Petrified History

IN DEFENSE OF his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had offended Victorian moral sensibilities Oscar Wilde wrote that no work of art is either moral or immoral, it is simply more or less artistically valid. Works of fiction, Wilde continued, ought not to be used as vehicles for morality. On the contrary, the writer should view morality as merely one of the materials out of which to create his new world. Wilde compared morality to a single color on an artist's palette.

James Michener should have heeded these words when writing Poland, A Novel. He places well-drawn sketches within an ingenious framework, but he uses the troubled country's political structure as an infrastructure, not just as an element. No episode develops completely and the characters are too obviously molded by their place in the overall design. The result lacks both credibility and human interest.

Michener is entirely preoccupied with his political message: "Personal freedom was the lifeblood of Poland, but the supreme irony was that its freedom-loving citizens were not able to develop those same mental forms which could preserve that freedom." He sets up rigid dichotomies between Polish culture and the surrounding barbarism. The monomania goes to the point where he assets that Germany and Russia invaded Poland solely to allay the fear that their common people would envy the conditions of the Poles and be incited to rebel. He makes no mention of Poland's immense strategic value or her rich fertility.

This political bias is partly inherent in the book's structure. It begins and ends in 1981 when Polish farmers attempt to organize a union. The fictional organizers meet with stiff opposition from Polish communist leaders and more obliquely from Soviet officials. Sandwiched between these opening and closing chapters are flashbacks to earlier Polish history. The reader is supposed to reach the concluding chapter with an even greater sympathy for the David of the situation, but Michener forces the sentiment.

The flashbacks follow three families who live in an imaginary town, about 80 miles from Krakow. Although the names change slightly over the centuries, each family's social position is rigid. The Buks, peasants, are subservient to the Bukowskis, minor nobles who in turn serve the Lubonskis, major nobles (magnates). From the Tatar invasion in 1241 to the modern union negotiations, these three families appear, and each performs the task dictated by his rank. The Buks tend the horses of the Bukowskis, who fight fearlessly for the causes chosen by the Lubonskis.

THE CONSISTENCY of the roles of three families is probably justified by the rigid class structure of Polish society and the book makes that point well. But it does not explain the precasting of the three families who serve as protagonists: the major nobles are wise and selfless, the petty nobles brave, but not extremely intelligent, the peasants stalwart and forthright. Under the combined weight of political and individual stereotypes, Poland is merely a vehicle for the characters' political platitudes. Even in the most romantic and stirring public scenes, personal characters get buried. The following is a scene from turn of the century Vienna:

"You keep saying We," Wiktor said, awed by the young women's fury, and she replied: "I was part of every revolution," and he said; "You weren't even born," and she said: "And I shall be part of every move that occurs after my death, because Poland will never surrender. People like me will never surrender, and you must be one of us."

While the reader (like Wiktor) is suitably impressed by this woman, he may have a hard time finding her a believable character. These are rather extreme statements, and the reader knows nothing of her that would make these statements more characteristic of her than anyone else. Michener tells the reader that she plays Chopin mazurkas "as if she must make an important statement for all Poles living in exile..." and that she has been Wiktor's mistress for two nights, but he has shown us nothing that would prove the basis of such political fervor or such a character. So little space is devoted to each historical episode that nothing "extraneous" to the main point seeps in. Any triviality which might make a character human might obscure the character's clearly designated role, might compromise the book's neat conclusion--any such detail is glossed over by the book's flying pace.

The book does have two strengths: the intrigue of the subject and the author's ability to quickly construct scenes. Michener is at his best when describing the homier aspects of Polish life; his 17th century wedding festival is the strongest scene in the book. He specifies which section of the slaughtered pig is eaten by which class, and how they cook it, as well as the music, dancing, costumes, and ceremonies which make up the rest of the celebration. But that sort of immediacy is missing in most of his scenes; a potentially lively and fascinating topic literally suffocates under the weight of the book's preconceived structure.