prisoners here of our own device

Author : Tadeusz Konwicki
Title : A Minor Apocalypse
Published : 25/09/2009 
Pages : 211
Genre : Literary fiction
Publisher : Dalkey Archive Press





     A Minor Apocalypse stars a narrator and character named Konwicki, who has been asked to set himself on fire that evening in front of the Communist Party headquarters in Warsaw in an act of protest. He accepts the commission, but without any clear idea of whether he will actually go through with the self-immolation. He spends the rest of the day wandering the streets of Warsaw, being tortured by the secret police and falling in love. Both himself and Everyman, the character-author experiences the effects of ideologies and bureaucracies gone insane with, as always in history, the individual struggling for survival rather than offering himself upon the pyre of the greater good.

     Satire is a great way to look at the lives we lead and sometimes how truly absurd they can be. We all have a great way of rationalizing the things that happen around us. In this book that happens to be the early eighties in Poland. The author imagined a world in which his country was going to become a part of Russia and lose its own identity. What actions could someone take to break free from this outcome and even if someone was to take such an action would it inevitably fail to make any difference to there country as a whole.

     Throughout the book, we follow the last day of our hero Konwicki an author who has decided to set him self-free from the control the state has imposed on him. When we are first introduced to him he seems tired and uninterested in the world around him. Having long ago decided to stop writing books as he sees this as doing his governments bidding he lives alone in his small flat. Our hero tells people that he is free if he simply does nothing then there is nothing anyone can do to control him. I'm fairly sure there is some logic in there somewhere. To some extent, the author has given us someone who represents not only himself but every other pole living in this country in the placing of this book. He is someone who desperately wants the freedoms given to others around the world but does little to effect change. It is only when someone else forces it upon him that anything starts to happen. On his travels across Warsaw to his final act of self-immolation, he meets various groups of people each representing different facets of ideology's within the country.

     The secret police as you would imagine start by stopping him multiple time to see his papers for no particular reason. When they eventually take him in they then proceed to torture him for what would appear to be nothing more than there own amusement. His old friends want nothing more than to go back to the good old days. But while they believe in some grand event to do this are unwilling to do it themselves. And the ordinary working people he encounters simply want to get on with there lives. They put there heads down and trudge on. Like the utility worker who turns up to turn off his gas. Who exclaims there is little he can do he is simply given an address and told to go get on with it. Maybe this is as true today as it was back then. How many of us truly question what we are doing with our lives. While now both in my home country and in Poland we have far more freedom of choice in our lives do we not still live in cages of our own doing. 

     This book allows us to see the many actions and choice that can be taken in a totalitarian country. It explores what happens to those who chose to sell their souls to these ideas and if there is any way for them to find redemption or if the end is a decision that has already been made for them. The author shows us of propaganda by the government to guide those living within the state borders. I cannot say how much of this holds true to Poland in the late seventies and early eights. I would think that the characters the author has chosen to create are inflated versions of these types of people. But never the less based around some grain of truth. They work well to show how truly stupid governments can get especially when the decision to control every aspect of there citizens lives. But it's easy to mock such ideas when you are not the ones living in them. When this book was written it was in the middle of Poland marshal law. And even in the guesses of satire, it was still a brave move by the author to write something so openly mocking of his government.

      There are not many moments in this book that gave me cause to laugh for the most part the humor is very dry and Is more inclined to be the kind to simply make you give a knowing smile. That being said the scene in which our hero encounters his past girlfriends all sat around a campfire did make in fact give me a laugh. His relocation of them being a far more elegant and romanticised version of events that took place. They are far more intent on ridiculing him and the moments they spent with him. Much like other books in this vein such as nineteen eighty-four love does play its part for  Konwicki he too feels like it could be some form of redemption for his past sins. The warm embrace of his younger lover feels like an escape. She offers him something he feels is missing. But hers is a young love and in many ways very naïve. It shares some great similarities with those how believed in the communist state. In so far as to say they both believe it to be the great cure-all. and that somehow it can right all the wrongs in there lives. only then transcending into something much more beautiful and grand.   

     This is not the lightest of books to get through the subject matter weighted down on me greatly. It is difficult to imagine a time when this idea and concepts would be everyday life. Therein lies the thing of it. Should we chose to forget then we will miss the signs when they come back around. As with all things in history they will inevitably do so. This was definitely a curious book to have read. Satire is sometimes a hard line to walk if you go too far one way or the other it fails to achieve the goals of the author.   Konwicki manages to find the balance in a story not only of his time but one that is starting to feel all too relevant today.