CHAPTER FIVE

REVISITING OF THE NOTION

OF MIGR LITERATURE

Fluidity, mobility, illusory naturethats what it

means to be civilized. Barbarians do not travel
(Runners, Tokarczuk 2007, 62)

In this chapter I will follow the narrator of Izabela Filipiaks 1995 novel
Niebieska mena eria (The Blue Menagerie, BM), who has already been
presented as a modern traveller and whom we know from the story
Weronika: Portrait with a Cat. Here, alongside the protagonists of other
texts, I will present the notion of migration and emigration in post-1989
Polish fiction. I will see the protagonists of these fictions as new
subjectivities in the process of becoming, discovering and adapting their
new freedoms as well as their gender and transcultural identities to the
new conditions.
The character/narrator of The Blue Menagerie, on the very first page,
describes her return to Poland from emigration:
Autumn. I have just come back to Poland. Coming back is not an easy
thing, which one can easily experience, just like that. You come back and
thats it. And you are. No, one comes back with one layer after another;
each one is deeper, until you reach the core of your bones, until you
experience the pain and forgetfulness. One leaves in the same way.
Ripping away, piece after piece, what was common, what belonged to
both, to us and the place. (BM, 5)1

As we see from the excerpt above, going away and coming back or the
experience of displacement is not an instantaneous or immediate
experience. One has to abandon the inhabited and domestic space (even if
1

All the literary translations in this chapter, if not stated otherwise or not taken
from published translations, are my own (U.Ch.). The first version of this chapter
was prepared for the conference in Passau (2010) and published in Chowaniec
2011. This is an edited and extended version.

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Chapter Five

this space is not friendly or cosy) and expose oneself to the foreign.
Indeed, the physicality of the space plays a decisive role, primarily
because of its connection to our embodied existence. In the previous
chapters I presented several fictional texts that deal with this kind of
experience, where the displacement resonates strongly with an
understanding of space and time. Indeed, Filipiaks novel is not a rare case
in migrants narrations. Polish postmodernity (ponowoczesno see the
translation of Bauman 1997), this new post-1989 reality, has provided a
fertile background for tales of voluntary or economically stimulated
dislocation, which has given birth to new characters in Polish literature.
These are not happy narratives, as we can probably guess, since trips
abroad, going away or coming back are commonly recognized metaphors
for suffering, disturbance or illness (Sontag 1991). Exile and dislocation
are often accompanied by images of distressed bodies, the suffering body.
This connection between the physical body of the emigrant and the loved
space (fatherland, motherland) was particularly vivid in literature during
the Romantic period (Siwicka and Bie czyk 1995) as well as in literature
after the Second World War. Twentieth-century migr writers such as
Maria Kuncewiczowa, Czes aw Mi osz, Witold Gombrowicz, Stanis aw
Bara czak or Adam Zagajewski frequently tried to situate themselves in
relation to their mother tongue, their living conditions abroad and the
status of being an migr (Filipowicz 1989; Danilewicz-Zieli ska 1999,
Gosk 2005), which was hardly ever described as easy and happy.

migr Literature?
Even though in Izabela Filipiaks or, as we will see, in Manuela
Gretkowskas texts we can trace the elements of migr experience, I am
very cautious when speaking of contemporary Polish literature as migr
literature. And here, it should be added at once, following Jerzy Jarz bski
in his Po egnanie z emigracj (Farewell to Emigration 1998), that writers
such as Witold Gombrowicz, Czes aw Mi osz, Jerzy Stempowski, Jzef
Wittlin, Stanis aw Vincenz, Andrzej Bobkowski and Gustaw HerlingGrudzi ski were far from being a homogeneous group. Thus to put them
all within one category has always been a sweeping generalization; they
were rather migr rebels than nostalgic writers crying for a lost homeland
(emigracyjni buntownicy, according to Jarz bski 1998). Bearing in mind
that the actual correlations between emigration, migration and literary
activity have always been very complex, it is fair to say, I believe, that
migr literature as a term has always been politically determined, with the
main assumption being that the migr writer was forced rather than chose

The Notion of migr Literature

137

to leave her/his home country.2 As such, the notion of emigration, as seen

in the case of Filipiaks texts, is still present in womens writing during the
first half of the 1990s, yet this writing, while entering into a debate with
the intellectual heritage of traditional migr literature, tries to break with
the political and national paradigm of displacement.
Unquestionably, Polish literary critics are still interested in the
category of emigration; it may refer to the authors place of residence, but
is often also connected to the themes treated in the texts. As a result of
recent socio-political changes, such as the post-communist transformation,
the extension of the European Union and Polands accession to it, as well
as the general economic crisis and search for better earnings or the need
for cultural change, there are many Polish authors working abroad,
especially in the last decade, and many books on migration have been
written there, such as Wioletta Grzegorzewskas Notatnik z Wyspy (Notes
from the Island, 2011) and Gugu y (Unripe Fruits, 2014), Marek
Kazmierskis Damn the Source (2013), Gra yna Plebaneks Illegal Liaisons
(translation 2013, Nielegalne zwi zki, 2010), Katarzyna Tubylewiczs
Rwie niczki (Peers, 2014), Piotr Czerwi skis Mi dzynard (Nation in
Between, 2011) and Pigu ka wolno ci (The Pill of Freedom, 2012), A.M.
Bakalars Madame Mephisto (2013, written in English), Jan Krasnowolskis
Afryka ska elektronika (African electronics, 2013) and many others.
Yet it is important to bear in mind the differences in usage of the
category of migr/emigration literature between the pre-1989 period and
the contemporary period. Emigration turns out to be a special kind of
experience of being in between. Contemporary emigration does not like
the prefix e and prefers the somewhat lighter migration, since the
latter is devoid of coercion, the need to seek asylum or desperate efforts to
get a visa. Contemporary (e)migration is often connected to the difficult
experience of loss of language, a loss difficult to accept since it is a loss on
request, it is a loss that seems to be a choice, and this is why we can talk
rather about inscriptions of migration (as suggested in the Introduction).
Such an experience brings the literary text close to a form of therapy for
treating melancholy, in which we see grief, sadness and attempts to work
through the damage. We see this, for example in Grzegorzewska (2011),
where she realizes she is in the dangerous moment of losing her language:
2

Jerzy Jarz bski writes that one of the characteristics of Polish literature is that it
is loaded beyond measure with social servitudes (Jarz bski 1998, 7). And of
post-1989 migr writers: Those younger writers were not emigrants any more, at
least the works by Jerzy ukosz, Manuela Gretkowska, Marek Jastrz biecMosakowski, who live temporarily or permamently abroad, have never been read
as migr literature (ibid., 242).

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Chapter Five
17.01.2011: I am becoming intrigued and surprised by the Polish language:
its etymology, tame transmutations, ellipses, phraseology and the reflexive
pronouns which we overuse. The mechanisms which since birth I have
accepted as mine and natural are starting to erode and cause me to
struggle more and more in my native tongue. And English? To my mind, it
is still in its infancy, perhaps never to progress beyond nappy stage. It
neither delights nor depresses me. Mr de Saussure, I have got myself into
this, so where should I go next? In which language should I seek more of
me? (Grzegorzewska 2012, 79)

The intimate diarys protagonist, Grzegorzewska, struggles with

melancholy, which she overcomes through writing her notes, slowly
discovering the pleasure of acquiring a foreign language. This struggle
frequently results from an emigration question about language and ones
own identity that is disturbed by the fact of loosening the bond
characteristic of ones native languagebetween the words and the
reality. This dialectic between the loss of the comportable in the
linguistic sense but unwanted Polish reality and the constant lack of
comprehending a new foreign reality becomes a significant element in
contemporary fiction concerning (e)migration. One of the striking
phenomena in migration is the loss of a common language between
generations. The native language, the mother tongue (in English) and
father tongue (j zyk ojczysty, in Polish), of the migrants children is the
language of neither their father nor mother. In the works of women writers
focused on movement, change, dislocation, I can see this transgressive
movement: writing from the perspective of someone who looks at Polish
culture from a distance. Thus, the critical tone in the literature of women is
often linked to specific nomadic themes. Only the one who has seen
something else (traveller, vagabond, immigrant) can see home in a
different light, hence the popularity of female tourists and migrants in the
recent literature.
To summarize our reflections on whether there is still an migr (or a
migration) literature, I enumerate several features of traditionally
understood migr literature. Among the most important elements I see
various contextual determinants, such as a particular hermetic character, a
closedness of the literary circles in which traditional migr literature was
created. This is also a psychological determinant, the feeling that one is
creating a work in a language that will probably never be read by the broad
audience. This closedness (zamkni to , the limited migr circles,
limited audience) is also connected to various critical limitations, such as
limited exposure to critical readings. These limitations on migr literature
are the result, of course, of the political situation that has also affected the