Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski - Book Report/Review Example

work] Book Review Ashes and Diamonds Jerzy Andrzejewski Northwestern Press; Translated edition (March 1, 1997) ISBN-10: 0810115190. ISBN-13: 978-0810115194 Ashes and Diamonds is a political novel first published in 1948 but covering only May 5 through May 8, 1945. Written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, it is set in Ostrowiec, Poland, a provincial town in the spring of that year. The principal characters are Stefan Szczuka, Maciek Chelmicki, Krystyna Rozbicka, Antoni Kossecki, Andrzej Kossecki, Alek Kossecki, Juliusz Szretter, Katja Staniewicz, and Franciszek Podgorski. The war has just ended in World War II. For Poland, that means the German occupation is over and the Russian Communist influence has not yet asserted itself. It is a country in transformation, with the people having been uprooted by the war and the country has not yet decided which political direction it will follow. This anchorless society is the backdrop for this story. Synopsis. The plot involves a young soldier, Maciek Chelmicki of the right-wing Nationalist Army who has helped expel the Nazis from Poland. Maciek brings to life the Polish resistance in post-World War II Poland. Now under the rule of Soviet Union, Poland becomes the object of Communist militarization and control. Maciek is dictated to shift his allegiance to the Soviets. He starts out as a carefree thrill-killer who hasn't given a serious thought to what he's doing. This don't-care attitude is his best defense against capture, as he doesn't behave on the sly and thus doesn't attract suspicion. Maciek's acts of terrorism bring him in conflict with the new social order. He is ordered to assassinate a new Communist district secretary, Szczuka, who has returned from Russia. Maciek is as cool as a cucumber when he bumps face-to-face with him. Their job done, he and his partner Andrzej, head in to town before leaving for their next assignment. Just as Andrzej is calling in his kill confirmation, Maciek notices their target walking into the hotel, all in one piece. They must have killed the wrong man. Told to try again to assassinate Szczuka, Maciek is hopelessly driven between the demands of conscience and of loyalty. As he waits at the Metropol hotel at which he and the communist official are staying and where people celebrate the end of the war and get blind drunk, he is up-ended by falling for a bartender named Krystyna. Krystyna is the kind of soulful beauty that could make any man question his lifestyle. She makes him feel that his manner of living is meaningless in the new, post-war climate. What both had intended as a one-night stand opens vistas to a possible peaceful future - to dreams of study, of normality. His romance with her seriously undermines his initial allegiance to the dying Republican cause. It forces him to re-examine the purpose of his mission and so he rethinks his part in the endless cycle of violence - to question whether the revolution is able to achieve the ends that they are working towards. Will he or will he not carry out his wicked mission Can he keep his cool long enough to do it The bartender has gone through the same losses as has everyone else in this sad country, but seems to be looking for some kind of hope. She is afraid to get too close to Maciek when she learns he's leaving in the morning. Maciek's youthful idealism is rekindled and throws him off balance. Army discipline requires a fulfillment of orders, and the old ways of war seem to be too ingrained in Maciek's psyche. At the last minute, he paces up and down before the hotel, his mind racing over whether or not to follow his target. Finally, his victim falls dead in his arms. Maciek kills Szczuka in the dark Though he manages to accomplish his mission on the very evening that fireworks announce the end of hostilities, Maciek is accidentally shot in the morning when running from a military patrol. He dies alone on a rubbish dump - curling up unglamorously in a fetal position, legs twitching as if to kick death away. Weakness. On the whole, Ashes and Diamonds appears to favor the Communists. The new minister is seen as a man of courage and honor who sincerely wants to help Poland. The Mayor's dinner is attended by polite Russian Army representatives, including a smiling female officer. When the police downtown round up some partisan troublemakers, the lead officer treats them with much tender loving care. The book blurs the lines between good and bad, although the actual anti-communists are certainly not set in a good light. A mayor's aide who helps in the assassination is a fool who ruins his career by getting drunk. The brain behind the killing is a rich aristocrat with a wife who wants to leave Poland as soon as she can. Maciek's immediate partner, Andrzej, is an unfeeling zealot. The story is sometimes hard to follow. One has a hard time trying to keep straight the communists, anti-communists, double-dealers, mercenaries, and red herrings. There are similar-sounding names. Andrzejewski does a poor job of developing the characters. There are just way too many of them (47) for the reader to really know much at all about any of them. One has to keep notes just to remember who the main characters are. It is lacking in plot as well. Perhaps through predominately using dialogue and not action, Andrzejewski was attempting to offer a glimpse into the minds of the characters. If this is the case, he could have done a better job by limiting the number of characters and spending more time with each of them. It would seem that if a lot of dialogue was included at the expense of plot, we would at least know more about the characters. Unfortunately this is not the case. Strength. The book examines the meaninglessness of war with such insight and humanity. It is as a response to the problems of society, revealing the factors that emphasize its complexes as well as its symptoms. The book is a discussion of conscience versus loyalty, with Maciek living in both the established and criminal world and often crossing the line. The book tells much of history. Post-war Poland is shown as directionless and confused. Ashes and Diamonds devastatingly documents the death of Old Central Europe. As a work of art, the book hinges upon how it is able to address the conflicts that a person goes through in one's lives. The story tries to bring out the conflict of an individual trapped between whether the ends are more important than the means. There's a thoughtful fairness in the symmetry of having both the new Communists and the murdering renegades reminisce about the wartime resistance days where both sides lost most of their friends but remember their comradeship warmly. The message is of course that Poland needs them all to come to the aid of the (Red) party. When the minister makes a speech on the road, he doesn't receive a wholesale endorsement from the average working men, who just want security and an end to the murders. Maciek and Szczuka are both sympathetically portrayed from a contrasting pair - the young man representing the past and cynicism, the old man the future and purposefulness. Conclusion. Originally published in Poland in 1948, and acclaimed as one of the finest postwar Polish novels, Ashes and Diamonds takes place at a time the nation is in the throes of its transformation. It maybe a landmark book that defines a generation of Poles. It is characterized by a deep sense of a fractured national identity and by an extraordinarily sharp idea of how a tragic history affected ordinary people. This generation in Eastern Europe is about a group of young men and women fighting in occupied Poland. The book, filled with anti-Soviet propaganda, offers a harsh view of the resistance fighters and their ideological struggle. It may not be a masterpiece as proclaimed by some, but it still has some powerful moments. This confusion maybe partly intentional as Poland was in transition, and from that chaotic center it's hard to assess the big picture. The changing emotions and loyalties of Maciek as the hero reflect that uncertainty. The ashes in this book are the remains of Poland after the Second World War. The Poles seek to pick up the pieces of their war- torn country and move on towards a "new Poland," one that embodies freedom and happiness. However the road to this Promised Land is very elusive, and people often blindly pick sides in a new battle to define Poland. The result is only more ashes. Contemporary political problems are projected in this book that examines the moral controversies accompanying the political and social changes of the post-war period, especially the tragic situation of young conspirators involved. Ashes and Diamonds is not without irony, such as the moment when Maciek and the Party official fall almost ridiculously into each other's arms as the one kills the other. The title of the novel is taken from romantic poetry: 'Will there remain among the ashes a star-like diamond, the dawn of eternal victory' The book doesn't attempt to answer this question as it tries to come to grips with the myths and legends of the era. Rather then reading some dry history book which would necessarily have less feeling for the stories of individual people, Ashes and Diamonds tells history exactly by concentrating on the peculiar life stories of the main characters. It shows how the unsettled and chaotic situation of post-war Poland gave rise to some weird coalitions in politics, strange passions or totally unreasonable expectations of the people who had to live then. Since we can afford the luxury of informed hindsight and already know that by 1949 Poland became communist, it is interesting to watch Poland in the period when things were not at all clear yet. Andrzejewski's writing reflected the crucial role of passions, desire, enthusiasms, and disillusionment in history. His characters are often defeated by their circumstances. The real dimension of Ashes and Diamonds is eschatological - meaning, it answers to the question: what is the ultimate destiny of mankind and the world When all is said, the true passion in this book is not the passion for detailed historical recreation, but the passion of a moralizer with regard to elemental issues: life, death, beauty, love, and the nightmare of murder. The part of the book that really made it worth reading for me was its fresh look at the heart of mankind. In my opinion, Andrzejewski does not present a people who held on to morality and goodness through even the toughest of times. He presents a people who, when pressured, reveal the predominately black makeup of a human heart that allows a person to do evil in order to survive or merely to get ahead. Some characters deal with this blackness in themselves and in others, often feeling let down and confused. One example of this is in a conversation between Podgorski and Kossecki after the war is over. Kossecki is burdened after the war with the knowledge that, when in the camp, he did not behave as the honorable man he thought himself to be before the war. He took part in beating people to save his own hide. In their conversation, Kossecki looks for answers to make himself feel okay. Then Podgorski, speaking about the time before the war, says - People had confidence in themselves, in their courage and their morality. Certain things seemed impossible. Life then simply did not present such desperate alternatives. A man had a right to think of himself as decent and incapable of exceeding certain limits. Only criminals did so. But nowadays I've met so many people who broke down and failed this or that test that I don't attach much importance to what a man thinks of himself. Until a man faces the test he can deceive himself endlessly. In the book, Kossecki is disappointed in the blackness of his own heart and Podgorski is disappointed in others who let him down. Through some character's painful realization that people are often not as good as they would like to believe, I was forced to ask myself how I would react in such horrible circumstances. Would a terrible situation reveal diamonds or ashes in my own heart I believe Andrzejewski's greatest success in Ashes and Diamonds is his ability to make me question myself, even though the novel is set in a foreign land and in a time period I will never live in. The title of the book is taken from Norwid's romantic poem. The characters in the book like Maciek are mostly torn between two lives and this obviously plays into this conflict. "Will there remain among the ashes," the Polish poet Norwid asked, "a star-like diamond, the dawn of eternal victory" The book presents this question which it leaves open for the reader to answer. Read More