This month's book review

reviewed by David Trawinski

I recently went to a Dyngus Day celebration at the house of a Polish friend, one of the few I have down here in northern Georgia. These annual festivities are a beautiful way to reinvigorate the customs and practices, and thank God, the culinary delights, of our joint heritage.
Presented there, was a vast spread of pierogi, kielbasa, and even, thanks to one of our non-Polish friends, a very faithfully handmade and most delicious plate of several dozen pączki for our dessert. It reminded me that spring, being a time of rebirth, is also a time to celebrate all that was born long ago in our collective culture.

In this vein, author Danna B. Gawell’s “Our Polish Ancestors” (order HERE) celebrates our heritage, its customs and traditions, and their origins. Subtitled “The history and culture of Poland from Prehistory to World War I,” I was enthralled to see it was not merely another recitation of important dates in Polish history or explanation of the Szlachta and their “Golden Veto.” Those are vitally important and very prevalent (I recommend the writings of Adam Zamyski for this information). This work fills a void by offering a historical perspective on the lives of the peasants who struggled to eke out a living from the land.

Its twenty-four chapters include “A Little History of Poland,” “The Prussian and Russian Partitions,” “Serfdom,” “Life on a Typical Polish Farm,” “Market Days,” “Sickness, Epidemics and Plagues,” and “Death, Funerals and Cemeteries.” If you wonder why the Prussian and Russian Partitions are explored, but not the Austrian Partitions, this entire work is highly focused on the Galician (Austrian partitioned) provinces. These Galician provinces were much more lenient in attempting to control or eradicate the Polish culture and customs as compared to the Prussian Germanification or the Tsar’s Russification attempts.

Two of my favorite chapters are entitled “Holidays and Holydays” and “Superstitions and Ancient Rites.” The first deals not only with the Christmas Wigilia meal, but also the traditions of New Year’s Eve; Lent (including Popielec or Ash Wednesday); Easter week, including Maundy Thursday’s focus on the Last Supper; the fasting of Good Friday; the blessing of the food on Holy Saturday; and finally Easter (with zurek soup and pisanki, the multitude of colorful hand painted Easter eggs.) Dyngus Day follows with its sprinkling of water rituals. By contrast, the next chapter, “Superstitions and Ancient Rites” deals with darker elements of the culture, especially regarding witchcraft and vampire superstitions of pagan times. Photos of evidence of vampire burials from Polish museums are included.

Overall, Gawell has added to the cultural knowledge base available to readers. Much is drawn from her travels to the “Old Country,” and she performs a remarkable service in including photos of museum artifacts, prints of classical Polish art, and other colorful cultural images throughout this work. The writing is superb, ever so enjoyable, as one feels warmly bathed in the forgotten details of a time long past. I highly recommend her book.

The second book reviewed dovetails nicely upon the foundation laid by the first. Linda C. Wisniewski again proves her mastery of the time — travel genre, especially those with a Polish cultural twist. The narrative perspective of the peasant character Regina from 1830 gives the novel a freshness and vitality all its own. It is a sequel, of sorts, to Wisniewski’s earlier novel “Where the Stork Flies,” but instead of being set predominantly in modern day, it takes the reader back to Old Poland. The trio of main characters from “Where the Stork Flies” are all present again, but the emphasis shifts to the peasant Regina.

The writing in “Time is a Pilgrim” (order HERE) is transcendent. Consider this sampling from the opening:

“The Halny comes when you least expect it. Even before you feel the touch of the wind, the mountains seem to move closer. They turn a soft lavender, lulling you into a false sense of safety. And on beautiful days in the springtime, when we dare to think of happiness, a strange wind may blow down across the Tatras and change everything.”

Regina’s husband dies in an unexpected and violent storm. The peasant woman then sets out on the age-old tradition of a walking pilgrimage to Jasna Góra Monastery in the town of Częstochowa. There, she intends to pray to the Black Madonna for the repose of her husband’s soul. Along the way, her faith is thrown into doubt by an encounter with a band of gypsies.

The time-travel aspect brings both Kat, her modern-day acquaintance from New Amsterdam, New York, whom Regina hails by the Polish name Kasia, and the centuries-departed Polish Queen Jadwiga into play in a spiritual resolution to her crisis.

This novel is a truly enjoyable read, and skillfully weaves the culture, superstitions, and spiritual providence of nineteenth-century Poland into the fabric of the story’s arc. Some historians will attempt to tell you Poland did not even exist in that specific period, but we know better. It existed in the hearts of all true Poles, who patiently awaited its rebirth. Faith also often demands such a rebirth, through an alignment of time, true friendship, and love. This story is evidence of that. My congratulations to Wisniewski.

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