Polonaise
By
Piers Paul Read
Polonaise is an excellent book by Piers Paul Read which mimics the Polish dance of the same name. The Polonaise dance is the national dance of
Poland. Poland plays an important part
in the novel. The story starts before
World War II in Poland and ends after the war.
Like the dance, the novel’s characters walk together, bow,
and circle around. The dancers have to
adjust to a change in meter, where there’s a hop into a bow, with a couple of
quick steps as the body straightens out.
Likewise the characters fortunes fall and rise.
The main character is Stefan Kornowski. The reader will see his character develop
into a student, a revolutionary, a writer, a husband, father and widower. There are times the reader will sympathize
with him, but he is so weak, he never becomes what we hope him to be. He is a fallen man.
His sister Krystyna is another important character. She seems to be stronger than Stefan. She is capable, and does what needs to be
done. Sometimes what she does is morally
wrong, but Krystyna knows right from wrong and accepts the consequences.
Early in the story, one summer while in their aristocratic
estate’s summer house, Stefan tells Krystyna, that there is no God. Stefan is a thinker and dreamer. He has deduced from his teenage ruminations
that belief in God is an ideal only necessary for peasants to believe in. At first, Krystyna thinks Stefan is wrong,
but life assails her quickly and her own young faith isn’t adequate to match
what fate has in store for her.
The times are 1935-6.
Poland watches Germany and the rise of Hitler with incredulity. Stefan and Krystyna are bankrupt, so their
eyes are focused on their own problems.
Their father has gone mental and eventually dies. Their lost aristocratic status isn’t felt as
acutely as it could have, due to the fact that Stefan and Krystyna have become
students of Marx and Lenin. They
eventually marry other communists and have children. The story touches on the economics of
socialism, fascism, and capitalism, with their class struggles and
materialistic views.
Stefan has always dreamt of becoming a writer in Paris. To get out of Poland, he leaves his wife to
join the war against fascism, in Spain.
Stefan takes his sister Krystyna’s husband, Bruno, with him. Bruno does go to Spain. Stefan stays in Paris. Both men eventually make it back home to
Poland.
Because the reader is reading the novel after the story’s
timeline, he knows that Stefan’s wife, being Jewish, isn’t going to survive. Neither will their children. The author doesn’t build up sympathy for this
angle, in the plot line. Stefan doesn’t
invest too much sentimental emotion on his family at all. He is out of the country when the Nazis take
over Poland. The readers eventually learn
that Stefan’s wife and children were killed, but their deaths are not part of
the story.
Polonaise is divided into three parts. Part I goes to the beginning of the Nazis
taking over Poland. Part II deals with
Spain, Paris, the USA, and the characters quickly adjusting to the quick
political changes in Europe. Lastly,
Part III ties the main characters together.
The reader learns that Stefan’s family has perished. Krystyna’s Bruno has died, but their son
Teofil is fine. In fact, Krystyna is
living in Paris, and has remarried. Her
second husband, Alain de Pincey, has adopted Teofil. Stefan also moves to Paris. He is still trying to be a writer.
A new and important character enters the scene, Annabel
Colte. She is a rich young lady who has
come to Parish to broaden her parochial education. She boards with Krystyna. She also meets Krystyna’s son, Teofil, and
the two fall in love.
Unfortunately, Annabel’s parents don’t want her to marry Teofil. They try to discourage the marriage. When it seems that the parents have
reluctantly resigned themselves to the marriage, Stefan perceives a villainous
plot to derail the marriage. This is
where learning how to dance the polonaise becomes useful. Stefan, maintains the dance’s noble
image. He steps up and saves Annabel
from ruin.
Not that Stefan is a noble character, by any means. He never was.
The readers’ first encounters with him at the summer house view a
slothful, cheerless, blasé teenager. He
freely admits to cowardice. He never
really loves his wife and children. He
seems too cynical to love anyone. In
fact, Stefan falls deeper and deeper into lechery. He fantasizes committing sadistic,
masochistic sex. His writing is
pornographic and dark.
The author Piers Paul Read, manages to convey sensuality
throughout the book. All his characters,
except for Teofil, have sex on their minds.
Teofil believes chastity proves strength. He only wants the best for Annabel and that
would be his pure love. Well, I guess
Teofil does have sex on his mind, like all of us. Teofil, however, has the moral strength to
wait for the marital bed.
The novel concludes
with Stefan writing his masterpiece.
Annabel and Teofil figure into Stefan’s work. But in writing the preamble, Stefan found
himself philosophizing. He had many
unanswered questions, starting with that summer house declaration to Krystyna,
that there was no God. But if there were
no God, why is everybody always pursuing happiness? What was he always searching for? Why was important to him that Teofil and
Annabel live happily ever after?
The novel ends with a polonaise circle, again asking the
ultimate philosophical question the teenage Stefan pontificated to his sister,
Krystyna: God is an ideal only necessary for peasants to believe in. Really?
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