Critics wrote that the pig and the pornographer. And people rushed to the new book by the author of “Mr. Samochodzik” [FRAGMENT]

If in the 21st century the most famous Polish village created thanks to the power of imagination and the media was Wilkowyje, then in the 1980s there was probably no more famous village than Skiroławki. In the pre-Google era, many people searched for Skiroławki on the map of the Olsztyn and later Warmian-Masurian Voivodships. They found Wozławki, Sędławki, right next to Bezławka, Muławka, then Rukławki, Tuławki, Worławki, Tątławki, Samławki, as well as Gutławki, Skandławki, Niegławka, Jegławka, Kiemławka, Skitławka, Łabławki, Lektawki, Wopławki…

Martial law died a natural death when, in October 1983, the Łódź-based “Odgławy” started printing the first fragments of “Once a year in Skiroławki”. There was a monstrous media frenzy. A popular writer for young people turned out to be a demoralizer!!! And the book was selling great. In spite of the critics who judged the author of reverence and faith.

The uproar after the newspapers played that a pig and a pornographer. They pounded evenly. After “Voices”, that they make fun of “pig moments” – instead of ambitiously raising the reader in high culture. After Nienacki that “it succumbs to commercialism and flatters the lowest tastes of unsophisticated readers” – this is Daniel Passent in “Polityka”, while Tadeusz Konwicki in the same weekly considered the novel to be kitsch, and rechristened Skroławki as Skirwałki.

365 days ahead of 35 years

People stood in tapeworm lines or borrowed copies they had read. The militiamen and the SB were in a better position, as they were the first in the country to have copying equipment at their disposal and cracked the copies like crazy. Thanks to this book, Nienacki appeared in the “New Year’s Crib” next to great party bonzes (such as Wojciech Jaruzelski) and people of culture (Krzysztof Penderecki or Maryla Rodowicz), which was a great distinction at the time (who is as old as me, remembers).

The texts for the program were written by Jerzy Kleyne and Roman Sowa, and directed by Witold Filier. The puppets were designed by Stanisław Ibis Gratkowski from the Lodz “Karuzela”, who was also the author of several caricatures, including Nienacki, published in “Gazeta Krakowska”. The authors did not fail to mention the author’s skirmishes with critics:

Me to Szopka? It’s some kind of ambush./Some speech of the critics! They keep giving me butts

they still resent me, boring basics!

A corrupter, a corrupter – they write – literary, / It’s a maniac pornographer, this Nienacki!

That’s how from Politics to Reality / That my book came out again, they burst with envy,

But the more sanctimonious men strike at me with their pen, The better my book sells in bookstores!

“Slightly Erotic Ballad”

It seems that Nienacki was ahead of his time in terms of his ability to cause scandal. It will be useless to write a scandalous piece, for even if it succeeded, and even the more successful it would, its influence would be limited to a narrow circle of experts and only a slightly wider circle of professional reactionaries. Therefore, for there to be a scandal, it is no longer necessary to work, but to become a work yourself.

And the creator of “Once a year in Skiroławki” succeeded. Even an incomplete enumeration of titles in his oeuvre makes it possible to understand the reasons why their radiation cannot be narrowed down to rigid categories: erotic and young adult literature. Super-skilled in the literary craft, a skilful fictionalizer and a keen observer of the surrounding reality, an erudite whose knowledge by no means intimidated or humiliated the reader – he was above all a well-read author. And free advertising has elevated one novel in particular to the status of an under-the-counter bestseller.

The text was devoured with flushed cheeks (I will not mention other physiological reactions) by readers of both sexes, from the Baltic to the Tatras, from the Bug to the Oder. Having reached a millionth circulation, the novel was promoted to the Golden Ten of Polish prose in the years 1975–1984. Lively depicted characters, humor rewarding a certain maniacal interests of the inhabitants of the Masurian village, blending everything into the background of nature, the whole orgiastic world of Skiroławki made the novel a masterpiece compared to, for example, … insert the title of some contemporary crap here, which I will not immortalize in your book.

The pranks and pranks of Kłobuk of infidelity

The heated discussions surrounding his “adult” books actually boiled down to two questions: are the sexual scenes simply a truth of life or an artistic abuse? How to treat a fragment like this:

“That night Justyna went naked to the barn to milk her black cow. A brown rooster with a coral comb was sitting on the ceiling beam. his tiny, thimble-like appendage swelled with blood like a male member and entered her until she felt pleasure and refused to defend herself.The rooster wrapped his fluffy wings around her hips, laid lovingly on her breast a tiny head with a sharp beak and a coral crest that Justyna started stroking her fingertips, feeling how the pleasure penetrated her body more and more intensely, she knew from faster and more violent movements inside herself that in a moment she would feel a gentle stroke of white dandelion that would fill her and impregnate her. gurgling in the bird’s throat, as if the rooster was about to crow loudly.

At first glance, the scene is shocking and disgusting. It gives the impression of promiscuous sex, even some kind of deviation. But let’s see. And what was the dream of a simple country girl? Because it was a dream – for those who did not read the whole thing. In such an environment, living in close contact with nature, the rooster was and is a symbol of male vitality. Let him cast a stone who has not had a strange dream at least once. After all, Sigmund Freud had already formulated a theory about the sexual basis of human dreams and daydreams.

“My heroine”, explained Nienacki, “a woman who is clearly crazy, she wants a child so much that she is ready to have one even with the devil. Old chronicles are full of descriptions of women who thought they were living with the devil. it’s burned at the stake. It’s not my fault that Kłobuk, the personification of the Masurian spirit, is actually a rooster in the regional tradition.”

In the “Great Book of Polish Demons” by Barbara and Adam Podgórski, Kłobuk symbolized fertility. If he lived in someone’s house, it meant prosperity for the hosts, but prosperity achieved at the expense of the neighbors. It could be grown by burying a dead fetus under the threshold, which is symbolically related to the main theme of the book – death and rebirth.

In an interview with the journalist of “Głos Bałtycki”, he emphasized one more fact: “I received three hundred letters and none of them were critical! Another myth has collapsed: that Poland is philistine. start by quoting excerpts from such letters. Just like Hrabal did. But I don’t have such letters! And it’s hard to make an introduction out of praise letters, because it looks like an artificial choice. It’s sad, but it was the columnists who turned out to be the biggest tangles.”

In revenge, one of them, in one of Fusy, pros and cons in “Polityka”, was tempted to say that Nienacki’s most interesting book is his checkbook. And who knows if the writer’s impressive bank account was not the biggest “flaw” of his work, at least according to critics.

Unnacki. Scandalist from Mr. Samochodzik – cover promotional materials Prószyński i S-ka