Flag Wedding the Sea – three photographs from a series by Grzegorz Klaman – works within in a similar semantic field although it employs different operational means. The photos represent the artist himself and his son, an adolescent at the time, waiving an invented flag or putting it to the sea in the gesture of communion. The flag was formerly designed by Klaman in reaction to revelations about the crime in Jedwabne2 and the clash of the revealed histories in the light of national myth and symbolism of the national banner (innocence and sacrifice assigned to the white and red stripe respectively). Klaman added a black stripe to mark the space for the unexpressed, unspoken and fallen into oblivion. The work deals with the transfer of value, which could be likened to the “national pedagogy” introduced by Bronisław Trentowski (1808-1869) in 1842 and 1844 and today’s reading of its dangers and outcomes. It also refers to the national fetish of the sea, which Poland was to wed (Poland has celebrated newly accomplished access to the sea with the national celebration of Wedding the Sea, held once in 1920 by General Haller in Port City Puck. The event was re-enacted in honor of its anniversary in 1990).
The history of Poland is a story of a struggle to win and maintain independence, the fundamental merit/virtue in light of which the Polish nation is educated. 16th century Poland was one of the biggest countries in Europe, second only to Russia, but for long periods in history, especially after late 18th century partitions, there was no independent Polish state until the Versailles Treaty. Those 150 years of not having a state were the most formative years for the concepts and visions of patriotism, heroism and sacrifice, with all the religious and cultural connotations attached to them expressed predominantly in literature and theatre. Europe established the foundations and what it would be today, and the Poles undertook several failed uprisings against foreign rule, leading to the development of a spiritual philosophy termed Polish Messianism, or 19th century mysticism. Writers such as Hoene-Wronski, charismatic religious leader Andrzej Towianski and the national poet Adam Mickiewicz are probably the most known and most influential creators and disseminators of messianic philosophy in Polish tradition. Mickiewicz, along with other national poets such as Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasinski, are taught today in schools and have probably the strongest impact, along with positivist novel writer Henryk Sienkiewicz and the late 19th century poet Stanisław Wyspianski, both expressing their views of popular and intellectual definition of Polishness.
These literary roots of what define national narratives in Poland are discussed in the found-footage video by Grzegorz Klaman titled Forty and Four. It combines excerpts from two movies by two Polish emblematic filmmakers, Andrzej Wajda and Tadeusz Konwicki. They took major Polish national literary pieces, Wesele (The Wedding, 1972) based on Wyspianski’s theatre play of 1901 and Lava - A Story of Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve) by Adam Mickiewicz (Lawa, Opowiesco Dziadach Adama Mickiewicza, 1989) based on the fragments of Mickiewicz’s Dziady (1830).
Klaman brings the two narratives together in the video work whose title is taken from Mickiewicz’s Dziady. Forty and Four is a Kabbalist number, deciphered by specialists either as a digital code of the poet’s first name, Adam, the secret formula describing the Messiah to come and the saviour of Poland whose mother is “a stranger” – interpreted by some as an allusion to Mickiewicz’s mother being of the Frankist family (a fact not fully acknowledged in the country). The expression taken from the Vision of Priest Peter is considered one of the most mysterious and inspiring moments of Mickiewicz’s writing, dealing with fate and destiny. Peter also has a vision of Poland as a “Christ of the Nations”, crucified for the salvation of other, overpowered nations. Written several decades later, Wedding by Wyspianski touches upon the impossibility of joint action, lack of internal bonds, repetitiveness of failure, lack of national spirit and pointlessness of efforts to gain sovereignty.
Dziady, and especially Grand Improvisation and the Vision of Priest Peter are most symbolic for understanding the internal struggle of the romantic hero with God and his ungraspable orders over humanity, as well as the acceptance and will of sacrifice. Mickiewicz writes:
”Now is my soul incarnate in my country
And in my body dwells her soul
My name is million, for I love as millions:
Their pain and suffering I feel.”
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