Between Russia and Germany: Aleksander Wat’s My Century as a Theme for Modris Eksteins

Abstract

Małgorzata Dziewulska analyses the ‘funeral of the avant-garde’ of the late 1920s and early 1930s, presenting the history of local avant-garde milieus in Central and Eastern Europe. The author finds the historical interplay of two totalitarianisms – fascism and communism – to be an intriguing point in the Central and Eastern European avant-garde’s common fate. In her description of the decline of the avant-garde, she reaches for Aleksander Wat – poet and co-creator of Polish futurism – through his Mój wiek. Pamiętnik mówiony [My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual]. Dziewulska examines Wat’s turn towards political journalism and his activity in the literary-political magazine Miesięcznik Literacki[Literary Monthly], a platform for the voices of Marxist writers and poets including Władysław Broniewski, Andrzej Stawar, Władysław Daszewski, Witold Wandurski, Bruno Jasieński and Leon Schiller. Another publication crucial for the author’s analysis of the ‘funeral of the avant-garde’ is historian Modris Eksteins’ Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age, in which he describes the critical year 1929 in Germany: devastating due primarily to the sudden deterioration of the economic situation, the issue of reparations and responsibility for the First World War.