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Ireneusz Iredy6.ski's Drama of Exposure MARC ROBINSON Ireneusz Iredynski made his literary debut with a short poem published in 1955, less than three years after Stalin's death, 'and on the eve of the 1956 reorganization of communist governments officially marking the end of Stalinism. It was 1956, of course, that witnessed the schizophrenia of Soviet diplomacy: a mere eight months separated Krushchev's "secret speech" condemning Stalin's crimes and the brutal quelling of the Hungarian revolution. Iredynski, born in Poland in 1939, came of age in this environment and his writing was born of its contradictions. Joining in the gradual flow of deStalinization that followed the election of Gomulka as Poland's premier in 1956, he began writing dramas of exposure that critique duplicity, chicanery, and the manipulations of those in power. Yet he remained sensitive to the fragility of all stability in Poland, and wrote from a remove of healthy skepticism. His plays express a profound mistrust, not only of the sincerity of those in power, but also of the purity and resilience of those in opposition. Iredynski is virtually unknown in North America, but theatres in western Europe, particularly in West Germany, often produce his plays, and in Poland his work is a staple ofmost repertoires. Several ofhis plays have been translated into English - and one, An Altar to Himself, was recently published in the United States. In addition to drama, Iredynski wrote short stories, poetry, two novels, and over forty radio plays. He was forty-six when he died in 1985, apparently from the effects of alcoholism. The historical circumstances surrounding Iredynski's theatrical beginnings determined the overriding political tone to much ofhis drama, but, retaining the priorities of a writer, Iredyriski conveyed his political critique primarily at the level of language. Three of his best known plays - Farewell. Judas. which focuses on the interrogation of a political activist; A Modern Nativity Play, about a group of prisoners in a concentration camp; and An Altar to Himself. Iredynski's Drama 357 which chronicles the rise and fall of a civil servant - share a concern with the effect political turmoil has on language. In these plays Iredynski documents both the abuse of language by various regimes and the verbal and literary impoverishment suffered by those who live under them. He depicts the breakdown of each society by showing what happens to its vocabulary. Norman Davies, in his pioneering history of Poland, God's PlaygroU/,d, demonstrates how language became one more battlefield in Stalinist Poland. In spite of a provision in the 1952 constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, Stalinism squelched any hope for open dialogue between those in power and those under it. Palpable lies occupied the space from which independent thought had been banished. "Ideological argument," Davies writes, "was swamped by the cult of Stalin's personality. Stalin's crude parodies of Lenin's deformation of Marx ... were translated into Polish and adopted as the true word. All discussions were brought to a close by a timely quotation from the great leader. Writers of genuine talent were reduced to writing poetic puffs and jingles.,,' Freedom ofspeech was further travestied when "an attempt was made to modify the Polish language by introducing the Russian practice of speaking in the second-person plural ... in place of the decadent Polish habit of speaking in the third person singular. ... "2 A world in which no official statement can be believed and no private utterance can be made without a glance over one's shoulder breeds alternate languages. The doublespeak of government gave rise to a corresponding artificial language ofan individual's public life - a vocabulary that enabled one to accommodate the intrusions of officialdom and avoid the retribution that came to those who expressed their true opinions. Czeslaw Milosz identified this language as Ketman in his 1952 analysis of Stalinism, The Captive Mind. Ketrnan is "the art of dissimulation," "a constant and universal masquerade."3 Eastern Europeans, he writes, speak a second, public language for mere survival, one bearing no resemblance to their inner thoughts. A Ketrnan speaker "says something is white when one thinks it black, smiles inwardly when one outwardly is solemn. hates when one...

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