CULTURE

Waldemar Łazuga: Memory of Ignorance, Ignorance of Memory

Apparently, with age, almost everyone becomes a historian - at least of his/her own life. And we are surprised at how many changes we have already witnessed… and at how little - despite this - has changed. Paradox? Not at all. In any case, no greater than the dialectical unity of two seemingly mutually exclusive wisdoms: that “everything passes” (i.e. changes) and that “nothing is new under the sun” (in other words, let’s not get carried away with these changes).

When I was in primary school - some thirty or more years ago - our art teacher instructed us to draw how we imagined the year 2000 would be. And I remember that all of us proceeded to draw flocks of hovercraft rising above the earth, because no-one even considered the possibility that there would still be any cars, roads or other such things around in the year 2000. So what? So nothing. Cars are as cars were. They drive as they used to drive…little different under Clinton from those in which the last Tsar of Russia, the late Nicholas II Romanov used to ride.

The same, of course, applies to telephones. And to radios and to records and to so many other ancient inventions which the forgetful contemporary society illegitimately lays claim to. As for the realms of politics and culture - they hardly deserve a mention. Conservatives and liberals were already around at the time of the French Revolution; socialists on the barricades in 1848; masons in Voltaire’s time; and the forerunners of today’s PSL-ites (Peasants Party members) during the 1525 Peasants War in Germany, busy organising blockades of forest trails. In the concert halls, nothing but anachronisms - music from 100 and 200 years ago; on the radio, antiquities - Jagger, Lennon, Czerwone Gitary and Piotr Szczepanik. And, after all this, I read from Eric Habsbawm that one of his more intelligent students asked whether, since he had heard of the Second World War, this meant that before the Second War there had been a First !!!

I cannot compete with Habsbawm, of course, although I have also been rendered speechless on several occasions. Firstly, when some university applicant confused Gomułka with Narutowicz. Later, when another had to pause to think about the abbreviation PZPR. And, finally, a third who, when asked about Napoleon, replied without the slightest embarrassment: “Sure, I’ve heard of him, but I wouldn’t like to guess who he was.”

Good old professor Habsbawm attempts to defend his student and writes something about the culture of a “permanent presentness”, to which the student had fallen victim. About an all-encompassing promotion, display and commerce. About a life with neither perspectives nor a sense of passing. About a philosophy of life summed up in the principle: as things are, so they were - just worse in every respect; as things are, so will they be - just better in every respect. And that’s about it.

Forgetful youngsters of the world unite!