Not easy because it is swollen with meaning. There’s a sense of trepidation to even venture on the subject. How should we think about her? In the tone of the romantic images and sentiments that it has inspired since the beginning of the 19th century? Or on the contrary – through the bitter experiences of the 20th century? Remembering Żmudź, which – in contrast to the bleeding Ukrainian borderland – seemed to be a mainstay of peaceful coexistence and symbiosis? Or rather the pre-war Vilnius region?
It’s a pity. Because this space is close to us, not only geographically. It remains significant – not only in its idealised, Arcadian form.
Usually, to understand this type of truth you need to delve into the chronicles, into history with a capital “H” – into the descriptions of marching events from which we are just making a more complete mosaic. Sometimes, however, the truth comes to us almost effortlessly. It reveals itself in emotion, it peeks out between words, carried lazily through subsequent anecdotes and considerations. Just as it appears in “The Issa Valley”.
“The river for Tomasz was enormous. There were always echoes above it: tadpoles were knocking tak-tak-tak; from somewhere, others were saying, as if there was an agreement, that they were supposed to answer one another. The whole orchestra and the washing women never made a mistake if it started anew, she immediately fell into the tact of what was already there. Tomasz stitched into the bushes, climbed the willow trunk and spent hours listening to the water. Listening.”
Away from the war and the turmoil of the early twentieth century, away from his parents, in Lithuania, in the Issa Valley, in the fictional village of ‘Ginie’ near Kaunas, Tomasz is growing up. He lives outside, at the home of his grandparents, a couple of eccentrics who give their grandson as much freedom as he might need. There are immaculate forests around him, flowery meadows and finally a river. The river around which life revolves and human destiny matures.
Tomasz also matures. He discovers the world slowly, learning the rules that govern it in his own boyish way. With the eyes of a child, he notices smaller and greater injustices, learns the cruelty and contrasts existing in Lithuanian soil. In time, he will also see the upcoming change: land reform, Iron Wolves, national disputes, identity and quarrels-of-belonging.
“Always with the threshing as at home, Tomasz experienced for the first time after this adventure with Domcia his strangeness. The animated discussions of the men, who drowsily chewed on snuff tobacco and spat yellow saliva and did not pay him any attention. He separated himself from them, that he would not be disturbed when he was scratching his course; grimy children of his age who had a duty to do: to smash a linen sheet from under the thresher; all this pushed him somehow off the beaten track.”
Written in exile, “The Issa Valley” is filled with a deep sense of longing. Miłosz invites us on a journey to the land of his childhood, as he remembered it: multi-ethnic, full of nature, somewhat wild, in which after the mass in the forest, a sacrifice of a snake was made in order to give strength to someone. For this trip to be successful, our guide had to become a child – resurrected from the alter-ego of the author, willing again to trust in the devils, ghosts and superstitions that inhabit his memories.
So the Issa Valley remains a place, both real and fairy-tale, a “mythical country”, in the words of Miłosz himself. It would be in vain to look for it in the atlas (or at least in Lithuania) – under the changed name hides Niewiaża, one of the Neman tributaries, flowing through the very heart of Lithuania, at the interface of Zmudź and Auksztota.
When he returned to the place of his youth in 1992, he found nothing there. The Soviet authorities dismantled the manor buildings in the 1960s, turning the property into a kolkhoz that deteriorated over time – thus adding an epilogue to the story. Today, the Cultural Centre of Czesław Miłosz is housed in a rebuilt granary.
“Nobody lives alone: he talks to those who have passed their lives, it becomes incarnate in him, it ascends the steps and explores, following in the footsteps, the corners of the house of history. From their hope and defeat, of the signs that remained after them, even if it was one the letter carved in stone, gives rise to calmness and restraint in pronouncing judgment about themselves. Great happiness is given to what they can get. Never and nowhere do they feel homeless, it supports their memory of all those pursuing as they reach an unattainable goal.”
The world Czesław Miłosz presents in The Issa Valley is gone. But this does not mean that it cannot be visited, a Nobel laureate frozen in prose like in Lithuanian amber.
And if only through bringing him back to life for one evening, the reader can discover truth, peace and restraint in speaking about themselves.
Autor
Olga Kowalska
Graduated in Polish and Romanian philology at the University of Gdańsk. Creator of the literary blog and accompanying YouTube channel - http://WielkiBuk.com, which she has been running since 2012. Reviewer and literature promoter. She conducts author meetings, interviews with writers and workshops related to promoting personal brands on the web. She works in a small company dealing in multimedia services.
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