Unquiet Days
Shannon, Christopher A.
SOLIDARITY IN THE KITCHEN UNQUIET DAYS At Home in Poland Thomas Swick Ticknor & Fields, $19.95, 286 pp. Christopher A. Shannon first went to Warsaw in the fall, that season of sullen skies...
...CHRISTOPHER LASCH teaches history at the University of Rochester...
...Swick's pilgrimage in August 1982 is the six-hundredth anniversary of the Black Madonna's arrival in Poland and the first to occur under martial law...
...Commonweal 14 February 1992: 29...
...Swick's detailed observations of his inlaws and friends make the book a success...
...The author and his wife Hania lived with her guardian, a family friend named Jadzia, and her daughter, Gosia...
...Begun by the Paulines in 1711, this nineday rite of passage from Warsaw to Czestochowa is as much a nationalistic and patriotic event as a religious one...
...Christopher A. Shannon first went to Warsaw in the fall, that season of sullen skies and sorrowful anniversaries that the Poles call golden...
...The faculty room is unionized, students march, protest, and are frequently interned...
...Rather than attempting a sweeping analysis of the events and figures of 1980-81—for which readers should turn to The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, by Timothy Garton Ash S wick relies on his day- to-day experiences and conversations to describe the excitement, rumors, and deprivations endured by ordinary citizens...
...At Home in Poland," the subtitle of the book, is slightly deceiving...
...embarks on the annual pilgrimage to Jasna Gora to see the Black Madonna, Poland's most sacred symbol of unity and faith...
...Swick describes several religious scenes with exquisite care and emotion...
...As a resident from September 1980 to September 1982, Swick witnessed some of the headiest events in contemporary Polish history...
...Unquiet Days is a readable and enlightening account of a people and a place about which Americans know little...
...He roamed the shabby streets and empty shops in the rain, stood stomping his feet in the snow as a decrepit trolley chugged toward him, then ducked into hotels for a reviving dose of Western materialism...
...Eighty pages is a substantial number to devote to a long hike in the countryside, yet Swick inexorably draws us along...
...WILSON CAREY McWILLIAMS teaches political science at Rutgers University...
...Two years is an ideal period to learn a city, to delve into its back streets and to become familiar with its personality, yet short enough so that one does not lose a critical detachment...
...Swick is an engaging reporter, and his eye catches the intriguing categories of the 1857 census, "4,008 wags...and 2,642 people who could be great, if not for this and that," as well as the reconstruction of Warsaw's Old Town 28: 14 February 1992 Commonweal and its beautiful cathedral...
...Martial law descends...
...Especially enchanting are the little victories his hosts achieve as they secure a traditional meal for Christmas, triumphing at last over the endless queues or gladly expending their sugar rations for a holiday pastry...
...Ail of this is relayed in crisp and evocative writing, and the reader is transported with great skill and dexterity to a Warsaw of depressing shortages and spirited citizens...
...Like millions of other Varsovians, they flicked their lights three times in breathless excitement as a clandestine figure gave voice to their aspirations across the airwaves...
...When Swick sees the tower of Jasna Gora jutting into the sky and begins the final march through the city, one of thousands chanting the rosary, we share his exultation completely...
...If cooking and the kitchen demonstrated some of the uses of adversity, it was with religion and the church that Poles sought comfort and succor...
...He was for ten years coeditor of The Crane Bag Journal of Irish Studies...
...His first Midnight Mass in St...
...Warsaw, Warszawa, Warschau, Varsovie, "the Thermoplyae of Poland," has suffered partitions, wars, occupations, and uprisings since its emergence as the capital in 1596...
...Led east by a romance with his future Polish wife, Swick settles in Warsaw for a stint teaching English...
...LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM writes the religious booknotes for this journal and teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...As the citizens of the former Soviet bloc grapple with their new-found freedoms, other young Western writers will explore these largely uncharted territories...
...His most recent book is The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (Norton...
...In the latter portion of the book Swick REVIEWERS MARK PATRICK HEDERMAN is a visiting professor from Ireland at Boston University where he teaches English and Irish literature in the Irish Studies Program...
...Yet amidst the gloom, Swick explored his new city with all the vigor of a happy new arrival...
...John's Cathedral is such an event...
...In 1980, the memory of the German occupation still hung tenebrous and fearful in the minds of older residents...
...So opens Unquiet Days, Thomas Swick's lively and engrossing account of two years in Poland...
...Instead of Solidarity's birth in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, we are given a glimpse into Aunt Janusia's apartment, where Swick and his family gather on the "Great Monday" after Easter to hear the first underground radio broadcast under martial law...
...Swick has set a high standard for his successors to follow...
...a Christmas unsullied by commercialism and lachrymose good cheer is also an intensely spiritual one...
...CHRISTOPHER A. SHANNON, a graduate of Boston University, will he entering law school this fall...
...His new wife and supportive relatives and colleagues were clearly a boon, and Swick is able to devote much of his energies to domestic details long hidden from Western eyes...
...The problems of emigration and "brain-drain" are enlivened with tales of unfaithful boyfriends fleeing abroad, and whispered pleas for an invitation stateside...
...The birth of Solidarity and its radicalizing effects are portrayed through the actions of his colleagues and students at the English Language College...
...With Swick we slather extra helpings of horseradish on matzo crackers to fortify ourselves against hunger, or slug back bottles of "cola, called, helpfully, Brown...
...PAUL ELIE is writing a collection of short stories...
...Students baldly cheat on exams as if "the fact that the system is itself corrupt seems to exonerate them, to make their corrupt actions right...
Vol. 119 • February 1992 • No. 3
