THE MEMOIR OF STEFAN CZARNIECKI

by Witold Gombrowicz

Translated from the Polish by Christopher Makosa

1

       I was born and raised in a home full of righteousness. With tender emotion I let my thoughts run toward you - O my childhood! I see my father, a fine-looking man, of haughty bearing, with a face in which everything - his gaze, features and grizzled hair - conspired to create the image of a perfect, noble race. I also see you, O mother, in immaculate black, with only a pair of old-style diamond earrings. I also see myself - a small, serious, thoughtful boy - and I feel like crying because of my dashed hopes. Perhaps the only blemish on our family life was that father hated mother. It's not that he hated her - I didn't express myself well; rather, he detested her, but why? - I never could tell and this is exactly where the mystery begins whose vapors brought me, in my mature years, to moral disaster. For what am I today? A pipsqueak or - better still - a moral bankrupt. What do I do, for instance? Kissing a lady's hand, I slobber all over it, then quickly take out a handkerchief, and with "Oh, pardon me" wipe the hand with the handkerchief.
       I soon noticed that father avoided mother's touch like the plague. What is more - he avoided eye contact with her and, while talking to her, he usually looked away or inspected his fingernails. There was nothing sadder than that averted gaze of my father. Once in a while, however, he looked askance at her with an expression of supreme disgust. This was beyond my comprehension, for I felt no aversion toward mother. Indeed, although she grew excessively fat and overflowed on all sides, I liked to snuggle up to her and rest my little head on her lap. But how, under these circumstances, am I to explain the fact of my existence, how did I come into the world? I suppose that I was created - so to speak - through coercion, with clenched teeth, against natural reflexes; in a word, I suppose that for some time my father, in the name of marital duty, grappled heroically with disgust (for he placed the honor of his manhood above all else) and that I, a little child, was the fruit of that heroism.
       After this superhuman and - in all probability - one-time effort, his disgust erupted with an elemental force. Once I overheard him shouting at mother, cracking his knuckles: "You're getting bald! Soon you'll be bald as a cannonball! A bald woman: do you understand what that means to me - a bald woman? Female baldness … a wig … no, I won't stand that!"
       And he added more quietly, in a soft voice laden with anguish: "Oh, you're so horrible. You don't realize how horrible you are. At any rate, baldness is a mere detail - just like a nose; this or that detail can be horrible - that also happens in the Aryan race. But you're horrible in your entirety, you're filled with hideousness from head to toe, you're hideousness itself ... Oh, if only one spot on your body were free of that element of hideousness, I would have at least a point of contact, some basis and, I swear, I would focus on it all the feelings I vowed to you at the altar. Oh, God!"
       This was beyond my comprehension. How was mother's baldness worse than father's? And mother's teeth were even better: there was a white eyetooth with a gold filling among them … And why did mother, on her part, not only not find father disgusting but, on the contrary, liked to smooth his hair in the presence of guests - because that was the only time father did not recoil. My mother was full of majesty. To this day, I see her officiating at a charity ball or dinner party, or making an evening retreat with servants in her private chapel.
       My mother's piety was unequalled; this was not so much ardor as greed - greed for fasting, prayer and good deeds. At the appointed hour, the manservant, the cook, the maid, the janitor and myself appeared in the pitch darkness of the chapel draped with crepe. After the prayers, a sermon began: "It's a sin! It's hideous!" mother said forcefully, her chin quaking and swaying like a yolk in an egg. Perhaps I'm speaking without the respect due to the dear shades? Life has taught me this language, the language of mystery …but let's not anticipate events.
       Once in a while, mother summoned the cook, the manservant, the janitor, the maid and myself at an unusual hour. "Pray, poor child, for the soul of that monster - your father; and you also pray for the soul of your Master, sold to the devil!" More than once, we chanted litanies under her leadership until four or five in the morning, until the door flew open and father appeared, in tails or a tuxedo, his face portraying extreme distaste. "On your knees!" mother, undulating and swaying, exclaimed approaching him, her finger pointing to a likeness of Christ. "Away with you, off to bed, on the double!" father ordered the domestics in a lordly manner. "These are my servants!" mother replied, and father left hastily to the accompaniment of our suppliant cries before the altar.
       What did that mean, and why did mother say "his dirty deeds" - why did she loathe father's deeds, when father, in turn, loathed mother? The innocent mind of a child was lost in these secrets. "Lecher," mother said, "remember - don't tolerate it! He who does not cry out in repulsion at the sign of sin, let him tie a millstone around his neck. You can't loathe, despise or hate. He swore, and now he loathes! He swore not to loathe! Fire of hell! He loathes me - but I also loathe him! Judgment Day shall come! In the other world we shall see which of us is better. Nose? - Soul! The soul has neither nose nor baldpate, and ardent faith opens the gates to future delights in Paradise. The time will come when your father, writhing in torments, will implore me, seated on Jehovah's - or rather, I meant to say, the Lord's - right hand, to give him my moistened finger to lick. We will see if he will loathe me!" Father, for that matter, was also pious and attended church regularly - but he never went to our chapel at home. More than once, perfectly urbane, he said, squinting like the aristocrat he was: "Believe me, my dear, it's tactless of you, and when I see you in front of the altar with your nose and ears, as well as with your lips - I'm certain that Christ also feels uneasy. Naturally, I don't deny your right to piety," he added, "in fact, being a neophyte is a beautiful thing from the religious point of view - but that won't help you. Nature is implacable, and remember the French saying: "Dieu pardonnera, les hommes oublieront, mais le nez restera." [6]
       And I was growing up. Sometimes father took me on his lap and for a long time examined my face with anxiety. "So far, the nose is like mine," I heard him whisper. "Glory be to God! But look at those eyes … and those ears … poor child!" - and his noble features became drawn with pain. "He'll suffer terribly when he becomes aware of things; I wouldn't be surprised if a kind of internal pogrom occurred within him then." What awareness or pogrom was he talking about? And generally - what color should be a rat born of a black male and a white female? Spotted? Or perhaps, when the contrasting colors are of equal force, the result of this conjunction is a colorless rat, a rat without any hue … but I see again that I anticipate events with impatient digressions.



2

       In school I was a diligent and model student, and yet I wasn't generally liked. I remember the first time: I stood before the principal, willing, eager, full of good intentions, with the eager readiness which had always characterized my nature - and the principal took me kindly under the chin. I assumed that the better my conduct, the more deserving of favors I would become by my teachers and classmates. My good intentions, however, crashed against the impenetrable wall of a mystery. What mystery? Bah! I didn't know, and actually I still don't know - I only felt that I was surrounded on all sides by an alien, hostile but charming mystery I couldn't penetrate. For isn't it a charming and mysterious rhyme: "One, two, three, all the Yids are dogs, and the Poles are golden birds, and I'm choosing thee" - which we used to call out to one another with classmates during games in the schoolyard? I felt it was charming: I recited it with emotion and delight, but I couldn't understand why it was charming - and it even seemed to me that I was quite redundant; that I should rather stand on the sidelines and only look on. I compensated for it with diligence and politeness, but my diligence and politeness met with the antipathy of not only the students but, which was stranger and even more unfair, of the teachers as well.
       I also remember:

Who are you? A little Pole!
What's your sign? The White Eagle sole! [7]

       And I remember my late lamented teacher of history and Polish literature - a quiet, rather sluggish old man, who never raised his voice. "Gentlemen," he said, coughing into an enormous foulard handkerchief or picking his ear with his finger, "what other nation was the Messiah of nations? A bulwark of Christianity? What other nation had Prince Józef Poniatowski? [8] As for the number of geniuses - especially forerunners - we have them as many as all Europe." And suddenly he began: "Dante?" - "I know, sir!" I immediately sprang up - "Krasiński! [9] Molière? - Fredro! [10] Newton? - Copernicus! Beethoven? - Chopin! Bach? - Moniuszko! [11] "Gentlemen, you see for yourselves," he summed up, "our language is a hundred times richer than French which, after all, is regarded as the finest of all languages. But then again, what can you say in French? Petit, petiot, très petite - at most. And Polish is so rich: mały, malutki, maluchny, malusi, maleńki, malenieczki, malusieńki, and so on." Even though I offered the best and quickest answers, he didn't like me. Why? - I didn't know, but on one occasion, clearing his throat, he said in a strange, knowing and confidential tone: "Poles, gentlemen, have always been lazy, as laziness goes hand in hand with great talents. Poles are talented but lazy rogues. Poles are strangely likeable." Since then my enthusiasm for learning faded, but even with that I failed to win favor with my mentor, although generally he did have a weakness for lazy rogues.
       Occasionally, he half closed one eye, and then the whole class pricked up its ears. "Spring, huh?" he said. "It's spreading through your bones, drawing you toward meadows and woods. Poles have always been like that - as they say, daredevils and tough customers. They won't sit still, believe you me... that's why women from Sweden, Denmark, France and Germany are mad about us - but we prefer our Polish women because their beauty is famous the world over." These and other remarks affected me to such an extent that I fell in love with a young lady I studied with on a bench in Łazienkowski Park. [12] For a long time I didn't know how to begin and when I finally asked: "May I, Miss?..." - she didn't even deign to answer. The next day, however, after consulting my schoolmates, I steeled myself and pinched her - and then she squinted and began to giggle…
       Success - I returned triumphant, overjoyed and self-confident, but also strangely concerned about the giggling and squinting, which I found incomprehensible. "You know what?" I said in the schoolyard, "I'm also a tough customer, a rogue, a little Pole; it's a shame you couldn't see me in the Park yesterday - you would've seen some nice things…" And I told them everything. "Knucklehead!" they said, but for the first time they listened to me with rapt attention. Suddenly one of them exclaimed: "Frog!"- "Where! What? Whip the frog!" All lunged after it, and I with them. We began to whip it with thin sticks, until it died. Feverish and proud to be allowed to participate in their most exclusive games, seeing in this the beginning of a new era in my life, I cried: "You know, there is also a swallow! A swallow flew into the classroom and is flapping against the windows - just wait..." I brought the swallow, broke its wing so it wouldn't fly away, and my hand at once went to the stick. Meanwhile, everyone surrounded the bird. "Poor little thing," they were saying, "poor little birdie, give it some bread and milk." And when they noticed I was raising my stick, my classmate Pawelski so narrowed his eyes that his cheekbones became more prominent and punched me painfully in the face. "He got smashed in the face!" they exclaimed, "You've no honor, Czarniecki, go on, hit him back, smash his face in!" "How can I punch him if I'm weaker than him?" I replied. If I hit him back, he'll punch me again, and I'll be doubly dishonored." Then they all pounced on me and, sparing me neither jeers nor spiteful jibes, beat me up.
       Love! Oh, what enchanting, incomprehensible nonsense - to pinch, nip or even embrace; oh, how much it encompasses! Oh, well! Today I know what to hold on to: I see here a secret affinity with war, for actually war is also all about pinching, nipping or embracing, but at that time I wasn't yet a moral bankrupt; on the contrary, I was full of good intentions. Love? I frankly admit that I was eager to love, for in this way I wanted to penetrate the wall of mystery... and I endured all the oddities of this strangest of affections with ardor and faith in the hope that perhaps one day I would understand what it was all about. "I want you!" I said to my beloved. She fobbed me off with vague generalities. "You're such a nonentity!" she said enigmatically, peering into my face, "a mollycoddled fop, a mama's boy!"
       I shuddered: mama's boy? What did she mean by that? Could she have guessed…? For I had guessed at a thing or two. I already understood that, if my father was purebred to the marrow, my mother was also purebred, but in a different sense, in a Semitic sense. What had induced father, that impoverished aristocrat, to marry mother, the daughter of a wealthy banker? I already understood his anxious glances, probing my features, and the nocturnal excursions of this man who, wasting his life in the disgusting symbiosis with mother, aspired, at the loftiest behest of the human species, to impart his race to different, worthier loins. Did I really understand? Actually I didn't, and here the enchanting wall of mystery rose again - I knew in theory, but personally I felt no disgust toward mother or father; I was a devoted son. Even today I don't understand it well: being ignorant of theory, I don't know what color is a rat born of a black male and a white female. I only suppose that mine was an exceptional casus, an unprecedented case: namely, that the races of my parents, hostile to each other and of equal force, had neutralized themselves within me so perfectly that I am a colorless rat, a rat without any hue! A neutral rat! This is my fate, this is my mystery, this is why I have always been unsuccessful and, participating in everything, I couldn't participate in anything. This is also why I grew apprehensive at the sound of the word "mama's boy" - the more so because it was accompanied by a slight lowering of the eyelids, on which I had already burned myself several times in my life. "A man," she said, puckering up her beautiful eyes, "a man should be daring!" "That's right," I replied. "I can be daring." She indulged in fantasies. She made me jump over ditches and lift weights. "Trample that flowerbed, but not now - make sure the janitor is watching. Crush the bushes, toss that man's hat into the water! Remembering the incident in the schoolyard, I was careful not to patronize her and, anyhow, when I asked her about the reason and cause, she replied that she herself didn't know; that she was an enigma, an element. "I'm a sphinx," she said, "a mystery…" When I failed in something, she was sad, and when I was successful, she was as happy as a child and, as a reward, let me kiss her pretty ear. But she never responded to my "I want you." "There is something about you," she said, embarrassed. "I don't know what, some kind of abschmak." I knew full well what that meant.
       All this, I admit, was strangely charming, strangely splendid  - yes, splendid is the word - but also strangely unconvincing. Still, I didn't lose heart. I read a great deal, especially poetry, and assimilated the language of mystery as best I could. I remember the school essay "Poles and Other Nations." "Of course, it's useless to talk about the superiority of Poles over Negroes and Orientals, who have repulsive skin," I wrote.
       "But the superiority of Poles over other European nations is also unquestionable. The Germans - ponderous, brutal, flat-footed; the French - small, diminutive and depraved; the Russians - shaggy; the Italians - bel canto. Oh, what a relief to be a Pole, and no wonder everyone envies us and would like to wipe us off the face of the earth. Only Poles do not fill us with disgust." I wrote these words without conviction - but I felt that this was the language of mystery and the very naiveté of my assertions was blissful to me.


3

       The political horizon darkened and my beloved betrayed a strange excitement. Oh, these great, fantastic September days! They were redolent, as I read in a book, of heather and mint; they were ethereal, bitter, burning and unreal. In the streets - crowds, songs and parades, terror, madness and elation accentuated by the rhythmic step of marching troops. Here - a veteran insurrectionist, tears and blessings. There - mobilization, the parting of young newlyweds. Everywhere - banners, speeches, outbursts of enthusiasm, the national anthem. Vows, consecrations, tears, posters, indignation, loftiness and hatred. Never before, if one is to believe artists, had women been so lovely. My beloved stopped paying attention to me, her look became deeper and darker, became expressive - but she looked only at military men. I was wondering what to do. All of a sudden, the world of the riddle had intensified incredibly, and I had to be doubly vigilant.
       I cheered with the others to express my patriotism and, on several occasions, I even participated in summary execution of spies. I felt, however, that this was a mere palliative. There was something in my Jadwisia's look which made me report for active duty as quickly as possible, and, as a result, I was assigned to the Lancers. And I immediately discovered that I had chosen the right path, for at the appearance before the medical board, standing naked with a piece of paper in hand, in the presence of six clerks and two doctors who had ordered me to lift my foot and inspected my heel, I encountered the same scrutinizing, serious, as if pensive and coldly assessing look of Jadwisia's - and I only wondered that, in the park that day, while accusing me of some inadequacies, she overlooked my heel.
       And so - I was a soldier, a lancer, and I sang along with the others: lancers, lancers, children divine, you make many a young lady pine. Yes - although, taken individually, none of us was a child. However, when in a body we were passing through town with that ditty, bent over our horses' necks, with lances and the visors of our caps, an amazingly wonderful smile was playing on the lips of women, and I felt that this time hearts were beating also for me … Why? - I don't know, for I was still Count Stefan Czarniecki [13] born of a mother née Goldwasser, only in top boots and with raspberry-colored facings on the collar. My mother, exhorting me "not to tolerate it," blessed me before battle with a sacred relic in the presence of the whole staff, of which the maid was the most deeply moved. "Slaughter, set fires, murder!" shouted my mother with inspiration. "Don't spare anyone! You're an instrument of Jehovah's, or rather, I meant to say, the Lord's wrath. You're an instrument of wrath, repulsion, disgust, and hatred. Destroy all those lechers who loathe, although they swore at the altar not to loathe!" And father, an ardent patriot, was weeping on the sidelines. "My son," he said, "you can wash away the blot on your ancestry with blood. Before battle, think always of me and avoid remembering your mother like the plague: this could be your undoing. Think of me and be merciless! No mercy! Destroy all those scoundrels, so all the other races will perish and only my race will remain!" And my beloved offered me her lips for the first time; this was in the park, to the accompaniment a café quartet, on a certain evening redolent of heather and mint - without any preliminaries or explanations, she simply offered me her lips. Poignantly beautiful! I feel like weeping! Today I understand that at issue was a plentiful supply of corpses: since we men had undertaken the slaughter - women, on their part, set to work. But at that time I wasn't yet a bankrupt and this notion, though familiar to me, was no more than a piece of idle philosophy and didn't stop tears flowing from my eyes.
       War, sweet war, what kind of lady are you? [14] Forgive me for returning to the mystery which so nags at me. A soldier at the front wallows in mud and flesh; he is oppressed with diseases, ringworm and filth; and, on top of it all, when his belly is ripped apart by a shell, his entrails often come out… How is it, then? Why is a soldier a swallow, and not a frog? Why is the profession of soldier beautiful and revered everywhere? Not beautiful - I didn't express myself well - but splendid, splendid in the extreme. The fact that it was splendid added to my strength in battle with fear - that loathsome traitor of the soldier's spirit - and I was almost happy, as though I already was on the other side of the impenetrable wall. Every time I managed to hit the target with my carbine, I felt that I was being suspended on the inscrutable smile of women and the measures of a soldier's song; and, after numerous efforts, I even found favor with my horse - that pride of the lancer - which, until then, had only nipped and kicked me.


4

       However, an accident occurred that cast me into the abyss of moral depravity from which I still can't extricate myself. Everything was going very well. The war was raging in the whole world together with the Mystery; men drove bayonets into each other’s bellies, hated, loathed and despised, loved and worshipped one another; on the spot where a peasant had peacefully threshed grain now lay a heap of rubble. And I joined the others! I had no doubts about how to act and what to choose; tough military discipline was my guidepost to the Mystery. I charged at the enemy or lay in a trench amid asphyxiating gases. Hope, mother of fools, was already unfolding bright prospects for the future before me: how I would return home from the Army, freed once and for all from the fatal neutrality of a rat... But, alas, things took a different turn. . . Cannons roared in the distance . . . Night fell upon the plowed field before us, ragged clouds scudded across the sky, a cold gale whipped us, and we, more splendid than ever, for the past three days had been fiercely defending a small hill with a broken-topped tree on it. Our lieutenant had just ordered us to hold out till the last drop of blood.
       Suddenly an artillery shell flies up, bursts, explodes, blows off Lancer Kacperski's both legs, rips apart his belly, and he at first becomes confused, cannot grasp what has happened, and a moment later he also explodes, but with laughter, and also bursts, but into laughter! - holding his belly, blood gushing forth like a fountain, he screams and screams in a humorous, shrill, hysterical, hilarious falsetto - long minutes! What contagious laughter! You have no idea what such an unexpected voice can sound like on the battlefield. I barely managed to survive until the end of the war. And when I returned home, I concluded, my ears still filled with that laughter, that everything I had hitherto lived for had crumbled to dust, that the dreams of a new, happy existence at Jadwisia's side had turned to nothing, and that, on the desert which had suddenly burst open before me, all I could do was to become a communist. Why a communist? But first of all - what do I mean by "communist"? For me, this term carries no specified ideological content, no program, no ballast. To the contrary, I use it rather for what is alien, hostile and incomprehensible in it, and what makes even the most serious individuals shrug their shoulders or let out wild screams of disgust and terror.
       But if a program is absolutely necessary, then so be it: I demand and insist that everything - fathers and mothers, race and faith, virtue and fiancées - everything be nationalized and distributed with ration cards in equal and adequate portions. I demand - and maintain this demand in the face of the whole world - that my mother be cut up into tiny bits and given piecemeal to everyone who is not zealous enough in prayer, and that the same thing be done with my father with regard to beings devoid of race. I also demand that all smiles, charms and graces be provided only upon express demand, and that any unwarranted disgust be punished by incarceration in a correctional institution. So much for the program. As for the method, it consists primarily in squeaky giggling and squinting. With a certain perversity, I contend that the war destroyed all human emotions within me. Further, I declare that, personally, I haven't signed any peace treaty with anyone, and thus - for me - the state of war is not suspended at all. Ha - you will exclaim - the program is unfeasible and the method silly and incomprehensible! Good, but is your program more feasible and your methods more comprehensible? At any rate, I insist neither on the program nor on the method - and if I chose the term "communism," this was only because "communism" is a mystery as inscrutable to the minds which oppose it as your sulks and smirks are to me.
       And so, my ladies and gentlemen, you smile and squint; you caress swallows but torture frogs; you pick fault with a nose; you constantly hate, loathe somebody or plunge into an incomprehensible state of love and rapture - and all for the sake of some Mystery. But what will happen if I also bring myself to create my own mystery and impose it on your world with all the patriotism, heroism and devotion which love and the Army have taught me? What will happen if I smile (a somewhat different smile) and squint with the unceremoniousness of an old warrior? Perhaps I behaved in the wittiest way possible with Jadwisia. "Is woman an enigma?" I asked. (After my return, she greeted me quite effusively, examined my medal, and we immediately went to the park). "Oh yes," she replied. "Don't you find me enigmatic?" she said, lowering her eyelids. "I'm a woman, an element and a sphinx." "I'm also an enigma!" I declared, "I also have my own language of mystery and I demand that you speak it. Do you see that frog? I swear on my honor as a soldier that I'll put it under your blouse if you don't say immediately, quite seriously and looking me straight in the eye, the following words: ciam-bam-biu, minu-mniu, ba-bi, ba-be-no-zar."
       She wouldn't do it for anything. She hedged as best she could, explaining that it was silly and unjustified, and that she couldn't do it. She blushed scarlet, tried to turn the whole affair into a joke, and finally began to cry. "I can't, I can't," she repeated, sobbing, "I'm ashamed, how could I... such meaningless words!" So I took a huge fat toad and carried out my threat. It seemed that she would go mad. She rolled on the ground like one possessed, and I could compare the squeal she let out only to the humorous scream of the man who'd had both legs and a part of his belly blown off by a shell. It's possible that this comparison and the frog joke are unpalatable, but please remember that I, a colorless rat, a neutral rat, neither white nor black, am also unpalatable to most people. Besides, should the same thing be delicious and splendid  to everyone? What seemed to me personally to be the most splendid, the most mysterious and the most redolent of heather and mint in this whole adventure was that - unable to free herself from the toad wreaking havoc under her blouse - she went mad in the end.
       Perhaps I'm not a communist, but only a militant pacifist. I roam the world, sail on this abyss of incomprehensible idiosyncrasies and wherever I see some mysterious feeling, whether it be virtue or family, faith or fatherland, I always have to commit some villainy. This is my mystery which I impose on the great riddle of existence. I simply can't pass quietly by a happily engaged couple, a mother and child or a worthy old man - but sometimes I'm overcome with a feeling of grief for you, dear Father and Mother, and for you - O my sainted childhood!




 

NOTES
 

6. Dieu pardonnera, les hommes…le nez restera (French): "God will forgive, people will forget, but the nose will remain."
7. Who are you?… The White Eagle sole!: This is a truncated stanza of a Polish patriotic jingle. The White Eagle symbolizes Poland.
8. Prince Józef Poniatowski (1796-1813): Polish-born Marshal in the Napoleonic Army and one of the symbols of Polish romanticism. In 1812, he joined Napoleon in his invasion of Russia and distinguished himself at Smolensk, Borodino and Leipzig where, in covering his retreat, he was drowned in the Elster.
9. Count Zygmunt Krasiński (1812-1859): Polish playwright and poet, author of the play Nieboska Komedia ("The Un-Divine Comedy") - hence the reference to Dante Alighieri (1265-1321).
10. Count Aleksander Fredro (1793-1876): Polish playwright noted for popular light-hearted comedies-in-verse with a mild satirical slant.
11. Stanisław Moniuszko (1813-1872): Composer of operatic works steeped in Polish folklore and history.
12. Łazienkowski Park: A romantic landscaped park in Warsaw.
13. Count Stefan Czarniecki: The protagonist bears the name of a historic figure, Stefan Czarniecki (1599-1665). Stefan Czarniecki, a national hero, won fame as commander-in-chief during the war with Sweden (1655-1660). The Lancers (or, more exactly, the Uhlans) of the story are the epitome of the Polish romantic tradition, not least due to their interesting paraphernalia, such as resplendent uniforms, lances and schapskas (or chapskas), i.e. high-crowned, flat-topped and plumed cavalry caps with visors. The song quoted by Gombrowicz, once a popular tune glorifying Polish lancers, fell into oblivion in the second half of the 20th century.
14. War, sweet war, what kind of lady are you?: The opening line of a sentimental ditty romanticizing war and the military.





© Translation and notes by Christopher Makosa