The Polish Complex by Tadeusz Konwicki

First published:Kompleks polski, 1977 (English translation, 1981)

Type of work: Philosophical and psychological realism

Time of work: The early 1970’s, with flashbacks to earlier rebellions

Locale: Warsaw, with imagined episodes elsewhere

Principal Characters:

• Konwicki, the narrator, a well-known Polish writer
• Kojran, a man who knows Konwicki’s books and who stalked him for three weeks in 1951 with orders to kill
• Duszek, a large man who pursued Kojran and was his jailer
• Zygmunt Mineyko, a revolutionary of the 1863 uprising, to whom a large part of the book is addressed in a narrative historical fantasy; the narrator identifies with him
• Romuald Traugutt, a Polish patriot who was appointed leader in the same 1863 uprising

The Novel

The Polish Complex centers on one of the constants of contemporary Polish life—waiting in line. In this case Poles are waiting outside a jewelry store in Warsaw for gold rings to arrive from the Soviet Union. The entire novel takes place in this line, although there are vivid interludes at other sites—a remote forest in Lithuania, for example, and a hotel room in another city. In these partly surrealistic and dreamlike episodes, a historical journey takes place as well as a geographical one. The episodes re-create scenes from the unsuccessful Polish rebellion of 1863; the sense of defeat, disappointment, inevitable doom, and eternal struggle suffered by the main characters of these episodes provides a psychological glue that binds past and present, determining individual and national identity. Tadeusz Konwicki himself was a revolutionary, fighting against the Soviet troops who took over his native area of Lithuania in the 1940’s. Like Zygmunt Mineyko, the 1863 revolutionary, Konwicki was unsuccessful in his attempt to keep his homeland free, but his identification with Mineyko in defeat and blighted hopes blurs the temporal distance between the two characters and explains something of the present psychological state of the Konwicki protagonist.

As Konwicki waits in line for the order to arrive from the Soviet Union, he makes the acquaintance of a number of other people. The two major characters he meets are Kojran and Duszek, standing behind Konwicki in that order. The order is symbolic, for these three have followed one another in the past. Kojran followed Konwicki with a death order for a time after Konwicki had dropped his revolutionary sympathies in favor of Socialist leanings. Duszek, in turn, pursued Kojran to torment and imprison him. Now, however, the three men join in a kind of begrudging camaraderie, even going off to have a drink together. They share an unspoken disillusionment over the value of intense political feeling, a sense of futility, and the feeling of being jaded with life, with politics, with experience; their shared feelings render the past almost humorously negligible and enable them to accept their differing roles and past hostilities.

Trivial episodes occur while they wait in line. A woman pretends to be old in order to get ahead in the line. A peasant woman suddenly tries to sell veal. A young man turns out to be a French anarchist who, ironically enough, has fled to Poland to find true freedom. Street musicians play Christmas tunes. There are also periodic announcements by the manager of the store. The three men temporarily leave the line to go for a drink. A girl walks barefoot through the December snowstorm in a dressing gown. A group of Soviet tourists get preferential treatment and go to the head of the line, although why they want to buy Soviet gold rings in Poland is never explained. The manager announces that the awaited rings have not arrived and that the shipment consists of samovars instead. Konwicki daydreams and muses and philosophizes about himself, about his identity, his career, his connection with Poland, his native land, his place in the universe. During the course of the evening he feels the symptoms of a heart attack and subsequently experiences a mild attack. When he comes to, he finds himself with Iwona, a salesgirl, and makes love with her. The episode begins in a gloriously romantic, passionate mood—Iwona is described in beautiful images drawn from nature—but degenerates into the tawdry as the lovers recognize the inevitable futility of their relationship and the manager angrily bangs on the door of their backroom trysting site.

As the novel approaches its end, there is another scene of a defeated revolutionary. This time it is the final good-bye between Romuald Traugutt and his wife in a strange hotel room. They are clearly aware that in assuming leadership of the People’s Government, Traugutt is deliberately marching to his death. Yet he must go. Their last night together is neither romanticized nor idealized, interrupted as it is by news that Traugutt’s passport has been seized by the police and by sounds of rowdy behavior in the adjacent room. This domestic good-bye prepares the reader for the less intimate farewells and dispersal of the people waiting in line. Konwicki rejects the invitation of a lonely woman to spend the night with her, and he heads back to his home. Yet where is home? It cannot be his native land, for Wilno has been seized and there is no freedom there, so it must be the small apartment where his wife presumably awaits his return. Despite the indifference of the universe, he feels the great potential of Poland—Warsaw is a “great massif” and houses “caves full of sleeping knights.” This is the Polish Complex—reality and vision.

The Characters

The major character in the novel is Konwicki himself. As the narrator-protagonist, he indulges in reveries and philosophical musings that are interrupted by the pedestrian events involved in waiting in line in front of a store for goods that never arrive. The novel depicts the human mind shifting without explanation or transition from the real world to the world of imagination and speculation. Konwicki identifies with failed, historically authentic revolutionaries of the nineteenth century, and the cycle of defeat and thwarted ambitions colors his sense of himself and his sense of Poland. The historical dimension brings psychological depth to the narrator, for it justifies and explains his sense of futility and despair.

All aspects of the narrator’s life are brought under scrutiny. Perhaps most important are his politics. Like the failed revolutionary, he wonders if it was worth it. Political opposites can now be superficial friends, and there is no suggestion that anything more is desired or desirable. Politics are meaningless although unavoidable in Konwicki’s depiction of contemporary Poland. Konwicki’s writings are reconsidered. Kojran and Iwona are familiar with his books. Yet what difference does that make? Konwicki takes no pleasure in their recognition. Indeed, he says that he hates his own books and laments the inadequacy of language for true communication. So strong is his sense of man’s alienation from man that he no longer writes to communicate but only to ward off total nihilism through an existential act. His personal life is under scrutiny. There is no haste to return home on Christmas Eve, and he engages in adultery. Romance degenerates into lust, and his stirrings of desire for a woman blend with those imagined ones of a revolutionary a century ago. His nationalism is examined. He wonders why the critics label him a Polish writer. What is the source of one’s ethnic identity? Waiting in line provides the narrator with the personal space he needs for introspection.

It is significant that the novel takes place on Christmas Eve and that these characters, a microcosm of the people of Poland, are waiting. They are waiting for material goods, waiting for gold of all things, that most symbolically materialistic of goods, the standard measure of wealth. The fact that it is Christmas Eve marks the degeneration of the Polish spirit compared to the triumphant waiting for the Christ child centuries ago. The implication is that modern Poles inhabit a spiritual wasteland. Yet Konwicki insists that he is waiting for a miracle, and the word is used throughout the book, evoking the quiet faith that a miracle can happen. Despite the narrator’s obvious satiety with life, despite his resigned despair, his halfhearted hope for a miracle betrays a residual and understated hopefulness that lingers regardless of the reality of both contemporary and historical Poland.

The other characters, who represent common types in Poland, share in the narrator’s individual and social malaise, but they find different responses. Some attempt to lie and cheat their way through life. Some, like the student and the French anarchist, fail to see the reality of present-day Poland, their lack of insight symbolized by the Frenchman’s physical blindness. Any evidence of compassion, such as the student’s allowing the old woman to cut in line, becomes reason for ridicule; she has worked on their sympathies and they are fools, but the worst thing about it is the understated way in which her hoax is subsequently revealed. Nothing is made of it—no outburst, no anger, as if it were to be expected that kindness and generosity would turn out to be absurd in this absurd world. There is grumbling and complaining. People waiting in line are selfish and greedy. They are caught up in the pettiness of everyday life. If they were waiting for something necessary, such as meat or milk or even needed clothing, they would be more sympathetic characters. Instead, they are waiting for gold rings, that most useless of commodities that soothes only one’s vanity or hedges one’s security.

While the reader of The Polish Complex becomes immersed in the psyche of the narrator-protagonist and is sensitized to how he thinks and what he feels, the other characters are not so fully realized. Indeed, they are almost caricatures, each vividly portrayed but representing a clear stereotype. The effect is that a reader feels exposed to the broad range of Polish society. Antagonistic or compassionate, honest or lying—these are merely superficial manifestations although they turn out after all to be universal. All cultures have such types; it is the human condition. Yet these characters are also distinctly Polish. It is the bedrock of Polish history and the collective Polish experience that make the Polish character unique.

Critical Context

The Polish Complex marks a dramatic change from the kind of writing which first earned for Konwicki a literary reputation in Poland. In 1954, his Socialist Realist novel Wadza (power) appeared and won the State Prize for Literature. Two years later he published Rojsty (1956); marshes), a book which he had actually written in 1948 but which could not be published until censorship restrictions were eased. Rojsty points in the direction of The Polish Complex; it satirizes a young man who is trying to become a hero fighting the Soviet invasion of Poland. Rojsty marks a turning point in Konwicki’s value system; he had sided with the Communists for a time because he believed that industrialism was the wave of the future for Poland, but he became disillusioned with socialism and turned in other directions. Rojsty was the first work to show the kind of writing that would make Konwicki a major literary figure.

Sennik wspoczesny (1963; A Dreambook for Our Time, 1969) brought Konwicki an international reputation. Almost immediately it was hailed as a major literary sensation. Konwicki depicts in the book a nightmarish world of torment, fear, evil, guilt, and alienation. A terrifying book, it has a surrealistic aura and a pessimistic view of life. These qualities also obtain in The Polish Complex, which was officially banned in Poland. First published in the samizdat, the novel shows the dismal realities of everyday life in Poland—the boredom, the disillusionment, the sense of a bleak future that seems shared by everyone. What makes the book perhaps even more devastating than Konwicki’s earlier work is that the problems are not idiosyncratic; they cannot be dismissed as one person’s peculiar combination of circumstances and identity, but are endemic to the country. Furthermore, the shaping of individual character by national history is inevitable and inescapable. Thus the condemnation is all the stronger.

Konwicki’s subsequent works have continued his vivid portrayal of a grim Polish reality and strong condemnation of the moral and spiritual condition of the country through techniques of fragmentation and collage. The Polish Complex confirmed that Konwicki is a powerful and intense writer whose reputation on the international scene is well justified.

Sources for Further Study

Anders, Jaroslaw. Review in The New York Review of Books. XXIX (March 4, 1982), p. 16.

Baran, Henry K. Review in Library Journal. CVII (March 15, 1982), p. 650.

Baranczak, Stanisaw. “The Polish Complex,” in Partisan Review. LI, no. 3 (1984), pp. 433-441.

Choice. XX, February, 1983, p. 798.

Krzyzanowski, Jerzy R. “The Polish Complex,” in Polish Perspectives. XXV (1979), pp. 98-110.

Nation. CCXXXV, September 11, 1982, p. 214.

The New York Times Book Review. LXXXVII, January 10, 1982, p. 3.

The New Yorker. LIX, February 21, 1983, p. 126.

Publishers Weekly. CCXX, December 18, 1981, p. 61.

Times Literary Supplement. October 1, 1982, p. 1063.