The “Grand Tour” of the Communist: Wilhelm Mach’s Queer Travel Writing*

Abstract

The articles addresses three problems referring to Wilhelm Mach’s travelogues: first of all, the relation between the act of writing and the quest for the truth of the self; secondly, the pivotal role of intimate memory and experience in the understanding of transnational political movements and in the third place, the unique point of view of a queer person who dissent from the dominant stereotypes and epistemic habits. Mach answers to all those questions in a very specific and unique manner – he disrupts the structure of the narrative, giving way to different techniques of registration and notation. Thus he pushes his travel writing in the liminal area of creative non-fiction which is a fascinating reaction to the oppressive rules of realism posed to the artists by communist regime. Mach’s travelogues about India and Bulgaria are discussed here in particular because they are an example of the writer’s personal ‘Grand Tour’ although it is a ‘Grand Tour’ organized under the constrictions of a totalitarian regime and experienced by a Marxist. Those historical and philosophical circumstances determine the peculiar image of both India and Bulgaria created by Mach. Under the political correctness required by the Stalinist censorship Mach’s texts are subversive and non-canonical.

Keywords:

• Travel writing
• queer studies
• state socialism
• Polish People’s Republic

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Brandys 164.

2 Tyrmand 342.

3 See, for example, Iwaszkiewicz, Dzienniki 1911–1955, 499. “A strange Helsinki mood. Are these white nights? But everything is awakening in me, as if I were young again, including this sense of profound, monstrous loneliness, the way I felt in my youth. Alone again: in a hotel, at this idiotic congress, among people and without people. And there’s no hand—and I don’t mean a heart or ass—only a hand to offer a little support, a little help in carrying this monstrous burden that is my life. … for one moment, I didn’t feel the weight of my life, the weight of this Ibsenian house that crushes me always, the weight of the defenders of peace, literary affairs, the drama of my pederasty, everything that torments me daily, that stabs me at every turn as if I were Andersen’s mermaid.” The entry comes from 27 June 1955.

4 Although in Poland same-sex acts were decriminalized as early as 1932 and have not been recriminalized ever since (for the laws against homosexuals during World War II see Ostrowska 2021), the state homophobic provisions strongly affected the life of non-heteronormative citizens. For example, police forces and secret services registered male homosexuals, creating “pink lists,” which made them vulnerable to pressure, extortion, and blackmailing. By tracing the way public discourse shaped knowledge about homosexuals in the Polish People’s Republic, Agata Fiedotow demonstrates how harmful it was for the positive self-identification and safety of non-heteronormative individuals that the authorities believed the homosexual community was “particularly dangerous to peace, order, and public safety, serving as the breeding ground for many professional crimes” (Fiedotow 241–358). Fiedotow shows the mechanisms through which homophobia imbued the politics of the Polish People’s Republic toward sexual minorities.

5 It is worth emphasizing that the history of homophile organizations and gay-rights movements in Central and Eastern Europe does not follow the logic of the emancipatory gay- and lesbian-rights movements in Western Europe and the United States, although it is not isolated from events unfolding behind the Iron Curtain (Szulc 61–122). The Polish word “pedał” does not have an affirmative meaning; it was not reappropriated as the English word “queer.” The term “queer” often appears in the Polish language without translation in its original form or is translated as “odmieniec” (“the one who differs”). In both forms it loses its important semantic connotation of “affirmative resignification” (Butler 223). The problems with the translation and adaptation of the term “queer” are described by Mizielińska 123–127, Kochanowski, and Niżyńska 137–143.

6 Throughout this article I interchangeably use the adjectives “homosexual,” “gay,” and “queer” to refer to persons primarily attracted to their own sex and performing dissident, non-heteronormative sexual practices. On one hand I am following Craig M. Loftin’s conviction that “historians must take care not to impose the present onto the past” (Loftin 15–16) and that subsequent events and theories should not distort the analysis of texts ­produced in the fifties when the Stonewall riots, gay liberation, and AIDS epidemic were in the future. Thus, whenever I refer to “homosexuals” and “homosexuality,” those terms replicate the epoch’s vocabulary in describing same-sex desire—those words grasp the zeitgeist of the post-war period. On the other hand, I insist on the anachronistic usage of the contemporary term queer. Its usage in the context of the fifties in communist Poland is a gesture of adjusting its meaning to a time when non-heteronormative sexual practices were not indicative of a fixed sexual identity. Tomasz Łukasz Nowak defines the period of the fifties and sixties as “queer before gay” since same-sex relationships and homoerotic practices of the time do not fit into the frame of gay life understood as an identity project (Nowak 193–208).

7 Tyrmand’s homophobia manifests itself in the fact that, according to him, erotic activity, “healthy” heterosexual masculinity, reaffirmed in sexual conquests, somewhat justified servility to the communists: “Dinner at Literaci. Jurek Brzoszkiewicz joins me at the table. A brave man. No one ever joins me. Ostracism of the vicious or simply my personal unattractiveness? I’m never quite sure and no one will tell me. I don’t want to exaggerate, so I prefer to think that I’m not of interest to anyone. Brzoszkiewicz bores me, but I like him. He serves the communists humbly, but it seems that, apart from his career, only whores and hanky-panky are on his mind” (Tyrmand 40).

8 Tyrmand 75.

9 Tyrmand 342.

10 Giedroyc, Bobkowski 45.

11 Flaszen 4. The intertextual code of the review’s title conceals the main accusation leveled against the novel: it is too immersed in the Proustian tradition. The critic even states: “a psychological analysis so detailed that it leads to perversion.” It is hard not to think that Flaszen is criticizing here a certain reference, legible only to the initiated: alluding to the French writer’s work evokes a community of homosexual artists.

12 Rola 4.

13 Kijowski 27–28.

14 Wiegandt 163.

15 Previously, only German Ritz problematized the non-heteronormative ­nature of Mach’s writing, looking for an expression of the writer’s homosexuality in the poetics and themes of his novels (Ritz 177–195). Ewa Wiegandt and Aleksander Fiut, quoted here, also hint at homoeroticism in Mach’s work, but for them it is not an active interpretive category.

16 Śmieja 378–403.

17 Fiut 8.

18 Mahn 47.

19 Brodzki, Schenck 4–5.

20 Said 1978; Pratt 1992.

21 In Thompson XVII.

22 Original: “starsza pani.” It is interesting that Mach does not use the word “auntie”—“ciota.” When describing himself as an old lady he is close to the English old-fashioned offensive word “nancy,” indicating the effemination of a gay man. The term “ciota” is now reserved for describing homosexuals from the Polish People’s Republic (PPR) period, whose identity and political practices do not fit into the model of gay activism. The term “ciota” is derogative when used in homophobic and heterosexual bigotry contexts. The affirmative resignification of the word, which could be translated in English as “queen,” is connected with Michał Witkowski’s novel Lubiewo. As Joanna Niżyńska notices: “Lubiewo narrates stories of ‘queens,’ who celebrate their non-assimilation and who insist on bringing to the fore their sexual desires and practices. Therefore, the reader cannot—even under the provision of bracketing out the choice of the sexual object—assimilate the world of Lubiewo as one that structurally resembles monogamous heteronormativity (two middle-class gays in a long-term relationship). Witkowski’s choice of privileging the world of queens/fags (cioty) over the world of gays (geje) denies the reader the comfort of recognizing the patterns of the majority in the practices of the minority. Thus, Lubiewo is not so much an emancipatory “gay” counter-narrative as it is a post-emancipatory “queer” narrative” (Niżyńska 140).

23 Letter to Ewa Otwinowska.

24 Edelman 10.

25 Mach 59–156.

26 Holland, Huggan 47.

27 Mach 80.

28 Mach 80.

29 Mach 80.

30 Mach 138.

31 Mach 70.

32 Mach 92–93.

33 Mach 71–72.

34 Mach 125.

35 Kuszewska 339.

36 Mach 166.

37 Mach 85–86.

38 Mach 78.

39 Mach 63.

40 Mach 69.

41 Mach 67.

42 Mach 76.

43 Mach 154.

44 Ritz 187–190.

45 Mach 96.

46 Looby 145.

47 Proust 117.

48 Mach 97.

49 On the travels of Polish queer writers to the south—mostly to Italy—see Amenta, Kaliściak, Warkocki 41–44.

50 Aldrich 10.

51 Aldrich 10.

52 Mach 97.

53 His photo is in Mach’s archive. Its presence is noted in the correspondence section, which means that the writer exchanged letters with Krishan after his return to Poland. However, their contents are not known to me, because, according to the wishes of Mach’s family, his archive is still not available to the public. At the moment, the staff of the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature, where Mach’s legacy is stored, kindly provide scholars with a working description of the archive.

54 Mach 152.

55 Monette 277.

56 On Monette’s offering a story of progress, evincing a desire for narrative resolution in the face of the HIV/AIDS crisis, see Minich 59–72.

57 Wiegandt 163.

58 Mach 205.

59 Mach 207.

60 Mach 200.

61 Mach 196.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded in whole by the National Science Center, Poland, grant number 2021/43/D/HS2/01542.

Notes on contributors

Adriana Kovacheva

Adriana Kovacheva (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Institute for Slavic Studies, Gender and Transcultural Balkan Studies Research Unit), PhD, literary scholar and translator, main interests: literature of Bulgarian and Polish People’s Republics, translation studies, archival studies, queer literature. Author of the books (Не)забележимата преводачка. Еманципационни преводни практики на Дора Габе. [The (Un)noticeable Translator. Emancipatory Translational Practices of Dora Gabe.] Veliko Tarnovo: Faber Publishing House, 2017; Ścieżkami tłumaczy. Poezja polska w Bułgarii w latach 1956–1989 [The Paths of Translators. Polish Poetry in Bulgaria 1956–1989] Kraków: Wydawnictwo Pasaże, 2016. Co-editor of the volumes Bułgarystyka—tradycje i przyszłość/Българистиката—традиция и бъдеще [Bulgarian Studies—Traditions and Future Development] (2020); Archiwum jako praktyka [Archive as a Practice] (2019). Project manager of the National Science Centre research grant “Queer Spaces behind the Iron Curtain. The Case of Wilhelm Mach.”