DOLOM| The Many Shades of White (2010).pdf

7/29/2019 DOLOM| The Many Shades of White (2010).pdf

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The Many Shades of White

The Berlin Wall is perhaps the consummate symbol of Cold War Europe, indeed the Cold

War world. Nearly the whole complexity of life in the Soviet Bloc is writ on its whitewashed

easterly face. That it abrades with the West makes it all the more encompassing as a mirror of the

experience, a great part of official and lay consciousness in the East having been devoted to its

neighbor. Those miles and miles of white concrete tell the story of censorship and repression

and these two seemingly simple concepts were developed into such mandarin systems of

circulating inputs and outputs as to have a qualified life of its own beyond the censor-artist

relationship, beyond the competing considerations of Diktat and free expression.

White as Uniformity

Remembering the difference between bare and bleached concrete, the readiest

impression is that white is an imposed uniformity. Stalinist Europe, in wall paint and much else,

had very exact specifications.

For example, the ideal partisan had to be all of the following: a man of action, a public

individual (one without the bourgeois impedimenta of private existence), and a future-oriented

idealist. InAshes and Diamonds Szczuka, living vicariously in a worn past, fails to live up to all

three and is crushed by the ineluctable march of the Dialectic. Crucial to his lifes denouement is

the choice to visit the witness to his wifes end, herself a near-extinct relic. The room he enters is

a cul-de-sac, a dungeon of past tenses, and in it he dies at the hands of a foil: Maciek, a forward-

thinking man of action whose equivalent sin is to reject the new order. Sczcuka, despite being a

true believer, dies for the crime of nursing human wounds; against the dictates of a grander force,


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he looks back and has to suffer, a pillar of salt. Maciek is also weighed and found wanting; a

ruthless AK assassin, not much more than a serial killer, he is perhaps the most fully incarnated

human being in the novel for the simple fact that he falls in love. But the new order has no room

for counter-revolutionaries (even one so suddenly unsure and repentant). Maciek dies, a

historical irrelevance. In the Wajda film adaptation his dead body falls onto a garbage heap. He

is debris, one of historys necessary casualties, and his dead body is the post-facto pulp of one

who refused the advance of time.

Before they expire, both are given glimpses to a more resolved lifeSczcuka the

comforting knowledge of a dignified death for his wife, Maciek the prospect of a new start with

Krystyna. Apparently, whom history would destroy, she first makes profoundly happy. The

novel of course is a pedagogic tool, and its main message is an old one: the wages of sin is death.

The example then bears out the demand for uniformity not only in the climactic murders but in

Andrzejewskis creepy dogmatism, which finds him appropriating as narrator History herselfa

mistress that demands the death of characters for reasons as philistine as ideology. That novels

(especially one as fully realized as this) have already internalized (and indeed began to advocate)

party decrees this early in the imperiums history (1948) shows the quick capitulation of the

artist class to the red flag.

Knowing art influences life more than the other way around, the communists took to its

gardens, pruning extant shapes to appropriate forms and cultivating desirable saplings.

Understanding art as a space of pure influence, they set out to be its undisputed marrionettist.

They weaned the shelves to an approved selectionAll art, of whatever period, which

embodied discontent, alienation, indignation, pity, longing, loneliness, suffering, however subtle,

was given permission to enter (Haraszti). And of arts present and future, a system of


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censorship and the more subtle control of employment were imposed on the artist class. They

instituted an official method: Socialist Realism, which cut all art production into a pre-approved

shapeoptimistic, populist, representational and partisan. The completion of this project, the

successful ionization of art with particles of ideology entails the end of that glorious era oflart

pour lart. As Haraszti points out the classical, medieval and renaissance epochs give ample

precedent for the notion that art and power are not natural enemies. Despite the grandeur of the

art of these periods, championing a return thereto is retrogression nonetheless. Whoever

unthinkingly rejoices in this artistic backslide, would perhaps celebrate as well a return to the

medieval understanding of blood or an Aristotelian conception of matter.

But the communists knew of other methods besides the politicization of art; particularly,

they undertook a project far grander in scope and whose success was accordingly far more

majestic: the politicization of life itself. Remember Ludviks imperishable outburst: Optimism

is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! The

backlash was very spontaneous. Those words mobilized the entire academic community around

him toward censure, a process that unfolded mechanistically and largely without direction from

on high. Friends and colleagues all unanimously turned against him. This total betrayal haunted

Ludvik for the rest of his life, especially as it found an objective correlative in that beautifully

choreographed tableau, the room of raised hands. The system has contrived to make ideology

ascendant over human relationships; teachers, close friends, even Marketa who was probably in

love with Ludvik joined in chorus to damn him to hard labor as a blacklist; more important than

the disloyalty, she probably thought it was in his best interest. Powerful is a system that could

boast of being able to bend to its requirements the pure impulses of youthful love.


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White as Silence

Now, take the white to mean silence; silence as inaction, silence as the sound of stasis.

All of the texts read in class were replete with characters that more or less allowed the system to

wash over them. The starkest example is The Garden Party, which is populated by unfeeling,

unthinking, unselfed dramatis personae, through which the party speaks unhindered. They strike

the reader (perhaps the experience of theatre-goer is different) as disembodied voice boxes,

walking larynges. The restless chatter in the play masks the silence of the individuals. These are

disemboweled husks; they have no ego with which to mediate the words of the party from

reception to reproduction. They just echo the slogans and allow that heartless thoughtless

machine, language, to suborn their souls.

But also, silence was later conceived as radical expression; when filth is expected of your

mouth, soundlessness entails a certain purity of gesture that is revolutionary. When

communisms internal distensions forced it to rely on a culture of underhandedness (that is to say

corruption, bribes, favoritisms) refusing the new norms was to undertake a subtle act of protest.

Think of Birkut, who clung to the systems de jures after its keepers abandoned it for a less

demanding set of de factos. Long after the system and its subjects gave up on the promise of

socialism, Birkut was still hard at work unshackling the downtrodden proletariat. He bravely

(perhaps naively) adheres to a face value understanding of communism, one that puts a premium

on the old lefts egalitarian roots. His tireless devotion to these ideals is demonstrated when his

long-time comrade, Witek, is apprehended by officials. Where everyone has accepted these

desaparecidos to be part of the daily grind, just one of many routine inconveniences to be long-

sufferingly endured, Birkuts insuperable sense of justice gives him a clarity of thought and will.

Remember the scene when he consults with the party official about Witeks case; among other


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condescensions, the official says: Dont be childish, theres a political war going on in Poland.

The bombast of that second clause could have easily drowned out somebodys constancy of

purpose, but it is exactly Birkuts childishness that allows him to ignore it. He refuses to work

under the systems terms and proceeds to act in a singularly subversive manner, for a goal no

larger than to free his friend from unfair imprisonment.

Think of Christa T., the unrelenting individualist, whose main modus operandi was to

carve out a space wherein she could explore the nature of her true self, and be honest to the

changing hypothesis. Where the system, ironically speaking through a wised up set of grade-

schoolers, mocks her for making too big a deal of the torture of a frog, she refuses the readymade

safety of that disingenuous cynicism. Rather than allow her wounds to heal, she allows herself to

experience the full range of emotion. She could easily prop up walls to intermediate between her

and the full force of trauma, but she instead stays steadfast to her commitment to a complete

humanity. So every new death forces her to relive all the others (the black tomcat smashes

against the stable wall, the magpies eggs splinter against the rock, and again the snow is brushed

away from the small rigid face). Truth is the refusal to allow whatsoever is volcanically alive in

you to fester in a post-human closure. There is a power and beauty in this understanding.

White vs. Full Color; East and West

An idea that presents itself repeatedly in the texts is the understanding that the two

societies, East and West, are simply different means to the same end. The results of these two

systems seem to converge repeatedly. The clutter of the Western side suggests the possibility of

common conclusions independently arrived at, by both the unregulated marketplace and

socialisms centralized planning apparatus. Though individual graffito may stand as small units


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of meaning, these discordant pieces cancel each other out in the aggregate. On the whole, that

saturnalia of colors carries about as much meaning as the white on its opposite. Think of the

many other convergences that arise from the diametrically opposed dogmas of the two systems.

The eponymous Case Worker can be said to display thefatalism (client vanishes behind his

case, the official behind his function) Durkheim thought inherent in the industrial work

arrangement. Perhaps these are miniature previsions of a larger convergence, one that Havel, in

his essayPowerand the Powerless, declared eminently possible given a perceived common rot

in both systems.

Also, the hands that worked to paint either side of the wall are products of their

respective situations. The white was painted on diligently by workers under state employ while

the western face was attended largely by amateurs. This arrangement works as a metaphor for the

way in which each society treated art. The free access fostered by capitalism engenders a radical

meritocracy that, just as much as it drives innovation and dispels the vice of complacency, forces

the artist to live in fear of want. He may starve, and live limited to the pittance of a day job.

Contrast this to the socialist system, as described by Milosz:

He who may once have done his thinking and writing in his free moments away from a

paying job in a bank or post office, has now found his rightful place on earth. He has been

restored to society, whereas the businessmen, aristocrats, and tradespeople who once

considered him a harmless blunderer have now been dispossessed. They are indeed delighted

to find work as cloakroom attendants and to hold the coat of a former employee of whom they

said, in pre-war days, "It seems he writes.

There is a certain justice here that cannot be easily dismissed; art is given its due obeisance, its

majesty finally propitiated to. Even the authority of Harasztis cynicism implodes when mocking

this arrangement. The satire falls flat in lines such as What do they know about freedom, those

who have no houses, never mind national artists retreats! its dismissiveness is so facile.


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Contemplate the imbalance between a mute inglorious Milton and a system that would have

clothed and fed him like a king among men.

And past this initial enticement (man after all shall not live by bread alone), there is the

opportunity to be an engineer of human souls. Milosz isolates the inducement to conformity: a

guaranteed audience. There are other factors, but to tempt the artist (someone whose hands daily

ache with the reach for true greatness) with power in the real and the now, with entry into the

circle of acknowledged legislators is to speak to the desires of his heart. Politics provides the

necessary chemical agent that art needs to digest the world (Haraszti). The desire to become

the soul of the community finds its perfect home in the systems warm embrace. Of course, we

know the overwhelming answer to the ultimatum (all these things will I give thee, if thou wilt

fall down and worship me): yes. The intelligentsia had nothing to lose but its independence; in

return, it gained half a world, and possesses it on condition that it protects the unity of this world

and interprets its own power as service. For the small price of working with a monochrome

palette, the artist of the east took his rightful place in the center of a proselytizing cult while

the artist of the west continued to wallow in his own bitter independence,

Post-Control, Self-Oppression

At a certain point, internalization is inevitable. The white not only ceases to be

unbearable, it begins to be necessary; or even worse, desirable. The objects that populate our

daily existence slowly integrate themselves into our daily lives, to the point where we can no

longer support ourselves without their once dispensable company. Enter the narrators ofThe

Joke, each subjected to an external constant that slowly accreted onto itself a psychic


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superstructure. These supreme fantasists all find their supporting illusions shattered in the end of

the novel, identity after identity destabilized and rearranged to cope with the critical loss of

foundation.

Take the example of Ludvik who arranged his life around an internal theatre of revenge.

The object of this odium, Pavel, is the man Ludvik blames for that room of raised hands. As

chance would have it, he finds himself in professional proximity to Pavels wife. He charms her

and proceeds to visit upon her micro-managed scenes of domination and plunder (Everything

that had happened to myself and Helena was part of a precise and deliberate plan). However the

conversation after this grotesque ritual reveals Helena to be an unwanted wife; his climactic theft

of Pavel Zemaneks secret chamber turned out to be more like the acceptance of a proffered

gift. More importantly, Helena lets slip that she recognizes Pavel in him. The ordering principle

of his life: his was an identity defined through an opposition that has apparently been dissolved

by time. The unspooling culminates in a face-to-face encounter with Zemanek that not only

confirms Helenas impression but also demonstrates his anger to be both flaccid and irrelevant.

Trying desperately to hold together his imploding cosmos, he cries:

What would I tell him? How would I respond? How would I explain to him that I couldnt

make peace with him? How would I explain that if I did I would immediately lose my inner

balance? How would I explain that one of the arms of my internal scales would suddenly

shoot upward? How would I explain that my hatred of him counterbalanced the weight of evil

that had fallen on my youth? How would I explain that he embodied all the evils in my life?

How would I explain that I neededto hate him?

Dependence is also key to censorships evolution past its ham-handed infancy, past the

initial set of corrective reinforcements, positive and negative. Half the story consists of early

onset artist dependence on content control. Entire languages, beasts of euphemism, allusion and

code, were invented to undercut the censor. Reveling in the brilliance of these systems, the artist

devised increasingly ornate and majestic inventions that allowed for an ever wider range of


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roundabout expression. The initial concession to work under the systems terms was the first

defeat; it granted the censor his rules. However, soon the artists fabulations provided them with

a resistance that helped them define themselves. Without the limits of that monochrome palette,

the artist found his thoughts and feelings evaporating like steam into an open expanse. At that

point, expression becomes impossible without the censors prescriptions.

However, even more corrosive to art was the dependence developed by the audience.

Accustomed to an artist class always positioning themselves around the decrees of censorship,

they learned to read political commentary into everything. Enter the era of total politicization in

all spheres of expression, which is to say the inability of expression to escape the systems

intrusion. Among other things, this diffused silences potential as a radical gesture; society, in

keeping with training, cannot help but interpret soundlessness as some sort of comment on the

regime, therefore tainting the purity of the gesture. This is a censorship much greater than any

censor could impose. At this point, the system would have not lost anything had it published and

distributed even the most anti-utilitarian art; the most virtuoso meditations on form would have

been rendered limp by a socialist audience blind to the pleasure of the text but fully receptive to

the possible political connotations of formalism. The socialist censor has completed the triptych;

in the center his toolsthe blacklists, broadcast delays, expurgations, revisions, speech codes

and on either side the colluding masses of poet and reader; the censor is ready to unveil his

masterwork: he has rendered impotent all of art.

The wall collapsed in 1989, ending over four decades of Cold War Eastern European

Culture. In many ways, this era of human historythe east-west binary, socialist censorship,

honesty as radical comment, politicized art, etc.exists as a closed system. It blossomed into a


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radically idiosyncratic universe while it lasted, and evaporated suddenly. To understand it is an

exercise in historical inquiry. The 89 reconfiguration has disabused the world of the minor facts

that anchored these texts to a relatable reality; already these novels seem a waste of time.

However, one should be careful giving concessions to this mindset. The requirement for

literature to be applicable is a poisonous one, akin to the Soviet demand for social utility in its

masterpieces. In any case it betrays an infantile appreciation of art. Get past the superficial

question of relevance and engage literatures marrowits insight into the creative mind, the way

it imparts that sob in the spine. From the dust of their respective dead realities, these works of

art remain compelling because their currency is still the human soul and their realizations

monumental stories in and of themselves.

Documents

DOLOM| The Many Shades of White (2010).pdf