Artistic Advocates for Freedom

By Frank Boyer

Few people who are not of the Polish nation know that it was the first country in Europe to have a written democratic constitution. This document enshrined the same enlightenment values that inspired the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution. When the Polish legislature voted in May of 1791 to accept that constitution, the event marked a tragically important moment in Polish history. That act expressed an aspiration to reform an aristocratic system that no longer served the people of Poland and affirmed a major theme in Polish culture: the vital importance of freedom and tolerance. Yet this document and the ideals it expresses were rendered bitterly ironic by subsequent events. Almost immediately, the three absolutist monarchies that bordered Poland, led by the Russian Empire, declared war, resulting by 1795 in the complete dismemberment of Poland as an independent state. Poland, once a powerful and prosperous commonwealth, entered a period of nearly 200 years of subjugation, broken only by the 19-year period between World Wars One and Two.

Every Pole who has lived subsequent to 1795 has had to deal in some fashion with the clash between Polish humanist political ideals and the reality of subjugation at the hands of its imperialist neighbor-nations. This cultural irony continues to have force even today, with the nation still finding its way as an independent state, newly minted with the collapse of the soviet empire. This tragic historical circumstance has led to exile as an important part of the cultural life of the Polish people. Many of the most important Polish intellectuals and artists, unable to express themselves freely while living within the traditional territory of Poland, made their greatest contributions to Poland and the world while living abroad. They were forced to flee, not only to exercise their intellectual and artistic freedom, but often for their very lives.

Among the most notable Polish exilic artists are Fryderyk Chopin and Jan Sawka, the first born near the beginning of the Polish captivity, the other born during the last dark chapter of that dark story.

There are many similarities between these two artists. Both men were of the Polish intelligentsia—the educated class—and grew up within the same tradition, a tradition that valued culture, social practice, and art as means of resistance to the political hegemony and cultural imperialism of a foreign and illegitimate ruling class. Both of them as young men found their artistic stride in their homeland, creating work of striking maturity and lasting importance. Both were compelled to flee abroad for political reasons. Both spent the remainder of their lives in exile, where they continued to create work that received international acclaim.

From the beginning to the end of their activity as artists, both Jan Sawka and Fryderyk Chopin created works that were intellectually and aesthetically strong, yet accessible. In part, this accessibility has to do with the fact that both artists worked in non-verbal media, so that the interpretation of their work did not depend on translation from a language that is not widely spoken. But there is a more subtle reason for this accessibility—both artists were working in the Polish articulation of the Western cultural tradition—both were of a social milieu the ethos of which insisted that culturally Poland lay at the eastern edge of Western Europe, not at the western edge of Eastern Europe, as its oppressors wished to insist. This grounding of their art within a larger tradition allowed for a kind of purity of expression that, in the hands of these consummate artists, ultimately rendered their work universal in its appeal. Both artists, while profoundly of their nation and people of origin, strove to speak to and for all humankind. They both succeeded.

And, finally, Jan Sawka and Fryderyk Chopin pursued similar goals in their lives and through their artwork. Both, at great cost to themselves, lived lives and created work that served to inspire not only their countrymen and women, wherever they found themselves, but all people, everywhere to live in the light of their values, to have courage, to endure, and to continue to work and struggle for freedom. The artworks of these two exiled Polish artists are important for us, not only because of their technical brilliance, or beauty, or emotional impact. Their works inspire because of what these artists and their works stood for and stand for, the possibility of and struggle for human freedom. They opposed oppression in every form, and in life and art, they call us to that task.

 
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