He was supposed to stimulate creativity in his students, take care of them, and discover their hidden talents. Instead, he brought danger to them, disappeared at crucial moments and required care himself. The Mr. Kleks we remember from films with Fronczewski is a different Mr. Kleks than the one of Brzechwa. However, few people still read the book, even though it is read in primary school – only students do it (“Academy” is compulsory reading in the fourth grade of primary school), and we, the old ones, remember the three-by-three film adaptations from years ago and say: great guy , although maybe a bit addicted to freckles. Few of us went further in reading – to the Journey and Triumph of Mr. Kleks.
An eccentric professor would not be as popular these days as we attribute to him. Probably none of you would want any child to come under your protective wing.
Helpless, dependent, selfish – Mr. Kleks is one of the worst role models
He may have been able to do everything, but he certainly couldn’t take care of Mateusz’s starling. He may have been able to cook with colors, but he put off helping Adaś find his parents as long as he could. He may follow the curiosity of children, but in fact they guide and protect him, not he them, although theoretically he is the adult. Mr. Kleks is full of contradictions, and in films from the 1980s, only once does one feel that something is wrong.
Meanwhile, in “Mr. Kleks’ Academy”, the professor turns out to be completely incapable of managing any facility where young people are supposed to stay. It’s supposedly just a fairy tale, but it is also full of cruel scenes. When Kleks falls into stagnation due to problems with the hairdresser Filip, who threatened to block the supply of fresh freckles, the entire Academy slowly slides towards destruction. She is to be saved – of course – by her children, because it is not Mr. Kleks who is unable to make any decision. But first, he almost destroys all the frogs and fish in the garden pond – he forgot to add water to them, and someone’s little world was on the brink of destruction.
Mr. Kleks’s Academy, 1968 edition with illustrations by Jan Szancer Photo private archive
It is children who take over the reins from an adult, which has had its own category in psychology for years. Parentification is not a box that can be easily escaped later. The adult, who was supposed to be the helm and ship, locks himself in his office and becomes absent: this is how his fairy tale and his power over adolescent boys end. This is no longer the face of the smiling Piotr Fronczewski, but of the childish Mr. Kleks from the books that we all read in childhood with different filters in our heads. The kids try to rise to the occasion where the adults fail, but regardless of their efforts, the Academy still fails. Although it is known that the Academy is only a metaphor for childhood, the children’s efforts that ended in failure will be interpreted much more literally by younger readers. You wouldn’t want your children to be in the place of Adaś Niezgódka, who helped Kleks bring to life a murderous doll who later, together with Filip the barber, destroyed the work of the genius – it is difficult to imagine how much guilt he would have to face later. Many adults would have trouble with such a task, let alone a child.
The self-absorbed Kleks ignores not only the boys entrusted to him, but also his closest helper, Mateusz the starling. Although his bird suffering is supposed to be part of the punishment, it must be doubly cruel knowing that anyone but Kleks would be able to break the spell for Mateusz with one snap. He doesn’t do it because – as in a fairy tale – Adaś Niezgódka is needed, who will save the enchanted animal with his wisdom and cunning. The problem with this element was noticed in the cult film adaptation many years after the book was published. Adaś verbalizes exactly the same doubts – why didn’t Mr. Kleks help, even though he undoubtedly could have helped? It is known that then Brzechwa would have missed a point in the development of the main character, but from today’s perspective, an additional year of suffering for Mateusz seems to be a punishment disproportionate to his crimes.
The professor’s relationship with the barber Filip is also based on an unfulfilled promise. Kleks promised to make a human out of his doll. He never fulfilled his promise, even though the shaver paid him with freckles, accessories and money necessary to create the Academy. If he knew it was impossible, he could have told the barber so. However, he preferred not to dissuade him by deceiving him with an impossible promise in exchange for making his dream come true.
Mr. Kleks’s Academy, 1968 edition with illustrations by Jan Szancer Photo private archive
What’s worse, in the next part – in “Travels” – Kleks again turns out to be incapable of action. He is unable to protect the crew during the ink expedition, and every time, like Odysseus, he loses more people, who also sometimes fall victim to cruel – disproportionate – punishments. Ultimately, he discovers that the solution to the Bydot problem is himself, which means that the entire mission was effectively in vain. In “Triumf” he also consistently ignores the problem of Adaś Niezgódka, putting only his own experiences above anyone else’s. At the same time, he is self-confident, immodest, like any genius – cruel and not very empathetic.
Mr. Kleks or Kleks?
Fortunately for Kleks, he can cover himself with the truths of fairy tales. These tell him to be “a little more” in all areas: smarter, more perfect, faster and omniscient. Its flaws become visible only when confronted with reality, and only from this perspective such a myth becomes just – well – a blot.
The work can be combined with the carnival according to Bakhtin – there are elements of perversion, absurdity, the world upside down. It is impossible to take the character of Kleks seriously, he is not a sage, a trustworthy teacher or an authority for children, like another director of a magical school – Albus Dumbledore, the hero of series of Harry Potter novels. Our native Mr. Kleks is a much more grotesque, caricatured figure. It teaches absurd subjects, such as flexography or spinning letters, which in turn fits into children’s need to play. The hero’s surname itself – “Kleks” – indicates the chaotic nature of the character and the inability to fit him into specific norms. What exactly is an inkblot in the colloquial understanding? A random, irregularly shaped stain that occurs as a result of an accident or as a result of children’s play. In children’s reading, Ambroży Kleks and his academy are synonymous with fun and adventure. Even the dark story about wolves is part of children’s folklore – children like to be afraid and feel the need to experience controlled terror, such as when reading. Kleks and the fairy-tale world in which it exists are the embodiments of children’s need for play, spontaneity and joy. Brzechwa’s goal was not to moralize, but to entertain – explains Kleksa and Brzechwa, Dr. Anna Goworek, a literary scholar and expert specializing in literature for children and youth
And it is not without reason that we only read this book as children. They don’t know the concept of “parentification” yet, for them an irresponsible adult is a funny man who needs help. Saving the Academy is the same as Harry Potter saving Hogwarts. Despite the suffering of Mateusz the starling, nature is an element that can be trusted, and products of human hands are not necessarily such. “Mr. Kleks” was created during the very difficult war and post-war times, and you can see the echoes of this war in the cruel, mechanical doll, and later in the equally cruel (but also brilliant) Patentonia.
Today, can we perceive Ambroży Kleks as an eccentric with addictions (he was addicted to freckles), a misogynist who excludes girls from his school, or even a mentally disturbed person who sometimes does not remember who he is? Of course, but only if we do not perceive it as a fairy tale, forgetting that it has its own rules, and magic and wonder are its permanent elements. Only adults can afford this interpretation, and this interpretation of this fairy tale is inaccessible to a child. Not only that, by the way. One of the most interesting analyzes of “The Academy of Mr. Kleks” is the one by Małgorzata Wójcik-Dudek, who in her work “W(y)tać Zagładę. Post-memory practices in Polish literature of the 21st century for children and youth” examines Brzechwa’s work through the prism of World War II (novel was published in 1946) and the Holocaust – adds Dr. Anna Goworek
I encourage you to read “Mr. Kleks” again – in the old, Janobrzech version (a new, modernized edition, based on which the film will now be released in cinemas, was also released in December). If you haven’t accompanied your fourth-graders as they read, you may be surprised by what you find in the text. I was there when my son and I started teaching Kleks three grades ago. I didn’t remember the brutality and cruelty, I only remembered the best and most colorful images, which was greatly helped by Jan Szancer’s wonderful illustrations. Only after almost thirty years, when I was reading “Academy”, “Travels” and “Triumf” to my own child, I had the impression that my disagreement with what Kleks says and does, and how he treats his companions and Adaś, is growing. At the same time, in conversations with my son, it turned out that for him everything was good and fairy-tale-like, that he had not yet lost that childhood innocence that we adults have long since lost. This common reading became an opportunity to talk several times about how I see something and how he sees the same thing. And they were very interesting conversations. I wish you the same with your kids.
(By the way, consider how Filip the shaver had virtually unlimited access to freckles… And whether he didn’t accidentally cut them off customers’ faces with his sharp razor…)
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
