the orientalist's gaze in mariusz wilk's woioka

ARTICLES

THE ORIENTALIST'S GAZE IN MARIUSZ WILK'SWOIOKA

Ula Lukszo Klein, Tennessee Technological University

Mariusz Wilk's diary-cum-travelogue Woloka, published in 2005, was nomi-nated for Poland's literary Nike prize in 2006. After the finalists were madepublic, Gazeta Wyborcza profiled each book. For Woloka, reviewer MarekRadziwon wrote, "Ksi^zkç Wilka mozna oczywiscie czytac takze jako kolejnôpowiesc podróznicz^—daleka pótaoc Rosji, zimna i mroczna, kraj starychtradycji, im bardziej niezrozumialy dla prz)âdkowych, nielicznych turystów,tym bardziej pociâj^cy. [...] W rzeczywistosci bowiem jest dziennikiemwlasnych poszukiwan, zapisem vi^rawy w poszukiwaniu sensu, relacj^ zpodrózy w gi^b siebie. [Of course one can read Wilk's book as yet another ad-venture story—the far north of Russia, cold and dark, a country of ancienttraditions, the more difficult it is to understand for the accidental and infre-quent tourists, the more alluring it is. [...] In reality, however, this is a diaryof one's own inner searching, the notes on a journey for meaning, a narrativefrom a journey into one's self.]"' Radziwon echoes Wilk himself, who as-serts the importance of the inward journey throughout Woloka, the secondbook in a trilogy of works that details Wilk's life and journeys in the Rus-sian Arctic and extreme north—Karelia and the Solovetsky Islands in partic-ular. Radziwon's statement also echoes a familiar trope in postcolonial nar-ratives and theory—the voyage in, often to the heart of darkness. Unlike theother books in this loosely-assembled "trilogy"— Wilczy notes [The Journalsof the White Sea Wolf] and Dom nad Oniego [The House on the Onega] —Woloka specifically positions itself as a simultaneous physical and spiritualjourney, one encompassing movement into the landscape as well as into thesoul. For this reason, Woloka especially lends itself to an analysis of the Ori-

1. All translations are mine.

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354 Slavic and East European Journal

entalist's gaze and the position of the Polish traveler/outsider as he consid-ers the Russian peripheries.^

In Niesamowita Slowiañszczyzna [Uncanny Slavdom], Maria Janionpraises Wilk for his ability to write about Russia in a nonreductive way—ina way that avoids the orientalizing of Russia in opposition to writers such asRyszard Kapuscinski, against whom Wilk is often explicitly writing (Janion240). Janion concludes her section on Wilk's trilogy by saying, "Narazie to,CO robi, pozostawiaj^c niektóre pojçcia w ich ruskiej wersji, dobrze okreslajako otwieranie w tekscie okien 'do innej (nie zachodniej) rzeczywistosci.'Rola Wilka w polskiej kulturze jest nie do przecenienia [For now, what hedoes, leaving certain ideas in their russified version, is a good way to de-scribe, as he does, the possibility of leaving open certain windows 'to a dif-ferent (non-Western) reality.' Wilk's role in Polish culture cannot be overes-timated]" (250). While Janion may be correct about the importance of Wilk'swriting to Polish culture, she oversimplifies the positive effects of Woloka.Though Wilk—and Janion—may believe he successfully resists the Oriental-ist's impulse, I would argue otherwise. Using a postcolonial approach, wewill see how Wilk's work appropriates the Orientalist's gaze, thus complicat-ing texts such as Woloka, which simultaneously seek to recover lost geogra-phies while also documenting the inward voyage of the writer. First, however,it is necessary to focus the current discussion on Eastern European postcolo-nial studies in order to understand how such a reading is both possible anduseful.

The Politics of a Postcolonial Poland and Doing Eastern EuropeanPostcolonial StudiesIn Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said is clear about his focus on "West-em" imperialism. Most subsequent works on imperialism and the relationshipbetween colonizer and colonized in literature follow in his steps, focusingtheir discussions of postcolonial literature on the divide between East andWest, the periphery and the metropolis. Though Said and others may ac-knowledge Russia as a colonizer and imperial power, they do not directly ad-dress the effects of Russian imperialism on the literature of its subalterns. AsIzabela Kalinowska-Blackwood writes, "Colonial and postcolonial theorists'bipolar worldview has precluded any examination of the vast territories of theEuropean 'inbetween,' the region known traditionally as Eastern Europe" (1).According to her, both Poland and its colonizer, Russia, are "between East

2. It is also worth noting that although often call a "trilogy," the books can each be read andunderstood separately; they do not rely on previous knowledge of the others in the series to beintelligible. Additionally, newer works in the series, Tropami rena [Following the Reindeer] andLotem gçsi [Following the Path of the Geese], suggest that rather than forming a coherent "tril-ogy," Wilk's notes about life in the Russian north are more of a loosely associated series of jour-nal entries—a structure echoed in Woloka.

The Orientalist's Gaze in Mariusz Wilk's Woloka 355

and West," partaking of both worlds, yet, in many ways, not completely ei-ther. Ewa Thompson similarly notes that "the world has never been dividedinto two neat compartments, West and non-West. The bilateral vision disre-gards the fact that Russia engaged in a massive effort to manufacture a his-tory, one that stands in partial opposition to the history created by the Weston the one hand, and on the other to the history sustained by the efforts ofthose whom Russia had colonized" (23). Though Kalinowska-Blackwoodand Thompson develop their theses on Russian colonialism and its literaryconsequences differently, both are in agreement that these structures are inplace, historically present, underexamined and in need of greater attentionthan has been previously granted them by most discourses on postcolonialand colonial literatures.

Thompson and Kalinowska-Blackwood, though two of the more outspokenwriters on the subject, are certainly not the only ones. A growing body of lit-erature on Russian imperialism or post-Soviet post-colonialism has takenshape over the last fifteen years. Clare Cavanagh and David Chioni Moore aretwo other prominent voices in favor of re-reading Eastern European litera-tures through a post-colonial lens. Moore stakes a strong claim for readingEuropean colonialism as colonialism, arguing, "it should be clear that theterm 'post-colonial,' and everything that goes with it—language, economy,politics, resistance, liberation and its hangover—might reasonably be appliedto the formerly Russo- and Soviet-controlled regions post-1989 and -1991,just as it has been applied to South Asia post-1947 or Africa post-1958. Eastis South" (115). Cavanagh similarly emphasizes Poland's specific claim topostcolonial standing by pointing out that "World War II and its aftermath byno means exhaust Poland's acquaintance with the price of empire. Dividedbetween three imperial powers—Russia, Prussia, and Austro-Hungary—from1795 until 1918, Poland vanished from the map of Europe completely. [...]Despite this Polish credential, only one European country, Ireland, has gener-ated a sizable literature in critical theory on its troubled colonial past andsemicolonial present" (85). Both Moore and Cavanagh make convincingclaims for using a postcolonial approach to Polish literature; their arguments,however, have not gone uncriticized.

Several critics have come forward to critique and complicate Poland's po-sition as a postcolonial nation or its culture as a postcolonial one. SociologistMagdalena Nowicka addresses this issue in an edition of Gazeta Wyborczafrom 2007. She points out the many problems with discussing Poland as apostcolonial entity, including the facts that Poland was never called a"colony" of another nation, no one in Poland calls Russia, Prussia or Austro-Hungary "colonizers," and most importantly, Poland did at various times inhistory "colonize" other lands and nations. This last point is essential to thecritical argument of Aleksander Fiut in "Kolonizacja? Polonizacja?" Fiuttakes issue with Cavanagh's seemingly deliberate ignorance of Poland's own


colonial history in the seventeenth century while at the same time castingPoland in the unproductive role of victim. He adds that he would counter Ca-vanagh's arguments by arguing, for a "radykalne odwrócenie perspektywy.Przypomnienie, ze by} w dziejach Polski okres historyczny, podczas któregoto nie ona byla terenem ekspansji, lecz sama tak^ ekspansjç prowadzila. Ze tojej kultura zepchnçla na margines kultury miejscowe [radical reversal of per-spective. A reminder that there was a time in Polish history when Poland wasnot a territory for someone else's expansion but that it was undertaking itsown expansion. That it was her [Polish] culture that pushed the local culturesto the margins]" (152). Fiut's argument complicates the picture of Poland aspostcolonial state by reminding us that a larger historical picture must also en-compass the memory of Polish hegemony.

Several scholars have attempted to write about the colonial relations inEastern Europe while still bearing this complication in mind. Literary criticDariusz Skórczewski positions himself explicitly between the positions ofCavanagh and Moore and that of Fiut. He argues that "Polish literature maybe read from the postcolonial angle and that such reading may bring about asignificant reformulation of Polish studies," but he also acknowledges that"the postcolonial paradigm should be applied to both the colonial and impe-rial encounters of Polish literature, which encompasses over two hundredyears of writing" (192, 197). Skórczewski also suggests that many classic,canonical Polish texts, such as Henryk Sienkiewicz's Trylogia [1884, 1886,1888] or his children's classic Wpustyni i w puszczy [1912] can be read as"shar[ing] the conviction of the civilizational supremacy of the Western met-ropolitan centers over the 'uncultured' peripheries" (197). At the same time,he adds that "to render them full justice, these texts should be explored in re-spect to how, if at all, the fact that Polish authors were themselves membersof a subjugated nation modified the image of the 'Other' in their works"(195). This approach demarcates a popular movement in some recent post-colonial readings of Polish literature: the attempt to find the sympathy be-tween the Polish writer and the Othered subject as members of a brotherhoodof the oppressed. Megan Dixon illustrates this analytical movement in anarticle on Adam Mickiewicz. She argues that "Mickiewicz, clearly, cannotidentify his superiority with a superior nation: his own nationality as a Pole,or Lithuanian, had no Empire, no geographical superiorify, and certainly nocontrol over any part of the East or Crimea. Russia, by contrast, did controlthe East as Crimea, just as it controlled Poland" (685). Thus, according toDixon, Mickiewicz is able to avoid adopting the Orientalist position as de-scribed by Said in Orientalism? On the other hand, it is impossible to ignorethe Westernized position that much Polish literature has appropriated.

3. Skórczewski also reads the Digression in Mickiewicz's Forefather's Eve this way, andadds that "[b]y underscoring the oppressed Russian people whom Poles should perceive as


While the Polish-Russian relationship of colonized/colonizer seems insome instances quite simple, it is made complex by a variety of other factors,Fiut's point being only one of many. Andrew Wachtel notes, for example, thatRussia at times experienced itself as a "colonized" entity, or at the very least,as one that was inferior to Western supremacy: "At the same time, in sharpcontrast to other politically strong imperializing modem states, Russia foundherself in a culturally subordinate, one might even say colonialized, positionentering the nineteenth century" (49). Wachtel's statement takes on addedmeaning when we consider the consistently marginalized position of Russianculture in the Western and Polish imagination. Janion argues, for example:"Wnowozytnej Polsce 'Wschodem' stala siçprzede wszystkim Rosja. 'Orien-talizacja' (w sense Saidowskim) Rosji kladzie nacisk na to, ze nie nalezy onado Europy. [...] Polska samoidentyfikacja dokonuje sic zazwyczaj poprzezprzedstawienie Rosji jako nie w pehii wartosciowego, lecz niebezpiecznegoInnego [In modem Poland, 'East' has become first and foremost Russia. The'Orientalization' (in the Saidian sense) of Russia emphasizes the fact that itdoes not belong to Europe.[...] Polish self-identification is usually achieved byrepresenting Russia as an unworthy yet dangerous Other]" (226-27). Thus,Polish intellectuals established themselves as culturally superior to their East-em neighbors—and colonizers. This is a common idea in the writing of thenineteenth century when Poland was effectively not a nation, perhaps as amode of self-recovery and preservation. The Polish push towards the West,however, has not faded over time.

Mariusz Wilk's Wohka is a work that specifically seeks to challenge Polishstereotypes of Russia in both culture and literature. Wilk harkens back to ge-nealogies of Slavophilia, pan-Slavicism, adventure narratives, and narrativesof self-discovery in order to construct a new way of looking at Russia.Though the blankness and chill of the Russian landscape remain inevitable inmost Polish texts on Russia, Wilk seeks to re-evaluate the Polish experiencethere, avoiding the blatantly negative view of their former colonizer and dig-ging deeper to examine a new periphery. He, like Kapuscinski, will ultimatelymake a literal pilgrimage to the old gulags, in addition to creating an accountof his travels that, in many ways, is meant to bring a suppressed world tolight." Despite this desire to break from the tradition of exoticist writing, Wilk

companions in misery, Mickiewicz established a long-lasting pattern of empathetic perceptionof the Russians as opposed to furious castigation of the Russian/Soviet drive for imperialpower. This pattern has been reinforced in writings by Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, CzeslawMilosz, and the essayists of Jerzy Giedroyc's monthly Kultura circle" (204).

4. This kind of writing has little in common with what Said and Elleke Boehmer term "resis-tance writing." There is no call to violence and little of what we might term a "nativist" ethic inthese travelogues. At the same time, these texts do not achieve the status of a completely"'open,' indeterminate text, or of transgressive, non-authoritative reading" as in the "multivocalmigrant novels" of decolonization elsewhere, as described by Boehmer (237).


fails in his attempt to construct a new way of looking at Russia. In describinghis own voyage in, Wilk ends up walking the same path as the Poles beforehim: describing Russia in a way that forecloses empathy and instead rein-states Polish cultural superiority to its old colonizer while exposing his ownsexism.

Wilk's Tropa: Attempting New MeaningsIn many ways, Wilk appears to succeed in his attempt to find and propagatenew ways of experiencing previously Othered landscapes. He inhabits a hy-brid position as he is neither a postcolonial subject in another colonial land—something perhaps better represented by Kapuscinski in parts oí Imperium —or a postcolonial subject in the metropolis. He may draw "attention to theregenerative experience of straddling worlds" (Boehmer 235), but his narra-tive is always already different from other postcolonial literatures that seek tocharacterize the life of immigrants in the colonial center. As a travelogue intothe peripheral regions of the former imperial power, Wilk's narrative worksto subvert some of the stereotypes of Russia held among Poles while at thesame time searching for his own, contradictory "trope" or "path." Similarly,Wilk is serious about including scraps of various histories of the regionamong his impressions of the voyage, though not in an attempt to "pin down"the landscape, but rather to recognize the history of the land, imperial andotherwise. Wilk's trajectory does not focus on the ways in which Poles havebeen oppressed by Russians; though Wilk worked in Solidarity in the 1980s,his Woloka does not begin with his emotions regarding Russia or the SovietUnion as colonizer. His focus on the history of Karelia rather speaks to his de-sire to share with his readers something new, something that fills him withwonder.

Wilk makes a valiant effort in Woioka to distance himself from previouswriters on Russia, both Polish and otherwise. One of the ways he succeeds inthis goal is through his linguistic and philological efforts to expose his read-ers to new language and lexicography that link Russians with Poles ratherthan separate them. Early on in Woloka Wilk explicitly mentions his desire toexpose his Polish readership to what some call "archaizm[y], sl[owa] dawnowyszedlszych z uzycia, dialektyzm[y] i tym podobn[e] [archaic expressions,words that have fallen out of use, expressions in dialect, etc.]" (57).̂ He ex-plains, in response to his readers' criticism, that the use of these words is aconscious choice (57). Much later, in response to further criticism, he be-moans the lack of compulsory Russian in Polish schools, arguing that"[jjçzyki zachodnie, tak popúlame teraz srod Polaków, s^ obce z grunturzeczy polskiej mowie. W rosyjskim—polski moze sic przejrzec—jak w lus-

5. His choice to use Russian terms in his text is gestured towards by Janion as a positivequality.


trze, angielskim moze—co najwyzej—makaronizowac [Western [European]languages, which are so popular now among Poles, are in essence unrelated toPolish. In the Russian language, Polish can see its own reflection, as in a mir-ror; in English it can, at best, be twisted]" (178). He points out the commonroots of the two languages, arguing that Russian "wychodzi bezposrednio zesiowianskiego [is directly descended from proto-Slavic]," while the Polishlanguage relies much more on the Latin structures it has assimilated over thecenturies (177). In some ways, this rhetoric harkens back to the nineteenth-century Slavophiles, who, like Yury Samarin, claimed Poland was strugglingbetween its "dominant 'Latin' soul and the semi-suppressed 'Slavic' soul"(qtd. in Walicki 2005, 92). As Andrzej Walicki explains in The Slavophile Con-troversy, "European culture was rooted in the Graeco-Latin heritage commonto all European nations, and this provided the basis for a universal culture"(127), while the Slavophiles saw Russian and Polish linked through a relativelack of this heritage. These notions appear in Wilk's desire to pull the Polishand Russian languages together in order to forge a new understanding betweenthe two nations.^ At the same time, he disavows any kind of totalizing visionof the future, conceding that "zaiste, ideahi nie ma [...j.Wzmiankuj^c o nim,pokazujç jedynie kierunek moich poszukiwan—nie eel. To jak w tao: tropa—jest celem. Kierunek prowadzi w gl^b [indeed, there is no ideal [...] referringto this idea only shows the direction of my searches, not the goal. As with thetao, the journey (tropa) itself is the goal. The direction takes us further in-ward]" (178). Although he is also aware that the element of transculturationworks two ways in a constant exchange,^ it is diffícult to ignore the nuances ofnostalgia in his argument for a common language between Poles and Russians.

Wilk's arguments for turning his own tongue East rather than West havesingular postcolonial reverberations, for he is latently suggesting that the Po-lish language and mind are being colonized by the West intellectually andlinguistically, specifically by English. He writes, "Obawiam sic, ze mlodziPolacy, uczeni w szkolach bez rosyjskiego, bçd^ chadzac po angielsku sciez-kami Intemetu, lecz swojego jçzyka w gQbie zapomn^ [I worry that youngPoles, getting an education without Russian language instruction, will walkthe paths of the Internet in English, forgetting their native tongue]" (177).

6. He expands on this idea, saying, "Idealem moim bowiem jest taki jçzyk, którego moma bynie thimaezyc z polskiego na rosyjski. I odwrotnie [my ideal is a kind of language that doesn'thave to be translated from Polish to Russian and vice versa]" (178). In this sense, Wilk appearsto hope for a new kind of "imagined community," one linked by a hybrid language that is neithersacred nor "territorialized" (Anderson 25).

7. He explains that he primarily speaks Russian during his travels, thus "zyjç w zywioleruskiej mowy, to znaczy w rzeczywistosci uksztattowanej przez jçzyk rosyjski i ksztattuj^cej tenjçzyk—zarazem. Niektóre przedmioty tejze rzeczywistosci nie istniej^ poza niíi [I live in theelement of Russian speech: that is, in the reality created by that language and that creates thatlanguage. Some subjects of this reality do not exist beyond its borders]" (179), implying that acertain amount of personal transculturation is necessary in order to fully experience the twpa.


This is certainly not an "objective" view of Polish education, but Wilk is at-tempting to re-establish a connection between Poland and Russia not foundedon imperial structures. Unlike the colonial literature of nineteenth-centuryPoland, Wilk avoids some of the "Polish feeling of cultural superiority overRussians" prevalent at the time (Walicki 2005, 90), focusing, at least linguis-tically, on the elements that tie the two cultures together. The language, atleast, is not "strange" or "surreal" to him; in fact, he builds his postcolonialreality through it, filling the imagined landscape of Russia with archaic con-nections to his own culture. Though the material and social conditions of thelandscape appear at times to disappoint Wilk, he manages to begin the build-ing of a Russo-Polish language through a conscious process of creolization.Here, creolization is not an effect of the imperial structures in place, but onethat Wilk appropriates for himself to fight, in some way, against the angliciza-tion of Eastern Europe and his own language. Conversely, Wilk's desire for asingular Polish-Russian heritage is a version of "nostalgia for lost origins[which] can be detrimental to the exploration of social realities within the cri-tique of imperialism," as Gayatri Spivak argues (87). In this case, we cannotreify Wilk's attempts to re-introduce Poles to Russified phrases; his linguisticendeavor is problematic at the very least.

Woloka also acknowledges a variety of different forms of colonization, in-cluding the colonization of the Russian North. Part of Wilk's emphasis on thehistory of the region is to explore who the people ofthat region are. The rich-ness of natural resources in the Karelia region, already well known by the endof the first millennium, began the Russian colonization there, according toWilk (25). And though the native tribes of the North quickly russified, Wilkpoints out that the process worked in reverse as well: "Ruscy przyjmowaliobyczaje tubylców [Russians took on the customs of the natives]" (28).Again, Wilk emphasizes the exchange of culture inherent in the colonial con-text, and he deliberately discusses the Russian North in terms of a colonizedterritory, stating that by the seventeenth century "[w] koncu ImperiumRosyjskie zapomnialo o Pólnocy [in the end, the Russian imperium forgotabout the North]" (29). Wilk's use of the word imperium not only echoes thetitle of Kapuscinski's own book on the Soviet "empire," but also links the farNorth with Poland, as colonized areas touched by Russian expansion. Thisconnection, however, goes uncommented on by Wilk; instead, he focuses onthe imperialist history of the North in order to contextualize this place for hisPolish readers, but he allows them to draw their own conclusions. In thissense, perhaps Woloka may do positive work for generating an understandingof colonial processes in regions previously under-analyzed. As I will show,however, Wilk's analysis of these processes is very quickly overshadowed byhis Orientalist gaze.

Wilk claims this journey is also one of personal discovery—and perhapsthis emphasis is meant as a disclaimer regarding his own point of view, his


specific interests in the region, and his particular vision of Russia. On theback cover of Woloka, he explains the meaning of the word "woioka": "pasziemi miçdzy dwoma zbiomikami wodnymi, przez który przewlekano iodzie.Wolok^ nazywano tez samíj, czynnosc przewlekania. Tyle slownik./ [...]Woloka to wreszcie wielka metáfora, w niej pasem ziemi jest nasze zycie,przez które przeJazimy z jednego niebytu do drugiego [a strip of land betweentwo bodies of water over which boats were dragged. Woioka can also meanthe dragging of the boats. That much from the dictionary./ [...] Woloka is fi-nally a grand metaphor where the strip of land is our life, over which wecrawl from one non-being to another]." Though Russia and, specifically, thenorthern part of Russia, are for Wilk also "a world apart," they become aworld of rebirth as well, combining both the mythos of the Westerner goingEast to experience the exotic, and the postcolonial subject communing withanother postcolonial subjectivity and attempting to enter it. Unfortunately, theorientalizing impulse of Wilk's prose negates much of his attempts to enterinto the postcolonial subjectivity he wishes to understand.

The Inevitable Orientalizing Impulse: The Lone Wolf & Master of AllHe SurveysFrom the beginning of Woloka, Wilk creates an imaginary landscape, anoneiric vision of Russia that embroiders and expands the notion of "the voy-age in." As Said argues, '"The voyage in, then, constitutes an especially inter-esting variety of hybrid cultural work. And that it exists at all is a sign of ad-versarial internationalization in an age of continued imperial structures" (244,emphasis original). It is significant that Wilk's own version of "the voyage in"begins in the northern reaches of the White Sea and, in fioating inward, ratherthan leaving "civilization" behind, approaches it, yet never reaches its goal.The tropa truncates mid-voyage, and the narrative cuts off after the death ofJerzy Giedroyc, the editor at Kultura (Wilk 2005, 121). When Wilk picks upagain in the third section of Woloka, he is simultaneously describing his set-tled life in Russia while also reminiscing about his voyage on the yacht ^«iwr.Throughout the memoir it is impossible to ignore the moments in whichWilk's prose articulates the superior Western position. In addition, his ownsexist, at times misogynistic, commentaries alienate female readers while fior-ther undermining his goal of presenting Northern Russia in a new and rele-vant way. Read together, the moments in which Wilk attempts to portray Rus-sia in an "objective" way and the moments in which Wilk objectifies thelandscapes and people around him merge into a larger narrative that seeks todisavow the Orientalist mentality that it subconsciously adopts.

Woloka from the start sets down a double goal of documenting Wilk's owntropa, a physical as well as spiritual path, while also documenting his impres-sions of the northwest region of Karelia, the Solovetsky Islands and the WhiteSea-Baltic Canal. The theme of the Westerner using an exotic location to


"find himself" is nothing new. Despite the frequent histories of the regionrelated in Woloka and the inclusion of other explorers and writers who camebefore him, the author's own epigraph points to the emphasis on the personalelement of his voyage:

Moja tropa czçsto mnie zawodzi na bezludzie:tu w gl^b tundry saamskiej,gdzie sic mozna spotkac z samym sob^ raczej —niz z kims innym. (Wilk 6)

My path often takes me to desert places:deep into the Saamian tundra,where one can meet with one's own self rather—than someone else.

The very disjointed quality of the first section, not organized explicitlychronologically or spatially, with few dates, suggests that these Zaplskisolowieckie ["Solovetsky Notes"] are in some ways more for the author'sown sake than anyone else's. The first "note" begins with ellipses, in mediasres, or rather, in mid-thought. Amidst discussions of the first foreign visitorsto the region come short, introspective statements from Wilk, regarding hisown sense of isolation and middle-aged introversion.^ Wilk claims that"Wyobcowac sic—to znalezc sic w sobie. Bye bardziej, realniej niz w rozrzç-dzonej przestrzeni ukladow, wzajemnosci, sieci powi^zan, zobowi^zan,wi^zan rzekomej rzeczywistosci [to cast oneself out is to find oneself, to bemore, realer than in the shallow space of agreements, reciprocities, the net ofties, responsibilities and leashes of this supposed reality] (41). He impliesthat a new place, a new experience, can make one's world anew. His personalvoyage is not one concerned with local (or global) politics so much as per-sonal experiences and growth. He describes the project as "Siowem, kladiemna papier biezf̂ c^ chwilç [In a word, I put on paper the current moment]" (62),which then begins with a numbered list of various entries regarding anythingfrom a local alcoholic drink made of mushrooms, to passage through the var-ious locks on the canal; from thoughts on Solzhenitsyn, to the history of thebuilding of the canal. It becomes increasingly obvious that these are not, infact, the immediate notes on the "current moment" that Wilk purports to besetting down. They are a studied and selective set of passages that demon-strates Wilk's own interests and agenda. The emphasis on the personal ele-ment of the voyage problematizes Wilk's project of giving the North a newhistory and Poles a new perspective on this place.

Wilk attempts to educate his readership on life on the canal, and his empha-sis on the canal's importance to Soviet history and the people of the region

8. Some of the explorers he mentions are Richard James, the Englishman who came to -thesame region in the early seventeenth century in the service of King James I and documented hisRussian travels in a diary, and St. Phillip, a sixteenth-century Russian Orthodox saint.

The Orientalist's Gaze in Madusz Wilk's Woloka 363

even today can be read as a history and testimony of its own. Yet, in additionto making this voyage a journey into himself, thus de-emphasizing the historyof the region or its people, he also, apparently unwittingly, trivializes and sim-plifies these people. He writes, for example, "Tutaj, na pólnocnym skraju im-perium, weterani zyj^ w bojazni, iz im na wiasny pogrzeb pieniçdzy nie star-czy. Ich twarze, jak ikony, wiçcej mowily mi anizeli slowa. Czçsto na twarzyodnajdowalem to, co próbowali zatrzec slowami [Here, at the northern pe-ripheries of the empire [imperium], veterans live in fear that they won't haveenough money for their own funerals. Their faces, like icons, tell me morethan any words. Often their faces revealed to me that which they had tried torub out with words]" (45). Significantly, Wilk rarely describes the faces of thepeople with whom he comes into contact. In this way, they become for thereader also like icons: blank masks, irrelevant and unreadable. His descrip-tion, in fact, is reminiscent of Adam Mickiewicz's characterization of Russianfaces in "Droga do Rosji" ["The Road to Russia"] from Dziady Czqsci III,Ustqp [Forefathers' Eve, Part III, Introduction]: "twarz kazdego jest jak ichkraina / Pusta, otwarta i dzika równina [the face of each [person] is like hiscountry, / An empty, open and wild plain]" (11.73-74). Though Mickiewicz'scharacterization of Russians is perhaps complicated by the fellow-feeling hehas for his brothers in arms at the end oí Dziady in "Do Pzyjaciói Moskali"[To My Muscovite Friends], he, like Wilk afrer him, exhibits a tendency toover-generalize the Russian people as hopelessly overwhelmed by the forceof their history and geography to the point of surrealism.

The issue of testimony and for whom Woloka attempts to be a testimonyñirther begins to unravel the premises of the text, as it suffers from some ofthe same ailments as Kapuscinski's Imperium. Maxim Waldstein has cri-tiqued Imperium for its reliance on an Orientalizing, Western view of post-Soviet Russia, "producing a highly stereotypical image of Russia" (482).^Kapuscinski's fragmentary narrative, his emphasis on the surreality of post-Soviet existence in these countries, and his focus on what makes life in theseplaces different and Other reinforce his own position as privileged outsiderand observer, not unlike the position of Wilk. Similarly, Wilk, like Kapus-cinski, turns the stories of the people he meets into sound bites, placed in be-tween stories of historical battles, the building of mosques or churches, anddescriptions of the landscape, thus raising the question: when the subaltern

9. Waldstein makes a strong case for the Orientalizing viewpoint of Kapuscinski in Im-perium, and I agree with his analysis. There are some more recent works that question theseclaims, including those of Aleksandra Chomiuk and Magdalena Horodecka who challengeWaldstein's analysis, mostly through a re-reading of Kapuscinski's self-positioning in the text.Horodecka claims that "[i]t is not possible to decide unambiguously whether we are dealingwith the orientalist perspective in Imperium" (206). While there are moments of ambiguity inthe text, like Wotoka, Imperium suffers from a Western perspective that Others the various peo-ples of the Soviet and post-Soviet nations.


speaks, can s/he speak from beyond the confines of the colonial relationshipwithout appropriating the language of the colonizer?^" Both authors attemptto give voice to the people they meet, yet their renderings are rarely more thansketches that serve as a way for the authors to learn more about themselvesrather than the people they meet.

In many ways, Wilk's relation to the people of Kolyma, Karelia and theSolovetsky Islands can be characterized as similar to Mary Louise Pratt's de-scription of Richard Wright's prose. She notes that "the fragmenting andabruptness of impressions is counteracted by a strong, continuous rhythm. [...]Wright is trying to represent an experience of ignorance, disorientation, in-comprehension, self-dissolution which does not give rise to terror or madness,but rather to a serene receptivity and intense eroticism" (Pratt 222). Wilk's"serene receptivity," however, is centered on himself He often juxtaposes in-tensely emotional moments with jarring transitions, evoking an "abruptness ofimpressions" that effectively silence the Other. In one section, Wilk observes"niezwyki[y], na pói prawoslawn[y] i na poly pogañsk[i] obrzç[d]. [...] Cochwilç—to baba Klawa, to Wasilicz—podchodzili do nagrobka Iwana lubmamy [...] i gladzili kamieñ delikatnie jakby to byly plecy ukochanegoczlowieka [an unusual half-Orthodox, half-pagan ritual. [...] every now andagain Baba Klava or Vasillich approached Ivan's or the mother's graves [...]and stroked the stone dehcately, as if it was the back of a loved one]" (176).This is a moment of intense emotion, yet in Wilk's text, there is no pause forreflection, only a new paragraph that begins, "In the evening we parted" (176).Observing the unintelligible rituals of the native peoples becomes merely away for Wilk to continue his own spiritual journey, rendering the people of theNorth as, again, silent, faceless, and utterly Othered icons. Similarly, an in-tense strand of sexual desire pulses throughout the travelogue that emerges al-most always as a misogynistic and/or sexist commentary.

The moments of the erotic and semi-erotic in Woloka are telling. AsThompson points out, "the Enlightenment-influenced interpretation of nation-alism is related to masculinity and manliness, which the proud Europeanswere all too eager to deny to those whom they colonized. The British werefond of speaking of effeminate Bengali males, thus rhetorically belittlingBengali nationalism" (6). Though Wilk might argue that Russian (or Polish)nationalism is not what is at stake in Woloka, the imperial dynamic betweentraveler and Other takes on the tinge of male versus female, masculine versusfeminine in Wilk's "seeing-man" relationship to Russia (Pratt 7). Wilk's onlycompanions on his yacht Antur are two men, one older, one younger than him,who initially are presented as merely names with no history: "Chodzilismy

10. In this case, the question is whether WiUc can speak without appropriating the languageof the Russian and Soviet colonizers that denigrates and invalidates that which is not specifi-cally Russian.

The Orientalist's Gaze in Madusz Wilk's Woloka 365

we trzech: Wasyli, Wania i ja [We went about in a trio: Vassily, Vanya, andme]" (Wilk 62). In the descriptions of their trip through the canal locks, Wilkoften mentions Vassily and Vanya cursing colorfully in Russian or talkingabout women and prostitutes. When Wilk introduces the concept of Russianmat, he gives the term a footnote stating, "wulgame przekleñstwa, w którychjçzyk rosyjski nie ma sobie równych na swiecie [vulgar curses, in which noother language in the world can rival Russian]" (74). Wilk revels in the ñex-ibility and virility, so to speak, of the Russian expression khui, which, he ex-plains, has "ponad tysi^c znaczen [...] Ot, bogactwo ruskiego mata! [has overa thousand meanings [...] Such is the richness of the Russian matl]" (74).Similar comments appear throughout the book, mostly in the form of quotedspeech, such as Vassily's mentioning "bylo tak cicho [...] ze slyszalem, jakzaizzzzz^ muchy, jebi^c sic na oknie [it was so quiet [...] I could hear the fliesfucking on the window]" (77), or Sania explaining that, despite Vanya's as-sertion that women are bad luck on a ship, "ja bym sobie dupy nie odmówil.Wszystko jedno, malolaty, dojrzalej, byleby ruchliwa byla i sokiem podeszia[I would never say no to a piece of ass. Doesn't matter, underage, mature, aslong as she's lively and juicy]" (87). The treatment of women in the text is es-pecially contradictory, as Wilk's supposed objective notations make room tolinger on a variety of questionable observations, many of which are overtlysexist. The reported comments of his brave companions pave the way forWilk's own sexist interjections, and Woloka does nothing to challenge therepresentation of "the subaltern as female [who] is even more deeply inshadow" (Spivak 83).

Wilk's "inner journey" contains several moments in which the search for"inner meaning" and his impulse to give the Russian North a new historybreaks down. These moments are marked by Wilk's taking on a masculinistpersona that could characterize either the Westerner/Orientalist view point orthat of the men of the North, which in Woloka is an extremely sexist, misog-ynistic place. In embracing and exploring the culture of the Russian North,Wilk seems to enjoy his position of dominance. When he meets a couple ofprostitutes on his voyage and gives them some money for alcohol, he re-marks, "Lubiç dziwki, one wszçdzie s^takie same [...] i nie w^tpiç, ze te dwiepotrafi^ to samo, co tamte, a moze lepiej, bo z oddaniem to robi^ i szczerze[I like whores; they're the same everywhere [...] I'm sure that these two cando the same as others, and perhaps do it better, as they do it with convictionand sincerity]" (175). It is unclear as to how Wilk comes to this conclusion,but his remark that these Russian prostitutes are somehow more dedicated totheir profession is simplistic. It reduces these women to "icons" as well—faceless women who come to represent the whole of the people of the region.For Wilk, these people represent a simpler way of life, one that is full of dep-rivation but also of sincerity and honesty. In this way, he uses the women torepresent something other than individual personhood, denying them subjec-


tivity." Similarly, he often focuses on women's individual body parts as an-other way to objectify them, though in the text he seems oblivious to this im-pulse. Lena, a KGB officer's daughter he meets, "ma w sobie cos z KatarzynyWielkiej (bynajmniej nie biust) i duze marzycielskie usta [has something ofCatherine the Great about her (although not her bosom) and large, dreamer'slips]" (195). When he sees topless young women jumping naked into thecanal on January 3rd, he adds, "gdy sie wynurzaly, to sutki im sterczaly zwody—jak spiawiki [when they came up for air, their nipples stuck out of thewater—like fishing bobs]" (203). He describes his friend Franek's daughteras she "jçla mnie silnie uwodzic, wypytuj^c przy okazji, czy nie móglbym za-tatwic zaproszenia do Polski. Napierata ciçzkimi piersiami [tried deter-minedly to seduce me, asking by the way if I couldn't get her an invitation toPoland. She leaned on me with her heavy breasts]" (239). These women be-come part of the Russian landscape, the landscape of a dissolute and drunkenpopulace that Wilk mentions in passing, as in the case of Franek's daughter,or openly enjoys, as in the scene with the prostitutes, or when he adds that thetopless girls in the canal make it impossible to concentrate on mooring theboat (203). These women, by implication, are open to liaisons with any manand, in fact, are attempting to seduce him, becoming objects in Wilk's north-em voyage while his gaze takes on the tinge of the "monarch-of-all-I-survey,"as explained by Pratt. Wilk appears to value and enjoy the atmosphere of sur-realism and sexual play that are open to him there.

The element of the surreal that surfaces over and over again in Wilk's char-acterizations of Russia is in contrast with his sense of connection to the peo-ple of the North via the common colonial yoke and linguistic background. Hisinsistence on this surrealism ends up falling into the Western stereotype ofviewing Russia as unknowable, unnameable, inexplicable. From close to thebeginning of his journey down the canal, he sees "[p]rzy brzegu zelazny pon-ton—w szlamie i wodorostach. Paru muz:yków lowi z niego ryby. Niercalni,niby zgçstki mgly [an iron boat covered in slime and seaweed. A couple ofpeasants are fishing from it. They are unreal, nothing but thickenings in thefog]" (67). He writes that in Petrozavodsk, "Nawet upal by! surrealistyczny[even the heat was surreal]" (165), while Kargopol "w zimie jest jeszczebardziej nierealny nizli latem [is even less real in winter than in the summer]"(198). He sums up his feelings on Russia with the pronouncement, "No coz,umyslem Rosji nie poj^c [Well, Russia cannot be understood by logic]"(200). In a text that focuses so often on concrete sensations, these expressions

11. Similarly, Gayatri Spivak's discussion of the two meanings of representation is significanthere. Wilk believes he can represent these people (speak for them) accurately while presentingthem as they are. Instead, by attempting to "speak for them" he re-presents them through his ownbias. While Wilk makes no pretensions to the kind of intellectual transparency Spivak denouncesin her essay, he is certainly guilty of merging these two concepts silently and problematically.


of non-reality indicate yet another contradiction within the text. In these pas-sages, Wilk unwittingly reverts to a dichotomous worldview offered by animperialist discourse, aligning himself with the Western notion of what Prattcalls "the white man's lament" (216). Like Moravia and Theroux in Pratt'sreading, Wilk veers away from an objective view of the land and people ofKarelia and instead finds in it "ugliness, incongruity, disorder, and triviality"(Pratt 217).

Wilk himself fi-equently disavows this view of Russia as ugly or disordered,even as other parts of his narrative obviously emphasize these aspects. He ac-tively discounts the "black" vision of Russia presented by Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich in her book Pandrioszka, which is meant to be a counterpoint to hisown more "open" attitude to Russia. He deems Kurczab-Redlich an "etranzer,który nie rozumie kraju, w którym sic znalazl {étranger [stranger], who does-n't understand the country in which she has found herself]" (180-81), asthough he himself is unaware of the desolation, surrealism and dissolution inhis own descriptions of Russia.'^ Many of these descriptions focus on the menand women along the canal who thrive on not only vodka, but Russkii Sever,a highly alcoholic facial tonic that substitutes for vodka for those who cannotafford it (171).'^ When Wilk "tips" the men he hires to renovate his new homewith bottles of vodka, they get so drunk that one man cuts off the other man'sarm above the elbow with a power saw (246). He calls giving the men thevodka a "fatal" mistake and adds that "odechcialo mi sic tego domu [I nolonger wanted the house]" (246). Wilk is "pierwszym obcokrajowcem w tejwsi" ("the first foreigner to come to the village") and the inhabitants "[j]akuslyszeli, zem obcokrajowiec, to oslupieli [when they heard that I was a for-eigner, they were shocked]" (243). Wilk emphasizes their isolation and differ-ence from himself even before he recounts the drunken brouhaha that endswith loss of limb. The scene is painful to read, even without Wilk's assertionthat it is so, and the reader is made to identify with the "lamenting" position ofa Westerner reading about the "strange" or "barbaric" East. Wilk identifieswith the Western imperial dynamic here, seeing all that is Other as unreal, outof control, or inexplicable. At the same time, he takes part in the "rituals" ofthe natives, himself drinking for three days straight in the village of Taivenga.This exoticizing character of Wilk's descriptions is difficult to reconcile withhis desire to represent Russia and Russians positively. Whether he is dis-cussing his inner voyage and how the landscape of northern Russia becomesthe backdrop for this personal enlightenment, reducing the people of that re-

12. Wilk also displays, yet again, his rampant sexism when he writes, with regard to Kurczab-Redlich's discussion of the Chechen War in Pandrioszka, that the chapter "dobitnie pokazuje, zes^ rzeczy, na przyklad wojna, nie dla dam [pointedly shows that there are some things, like warfor example, not for the ladies]" (181).

13. Wilk explains: "[Russkij Siewier] [t]o plyn kalganowy do pielegnacji twarzy na osiem-dziesi^t piec obrotów" (171).


gion to sound bites, or indulging in overtly sexist observations, Wilk's Wolokafails to channel a new, non-Orientalist view of Russia. Wilk's travelogue is aform always already infiuenced and infiltrated. The description of his "voyagein" attempts to sidestep the "imperial structures" of the traditional Westernvoyager or voyeur, but he clearly fails and instead becomes an emotionalvoyeur. He repeatedly asserts his own search for individual enlightenmentwhile denying the personhood of the people he meets in the North, thus rein-forcing the dream-like view of northern Russia that does nothing to dispel theOrientalizing impulse of the memoir.

For Wilk, the purpose of Woloka was to find his tropa while also giving theaverage Polish reader insight into a place where many contemporary Poleswill never go, yet which is inextricably linked to Poland through the historyof the gulags of the region. Through his published writings, Wilk attempts tocreate a new kind of "imagined community," one that could conceivablystretch beyond the borders of the nation.'"* In his attempt to create a newmethodology for travel and self-discovery, Wilk appropriates the term tropa,explaining that "Rosyjska tropa pochodzi od starej formy tropat'—deptac.Zatem tropa to sciezka wydeptana przez czleka lub zwierzç. Uzywaj^c tropy,zamiast 'drogi', podkreslam czynnosc deptania samopas, niekorzystania z go-to wego szlaku [The Russian tropa comes from the old form tropat'—to tram-ple. Thus, tropa is a path stamped out by a person or animal. Using the wordtropa rather than 'path,' I am emphasizing the act of blazing out your owntrail, of not making use of a preexisting path]" (142). Wilk attempts to blazea new trail via a "new" way of writing about both colonizer (Russia) and thecolonized (the inhabitants of the northern regions where he travels). HisNorth is an imaginary landscape with him as the primary imager; despite hisfocus on the grand arc of history embedded in the region, he seems to bemerely "floating" through the landscape. In the end, it is unclear exactly whatthe tropa is. For Wilk, perhaps that is the point. Despite the ambiguities in thetext and its emphasis on his personal journey, however, Wilk still reinforcesOrientalist dichotomies in Woloka.

The people of the North occupy a significant space in the imperial narra-tive of Russia: they are both Othered as Russians and accepted as fellow-colonials and non-Russians by Wilk. Similar motifs occur in Kapuscinski'sImperium, where the people of the Caucasus or Central Asia are given a voiceby the text, and their histories are recorded, but they remain foreign andstrange, their customs quaint and their culture in need of a Western interme-diary. Though Wilk does not see himself as a "Western intermediary," his nar-rative constructs an imaginary view of Russia cut off from reality even in themoments when it purports to be immersed in it. His "voyage in" differs

14. I borrow this term and its usage from Benedict Anderson's book of the same title.


strongly from the colonialist "voyage in" of early European travel or eventum-of-the-twentieth-century narratives such as Heart of Darkness}^ At thesame time, Wilk's travelogue is not the kind of reversal of the "voyage in"that Salih's Season of Migration to the North embodies, which offers "notsimply a reclamation of the fictive territory, but an articulation of some of thediscrepancies and their imagined consequences" (Said 1994, 212). These for-ays into a new relationship with the former colonizer, through the experienceof visiting the peripheries, might prove fruitful in the future. Yet Wilk consis-tently undermines these possibilities through the emphasis on his personalawakening and his denial of individuality to the people he meets, as well asthe sexist language he uses and appears to enjoy.

If this is the case, then perhaps, in an unintended sense, Maria Janion is right:"Rola Wilka w polskiej kulturze jest nie do przecenienia [Wilk's role in Polishculture cannot be overestimated]" (250). A deeper understanding of the Polishroles of colonizer and postcolonial subject is needed when we finish looking ata work like Woloka, which so subtly yet problematically blends these two sub-ject positions. Woloka is a book that has been nominated for awards and beentouted for its ability to forge new connections between Poland and Russiathrough travel and language, yet its sexism, at the very least, has been ignored.Additionally, Woloka, as part of a larger body of works, informs us that Wilk'smethodology is both popular and lucrative. If we consider Wilk's popularityalongside that of Ryszard Kapuscinski, we might surmise that Polish attitudestowards the former colonizer as well as the country's position in Europe arestill in the process of formation, as Poles struggle for a more comfortable po-sition than that of martyr-country. More postcolonial readings of Polish litera-ture remain to be done in order to further theorize these relationships and per-haps, in the future, find a new tropa that will indeed lead to an understandingof Poland and Russia that avoids the Orientalizing impulse.

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The Orientalist's Gaze in Mariusz Wilk's Woioka 371

Wilk, Mariusz. Wilczy notes. Gdansk, Poland: Wydawnictwo slowo/obraz terytoria, 1998.. Woloka. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2005.. Dom nad Oniego. Warszawa: Les Editions Noir Sur Blanc, 2006.. Tropami rena. Warszawa: Les Editions Noir Sur Blanc, 2007.. Lotem g^si. Warszawa: Les Editions Noir Sur Blanc, 2012.

AbstraktUla Lukszo KleinSpqjrzenie orientalisty w Woloce Mariusza Wilka

Wydany w roku 2005 opis podrozy/pamiçtnik pod tytulem Woloka']Qst drug^z seriiprac Mariusza Wilka na temat jego zycia i podrózy po póinocnej Rosji. Woloka wwiçkszym bye moze stopniu niz pozostaîe czçsci calosci, sytuuje sic jako opis po-drózy, który podkresla nieustaj^ce zainteresowanie Wilka zagadnieniami kontaktówpomiçdzy kulturami z jednej i odkrywania samego siebie z drugiej strony. Autorkaponizszego artykuhi rozwaza, na ile gatunek, który sam Wilk okresla mianem tropy,pozwolit mu zrealizowac postawione sobie zadania, w swietle nowszych prac natemat postkolonialnych zwiazków Polski i Rosji. W oparciu o klasyczne teksty teoriipostkolonialnej autorstwa Gayatri Spivak, Edwarda Saida i Mary Louise Pratt, a takzenowsze teksty omawiaj^ce polskie relacje postkolonialne, autorka analizuje oriental-istycznq^ tendencJQ Woloki. Poprzez analizç roli Wilka jako "monarchy wszystkiego,na CO patrzQ," jego osobiste uprzedzenia, a takze nieokielznany seksizm, autorkadowodzi, ze Wilkowi nie udaje sic wyjsc poza stosunek czlowieka Zachodu orazobcego, mimo ze z powodzeniem kwestionuje on dynamikç pomiçdzy koloni-zowanym a kolonizatorem. Reasumuj^c, proza Wilka stanowi dowód orientalizu-jq^cego spojrzenia autora i problematycznego stosunku pisarzy polskich do Rosji.

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