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The history of my visits to Lwow starts with the fact that I didn’t want to go there at all. Really. I could have, but didn’t want to because I was afraid of it, but I dreamed about it, and all my friends who went there had the duty of photographing [for me] all those [family] houses and those various places in Lwow. And one time, it was 1980 or 1981, one of my colleagues went to Almatur [a student travel bureau] and it turned out they had five seats free on a bus trip for university students. And she booked those five seats. It was Monday, I had a class [with students] at the Collegium Paderevianum, she knocked on the door and said, ‘Janka, on Wednesday at 5am you’re going to Lwow.’ I got so agitated I had to dismiss the class. I couldn’t continue.
And so we went to Lwow. With a group of Theater Studies students. The first time I was there, I saw Lwow as a boorish place. That’s probably the best word for it. Simply boorish. I saw a poor, provincial city. Poor, impoverished, neglected, terrible. Cobbles dating back to Franz Joseph’s times. Besides, I was plagued by that peculiar smell, the smell that all Soviet cities have. Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not a Russophobe, absolutely not, but their cities have this characteristic smell, when you enter a doorway or pass an open one. I don’t know whether it’s some disinfectant or something. Besides, when I looked into the doorways of the various houses in which my uncles or aunts had lived, remembering those beautiful, wonderful houses, the walls in all those doorways were painted to halfway up with this disgusting oil paint. And everything was completely run down, the whole downtown. That was my impression.
All the time I felt like a stranger. I didn’t feel it was my city, but one day, with one of my friends, we went to the High Castle. It was winter, and there, at the High Castle, with that beautiful white snow, something started to awaken, something closer… And then we’re walking down that High Castle, walking on foot, down Kurkowa Street [now Lysenko], which is rather steep – in fact, all streets in Lwow run either up or down. We’re walking and down there I see the building of the pre-war Karol Szajnocha high school. This is the high school that Stanislaw Lem commemorated in his ‘High Castle’ [1966; biographical novel on the writer’s childhood in Lwow]. And at that moment, when, walking down that snow-covered Kurkowa Street, I saw that high school building, it was the only moment when I lost my sense of reality. I thought: God, I’m in Lwow! I’m in Lwow!
And suddenly I’m trying to recall the image of Cracow, that, you know, I’m from Cracow… I’m only visiting this place. The reality is: I’m only visiting this place. I’m not here, I’m only visiting. And I’m trying to get this image of Cracow… and I can’t. I can’t focus my concentration enough to recall anything from there. And finally I saw the green-painted door of the house where I live in Cracow. It was the only image my memory managed to recall. Cracow was an empty sound, a name that signified nothing. It was that one and only moment, which lasted… I don’t know. A minute, two? Other than that, I knew all the time it wasn’t my city. And after that visit I completely lost the sense of longing for Lwow, it drifted away somewhere.
And so we went to Lwow. With a group of Theater Studies students. The first time I was there, I saw Lwow as a boorish place. That’s probably the best word for it. Simply boorish. I saw a poor, provincial city. Poor, impoverished, neglected, terrible. Cobbles dating back to Franz Joseph’s times. Besides, I was plagued by that peculiar smell, the smell that all Soviet cities have. Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not a Russophobe, absolutely not, but their cities have this characteristic smell, when you enter a doorway or pass an open one. I don’t know whether it’s some disinfectant or something. Besides, when I looked into the doorways of the various houses in which my uncles or aunts had lived, remembering those beautiful, wonderful houses, the walls in all those doorways were painted to halfway up with this disgusting oil paint. And everything was completely run down, the whole downtown. That was my impression.
All the time I felt like a stranger. I didn’t feel it was my city, but one day, with one of my friends, we went to the High Castle. It was winter, and there, at the High Castle, with that beautiful white snow, something started to awaken, something closer… And then we’re walking down that High Castle, walking on foot, down Kurkowa Street [now Lysenko], which is rather steep – in fact, all streets in Lwow run either up or down. We’re walking and down there I see the building of the pre-war Karol Szajnocha high school. This is the high school that Stanislaw Lem commemorated in his ‘High Castle’ [1966; biographical novel on the writer’s childhood in Lwow]. And at that moment, when, walking down that snow-covered Kurkowa Street, I saw that high school building, it was the only moment when I lost my sense of reality. I thought: God, I’m in Lwow! I’m in Lwow!
And suddenly I’m trying to recall the image of Cracow, that, you know, I’m from Cracow… I’m only visiting this place. The reality is: I’m only visiting this place. I’m not here, I’m only visiting. And I’m trying to get this image of Cracow… and I can’t. I can’t focus my concentration enough to recall anything from there. And finally I saw the green-painted door of the house where I live in Cracow. It was the only image my memory managed to recall. Cracow was an empty sound, a name that signified nothing. It was that one and only moment, which lasted… I don’t know. A minute, two? Other than that, I knew all the time it wasn’t my city. And after that visit I completely lost the sense of longing for Lwow, it drifted away somewhere.
Period
Interview
Janina Wiener
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