Oldal 390 [390]
388
Wladyslaw Chtopicki
If American soldiers entered Warsaw one day driving their tanks, the slimeballs
would welcome them with great enthusiasm.
The classification of slimeballs Wierzbicki offered was of interest for its sheer
intellectual sophistication. He saw them mainly among the educated city dwell¬
ers—the artists, journalists, politicians—regardless of the age and religion. He lists
three kinds of artistic slimeballs: a venerable humanist and aesthete, a young avant¬
gardist, and a middle-aged realist. He also saw slimeballs among communist party
members, among loyal citizens in the centre of the political stage, and even among
apparent nonconformists and victims of repression. The description and classifica¬
tion is no doubt satirical and exaggerated, but it generally draws upon the behav¬
iour of many Polish intellectuals in the 1950s who, whether under pressure or not,
embraced the regime and used their intellectual powers to extol its virtues at a time
when many former Home Army soldiers were imprisoned, tortured, and executed.
The slimeball, regardless of its type, was not presented visually as it was a rather
complex mental construct, which reflected the complex reality behind it, definitely
not of a black-and-white nature. The rare visual presentation on the cover of the
book by Wierzbicki (1991) was obviously ironic and metaphorical (see Fig. 10).
The book title, Rozkosznisie ("The Bliss-Seekers/Sweeties’), was in obvious contrast
to the image ofa wolf on the cover.
Simultaneously with denouncing slimeballs, Wierzbicki admits that “this is
a tragedy of Polish intelligentsia, Polish culture and Poland simply ... that we all or
almost all are, at least partially, or used to be partially, slimeballs” (1979). Wierzbic¬
ki himself was a party member in the 1950s and became a dissident in the 1960s.
He recalls his own slimeball behaviour—as a “non-conformist slimeball” he wrote
strong essays, often unpublished, and was afraid of being sacked and not being
able to publish his book (much more than of being thrown into prison). He was
asked to sign an open letter of the intellectuals targeted at the government a month
before the book was to be published—and could not refuse to sign it, as much as
he would have liked to refuse, since he was visited at home and wanted to save his
face in front of a colleague—the “slimeballish” reasons (cf. Wierzbicki 1991: 64).
Familiar Others and Others
Apart from the slimeball/ragball character, which was the familiar Other in terms
of being Polish, local and our own, while also being an opportunist-communist and
thus “red” and unacceptable, Szpotariski also writes about the real Other, sketching
“a representation of the limit of our identity, knowledge and perceptions” (Demski
2013: 72) in his mock poem “Tsarina Leonida and the Mirror” (1979), where the
main character, Leonida, is a surreal narcissist, very keen on her appearance. Her
characteristic behaviour is her insistence on kissing passionately all of her male
guests and then complaining bitterly of their betrayals.