A Minor Apocalypse by Tadeusz Konwicki

First published:Mala apokalipsa, 1979 (English translation, 1983)

Type of work: Historical fantasy

Time of work: Sometime in the not-too-distant future

Locale: Poland

Principal Characters:

• Konwicki, the narrator
• Hubert, and
• Rysio, two Polish dissidents who ask Konwicki to set himself on fire in protest against the Polish government
• Nadezhda, a beautiful Russian woman who is attracted to Konwicki
• Comrade Kobialka, Konwicki’s neighbor and a high-ranking Polish politician who takes his clothes off on television as a protest against the system
• Comrade Sacher, a Politburo member who once threw Konwicki out of the Communist Party but who now befriends the narrator
• Tadzio Skorko, a young Pole from the provinces who befriends Konwicki but who is also a police informer
• Jan, a revered dissident who is exhausted and depressed by his years of opposition to the government

The Novel

A Minor Apocalypse takes place sometime in the not-too-distant future. The author makes himself the narrator and protagonist who is importuned by two dissident friends to set himself on fire as a protest against the inhumanity of the Polish government. Hubert and Rysio suggest that Tadeusz Konwicki should sacrifice himself because he is a prominent writer—but not so valuable that his loss would do irreparable damage to the nation. Knowicki would like to ridicule their proposition, yet he is forced to take it seriously because of his own stymied creativity and the demoralizing stasis of the country as a whole. As he says to Jan, whom he has regarded as a moral beacon of the culture, “someone has to break this lethargy.... To wake the sleepers with a wild cry.”

Much of a A Minor Apocalypse is taken up with Konwicki’s efforts to prepare himself for his immolation in the service of the Polish quest for freedom. During his daylong journey around Warsaw, he meets several figures who are representative of the culture, of both the authorities and the Polish underground. Much of the narrator’s own past is also revealed. He is, himself, a compromised figure, having once been a Party member. What strikes him now is how long both the government and its opponents have put up with a stalemated situation. If the Communists have not built a better world through socialism, the opposition has become almost comfortable with its lack of effectiveness. At times, it seems more like a weary game the two sides are playing.

Indeed, Poland has been under the Russian hammer for ages, it seems, and the result is that no one is sure of the country’s own history. Dates vary in the novel, and the narrator is never quite certain which anniversary of the victory of socialism is being celebrated. Time itself has become a political tool. In such vague and ambiguous circumstances, Konwicki wonders—right up to the end of the novel—whether his sacrifice will have meaning.

The Characters

Although the Konwicki character of A Minor Apocalypse bears a striking resemblance to the novelist, author and narrator are not the same. If Konwicki did at one time collaborate with the Polish Stalinist state in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s he has also had a much more successful career in opposition than his namesake in the novel. After 1954, the novelist turned against the government and authored several significant novels and directed several important films. While he may feel the weariness of his narrator and rue the seeming futility of Polish history, his art has been steadfastly witty and energetic—hardly the sign of an exhausted talent.

A Minor Apocalypse abounds in interesting characters. Hubert and Rysio for example, present the bizarre plan for Konwicki’s sacrifice in rational, well-articulated terms. They are men in the business of dissidence. Even though Konwicki wants to discount what they say, he recognizes the impulse behind their extremism. They want to galvanize a country slipping away into acquiescence to the status quo. Moreover, Konwicki realizes that something is afoot (perhaps a change in the Zeitgeist?) when Comrade Kobialka strips on nationwide television and address Party members as Comrade Swine. The totalitarian system is itself victimized by an unreality that some of its members occasionally acknowledge.

It is extraordinary how much good fellow-feeling Poles on opposite sides of the political fence have for each other in this novel. Even when Konwicki is tortured with a sophisticated drug that makes the slightest touch of his flesh excruciatingly painful, he is entertained by a tormentor who tacitly acknowledges that all Poles are in the same historical boat. The question is not whether to compromise with the Russians, but rather the limits to which the individual will go in compromising. Thus the young Tadzio Skorko is a genuine admirer of Konwicki, the dissident, yet informs on Konwicki nevertheless. Similarly, Konwicki turns on Tadzio and threatens physical violence, but no harm is actually done to the informer because the narrator surely knows that Tadzio is an aspect of himself—or at least of his former self. Konwicki makes a point of noting that he is from the provinces, and Tadzio is repeatedly described as a young man from the provinces. Tadzio, too, is another form of the narrator’s own name, Tadeusz.

Comrade Sacher is perfectly expressive of the absurd Polish situation, in which characters have a way of turning into their opposites. He has been a Party hack, responsible for expelling Konwicki from the Party. Now in old age Sacher turns to painting and would like to view himself and Konwicki as fellow artists. In this pre-Solidarity novel, Poles are, in other words, divided against themselves and suspicious of one another’s motivations. Rysio, the dissident, is opposed by his brother, a government official, who calls him an idiot and accuses him of “dreams of a career on a world scale. That’s why he writes that unpunctuated, dissident prose.”

The Russians—traditionally viewed as the source of most of Poland’s misfortunes—are presented sympathetically in the figure of Nadezhda. She falls in love with Konwicki but reveals how little the Russians know about Poles. Konwicki is fascinated with her and not about to give her up. Time after time, the individuality of the novel’s characters makes them larger than the opinions they express. Konwicki does not care much for Russians, yet he cannot seem to help his attraction to Nadezhda. The contradictions that Konwicki finds are the contradictions not simply of socialism but also of humanity as a whole.

Critical Context

A Minor Apocalypse quickly became a controversial novel when it appeared in 1979. Konwicki seemed to be attacking everyone—not simply the Russians and the Polish government but also dissidents and the West. Like several other critics of the novel, its American translator, Richard Lourie, identifies certain characters as based on prominent Polish artists and intellectuals. He suggests in his translator’s introduction that Konwicki is settling scores with many of his Polish colleagues, including the famous film director Andrzej Wajda. While there is little doubt that certain characters have their origins in real-life models, it seems misguided to call A Minor Apocalypse a roman a clef; that is, the author has more in mind than immediate political realities. The characters in his novel, like the character of Konwicki himself, are fully imagined figures in a fable of history. As Anders concludes, “By placing his story in an indefinite future, where time has almost ceased to exist, Konwicki captures this repetitive character of the Polish drama, giving us not Poland in a particular moment but a summa of Polish history.”

A Minor Apocalypse is one of those novels that is particularly sensitive to the changing currents of history. It was written just before the Solidarity strikes in August of 1980. At that time, Polish society seemed particularly stagnant and divisive. The standard of living was rapidly dropping, the political opposition to the government seemed hapless, and the country seemed to be drifting toward the apathy that is so acutely present in the novel. The stunning success of Solidarity then seemed to prove Konwicki wrong, for the country aroused itself in a massive movement in favor of democracy and human rights. Yet the subsequent suppression of Solidarity supports his skeptical vision about the possibilities of a permanent change for the better. Whether anything more than a “minor apocalypse” is possible in Poland is an open question, a question Konwicki has posed with great wit, humor, and tolerance.

Bibliography

Anders, Jaroslaw. Review in The New Republic. CLXXXIX (November 21, 1983), pp.43-45.

Christian Science Monitor. October 13, 1983, p. 26.

Fuksiewicz, J. Tadeusz Konwicki, 1967.

Krzyzanowski, J. R. “The Haunted World of Tadeusz Konwicki,” in Books Abroad, XLVIII (1974), p. 3.

Library Journal. CVIII, June 1, 1983, p. 1157.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. August 28, 1983, p. 1.

National Review. XXXV, July 22, 1983, p. 88.

The New York Review of Books. Review. XXX (October 13, 1983), pp. 19-20.

The New York Times Book Review. Review. LXXXVIII (October 23, 1983), p. 13.

The New Yorker. Review. LIX (January 2, 1984), pp. 89-90.

Newsweek. Review. CII (August 8, 1983), p. 72.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXIII, June 10, 1983, p. 56.

Rostropowicz, Clark J. “Introduction,” in The Polish Complex, 1984.

Wegner, J. Konwicki, 1973.