Stachursky – Chłosta.
In general, centrally, stone it, no putty!
Stone it, no putty!
In general, centrally, stone it, no putty!
You don’t have to delve too deeply into the above stanzas to come to the conclusion that we are dealing with a work with a not very cheerful, or even pessimistic and unambiguously critical message. As we have already seen from our previous reflections on Mr. Łaszczok’s work, he is not an apologist for contemporary generations, he does not look for excuses for their poor moral condition, mental enslavement and self-destructive tendencies. He does not try to lift, elevate or ennoble people. Nor does he engage in pretentious moralizing or strenuous didacticism. He simply accurately depicts the problems, clearly outlining and naming them precisely, but at the same time he does not suggest his own ideas for solving them (as Prus did in his columns, for example), although his intellectual potential would certainly allow him to do so. The same is true of “The Flogging”.
It is worth making a digression at this point and noting, which we have not done on the occasion of one of the previous texts due to culpable negligence, that Mr. Łaszczok refers to the ancient sources of poetry, when it was presented in public to the accompaniment of the lyre. He only changes the instruments, fitting himself with sensitivity and tact into the context of the present day, avoiding anachronism and not exposing himself to misunderstanding or even exclusion because of it. Still, I dare to think that we do not fully understand what the poet wants to tell us at all costs, and often even shout out.
However, regardless of the drama of incompleteness and uncertainty of interpretation, we will try to make our reflections. First, a few words about the title. It can be understood in two ways:
(a) as a form of unsophisticated physical violence;
b) as a set of tools used by the mass media to mentally train citizens and program their views;
The poet probably did not mean flogging in the traditional sense, so let’s focus on the “b” point. Well, by the term “mass media” we understand the world they create and represent. Admittedly, the facts are not available in any way objective, because we filter them, subject them to subjective interpretation, basing on our own knowledge, experience and referring to the worldview we have, already developed to some extent, although still “plastic” and susceptible to “modelling”. Mr. Jacek tells us that we are constantly immersed in their stream, powerless in the face of information noise, unable to free ourselves from the subservient attitude towards what and who tells us. Passively, unconsciously, unthinkingly, we approve or deny, using the same argumentation that was used by others to force it (on us).
The poem has a very well-thought-out strophic structure. The subsequent stanzas follow from the previous ones, broaden the group of issues raised, are an elaboration of the poet’s mental concepts, and it certainly cannot be said that they are a coincidence. Of course, someone could bring an argument to the discussion about the conciseness of this work and, referring only to it, shout that there must be little content in it, but he would be wrong to show only insensitivity to poetry, ignorance, and also be – if we go further – betraying little intellectual potential. We will prove it in the next paragraph.
First of all, the poem has a bracketed structure (I omit the word “flogging” in this inference, which is the first line of the poem, due to its sloganeering and a more strongly marked connection with the middle part of the poet’s reflections, rather than one of the extremes), thanks to which it is closed and resonates more strongly. The beginning and the end of the poem (“in general, centrally, stone it, no putty”) are imbued with the element of colloquial, lively, dynamic, emotionally engaged speech. However, the subject who utters them should not be identified with the author himself, but rather with the character, the poetic creation that he has created through these words. Contrary to appearances, a lot can be said about it. Certainly, he is a simple, uneducated man, strongly reacting to the existing reality (expressivisms). In a sense, it is a homo faber (albeit rather in a narrower scope than it would appear from the meaning of this phrase), who transposes what he has heard or read in the official (i.e. media) communication into a non-public, even intimate, private discourse, in which his role as a reporter is also revealed, although the subject himself is not a source, but plays the role of a medium, interfering only with the form, to be able to convey information without distance (on a private level, however, this is limited to a minimum, which would be unthinkable in the case of a communicative act of the reader/viewer/listener type of editor). However, the role played by the media in this is not insignificant, as they “guide” to such a way of informal communication by creating it. And so, here, let’s assume that when we inform about a tragedy (combining the word “stone” with stoning, which is not at all unjustified, given that we have shown an expression that did not come out of nowhere, although this “stone” is reduced here only to a symbolic apprehension, constituting a pars pro toto of the aforementioned tragedy or, more broadly, the information itself), showing certain images, provoking us to transfer them, translations into the language of direct, everyday contacts.
This statement is further constituted by the exclamations in the next stanza (“Flogging! /Hay! / Viagra! / Smoke!”). Although seemingly meaningless, they constitute a sensible cause-and-effect sequence, illustrating the process of spreading the virus of information. It can be represented by points as follows:
1. The information is transmitted and transmitted by means of a signal to the receiver (human) by the sender (media).
2. The information is received and decoded by the recipient, evoking a specific reaction in him and forcing him to respond to it.
3. Information influences a person, evokes an emotional reaction (e.g. agitation, agitation, shock) and a desire (and sometimes a compulsion) to pass it on.
4. Information (in an appropriately modified form – see above) spreads on the level of interpersonal contacts, is discussed and discussed.
As we can see, the first two points could be related to the classic model of communication of Shannon and Weaver (of which the poet could not have been unaware of it), the next two are only a simple consequence of it, showing the further life of information, its spread and the impact it has on those with whom it comes into contact. We can also see here that the perspective of the subject is changing – this time it can be called the author’s. Perhaps Mr. Łaszczok expresses himself in an overly emphatic way, although he somehow “refutes” this emphasis, “abolishes it”” with the conciseness already mentioned in the context of the whole piece (here it is even a catchphrase, which we have also alluded to), so it cannot be counted among any artistic shortcomings of the work. Stachursky seems to be in control of his pen all the time. It’s true – he’s not able to suppress everything inside himself as much as Staff, but the times are different now, and the society is different, so you shouldn’t even expect such a creative attitude. Poetry must be adequate to what it refers to, and in this respect we cannot have any reservations about Mr. Łaszczok.
Stachursky is a poet who, under the guise of an attractive form for a young audience and seemingly trivial content, hides a strong, expressive and valuable message. He could try to be erudite, to demonstrate, or even boast of the fact that he participates in high culture and is in no way inferior to the most outstanding Polish poets of the last few decades, but he does not do so, and we still know that putting him in the same line as Miłosz or Szymborska, Polish Nobel Prize winners in the field of literature, is by no means an abuse. Łaszczok is an attentive observer of reality, his reflections are insightful and accurate, although often bitter and even extremely pessimistic. But could they be different in this day and age? Do we need life-affirmators who, infatuated with everyday life, sing their own songs of praise abstracted from reality about the uniqueness of existence in every shape and form? Or maybe we could use artists who, by referring to national tragedies from the past, want to arouse the last spasms of patriotism in a cosmopolitanized society? Or maybe we crave avant-gardists who, using iconoclasm, cheap controversy, fuzzy contestation and linguistic confusion, will try to tell us that they really have nothing to say? Or maybe we prefer Jacek Łaszczok, who will use our language, being one of us, not above or next to us, who we are and where we are going? Let everyone answer this question for themselves.
True art, even in the modern world, is not defenceless and should somehow defend itself.
Stachursky – Chłosta – Kulturalne pisanie
