue Ocean Deodorant — this is the color of the Mother of God, of the firmament, and like white it represents purity. Red — Fort Moka Desert — this is the color of the Holy Ghost which kindles the flames of love and bursts forth as tongues of flame. It is also the color of Christ’s Passion, of the cross and of all those travelers who spilled blood on the road to faith. Black — John Players Stuyvesant — this is death, mourning, grief and conciliation but also contempt for the world, repudiation and darkness which only divine light can dispel.
With Stasiuk's writing, it's easy to concentrate on description because of its richness, yet it's characters who structure this novella. Having a chapter per person means it's also been described as a short story collection - although it's more cohesive than that suggests. I found it a more natural way of getting to know a place than standard narratives: as you would often in a new place, you meet people one by one, observe what is around at the time, gradually learn more about that person and aspects of life to which they're connected. Some of these characters are rather similar: most are tough working-class men hewn from the same stone, though a few have distinctive jobs or histories. 'Grandma' in some ways is a storybook babushka, yet her story becomes a little more complex and fleshed-out; the other woman who has her own chapter would have to be described as a force of nature, someone perhaps too beautiful and strange to do well in such a place, an archetype whose name I don't know; yet she and those who fit in better are alike in having substantial tragedy attached.
It is the ancient and transcendent rather than the modern on which Stasiuk is most enchanting, and which makes this book beautiful alongside the hardships it details, reflecting a harsh life in a lovely landscape:
rooted in some primordial time when nouns, verbs and adjectives were firmly bound to objects, events and attributes, in a time when language was only a mirror reflection of the world
Janek lived according to the clock of the sun, whose adaptability was more compatible with a nature immersed in the cosmos.
When the black windows paled to blue and the light of dawn drew out their transparency and grime, the men would get up, one waking up the other, muttering the same curses their fathers had used.
when they woke up on all of the dawns that had been allotted to them.
Or on landscape: Winter ends late here. There are blizzards even in April, and the nights are frosty. The arrival of spring is preceded by a muddy season when colors run together. White struggles with black, with grayness, with the first green. The slopes and valleys continually change their appearance.
They all emerged from winter white and to it they returned, as if December actually had the power to abolish time. On a snowy night, when the fluorescent lights glowed with a quiet hum, it always looked like the start of eternity. [I love reading that in December; it seems unusual to love being in the burrow of all this darkness, a longed for yet involuntary pause in self and world regardless of what noisy customs have been laid on top - I suppose I have something of the physical stasis associated with winter SAD, whilst tending not to sadness but to an almost stubborn contentment and entrenchment, unlike the dissatisfied restlessness of lighter times of the year. In Stasiuk, I see someone else understands it and words it so beautifully, elucidating ideas I had never verbalised.]
His rural environment is clearly not the pretty chocolate-box village, and there was this visceral reminder of how draughty daily life at home in little wooden houses would have been - still will be somewhere - which if I ever knew it before, I'd forgotten: Its whistlings penetrated right through Grandma’s shack, swept the dust from the floor, whipped the gray, braided straw ropes up the chimney and flung them into the sky,
In two or three [Nordic & Baltic] novels & old stories of rural life I've read over the past couple of years, people have been reluctant to slaughter their own livestock, because they were too attached to the animals, and a neighbour had to do it instead. (Something which contemporary urban people perhaps don't realise, assuming that they were emotionally cold, or knowing only about TV chefs who have raised and slaughtered their own livestock.) The same situation crops up again here: a man gets a fellow villager to do slaughtering, and the one doing the killing makes the additional more detached point: The most important thing is that the little beast doesn’t get scared. Makes a bad job of it, and the meat’s no good. Stinks of fear. It’s worst with a pig. You can’t fool a pig, it’s smart.
There is an excellent afterword by the translator (from 2003), which among other things, gives national context to the book, and mentions what has been lost in translation.
Political, social and economic changes set in motion in 1989 created a climate much more open to new and experimental literary voices, and Stasiuk, along with his contemporaries (among them Stefan Chwin, Natasza Goerke, Paweł Huelle, Jerzy Pilch, Olga Tokarczuk, and Magdalena Tulli), responded by creating a literature that engaged both Poland’s past and recent Western literary, cultural and critical preoccupations. Among other things, the new Polish prose is characterized by a strong centrifugal tendency and a corresponding rootedness in so-called “little homelands.”... Stasiuk’s Beskid Mountains, the Gdańsk of Huelle and Chwin, the Silesia of Pilch and Tokarczuk — all are essentially as far away from Warsaw as one can be without crossing the border...
A strong inclination toward generic experimentation is also characteristic, manifesting itself, for example, in Goerke’s rejection of conventional, realistic, cause-and-effect narrative structure; in Tokarczuk’s mosaics of voices and styles; and in Stasiuk’s continual interrogation of canonical textual boundaries.
As I've mentioned, Stasiuk lives near the Slovak border - and borders, boundaries and their fluidity are a common theme in his writing:
“fissure in existence,” where boundaries dissolve between the natural and the supernatural, and where passage can be made from one side to another... Kosciejny [who becomes a ghost] becomes the embodiment (and disembodiment) of the tension between matter and spirit that lies at the core of Stasiuk’s metaphysics. Other significant vehicles for expressing this tension include television, dreams, alcohol, forces of nature, and time, all of which have the power to suspend Stasiuk’s characters for at least a moment over the fissure in existence that makes death, as well as life, less certain.
The narrator is not only semi-autobiographical, but he simultaneously assumes two roles: he is an outsider to the villagers, but a local to tourists. In constructing the book’s narrative trajectory, Stasiuk deliberately plays with the limits between fallibility and omniscience, several times surrendering the narrative (to a greater or lesser degree) to another persona altogether...
Not having a degree, having been in prison, preferring to live hundreds of miles from urban literary centres - yet also being one of Poland's most respected authors - he seems like a figure who is always both and neither: establishment and outsider.
The liminality of his adopted home is also cultural: the region as a centuries-old palimpsest created by a succession of migrating (or invading) cultures. A prominent theme is the cyclical efflorescence and decay of a series of belief systems brought from over the border: the migrant Lemko population brought their own Greek Catholic, or Uniate, church observing the rites of Eastern Orthodoxy but looking to the Pope in Rome). Stasiuk had looked after an old wooden Greek Catholic church in a forest, which was later taken down and transported piece by piece to a museum. Its site is also a kind of ghost, present and absent at once.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this commentary was to learn how the original language facilitates this sense of fading in and out of time and of crossing and hovering around borders:
English verbs do not have the same nuanced possibilities of motion, quantity, and force offered by Polish affixes. Verb tense shifts back and forth easily in the original — this is allowable, even neutral in Polish, but Stasiuk knowingly exploits its potential to efface boundaries between past, present, and future. The translator is faced with the task of marking this purposefully constructed synchronicity without offending the sensibilities of readers accustomed to narratives in a uniformly past tense.
Stasiuk makes use of several different language registers simultaneously, and this signals both his narrator’s otherness and his gradually acquired status as local, but this idiom is exceedingly difficult to render in a translation.
The translator was still studying at the time she worked on this book; I wondered if someone more experienced and more avant-garde might have managed to transpose this tense-play more effectively into English - that surely would have been a full-five-star book. Still, the overall tone in the prose is very similar to that in the translation of Dukla by Bill Johnson, considered one of the most accomplished Polish-English literary translators - and quotes from that captured the feel of Stasiuk's writing for a GR friend who's a native Polish speaker - so something substantial must be right here.
I'd been interested in this book for a long time; it's been out of print for years and the second hand price has now shot up to £100. Kicking myself for not getting it when it was nearer £20, I'd accepted I may never read it. Then after reading Agnieszka's post, I was browsing the publisher's website and idly clicked the link to their official Scribd page: and there was Tales of Galicia as a free PDF download. (I'm a subscriber on Scribd, but it looks like you can get this PDF without subscribing to the main ebook service.)
I loved Tales of Galicia in much the same way as I loved Dukla, though when the narrative was in close third-person, I wasn't always sure the intense, metaphysical style rang true to some villagers' personalities. With some it does, whilst with some characters Stasiuk uses simpler phrasing; but others I imagined them having the same ideas in different words, or feeling these things almost wordlessly. The kneejerk contemporary reaction might be to call the characterisation essentialist or romanticised - an author from the city - albeit a self-taught author without a degree - moves to a rural area and sees people as having simple, hard lives only partly touched by technology. Yet these places were certainly more isolated and less mechanised than West European rural areas at the same time; and it would be impossible to judge without knowing them (and the period) for oneself...I get the feeling he's pretty accurate, except, crucially, humour is almost absent. But I would love to know the opinions of people who grew up in villages like this one.
There was a phrase either in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, or the Penguin introduction - a quote I spent hours trying to find again in my teens - that succinctly and perfectly described something about remote places that seem always to have been as they are, for good and bad. In some ways beautiful, others awful. The village in Tales of Galicia is like that, a beautiful place with little of the noise of city life, more or less close-knit, but but with undercurrents of violence and abuse, more recent norms more established in cities not having spread to somewhere so isolated, where no-one can hear you scream.
It was a village like any other. A snaking three-kilometer chain of buildings scattering, splitting off, and then clustering densely together again. The concrete, wood, sagging roofs, relics of fences, and iron balustrades produced a fallen cake of poverty and a yearning for the world as seen on tv. The asphalt road barely grazed the outskirts of the area of densest settlement, barely brushed against it. Which was probably all for the best, since kids and dogs had taken possession of the pot-holed gravel road that served as the main artery.
his fertility was of almost biblical proportions, although not too much out of the ordinary around here.
About the guy who had been sleeping with his own daughter for years, and how people had already gotten used to it and forgotten about it. He told me who had bought himself a fourteen-year-old girl for money and was waiting for the girl to grow up so he could marry her and for now he was just keeping her in the house for work of one kind or another.
The fall of communism has allowed that yearning for the world as seen on TV to manifest physically; now everything is changing so much now that you wouldn’t recognize it a week later. As the afterword says, The action of the book takes place a few years after 1989, and this peripheral setting offers a prime vantage point from which to view the effects of transition spreading out from the center.
In the pub they are all ears listening to Edek’s niuyorks, grinpoynts, djobs, blaks and kadylaks
the waitress appeared from behind a curtain of colorful plastic strips in makeup, jewelry and stretch pants covered with clusters of grape vines, her gold earrings in a duet with the tape player, just like the dreamily yawning, final lazy aamoorree.
The girl looked at his broad shoulders in a parrot-green American Kick Boxer jacket, at his rear end in purple Gladiator sweat pants, at his whole figure, which iridesced and phosphoresced from his feet on up to his lemon-colored Yellowstone cap.
Whilst Stasiuk has an eye for the metaphysical and for the beauty of nature, I think he realises that what most middle-class outsiders regard as tackiness is also an essential part of working-class and rural life: surely it comes from the same impulse which has always led people to innovate regardless of poverty or of not having all the same information sources as "tastemakers". (Around the same time I was reading this book, I browsed a website for something I'd regard as pretty much a dream holiday if I were fit & healthy - working holidays on traditionally run E. European farms - and noticed here an aesthetic criterion for traditional, touristique villages. Essentialist, yet likely also sensible and realistic in order to keep the greatest number of customers happy and therefore to break even: Unfortunately and relatively counterintuitively for those not closely acquainted to the Romanian village situation, our criteria are not easy to meet, mainly because of a recent invasion of kitsch in rural areas.)
Describing the new consumerist novelties, Stasiuk's writing edged towards the pseudishly earnest. I'm reminded of a friend's opinion that English is worse-suited to poetic seriousness than continental languages, and that may be the problem here. Although I like the underlying intention, blending old religious fervour with the idolisation of these new products, I think it could do with a dash of humorous exaggeration or irony:
Blue Ocean Deodorant — this is the color of the Mother of God, of the firmament, and like white it represents purity. Red — Fort Moka Desert — this is the color of the Holy Ghost which kindles the flames of love and bursts forth as tongues of flame. It is also the color of Christ’s Passion, of the cross and of all those travelers who spilled blood on the road to faith. Black — John Players Stuyvesant — this is death, mourning, grief and conciliation but also contempt for the world, repudiation and darkness which only divine light can dispel.
With Stasiuk's writing, it's easy to concentrate on description because of its richness, yet it's characters who structure this novella. Having a chapter per person means it's also been described as a short story collection - although it's more cohesive than that suggests. I found it a more natural way of getting to know a place than standard narratives: as you would often in a new place, you meet people one by one, observe what is around at the time, gradually learn more about that person and aspects of life to which they're connected. Some of these characters are rather similar: most are tough working-class men hewn from the same stone, though a few have distinctive jobs or histories. 'Grandma' in some ways is a storybook babushka, yet her story becomes a little more complex and fleshed-out; the other woman who has her own chapter would have to be described as a force of nature, someone perhaps too beautiful and strange to do well in such a place, an archetype whose name I don't know; yet she and those who fit in better are alike in having substantial tragedy attached.
It is the ancient and transcendent rather than the modern on which Stasiuk is most enchanting, and which makes this book beautiful alongside the hardships it details, reflecting a harsh life in a lovely landscape:
rooted in some primordial time when nouns, verbs and adjectives were firmly bound to objects, events and attributes, in a time when language was only a mirror reflection of the world
Janek lived according to the clock of the sun, whose adaptability was more compatible with a nature immersed in the cosmos.
When the black windows paled to blue and the light of dawn drew out their transparency and grime, the men would get up, one waking up the other, muttering the same curses their fathers had used.
when they woke up on all of the dawns that had been allotted to them.
Or on landscape: Winter ends late here. There are blizzards even in April, and the nights are frosty. The arrival of spring is preceded by a muddy season when colors run together. White struggles with black, with grayness, with the first green. The slopes and valleys continually change their appearance.
They all emerged from winter white and to it they returned, as if December actually had the power to abolish time. On a snowy night, when the fluorescent lights glowed with a quiet hum, it always looked like the start of eternity. [I love reading that in December; it seems unusual to love being in the burrow of all this darkness, a longed for yet involuntary pause in self and world regardless of what noisy customs have been laid on top - I suppose I have something of the physical stasis associated with winter SAD, whilst tending not to sadness but to an almost stubborn contentment and entrenchment, unlike the dissatisfied restlessness of lighter times of the year. In Stasiuk, I see someone else understands it and words it so beautifully, elucidating ideas I had never verbalised.]
His rural environment is clearly not the pretty chocolate-box village, and there was this visceral reminder of how draughty daily life at home in little wooden houses would have been - still will be somewhere - which if I ever knew it before, I'd forgotten: Its whistlings penetrated right through Grandma’s shack, swept the dust from the floor, whipped the gray, braided straw ropes up the chimney and flung them into the sky,
In two or three [Nordic & Baltic] novels & old stories of rural life I've read over the past couple of years, people have been reluctant to slaughter their own livestock, because they were too attached to the animals, and a neighbour had to do it instead. (Something which contemporary urban people perhaps don't realise, assuming that they were emotionally cold, or knowing only about TV chefs who have raised and slaughtered their own livestock.) The same situation crops up again here: a man gets a fellow villager to do slaughtering, and the one doing the killing makes the additional more detached point: The most important thing is that the little beast doesn’t get scared. Makes a bad job of it, and the meat’s no good. Stinks of fear. It’s worst with a pig. You can’t fool a pig, it’s smart.
There is an excellent afterword by the translator (from 2003), which among other things, gives national context to the book, and mentions what has been lost in translation.
Political, social and economic changes set in motion in 1989 created a climate much more open to new and experimental literary voices, and Stasiuk, along with his contemporaries (among them Stefan Chwin, Natasza Goerke, Paweł Huelle, Jerzy Pilch, Olga Tokarczuk, and Magdalena Tulli), responded by creating a literature that engaged both Poland’s past and recent Western literary, cultural and critical preoccupations. Among other things, the new Polish prose is characterized by a strong centrifugal tendency and a corresponding rootedness in so-called “little homelands.”... Stasiuk’s Beskid Mountains, the Gdańsk of Huelle and Chwin, the Silesia of Pilch and Tokarczuk — all are essentially as far away from Warsaw as one can be without crossing the border...
A strong inclination toward generic experimentation is also characteristic, manifesting itself, for example, in Goerke’s rejection of conventional, realistic, cause-and-effect narrative structure; in Tokarczuk’s mosaics of voices and styles; and in Stasiuk’s continual interrogation of canonical textual boundaries.
As I've mentioned, Stasiuk lives near the Slovak border - and borders, boundaries and their fluidity are a common theme in his writing:
“fissure in existence,” where boundaries dissolve between the natural and the supernatural, and where passage can be made from one side to another... Kosciejny [who becomes a ghost] becomes the embodiment (and disembodiment) of the tension between matter and spirit that lies at the core of Stasiuk’s metaphysics. Other significant vehicles for expressing this tension include television, dreams, alcohol, forces of nature, and time, all of which have the power to suspend Stasiuk’s characters for at least a moment over the fissure in existence that makes death, as well as life, less certain.
The narrator is not only semi-autobiographical, but he simultaneously assumes two roles: he is an outsider to the villagers, but a local to tourists. In constructing the book’s narrative trajectory, Stasiuk deliberately plays with the limits between fallibility and omniscience, several times surrendering the narrative (to a greater or lesser degree) to another persona altogether...
Not having a degree, having been in prison, preferring to live hundreds of miles from urban literary centres - yet also being one of Poland's most respected authors - he seems like a figure who is always both and neither: establishment and outsider.
The liminality of his adopted home is also cultural: the region as a centuries-old palimpsest created by a succession of migrating (or invading) cultures. A prominent theme is the cyclical efflorescence and decay of a series of belief systems brought from over the border: the migrant Lemko population brought their own Greek Catholic, or Uniate, church observing the rites of Eastern Orthodoxy but looking to the Pope in Rome). Stasiuk had looked after an old wooden Greek Catholic church in a forest, which was later taken down and transported piece by piece to a museum. Its site is also a kind of ghost, present and absent at once.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this commentary was to learn how the original language facilitates this sense of fading in and out of time and of crossing and hovering around borders:
English verbs do not have the same nuanced possibilities of motion, quantity, and force offered by Polish affixes. Verb tense shifts back and forth easily in the original — this is allowable, even neutral in Polish, but Stasiuk knowingly exploits its potential to efface boundaries between past, present, and future. The translator is faced with the task of marking this purposefully constructed synchronicity without offending the sensibilities of readers accustomed to narratives in a uniformly past tense.
Stasiuk makes use of several different language registers simultaneously, and this signals both his narrator’s otherness and his gradually acquired status as local, but this idiom is exceedingly difficult to render in a translation.
The translator was still studying at the time she worked on this book; I wondered if someone more experienced and more avant-garde might have managed to transpose this tense-play more effectively into English - that surely would have been a full-five-star book. Still, the overall tone in the prose is very similar to that in the translation of Dukla by Bill Johnson, considered one of the most accomplished Polish-English literary translators - and quotes from that captured the feel of Stasiuk's writing for a GR friend who's a native Polish speaker - so something substantial must be right here.
February 12, 2015
* 12.02.
Изцяло я прочетох и втория път, не само оттук-оттам. Мислех да е след няколко месеца, но не можах да прибера книгата в библиотеката. Ами ако съм изпуснала нещо подобно:
„…очите му бяха покрити с емайла на лудостта, която се крие вътре, циркулира във вените, отърква се о вътрешностите, дълбае тялото както къртицата земята и никога не излиза на бял свят преждевременно, само свети в зениците. А когато излезе, то това винаги е краят, остава празна обвивка и лудостта тръгва нататък, защото, каквото и да става, хора на света много.“
„Левандовски хърка. От носа му се точат сънища. Изпълват стаята, присядат на столовете около масата и се препират за душата му: „Аз ще я взема, когато дойде времето.“, „ Не, моя е.“ „Не, аз го мъчих най-дълго.“ „А ако няма душа?“ „Всеки има. Така пише.“ После се топят във въздуха, за да направят място на следващите, защото Левандовски на нощ сънува двадесетина, стотици за година живот, за всеки ден от живота си.“
Мислите ми след втория прочит:
- сигурно повече ще забелязвам всички заобикалящи ме детайли, особено навън – път, небе, поле, стара сграда, човешки емоции (в книгата само за небето имаше над 10-15 описания в различните му състояния и „функции“).
- какво зная за света и хората, след като не познавам „текезесари“, дървосекачи, „обикновени“ безделници, истински „престъпници“
- разгледах предполагаемия район в Полша с google street view – споменатото градче Krosno (като Каварна, но без море и малко по-спретнато); още по-малкото градче Zagórz (просто защото нямаше google street view в по-малко село, за да си представя напълно измисленото от Сташук село Жлобиска) https://www.google.bg/maps/@49.511765...
- отдавна не бях се интересувала от неща като църкви и селски къщи, но предимно заради разказа „Мястото“ стигнах до дървената църква в градчето Sanok
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...
- корицата ми прилича на „дървената материя“ на селото от книгата и понякога я попипвам – дали не е от дърво и тя
- вече нямам само един любим „горски/селски“ писател (Селинджър); към него се присъединиха Арто Паасилина и Анджей Сташук
- за да не започна друга книга, във времето за вечерно четене извърших крайно непривични за мен домакински дейности, отлагани с месеци
- отново имам неудържимо желание да препиша тук предпоследния параграф. Но нали все пак е от края на книгата, трябва да се въздържа
- в „клюкарника“ си записах: февруарско щастие = 137 страници
__________________________________________
* 10.02.
Отсега мога да кажа – най-любима книга за 2015 г. Дано има и други разбира се, но нищо не може да я измести, каквото и да прочета по-нататък. Вместо десетките страници откъси, които преписах, първото, което ми идва наум за „Галицийски истории“, е от друг роман:
„…понякога този живот е способен на повече красота, отколкото светът може да понесе.” („Нека големият свят се върти“, К. Маккан).
„Този живот“, тази трудна красота, в случая е книгата на Сташук. До вчера почти не бях чувала за автора, а сега го наричам Анджей, сякаш ми е добър стар приятел. Откога си търся нов любим полски автор след Олга Токарчук. Сташук няма нищо общо с нея – си помислих в началото, а в края – има много общо с нея (не само защото тя също пише за погранични райони). И при двамата харесвам това, че освен видимите неща, описват и „вторичните“, например „допитата чаша с вино „Казачок“, пронизана от светлия поглед на телевизора“. И при двамата (и не само) – онова неуловимо, но недаващо мира нещо, наречено „съвест“.
След като не можах да завърша книгата през нощта заради умишленото бавно четене, рано-рано в 7 ч. продължих, а на обяд стомахът ми сътвори цяла симфония от глад, но не му обърнах внимание. Докато предната книга изгълтах наведнъж, защото историята не позволи да я оставя, сега четох тази още по-кратка книга много бавно. Първо, защото редовно спирах за преписване на откъси. Второ, защото на някои места не ми се искаше да продължа – гледах ги отново и отново, на стр. 33 бях заседнала дълго, препрочитайки всяка дума, без да знам, че на стр. 34 ще направя същото, после пак, до преписаната изцяло стр. 123. И финалът си залужава преписване и научаване. Получи се парадокс – хем бях щастлива, че попаднах на тази книга, че не съм я пропуснала, хем малко съжалявах, че вече е прочетена. Малко пресилено, но един вид като мечтата, която постигнеш и вече няма към какво да се стремиш и настъпва известна празнота… Е, поне ми остават откъсите и още една книга на Сташук след известно време. „Горкият“ Анджей – само средно образование имал…
„Когато са се раздавали душите, трябва да е станала някаква грешка, защото тялото на Владек, родено и заселено на тази земя, получило някакъв лек, някак прекалено духовен орган, който не успяваше да се справи с тежестта на матер��ята. Със собствените крайници, със съня, с отлитането на времето, с тежестта на каменната почва. Прастарият ритъм, който подгонва съседите напролет към полето, лете към поляните, а наесен към картофените ниви, едва го беше докоснал. Затова Владек, макар че пиеше умерено и беше порядъчен човек, в селото беше на опашката, а по доход на глава от семейството заемаше последното място. […] ... Владек беше добър баща и най-голяма радост му доставяше, когато дечурлигата го накачулваха от главата до краката. Тогава седеше доволен като мормон, а жена му отиваше да работи в гората.“
Периодът е „пост-соц“, но в този отдалечен селски район изглежда сякаш е с няколко десетилетия по-рано, за хубаво или лошо… Селото е като изморен организъм с разхлабени ставни връзки, които все пак се държат някак - по силата на онези много добре описани в книгата природни закони. И най-вече заради сътвореното от човека. Към последните разкази (или глави?) връзките обаче сякаш се „сгъстяват“, защото тайните и прегрешенията спояват хората, не ги пускат да са отделени. И те все повече започват да витаят в една неопределена реалност – „без имена и форми“.
Заради тази амалгама се разхождах напред-назад в книгата. В разказа за Маришка се върнах на разказа за Бабичката, Кошчейни го проследих с голямо внимание. А заради свободно-свързаната структура на „Галицийски истории“ си спомних за „Между приятели“ на Амоз Оз. И там кибуцът беше специфично място, и тук е много специфичен районът (по-скоро на моменти на някои руски книги ми напомняше), но може ли да не си помислим и за почти всяко българско село при това описание:
„Слънчевият циферблат на площада, където църквата обозначава дванадесет, кръчмата – шест часа, на три е магазинът, а от девет тръгват автобусите.“
Колебая се дали църквата или кръчмата е по-централен герой в тази книга. Но всъщност защо трябва да има „по“.
„Църквата на хълма, в която идваше в неделя, беше свидетелство за двойствеността на света. Човек можеше да влезе в нея, да се умие от греховете, за да се потопи обратно в действителността, в която категориите добродетел и грях бяха непрозрачни, взаимно се просмукваха, съвсем като тъмнината и светлината преди първия ден от Сътворението. Дали в ума на Юзек не се е появила интуицията, че храмът е лицензиран от обграждащия го хаос?“
За кръчмата има и отделен разказ, освен че в много други действието също се развива там. Но и този автобус е много показателен за живота в селото.
„Последният автобус винаги е пиянски. Мъжете се търкалят между седалките като билярдни топки и хлътват в случайни места, като започват разговор със съседите, с жени, понякога разговарят със сянката. В девет вечерта през зимата е все тая с кого ще говориш.“
Можем едва ли не да оправдаем пияниците в подобни „пост-соц“ условия, да обвиним обстоятелствата, в случая западащото ТКЗС със съответното наследство от кухото минало. И докато това малко ми напомня на сергей-довлатовските пияници от „Резерват“,
„Веднъж го намерих в един ров. Просто си спеше в преобърнатия трактор. Общо взето, често заспиваше там, където сънят го завари.“
тук се сетих за „по-поетичното и философско“ пиянстване на някои отлетели рок звезди.
„Последователността на събитията изчезва, изчезват причините и последиците и грехът изчезва заедно с историята. Всичко се случва едновременно, започва преждевременно и свършва, преди да е започнало. С поредните чаши Юзек усмъртява времето, извършва някаква безумна аутопсия, която оголва хилавия скелет, върху който наслагваме усилия, постижения, планове и надежди. В този поток изчезва и самият Юзек, като граница между това, което е било и това, което тепърва ще бъде. Разбира се, стърчи на масата с нарастваща небрежност, обляга се на подлакътника и също с нарастваща страст дърпа от цигарата си така, че бузите му сякаш се допират от вътрешната страна. Неговото съществуване обаче се превръща в проблем. От оста на времето изчезва точка нула. След час, след като бутилката е изпразнена, в процеса на поглъщане на мизерикордиални бири, сменя името ми с някакво друго, някогашно име, което е участвало в живота му. След малко отново го намира и ме кани в бъдещето, на лов за пъстърви през пролетта, а рибите се появяват в съзнанието му като далечна реминисценция от детството, теглеща на буксир няколко други разказа. Това е плетеница от разклоняващи се пътечки. Юзек не избира пътя. Тръгва натам, накъдето го понесат удобните срички, приликата в имената или случайният пиян поглед.“
Няма смисъл да говоря повече (да не остана и без вечеря). Следват купища откъси, искам целият свят да види тази книга. :). Задната корица също дава отлична представа за нея - рядко в анотациите виждам това, което всъщност намирам в книгите. В случая извадки от книгата са оформени в идеално описание на съдържанието.
Не мога да не спомена и преводачката. Не само заради изрази като „хаотично сплетените гъстаци“; „къде се дява свръхестественият светлик“, „времето, което се вгнездява във вените им“. Изобщо цялостно е влязла в духа на книгата Диляна Денчева. Ето го този дух:
Изцяло я прочетох и втория път, не само оттук-оттам. Мислех да е след няколко месеца, но не можах да прибера книгата в библиотеката. Ами ако съм изпуснала нещо подобно:
„…очите му бяха покрити с емайла на лудостта, която се крие вътре, циркулира във вените, отърква се о вътрешностите, дълбае тялото както къртицата земята и никога не излиза на бял свят преждевременно, само свети в зениците. А когато излезе, то това винаги е краят, остава празна обвивка и лудостта тръгва нататък, защото, каквото и да става, хора на света много.“
„Левандовски хърка. От носа му се точат сънища. Изпълват стаята, присядат на столовете около масата и се препират за душата му: „Аз ще я взема, когато дойде времето.“, „ Не, моя е.“ „Не, аз го мъчих най-дълго.“ „А ако няма душа?“ „Всеки има. Така пише.“ После се топят във въздуха, за да направят място на следващите, защото Левандовски на нощ сънува двадесетина, стотици за година живот, за всеки ден от живота си.“
Мислите ми след втория прочит:
- сигурно повече ще забелязвам всички заобикалящи ме детайли, особено навън – път, небе, поле, стара сграда, човешки емоции (в книгата само за небето имаше над 10-15 описания в различните му състояния и „функции“).
- какво зная за света и хората, след като не познавам „текезесари“, дървосекачи, „обикновени“ безделници, истински „престъпници“
- разгледах предполагаемия район в Полша с google street view – споменатото градче Krosno (като Каварна, но без море и малко по-спретнато); още по-малкото градче Zagórz (просто защото нямаше google street view в по-малко село, за да си представя напълно измисленото от Сташук село Жлобиска) https://www.google.bg/maps/@49.511765...
- отдавна не бях се интересувала от неща като църкви и селски къщи, но предимно заради разказа „Мястото“ стигнах до дървената църква в градчето Sanok
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...
- корицата ми прилича на „дървената материя“ на селото от книгата и понякога я попипвам – дали не е от дърво и тя
- вече нямам само един любим „горски/селски“ писател (Селинджър); към него се присъединиха Арто Паасилина и Анджей Сташук
- за да не започна друга книга, във времето за вечерно четене извърших крайно непривични за мен домакински дейности, отлагани с месеци
- отново имам неудържимо желание да препиша тук предпоследния параграф. Но нали все пак е от края на книгата, трябва да се въздържа
- в „клюкарника“ си записах: февруарско щастие = 137 страници
__________________________________________
* 10.02.
Отсега мога да кажа – най-любима книга за 2015 г. Дано има и други разбира се, но нищо не може да я измести, каквото и да прочета по-нататък. Вместо десетките страници откъси, които преписах, първото, което ми идва наум за „Галицийски истории“, е от друг роман:
„…понякога този живот е способен на повече красота, отколкото светът може да понесе.” („Нека големият свят се върти“, К. Маккан).
„Този живот“, тази трудна красота, в случая е книгата на Сташук. До вчера почти не бях чувала за автора, а сега го наричам Анджей, сякаш ми е добър стар приятел. Откога си търся нов любим полски автор след Олга Токарчук. Сташук няма нищо общо с нея – си помислих в началото, а в края – има много общо с нея (не само защото тя също пише за погранични райони). И при двамата харесвам това, че освен видимите неща, описват и „вторичните“, например „допитата чаша с вино „Казачок“, пронизана от светлия поглед на телевизора“. И при двамата (и не само) – онова неуловимо, но недаващо мира нещо, наречено „съвест“.
След като не можах да завърша книгата през нощта заради умишленото бавно четене, рано-рано в 7 ч. продължих, а на обяд стомахът ми сътвори цяла симфония от глад, но не му обърнах внимание. Докато предната книга изгълтах наведнъж, защото историята не позволи да я оставя, сега четох тази още по-кратка книга много бавно. Първо, защото редовно спирах за преписване на откъси. Второ, защото на някои места не ми се искаше да продължа – гледах ги отново и отново, на стр. 33 бях заседнала дълго, препрочитайки всяка дума, без да знам, че на стр. 34 ще направя същото, после пак, до преписаната изцяло стр. 123. И финалът си залужава преписване и научаване. Получи се парадокс – хем бях щастлива, че попаднах на тази книга, че не съм я пропуснала, хем малко съжалявах, че вече е прочетена. Малко пресилено, но един вид като мечтата, която постигнеш и вече няма към какво да се стремиш и настъпва известна празнота… Е, поне ми остават откъсите и още една книга на Сташук след известно време. „Горкият“ Анджей – само средно образование имал…
„Когато са се раздавали душите, трябва да е станала някаква грешка, защото тялото на Владек, родено и заселено на тази земя, получило някакъв лек, някак прекалено духовен орган, който не успяваше да се справи с тежестта на матер��ята. Със собствените крайници, със съня, с отлитането на времето, с тежестта на каменната почва. Прастарият ритъм, който подгонва съседите напролет към полето, лете към поляните, а наесен към картофените ниви, едва го беше докоснал. Затова Владек, макар че пиеше умерено и беше порядъчен човек, в селото беше на опашката, а по доход на глава от семейството заемаше последното място. […] ... Владек беше добър баща и най-голяма радост му доставяше, когато дечурлигата го накачулваха от главата до краката. Тогава седеше доволен като мормон, а жена му отиваше да работи в гората.“
Периодът е „пост-соц“, но в този отдалечен селски район изглежда сякаш е с няколко десетилетия по-рано, за хубаво или лошо… Селото е като изморен организъм с разхлабени ставни връзки, които все пак се държат някак - по силата на онези много добре описани в книгата природни закони. И най-вече заради сътвореното от човека. Към последните разкази (или глави?) връзките обаче сякаш се „сгъстяват“, защото тайните и прегрешенията спояват хората, не ги пускат да са отделени. И те все повече започват да витаят в една неопределена реалност – „без имена и форми“.
Заради тази амалгама се разхождах напред-назад в книгата. В разказа за Маришка се върнах на разказа за Бабичката, Кошчейни го проследих с голямо внимание. А заради свободно-свързаната структура на „Галицийски истории“ си спомних за „Между приятели“ на Амоз Оз. И там кибуцът беше специфично място, и тук е много специфичен районът (по-скоро на моменти на някои руски книги ми напомняше), но може ли да не си помислим и за почти всяко българско село при това описание:
„Слънчевият циферблат на площада, където църквата обозначава дванадесет, кръчмата – шест часа, на три е магазинът, а от девет тръгват автобусите.“
Колебая се дали църквата или кръчмата е по-централен герой в тази книга. Но всъщност защо трябва да има „по“.
„Църквата на хълма, в която идваше в неделя, беше свидетелство за двойствеността на света. Човек можеше да влезе в нея, да се умие от греховете, за да се потопи обратно в действителността, в която категориите добродетел и грях бяха непрозрачни, взаимно се просмукваха, съвсем като тъмнината и светлината преди първия ден от Сътворението. Дали в ума на Юзек не се е появила интуицията, че храмът е лицензиран от обграждащия го хаос?“
За кръчмата има и отделен разказ, освен че в много други действието също се развива там. Но и този автобус е много показателен за живота в селото.
„Последният автобус винаги е пиянски. Мъжете се търкалят между седалките като билярдни топки и хлътват в случайни места, като започват разговор със съседите, с жени, понякога разговарят със сянката. В девет вечерта през зимата е все тая с кого ще говориш.“
Можем едва ли не да оправдаем пияниците в подобни „пост-соц“ условия, да обвиним обстоятелствата, в случая западащото ТКЗС със съответното наследство от кухото минало. И докато това малко ми напомня на сергей-довлатовските пияници от „Резерват“,
„Веднъж го намерих в един ров. Просто си спеше в преобърнатия трактор. Общо взето, често заспиваше там, където сънят го завари.“
тук се сетих за „по-поетичното и философско“ пиянстване на някои отлетели рок звезди.
„Последователността на събитията изчезва, изчезват причините и последиците и грехът изчезва заедно с историята. Всичко се случва едновременно, започва преждевременно и свършва, преди да е започнало. С поредните чаши Юзек усмъртява времето, извършва някаква безумна аутопсия, която оголва хилавия скелет, върху който наслагваме усилия, постижения, планове и надежди. В този поток изчезва и самият Юзек, като граница между това, което е било и това, което тепърва ще бъде. Разбира се, стърчи на масата с нарастваща небрежност, обляга се на подлакътника и също с нарастваща страст дърпа от цигарата си така, че бузите му сякаш се допират от вътрешната страна. Неговото съществуване обаче се превръща в проблем. От оста на времето изчезва точка нула. След час, след като бутилката е изпразнена, в процеса на поглъщане на мизерикордиални бири, сменя името ми с някакво друго, някогашно име, което е участвало в живота му. След малко отново го намира и ме кани в бъдещето, на лов за пъстърви през пролетта, а рибите се появяват в съзнанието му като далечна реминисценция от детството, теглеща на буксир няколко други разказа. Това е плетеница от разклоняващи се пътечки. Юзек не избира пътя. Тръгва натам, накъдето го понесат удобните срички, приликата в имената или случайният пиян поглед.“
Няма смисъл да говоря повече (да не остана и без вечеря). Следват купища откъси, искам целият свят да види тази книга. :). Задната корица също дава отлична представа за нея - рядко в анотациите виждам това, което всъщност намирам в книгите. В случая извадки от книгата са оформени в идеално описание на съдържанието.
Не мога да не спомена и преводачката. Не само заради изрази като „хаотично сплетените гъстаци“; „къде се дява свръхестественият светлик“, „времето, което се вгнездява във вените им“. Изобщо цялостно е влязла в духа на книгата Диляна Денчева. Ето го този дух:
February 14, 2019
Опустошение.
Така добре пише Анджей Сташук за тези опустошени от "преходи" хора и къщи, да и къщи. Макар в различно време, напомня с нещо на Бабел. Може би с плътността на метафорите, и опустошението.
Галицийски истории обхващат няколко селца и няколко от техните емблематични жители, плюс два призрака. По някое време се заформя криминална случка, но в подобни опустошени от времето и алкохола места винаги има криминален нюанс.
Метафорите и изразите на Сташук са страхотно поетични и в изобилие. Тежки, изронени, кални, мъгливи, душни, опечени от слънцето, замръзнали на буци в димна завеса от цигари и алкохол, и измежду всичко това надничат човешки лица.
След всеки разказ исках да избягам в природата на Радичков. Да се мушна в гората и да ми олекне.
(7 години съм работил в района на Кремиковци и атмосферата на тези разкази са ми ужасно познати. (Боже, звучи като 7 години в Тебет, хахаха.) Тази индустриална част е в сложен сплит с населеното място. Има от всичко от времето на "прехода", разруха, мизерия... и красива природа. Гора и много, много безплатно небе. Като в разказите, но с едно мега-"ТКЗС".)
Толкова е мизерно, че е почти мистично, наподобява Зоната от "Пикник край пътя" на братя Стругацки. Всеки с малко повече фантазия би предпочел да се преврне в Сталкер на подобни места. По-оптимистично е.
Откъси:
След час, след като бутилката е изпразнена, в процеса на поглъщане на мизерикордиални бири (Мизекордия - къс меч с формата на кръст, с който през Средновековието са доубивали по време на война тежко ранените войници), сменя името ми с някакво друго, някогашно име, което е учавствало в живота му. След малко отново го намира и ме кани в бъдещето, на лов за пъстърви през пролетта, а рибите се появяват в съзнанието му като далечна реминисценция от детството, теглеща на буксир няколко други разказа.
Водите на потопа се отдръпват, последните партийни секретари са издавени или са се спасили с бягство, злото е изтребено, а на небето изгрява нова дъга, знак на помирение.
Децата от ТКЗС-то са накачурили люлката. Наоколо всичко потъва и само люлката се издига нагоре и нагоре, а ковачът Крук, обърнат към слънцето, гледа хвърчащите дечурлига и лицето му се превръща в огледало на детските смехове. Сбръчкано и небръснато, но вярно огледало.
Прасето не можеш да го излъжеш, умно е.
В девет вечерта през зимата е все тая с кого говориш.
Изкриви лицето си съгласно някаква сложна представа за усмивка. В това нямаше нищо друго, освен усилие.
Златото на обеците ѝ блести като прозявка, завършваща с лениво, полусънно "аамореее" в дует с касетофона.
Призори е трудно да ги различиш: животни, събития, мечти.
ПП. На предпоследната - 135 стр. има една печатна грешка: "Жените може за попеят."
Така добре пише Анджей Сташук за тези опустошени от "преходи" хора и къщи, да и къщи. Макар в различно време, напомня с нещо на Бабел. Може би с плътността на метафорите, и опустошението.
Галицийски истории обхващат няколко селца и няколко от техните емблематични жители, плюс два призрака. По някое време се заформя криминална случка, но в подобни опустошени от времето и алкохола места винаги има криминален нюанс.
Метафорите и изразите на Сташук са страхотно поетични и в изобилие. Тежки, изронени, кални, мъгливи, душни, опечени от слънцето, замръзнали на буци в димна завеса от цигари и алкохол, и измежду всичко това надничат човешки лица.
След всеки разказ исках да избягам в природата на Радичков. Да се мушна в гората и да ми олекне.
(7 години съм работил в района на Кремиковци и атмосферата на тези разкази са ми ужасно познати. (Боже, звучи като 7 години в Тебет, хахаха.) Тази индустриална част е в сложен сплит с населеното място. Има от всичко от времето на "прехода", разруха, мизерия... и красива природа. Гора и много, много безплатно небе. Като в разказите, но с едно мега-"ТКЗС".)
Толкова е мизерно, че е почти мистично, наподобява Зоната от "Пикник край пътя" на братя Стругацки. Всеки с малко повече фантазия би предпочел да се преврне в Сталкер на подобни места. По-оптимистично е.
Откъси:
След час, след като бутилката е изпразнена, в процеса на поглъщане на мизерикордиални бири (Мизекордия - къс меч с формата на кръст, с който през Средновековието са доубивали по време на война тежко ранените войници), сменя името ми с някакво друго, някогашно име, което е учавствало в живота му. След малко отново го намира и ме кани в бъдещето, на лов за пъстърви през пролетта, а рибите се появяват в съзнанието му като далечна реминисценция от детството, теглеща на буксир няколко други разказа.
Водите на потопа се отдръпват, последните партийни секретари са издавени или са се спасили с бягство, злото е изтребено, а на небето изгрява нова дъга, знак на помирение.
Децата от ТКЗС-то са накачурили люлката. Наоколо всичко потъва и само люлката се издига нагоре и нагоре, а ковачът Крук, обърнат към слънцето, гледа хвърчащите дечурлига и лицето му се превръща в огледало на детските смехове. Сбръчкано и небръснато, но вярно огледало.
Прасето не можеш да го излъжеш, умно е.
В девет вечерта през зимата е все тая с кого говориш.
Изкриви лицето си съгласно някаква сложна представа за усмивка. В това нямаше нищо друго, освен усилие.
Златото на обеците ѝ блести като прозявка, завършваща с лениво, полусънно "аамореее" в дует с касетофона.
Призори е трудно да ги различиш: животни, събития, мечти.
ПП. На предпоследната - 135 стр. има една печатна грешка: "Жените може за попеят."
February 27, 2016
A pitch-perfect genre-bending tale of an eroded village limping along in post-communist Poland, at the southern border with Slovakia. The initial connected story-portraits of individual characters eventually give way to a more unified narrative imbued with mystery and the supernatural. An itinerant narrator ducks in and out of a river of fluid time, moving seamlessly between past and present. Stasiuk's prose is slow but uncluttered, allowing space to take in his descriptions of the natural world and the sometimes ambiguous human connection to it. If the book were longer I'd be more than pleased to still be reading it...
Nothing felt like happening, nothing, nothing. The stream of time slipped between the houses, rolled through the market square, and passed the two benches set crosswise. It flowed over the ruins of the town-hall tower, which over the past two hundred years it had managed to erode, infect with rot, and wash clean of plaster, and which it would certainly overcome in the end, like a flood carries away things that are light, unnecessary, and forgotten. Time also flowed from the sky, poured out like slow molasses and sloshed against the pavement's metallic shell. But neither its stream nor a single splash could manage to pull any greater event behind it.
November 27, 2016
Andrzej Stasiuk again :) Tym razem moim łupem padł zbiór opowiadań o małej miejscowości w Beskidzie Niskim, której mieszkańcy zmagają się z upiorami przeszłości w trakcie przemian ustrojowych. Cień PRL-u, a nawet czasów jeszcze bardziej odległych ciąży na ludziach, którzy tu mieszkają i uniemożliwia im powstanie na nogi z marazmu, apatii i zawieszenia. Przyznam, że do tej pory nie trafiłem jeszcze na książkę Andrzeja Stasiuka, która by mi się nie spodobała, aczkolwiek "Opowieści galicyjskie" mimo, że są uznawane za jedną z najważniejszych jego dzieł, a nawet dorobiły się adaptacji filmowej, nie chwyciły mnie za gardło tak mocno jak dotychczasowe pozycje które wyszły z pod jego ręki.
Atmosfera opowiadań, które znajdziemy w niniejszej książce jest mocno dołująca, co nie dziwi wcale zważywszy na twórczość Stasiuka, która wcale przecież nie należy do lekkich, łatwych i przyjemnych, a ponadto trudno oczekiwać motywacyjnej, optymistycznej literatury w historii toczącej się w cieniu PGR-ów. W oparach alkoholu, w towarzystwie biedy i bezrobocia, życie toczy się smętnie, a klaustrofobia charakterystyczna dla społeczności tu żyjącej i bezsensowność egzystencji jest aż nadto zauważalna. Pośród tego wszystkiego krąży zagubiony pomiędzy światami wiecznymi duch, starający się uniknąć potępienia, który doprasza się o uwagę i modlitwę. Czy natomiast uda mu się kogoś przebudzić swym wołaniem przypominającym wołanie na pustyni? - kwestia nad wyraz wątpliwa jak szybko można się zorientować.
Nie potrafię określić czy w opowieściach Stasiuka czuć klimat charakterystyczny dla Galicji, bo nie bardzo wiem jaki to miałby być klimat. Wiem natomiast, że zarówno krajobrazy jakie kreśli tutaj Andrzej Stasiuk jak i mentalność ludzi żyjących w tej wsi to rzecz charakterystyczna nie tylko dla Polski z czasów transformacji ustrojowej, ale do dziś widoczna w różnych miejscach naszego kraju. Przytłaczający wydźwięk tych opowiadań, będących raczej rozdziałami jednej historii niż samodzielnymi utworami, jest okraszony mistycyzmem i jak to bywa u tego autora - egzystencjalnymi rozważaniami na temat roli pamięci, czasu i dziedzictwa. Te ostatnie elementy należą do moich ulubionych w twórczości Stasiuka i dlatego trochę ich jak dla mnie było tutaj jakby mało. Z tego też chyba względu "Opowieści galicyjskie" nie będą należeć do moich ulubionych książek jego autorstwa. Nie oznacza to jednak wcale, że ta książka nie zachęca do refleksji i nie wnosi nic dla wrażliwego i otwartego czytelnika. Jest tylko trochę trudno dotrzeć do tych wątków pośród tego przygnębienia i depresji.
Kończąc już opinię na temat tej książki ( bo nie bardzo wypada się bez końca rozpisywać nad książką niezbyt przecież obszerną, którą każdy może przeczytać w wolnej chwili) chciałbym zaznaczyć, że niewielu jest pisarzy, którzy tak jak Andrzej Stasiuk oddają emocje i za ich pomocą oddziaływują na czytelnika aż tak wyraźnie. Czytając "Opowieści galicyjskie" człowiek ma wrażenie, że męczy się na kacu wraz z bohaterami tej opowieści, zapomina że ma cel w życiu i pracę i momentami oddaje się atmosferze beznadziejności nawet jeśli perspektywa bohaterów tej opowieści jest mu zupełnie obca. Choćby ta umiejętność autora zasługuje na to, aby poświęcić te parę chwil na lekturę książek takich jak ta. Przecież to między innymi jest nieocenioną wartością literatury, że możemy wchodzić w różne skóry, niekoniecznie sprawdzając wszystko w realu. Ja natomiast bardzo się cieszę, że mam przed sobą jeszcze wiele książek Andrzeja Stasiuka. A może polecicie mi po którą sięgnąć w pierwszej kolejności? :)
osinskipoludzku.blogspot.com
Atmosfera opowiadań, które znajdziemy w niniejszej książce jest mocno dołująca, co nie dziwi wcale zważywszy na twórczość Stasiuka, która wcale przecież nie należy do lekkich, łatwych i przyjemnych, a ponadto trudno oczekiwać motywacyjnej, optymistycznej literatury w historii toczącej się w cieniu PGR-ów. W oparach alkoholu, w towarzystwie biedy i bezrobocia, życie toczy się smętnie, a klaustrofobia charakterystyczna dla społeczności tu żyjącej i bezsensowność egzystencji jest aż nadto zauważalna. Pośród tego wszystkiego krąży zagubiony pomiędzy światami wiecznymi duch, starający się uniknąć potępienia, który doprasza się o uwagę i modlitwę. Czy natomiast uda mu się kogoś przebudzić swym wołaniem przypominającym wołanie na pustyni? - kwestia nad wyraz wątpliwa jak szybko można się zorientować.
Nie potrafię określić czy w opowieściach Stasiuka czuć klimat charakterystyczny dla Galicji, bo nie bardzo wiem jaki to miałby być klimat. Wiem natomiast, że zarówno krajobrazy jakie kreśli tutaj Andrzej Stasiuk jak i mentalność ludzi żyjących w tej wsi to rzecz charakterystyczna nie tylko dla Polski z czasów transformacji ustrojowej, ale do dziś widoczna w różnych miejscach naszego kraju. Przytłaczający wydźwięk tych opowiadań, będących raczej rozdziałami jednej historii niż samodzielnymi utworami, jest okraszony mistycyzmem i jak to bywa u tego autora - egzystencjalnymi rozważaniami na temat roli pamięci, czasu i dziedzictwa. Te ostatnie elementy należą do moich ulubionych w twórczości Stasiuka i dlatego trochę ich jak dla mnie było tutaj jakby mało. Z tego też chyba względu "Opowieści galicyjskie" nie będą należeć do moich ulubionych książek jego autorstwa. Nie oznacza to jednak wcale, że ta książka nie zachęca do refleksji i nie wnosi nic dla wrażliwego i otwartego czytelnika. Jest tylko trochę trudno dotrzeć do tych wątków pośród tego przygnębienia i depresji.
Kończąc już opinię na temat tej książki ( bo nie bardzo wypada się bez końca rozpisywać nad książką niezbyt przecież obszerną, którą każdy może przeczytać w wolnej chwili) chciałbym zaznaczyć, że niewielu jest pisarzy, którzy tak jak Andrzej Stasiuk oddają emocje i za ich pomocą oddziaływują na czytelnika aż tak wyraźnie. Czytając "Opowieści galicyjskie" człowiek ma wrażenie, że męczy się na kacu wraz z bohaterami tej opowieści, zapomina że ma cel w życiu i pracę i momentami oddaje się atmosferze beznadziejności nawet jeśli perspektywa bohaterów tej opowieści jest mu zupełnie obca. Choćby ta umiejętność autora zasługuje na to, aby poświęcić te parę chwil na lekturę książek takich jak ta. Przecież to między innymi jest nieocenioną wartością literatury, że możemy wchodzić w różne skóry, niekoniecznie sprawdzając wszystko w realu. Ja natomiast bardzo się cieszę, że mam przed sobą jeszcze wiele książek Andrzeja Stasiuka. A może polecicie mi po którą sięgnąć w pierwszej kolejności? :)
osinskipoludzku.blogspot.com
July 25, 2011
This is a lovely novel from one of the 'new school' of Polish writers (see Natasza Goerke elsewhere in this list) set in a fictitious village in the Beskid Mountains or nearby, close to the Polish-Slovak border. Initially seeming to be a short story collection, the tales start to weave together to become a touching and quite poignant novel of being on the edge – of Poland, of social change, of life/death, and several other sorts of marginality. Even marginal characters, some of whom appear for little more that couple of lines, seem to layer and build up a moving sense of life in the once-was-a-collective-farm/village.
I'd never read Stasiuk before – but once again Prague's Twisted Spoon Press has come through with a fine piece of central European fiction to remind me that there is really good work being done that seldom if ever makes its way into English.
I'd never read Stasiuk before – but once again Prague's Twisted Spoon Press has come through with a fine piece of central European fiction to remind me that there is really good work being done that seldom if ever makes its way into English.
Currently reading
January 13, 2018I am in the middle of this one and not sure I am going to finish it. I learned of it through another goodreads person who also included the link. (It had been available on Scribd but isn't any longer.)
I found that some of the stories really drew me in and some were less accessible. More than that, each time I began to feel like I was really entering the world of a story it ended and I had to start all over again. So it was a lot of effort and hard to connect. That said, I do hope to finish it at some point. And I especially liked the story or chapter called Kosciejny (this is one of those books that feels like it could be a story collection, a novel, a bit of contemporary historical fiction with a little magical realism, some combination of all three.)
Here are some quotes:
And even though it was cold, Blacksmith Kruk didn’t move, didn’t hunch his shoulders, didn’t try to button up his denim shirt. H continued his story mindful not to leave anything out, and everything had its own weight, everything had its own proper place in the story, as if memory and speech were gifts he was not allowed to waste. (30 from Kruk)
Dark, nomadic essences flowed under Janek’s kobold skin. But they had been watered down by alcohol the blood of sedentary generations, and the hopelessness of a limited horizon, where the sun rose behind a picket fence hung with babies’ diapers and women’s cottons and linens. The houses were filled with children’s shrieking. Not wails of hunger yet, but then again, nobody knew what the future had in store. In the guise of springtime, it would reveal the deterioration. Old people would die as usual. And the vanishing snow would expose the slow gangrene in the fields and buildings and in the piles of laboriously collected things, rotting and leaning to one side only to collapse and return once again to the somnolent and sluggish earth. (34)
Kosciejny looked like he usually did, a little like a scarecrow that had just escaped from the garden. That’s exactly how skinny, forty-year-old men in overalls look. Time rubs their features away, and it’s only in old age, when they have come reconciled with it, that they get their own one-of-a-kind faces back. Maybe so death can tell them apart. (51)
(From Kosciejny)
He cut off the head with short, quick strokes. Two mongrels were hanging around nearby. Then the tip of the knife slipped along the belly, along the legs, and the skin came off like a stocking. Steam was rising in the cold morning air. It was already over— skin, carcass, entrails, everything neatly separated. A simple and precise dissection of existence. (52) (From Kosciejny)
Then K continued on his journey out. Peaceful, drowsing, just like the horses, one foot after the other to the edge of night, where darkness flowed over the mountains like rich, black milk. (53)
“…dirt and freedom always intermingle.” (53)
“I don’t feel sorry for you, I just pity the horses.” (53)
I found that some of the stories really drew me in and some were less accessible. More than that, each time I began to feel like I was really entering the world of a story it ended and I had to start all over again. So it was a lot of effort and hard to connect. That said, I do hope to finish it at some point. And I especially liked the story or chapter called Kosciejny (this is one of those books that feels like it could be a story collection, a novel, a bit of contemporary historical fiction with a little magical realism, some combination of all three.)
Here are some quotes:
And even though it was cold, Blacksmith Kruk didn’t move, didn’t hunch his shoulders, didn’t try to button up his denim shirt. H continued his story mindful not to leave anything out, and everything had its own weight, everything had its own proper place in the story, as if memory and speech were gifts he was not allowed to waste. (30 from Kruk)
Dark, nomadic essences flowed under Janek’s kobold skin. But they had been watered down by alcohol the blood of sedentary generations, and the hopelessness of a limited horizon, where the sun rose behind a picket fence hung with babies’ diapers and women’s cottons and linens. The houses were filled with children’s shrieking. Not wails of hunger yet, but then again, nobody knew what the future had in store. In the guise of springtime, it would reveal the deterioration. Old people would die as usual. And the vanishing snow would expose the slow gangrene in the fields and buildings and in the piles of laboriously collected things, rotting and leaning to one side only to collapse and return once again to the somnolent and sluggish earth. (34)
Kosciejny looked like he usually did, a little like a scarecrow that had just escaped from the garden. That’s exactly how skinny, forty-year-old men in overalls look. Time rubs their features away, and it’s only in old age, when they have come reconciled with it, that they get their own one-of-a-kind faces back. Maybe so death can tell them apart. (51)
(From Kosciejny)
He cut off the head with short, quick strokes. Two mongrels were hanging around nearby. Then the tip of the knife slipped along the belly, along the legs, and the skin came off like a stocking. Steam was rising in the cold morning air. It was already over— skin, carcass, entrails, everything neatly separated. A simple and precise dissection of existence. (52) (From Kosciejny)
Then K continued on his journey out. Peaceful, drowsing, just like the horses, one foot after the other to the edge of night, where darkness flowed over the mountains like rich, black milk. (53)
“…dirt and freedom always intermingle.” (53)
“I don’t feel sorry for you, I just pity the horses.” (53)
June 4, 2019
Mocne 3,5 * Piekny jezyk, jak to u Stasiuka. Wspaniale opisy postaci. Poezja. Jednak zabraklo mi jakiegos dalszego ciagu. Mialam wrazenie, ze ta, dosc krotka, ksiazka, a w zasadzie zbior opowiadan, jest niedokonczona.
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March 8, 2024calkiem cool
nawet buja
ale pojecia nie mam po co mi to bylo
nawet buja
ale pojecia nie mam po co mi to bylo
March 27, 2025
W tym przyoadku także przeczytaliśmy krótki fragmet "Miejsca" i jestem zakochana w tym utworze, i w tym fragmencie. Może też dlatego że mój tata mieszkał w Czarnym (czarne idk im sorry) i jest pochodzenia ukraińskiego. Czuje przywiązanie do tego miejsca w pewien sposób. Ogromnie pragnę przeczytać cały zbuór opowiadań 💗😭
February 12, 2025
Piękny język, ale tematyka nie przypadła mi do gustu. Trochę przypominała mi ta książka film "Pieniądze to nie wszystko". Tylko to nie była komedia. W sumie była bardzo smutna.
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March 17, 2024przeczytałam tylko miejsce ale chce mieć kolejną pozycję w rocznym wyzwaniu
March 27, 2018
Оповідання про простоту і бідноту. І про простоту, яка можлива лише в бідно(с)ті, яка лише там, у таких місцях оголює сутність людини, що живе в потоці звичних ритмів і разючої повторюваної від сезону до сезону буденності. Саме тому на тлі того, що нічого не відбувається кожна навіть найдрібніша подія обростає біблійним епосом. Можливо також й пафосом, але він одразу ж губиться у гіперреальності і сюрреалістичності монотонного інертного світу, повністю автономного, закритого й самодостатнього як, будь яке, традиційне суспільство, як будь-яке село.
У цьому світі кожен персонаж - типаж і архетип. Унікальна доля і така повторювана карта світу і життєва драма. "Галицькі оповідання" цілком могли б бути романом, якби не були оповіданнями, де персонажі мандрують з однієї оповіді в іншу, скуті докупи місцем, часом і волею наратора, що наче привид бачить крізь стіни, чує голоси і знає все, але не про все говорить. Принаймні не одразу.
Моя перша книжка Анджея Стасюка. Чудовий стиль, чіткі метафори, філософічні звороти і сильне відчуття цілісності маленького світу з позиції деміурга, який вирішив, мов привид непомітно навіть для самого себе прогулятись своїм творінням. Багатий переклад Прохаська лише підсилює гарні враження від книги.
У цьому світі кожен персонаж - типаж і архетип. Унікальна доля і така повторювана карта світу і життєва драма. "Галицькі оповідання" цілком могли б бути романом, якби не були оповіданнями, де персонажі мандрують з однієї оповіді в іншу, скуті докупи місцем, часом і волею наратора, що наче привид бачить крізь стіни, чує голоси і знає все, але не про все говорить. Принаймні не одразу.
Моя перша книжка Анджея Стасюка. Чудовий стиль, чіткі метафори, філософічні звороти і сильне відчуття цілісності маленького світу з позиції деміурга, який вирішив, мов привид непомітно навіть для самого себе прогулятись своїм творінням. Багатий переклад Прохаська лише підсилює гарні враження від книги.
July 16, 2017
Несподіванно чудово. Читала б і читала далі.
December 30, 2018
"... en de oude man wees op de plekken waar huizen hadden gestaan, hij noemde namen, vertelde stukjes van allerlei gebeurtenissen. Hij reed door het dorp dat in zijn geheugen bestond. Tijd noch vuur noch breekbaarheid had er toegang. Ten slotte glimlachte hij bij ons afscheid een beetje spottend. Zijn gezicht deed denken aan een door vorst aangetaste appel. En hij zei met een bijna vrolijke schittering in zijn ogen: 'Zo, nu kan ik net zo goed doodgaan.'"
September 20, 2024
Przygnębiająca, ale pięknie, poetycko napisana książka. Na pewno sięgnę po kolejne pozycje autora.
" Z jego nozdrzy snują się sny. Wypełniają pokój, przysiadają na krzesłach wokół stołu i spierają się o duszę"
" Z jego nozdrzy snują się sny. Wypełniają pokój, przysiadają na krzesłach wokół stołu i spierają się o duszę"
April 18, 2024
Zieeeeew
April 22, 2025
„miejsce” - 3,5 ✨
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January 16, 2026Miejsce 1/14
February 10, 2023
Fajna w sumie
May 20, 2024
Opowieści przypominające trochę fragmentami “Baśń o wężowym sercu”, ale z piękniejszym językiem, luźno powiązane ze sobą opowiadania o wiejskiej codzienności, mega mega język, moim ulubionym pozostaje chyba “miejsce”
March 13, 2025
"lecz miejsca nie można przenieść. miejsce nie ma wymiarów. jest punktem i nieuchwytną przestrzenią."
March 12, 2023
poetycki obraz nędzy w miejscu gdzie czas sie zatrzymał
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March 20, 2024tylko opowiadanie ,,Miejsce" 👍👍
May 3, 2024
ewangelia galicji
September 18, 2009
A lovely selection of short poetic stories based in Poland
May 8, 2016
A very quick but still enchanting through and through read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 129 reviews