A Dreambook for Our Time by Tadeusz Konwicki
"A Dreambook for Our Time" by Tadeusz Konwicki is a novel set in a remote Polish village, exploring themes of guilt, despair, and the search for meaning in a post-war context. The story follows Paul, a middle-aged laborer, who is viewed with suspicion by the villagers due to his educated demeanor and mysterious past. Through fragmented narrative techniques, the book juxtaposes Paul's present experiences with haunting memories of his time with the Polish Home Army during World War II and the anti-Communist guerrillas that followed. The villagers, struggling with their own sense of hopelessness, are drawn to a religious cult led by Joseph Car, a figure who symbolizes both connection and confusion for Paul.
As the narrative unfolds, readers encounter a rich tapestry of characters, each representing different aspects of human suffering and survival. Paul's internal conflict intensifies as he grapples with his feelings of guilt over past actions and his failed attempts to connect with Justine, who embodies the stability that eludes him. The novel's experimental structure reflects the chaos of war and the fractured nature of identity and history in Poland. Despite its surrealistic elements, the text offers a nuanced exploration of resilience, suggesting that even amidst despair, the characters strive for understanding and connection in a world marked by loss.
A Dreambook for Our Time by Tadeusz Konwicki
First published:Sennik wspoczesny, 1963 (English translation, 1969)
Type of work: Impressionistic realism
Time of work: The 1930’s to the early 1960’s
Locale: Poland
Principal Characters:
Paul , a disillusioned veteran of anti-Nazi and anti-Communist conflictsJoseph Car , the leader of a religious cultJustine , Car’s young wifeRegina , the operator of a grocery cooperativeMalvina Korsak , Paul’s landladyIldefons Korsak , Malvina’s brotherSzafir , the local Communist Party officialDebicki , a railroad foremanJasiu Krupa , a railroad worker and a former partisanCount Pac , another railroad workerSergeant Glowko , the local policeman
The Novel
In a remote Polish village, Paul works as a laborer building an extension on the railroad. The other villagers, though friendly, are suspicious of the middle-aged stranger because he seems educated and says little about himself. Paul rents a room from Malvina Korsak, who is unmarried and lives with her elderly brother, Ildefons. The other characters in the novel include Regina, a lusty woman who runs the local grocery cooperative; Jasiu Krupa, a former partisan with only one hand; Count Pac, a railroad worker who, despite his name, insists upon his humble origins; Debicki, who oversees the work on the railroad; Sergeant Glowko, a policeman; Szafir, the local Party official; Joseph Car, a mysterious stranger who leads a religious cult to which most of the villagers belong; and Justine, Car’s young wife.
The fragmented narrative jumps between Paul’s experiences in the present and his past life, mostly his serving with the Home Army, which battled the Nazis during World War II, and with anti-Communist guerrillas who fought the Soviets after the German Occupation of Poland ended. Paul was expelled from the Home Army for killing German soldiers when ordered not to do so. Later, with the guerrillas, he grew sick of killing and attempted only to wound a man he had been ordered to assassinate. Paul is sure that Joseph Car is this man, and his mixed feelings of guilt and anger are intensified by his falling in love with Justine. She rejects his pleas to run away with him.
The villagers’ despair at their seemingly meaningless lives increases when engineers arrive to dam the Sola River and create a reservoir, thereby flooding their community. Forces over which they have no control seem to be out to destroy their efforts to conduct a normal existence. They find some solace in Joseph Car’s cult and seek scapegoats to blame for their troubles, beating Paul and Szafir, who dies soon afterward.
The Characters
A Dreambook for Our Time opens with Paul’s attempted suicide. He thinks that he can no longer live with his guilt and despair. He feels guilty for his mother’s arrest by the Nazis and her subsequent death, for his accidental killing of a young comrade he mistook for a German, for surviving the war when so many of his friends and countrymen did not, for his failure and that of his society to live up to their potential. He has seen too much death, too many broken promises. Tormented by his memories, he sees his past in the often-accusing faces around him: “I look for meanings everywhere. Every face I see grows over with the thicket of memory. I shall never extricate myself from it.” While the villagers can find some respite in religion, Paul cannot: “I don’t need a faith from outside. I want to find peace in myself.” Tadeusz Konwicki offers little hope of his character’s ever finding it.
Paul is an idealist who has lost all of his ideals. Count Pac tells him, “You wanted to set the world right, make people happy. You swallowed any amount of these ideas, and they’ve eaten you up inside. Only have to touch you with one finger, and you all fall apart, like rot.” Paul’s decay is presented as that of Poland. He fought the Nazis and the Soviets to preserve his country’s integrity. Then he joined the Communist Party, only to be disillusioned.
Paul thinks that if he confronts Joseph Car his torment might be somewhat alleviated. Yet this mystic only adds to his confusion by first admitting that he is the man Paul wounded during the war and then claiming that he is not. Paul wants to save himself by proving that he can care for another human being. “I’ll make you a gift of the last remains of my feelings,” he tells Justine. When she refuses to leave her husband, Paul’s sense of hopelessness grows.
Joseph Car is Paul’s psychological double, a reflection of Paul’s past. “The same sin links us, the same memory,” Paul tells him. Car says that Paul sees only his guilt, is motivated only by his desperation to reassemble some of the pieces of his broken life. Car does this himself by unifying the villagers in a cult through which he hopes to release them from the burden of their pasts.
Like Joseph Car, most of the characters are primarily symbols, representing different types of victims. Because she is an orphan who knows neither her true identity nor her nationality, Justine must be loyal to her husband, the only stability she has ever known. Accepting her fate, Malvina hides behind homilies and claims that she has chosen not to be happy. Her brother, Ildefons, blames the world’s troubles on humans trying to be wiser than God. He attempts to escape by writing stories about fantastic animals and plants, yet when his sister reads and criticizes them, he destroys years of work. The most complex of the characters, Regina, wants affection but fears intimacy. No longer able to bear her loneliness, she leaves the village only to return to marry the dull Debicki. She is the character most capable of sympathizing with Paul’s pain.
Critical Context
Tadeusz Konwicki’s early fiction was in the Socialist Realist vein dominant in postwar Poland, but with novels such as this one, he helped lead Polish literature into more ambitious spheres. The experimental qualities of A Dreambook for Our Time can be seen primarily in its fragmented structure. Paul’s life in the present is interrupted by flashbacks to his past, but these earlier events do not occur in chronological order: Paul’s period with the guerrillas, for example, comes before his expulsion from the Home Army. There are flashbacks within flashbacks, a method which helps to emphasize the chaos of war and the characters’ turmoil. Since there is no pattern to the history of Poland, a seemingly random structure is fitting for a novel attempting to capture the essence of life in that country.
A Dreambook for Our Time is frequently described by critics as surrealistic and nihilistic. The former quality results from Konwicki’s slight distortion of reality as the best means of depicting the everyday nightmares of life in the twentieth century. The charge of nihilism seems inaccurate, since Konwicki’s characters rarely give up on life despite the diminishing possibilities they encounter.
Bibliography
Koakowski, Leszek. Introduction to A Dreambook for Our Time, 1976.
Krzyzanowski, Jerzy R. “The Haunted World of Tadeusz Konwicki,” in Books Abroad. XLVIII (1974), pp. 485-490.
The New York Times Book Review. Review. LXXV (May 17, 1970), p. 5.
Saturday Review. Review. LIII (June 20, 1970), p. 43.
Wegner, J. Konwicki, 1973.
World Literature Today. Review. LI (Summer, 1977), p. 464.