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As far as our anger can take us
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A shikari of our ownI came to my old home to pack my books into carton boxes and see how I could organise their transport to Leiden. But soon I verified this is not a feasible option. My Multilingual Library is too big, too tempting, it resists being packed into carton boxes; at least till the moment when History comes to knock at my door louder than she does now. But at the moment, I just cannot manage; and I go to the centre of the city to buy more books.
Since many years, I've been choosing my books from a special bookshop selling them at reduced prices. Most books ever published in Poland end up there, sooner or later. This time my choice is – Thirty three, says the man selling books at reduced price, not quite as politely as he should, putting on the table the change from my fifty-zloty banknote. The book I buy is not a fashionable one, not at the time when the Poles discover postcolonial theory, ecofeminism and animal studies. The very concept of hunting lions, be it in Somaliland or anywhere else, is shameful, patriarchal, politically incorrect. It is an ugly idea. The count Potocki (1862-1922), great-grandson of Jan Potocki author of The Manuscript found in Saragossa, a very wealthy man belonging to cosmopolitan aristocracy of Europe, was a colonial shikari just as any English nobleman of his time might be. It is directly from London that he goes to Somaliland, taking with him a salutary cargo of mineral water “Apollinaris” and a copy of Richard Burton's First Footsteps in East Africa. He travels in the company of another two Polish counts, Tomasz Zamoyski and Jan Grudzinski, from December 1895 to March 1896. What I find in this hunting travelogue is something so tragically absent from Polish culture nowadays: respect and understanding for otherness. Potocki admires the natives, be it for their excellence as hunters, and understands the country, has some grasp of its reality, the processes going on, the games of influence and power on the East African playground, the essence of the local usages and beliefs. At least he tries, very much in the contrary to contemporary travel celebrities in the line of Wojciech Cejrowski or Martyna Wojciechowska, exploiting precisely the mental narrowness of the Polish public and its inborn contempt of any foreigners, let alone the peoples of Africa. It is a paradox that the colonial shikari could have a very different, in a way much more modern mentality than many of his co-nationals represent today, and what vaguely surprises me is that he wrote his travelogue in Polish, not in English or French. Potocki's book respires beauty and some sort of authenticity that is often absent from travelogues written in late colonial period. Beauty is what he is after, even more than lions; no wonder that the mention of the monotony and desolation of Somalian landscape appears for the first time well after the half of the book (p. 141). He is not after the picturesque poverty, neither is he after such a thrill of blood as Montbard was in his Maghrebian journey that I presented here on the page dedicated to Morocco. In spite of such a profane endeavour as hunting, there is something sublime in Potocki's travelogue, as it is sometimes to be found in the best colonial literature. He enjoys immensely the freedom of open space, the hot winds of Africa, and the beauty, the sublime beauty of every single antelope he hunts. Potocki is not the type of serial killer, posing to pictures with a number of skins and animal corpses he had laid down. As I read his narration, it becomes clear it's not the number of prey he is after. Every animal is seen individually, in a thrill of beauty, not a thrill of blood. Perhaps this is why he comes so close to his native companions. Hunting brings them together; there is a community of hunting males composed of those Polish aristocrats and Midgan tribesmen; they may laugh at each other's lack of expertise and awkward gestures, but they barter meat against poisoned arrows (p. 96) as if they were equal, or very near to become ones. And finally, at the end of a successful hunt, they are celebrated in the village as triunfant males should be celebrated in any patriarchal society: Miało to aspekt wojenny, rycerski, niezwykły, różny od wszystkiego, co się dotychczas widziało. Trudno się było oprzeć uczuciu prawdziwego wzruszenia na widok entuzjazmu tych ludzi i niekłamanej radości, z jaką dzielili naszą uciechę („It had a bellicose, chivalrous, uncommon aspect, so different from anything we used to see before. It was hard to avoid the feeling of authentic commotion, as one saw the enthusiasm of those people and not pretended joy with which they shared our pleasure”, p. 110). Such a closeness sometimes becomes troublesome, when the travellers are asked to take parts and help to settle local conflicts (p. 101); overall, life in the camp becomes not so very different from what it migth be in any „crowded Ukrainian village” (p. 104). The Somalian types appear as noble and beautiful in the eye of the Polish traveller, even if today it seems strange, at best, to search in them for any hints of "Aryan type" (p. 54). Noble and beautiful are also the local usages: tchną prostotą i szlachetną wielkością ("they respire simplicity and greatness", p. 55); to uczciwy naród, wojowniczy i odważny („the nation is honest, bellicose and brave”, p. 114). The thrill comes also from Somalian songs, których dziki dźwięk przechodzi nieraz w tony dziwnie piękne i poważne („their wild sound is often transformed into a tone of strange beauty and seriousness”, p. 80), or, as Potocki comments it in a different place, it is a mieszanina dzikości z wyższą kulturą […], niekiedy niemal tak piękna jak chorał kościelny („mix of wildness and superior culture […], sometimes nearly as beautiful as church music”, p. 129); yet Potocki sounds even more grandiloquent when he refers to the religious fervour of the Somalians and their excellence as Muslims, for whom the world is a temple of God: meczetów tu nie ma, dla nich świątynią jest świat, kopułą niebo, a zachodni horyzont ołtarzem („there are no mosques here, the world serves them as a temple, the sky is the cupola, the western horizon is the altar”, p. 132). As I read this, I wonder why the Somalis should pray westwards. After all, Potocki might be more confused and less precise in his observations than the matter-of-fact tone of his narration suggests. But overall, I would say he blunders less than other amateur travellers of his time – and ours – usually do. Certainly, the literariness of Potocki's descriptions owes a lot to the models of Polish impressionism, developed, in the same period, by such writers as Stefan Żeromski. Similar literary technique is combined here with simplicity of a hunter that has no claim to poetical inspiration, but just to render the visual effect made by a cloud of locust: Nad naszym obozem przeleciała szarańcza i opadła w pobliżu w takiej masie, że rzuciła na ziemię cień podobny do chmury; dziwne to zjawisko podkreślały ciekawe efekty świetlne, gdy szrańcza leciała pod słońce migocząc w powietrzu niby srebrna lawa („The locust flew over our camp and landed nearby in such a quantity that it threw a shadow upon the ground just like a cloud; this strange phenomenon was increased by interesting light effects, when the locust flew against the sun shimmering in the air as if it was a silver lava”, p.83). There is a hint of colonial superiority and the sense of mission, as Potocki and his companions distribute their pharmaceuticals among the grateful natives (p. 122); it couldn't be otherwise. Be that as it may, I would prefer to be such a traveller and such a travel writer as Potocki was, rather than resemble those contemporary Polish travelebrites, idiot, narrow-minded, ideologically even more compromised than my colonial shikari. And perhaps also much more disrespectful of the world than he was. Józef hr. Potocki, Notatki myśliwskie z Afryki. Somali [1897], ill. Piotr Stachiewicz, Poznań, Zysk i S-ka, 2009. Kraków, 19.04.2019 |