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« dnia: Września 27, 2005, 07:10:44 pm »
Ok, here it goes:
I am generally opposed to the idea that ideas, feelings and situations in books are non-transmutable to people living outside the specific times and places when and where these books were first written. The writer is a person who, it is true, lives in a particular place and in a particular time, but whose individual experiances may be so different from what the general "normal" experiances are of the rest of the population that many times his works are not reflective of those times and places in the least. Take, for example, someone who lives their entire life in their house - as many writers in history have done - and yet who writes about travels and peoples far removed from their dwelling place. A perfect example is Karl May - the man never visited America, yet he wrote the famous Winetou-Old Shatterhand-Old Firehand stories. Were these stories reflective of truth about American Indians or about the American West? Did people behave how they did in May's books? Probably not. And if not, then May's books are purely fiction, in which case time and place have no bearing on the stories as for them to be understood one simply needs some previous knowledge of the particulars of late 19th century America (ie, one needs to know who an Indian was, and what was a rifle, etc).
As well, how much of the experiances of the author should we go through before we too can understand what the author writes about? Are books only to be understood by the writers themselves? Can any other person actually realize which of the parts of the book the writer wanted to emphasize and concentrate upon vs the filler material written only because the writer was lazy and wanted to thicken his work? To accept that time and place are very important (crucial, in fact) things which no person could attain who hasn't actually lived through them also means that one has to accept that all books, essays or stories cannot ever be fully (or even in a significant part) appreciated by anyone else but the author himself. The reason is that individual experiaces the writer has colour his vision and his understanding in some way - thus love may mean something to him than it does to other people, as could any other thing.
Another reason why I don't believe that argument is because I truly believe that all people can and do exhibit the same types of emotions, feelings and reasoning (except for anomalies). The feeling of pride as described in the Illiad vs in some modern literary work is exactly the same. Hope is the same, as is greed, or hunger, pain, etc. These things are universal. What might change is the setting, and the significance of particular things in the society, but human emotions and actions do not change. Thus, as long as one is fairly well versed in history and customs of the ages one is reading about, one should be able to have no problems understanding most books.
What this means is that to understand Lem one has to work really hard to understand Poland of the last century, the ties to Russia, communism, waiting in lines for bread, Polish literary history, Polish humour, etc, etc. But if one does study these things, and has an imagination large enough, I don't see a reason why one should not be able to understand Lem or any other writer Poland ever produced. Thus, a pure virgin to Polish might misuderstand many of the things Lem writes about. He will miss the razor-sharp puns Lem makes, and miss some cultural references. He might get the general drift of the stories, but without those little additions he will not fully understand what was written. But with some study, he should have no problem understanding the true meaning.
To my English friends who want to read the Good Soldier Svejk by Hasek I always say this: read 50 other Czech books, see some Slavic movies, and eat some Slavic foods. If you can, visit the Czech republic, and date someone living in those parts of the world. After you do that for 1-2 years, you will be ready to appreciate Hasek to the fullest.
The above is a perosnal opinion, and you are free to disagree with it. Sorry for the authoritative style, but that is sometimes how I write.
Cheers, Socrates
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