Limes-Pontes-Agora

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Limes Pontes Agora

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Limes Pontes Agora A Tale of New Borderland of Europe in Eight Scenes

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Authors concept, synopsis, text:

Małgorzata Sporek-Czyżewska Krzysztof Czyżewski artistic concept:

Wiesław Szumiński collaboration:

Marek Skorupski graphic design:

Witek Minkowski video:

Marcin Gwiazdowski photoedition:

Marek Skorupski technical supervision:

Michał Moniuszko collaboration:

Bożena Szroeder production:

Marek Skorupski Michał Moniuszko

Sejny 2010

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Table of Contents Czesław Miłosz: Borderland

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Borderland’s path

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The Borderland Ethos and Tradition

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The Borderland the Map

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The Borderland the Atlantis

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Czeslaw Milosz the Exile and the Returner

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1989 Meeting Poet and Practitioners of Active Culture

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The “Borderland” Center Memory, Education, Coexistence

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Bridge-Builders Laboratories of Intercultural Practices

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International Center of Dialogue and the Pedagogical Province

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It is fitting that instead of the mansion in Krasnogruda a center of international dialogue will be created and that Sejny keep the memory of what they were … At some time we learned Hegel’s formula, ‘Overcome and retain.’ This is probably the essence of our efforts to get closer to the past. Immersed in ‘now,’ in a way we should strive to move into another dimension, with all the consciousness that we work from this, what has been, for this, what will be, and that we prepare a gift for the people, who will be living after us. I am happy to say in my thoughts to those with whom I used to walk here, in Krasnogruda and in Sejny, ‘You are in good hands, not forgotten in scorn, but present.’ However there might have been only ‘the ugliness of ravaging,’ it happened otherwise, there is the victory of human reason and will. Excerpt of Czeslaw Milosz letter to „Borderland”

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Czesław Miłosz Borderland

I III.

II. IV.

V. str. 61

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VI.

Small and unknown Sejny can be compared to New York, according to the great Yiddish tradition, which from each shtetl, from each town on the eastern borderlands of Europe, could make the center of the world.

Claudio Magris

„Corriere della Sera”, 29.06.2009

The text has not been previously published, written for the Boderland portfolio prepared by the American artist Batuz with cooperation of the Borderland Foundation and dedicated to the memory of the poet's late wife who died on 15 August 2002. The portfolio includes also texts by Tomas Venclova, Sokrat Janowicz, and Dovid Katz. Its presentation took place at The Atlantic Club, Berlin, on 13 September 2002.

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Borderland’s path

We

have pulled down the Berlin Wall, we have opened borders, popularised the Internet, most of us lives in multicultural metropolises. However a wall remains a vivid experience of a contemporary European. It does not run along the borders of national countries anymore and it is not built by different languages or political systems. A wall nowadays grows inside the society, on the bank of a river, and it is made by sharp and confrontational borders of cultural identities. The new wall, in which our contemporary fears and losses are sealed, is being established by the growing presence of the alien. It is being established not outside of our world, but inside our intimate space, before reserved only for this, what is nearby and ours. We realise more and more, that identity is not the same as communality, and that, fighting for the former value, we have lost most of the latter’s spirit. The problem of contemporary Europe, which reminds more and more of an archipelago of distinct cultures, is not the grounding differences, but what Czeslaw Milosz called the ‘connective tissue,’ on which he based his concept of ‘Europe – native realm.’ That is why contemporary European story is a story of co-existence. The story is the spring of this current of thought and action, which is capable of, once more, pulling down the wall on the Old Continent; and this time it won’t be in the world of enslavement and the Cold War, but in the world of growing presence of the alien. Such a story might begin like that… [Krzysztof Czyżewski. Opowieść o współistnieniu. Lecture. 25.09.2009]

Borderland is the shadow cast by the border on the nearest neighbourhood. Therefore, a life-giving buffer zone takes shape, the one protecting diversity. It differs from the usual kind of border zone – empty, guarded, and rife with enmity. Borderland does not erode the borders, but rather expand the sphere that they encompass, absorbing those who live there, accepting their intermingling as a matter of course. Borderland is an agora. Here, he who is not in dialogue with others simply vegetates on the periphery. The centre of this sphere is always found in the meetings that take place there – that is to say, everywhere – and its circumference is found in that which remains untouched by Otherness – in other words, nowhere. Borderland deprives the border itself of the ruthlessness inherent in a thin line that slices through open space and divides it, while at the same time rendering everything in its immediate vicinity barren. Anyone who lives in a border zone thinks more about crossing it than about going back home. Space – naked, shadeless, and lacking a safe refuge, is hostile to those who happen to pass through, as well as to newcomers and outsiders. Nowhere else is their differentness so noticeable. In a place where there are no bridges, there are also no neighbours willing to help each other

build the roofs over their heads. In the borderlands, a man lives in the shadow of the Other. He lives because he struggles with him, engages in polemic with him, profits from him (even if it is only in the form of theft). He gains his identity by emerging from the shadow. He emerges from the shadow by gaining identity. Only in a struggle, in that constant grappling with the Other, he becomes unique, one's own man. Separate tradition and religious or national affiliation are not enough. Only when it faces confrontation, when it meets with Otherness in this place of intermingling, it appears as one's identity. Here – in the borderland. Borderland is not a promised land for those who are seeking peace, assuagement, and neighbourly love. Stress and quarrels are something endemic here, just as the threat of cataclysm implicit whenever the earth begins to quake – the order of the day in tectonically active areas. And just as distilled water is not good for the human body, any attempts to render differences sterile only poison the living tissue of the borderlands. Otherness is the bacteria that make it possible to live and survive in borderland. Borderland, as a sphere for communication, also provides a place for true separateness. Precisely because the agora is at its center, all around different districts can continue to exist while maintaining their own traditions. Borderland does not know conformity, only consensus. It knows a renunciation, but not a renouncement. It witnesses reconciliation, which, although always difficult, never comes at the cost of blurring the truth, or of oblivion. Here ‘shared’ does not mean ‘homogeneous,’ and that what is ‘in-encounter’ does not mean ‘standardised.’ It is the counterpoint, not the conflict that’s essential here. Borderland resounds with a dissonance that supplants the culture of the gatekeeper. The borderland’s song is inherently polyphonic, one whose harmony arises from voices sung in dissonance with relation to the main melody, which has no voice of its own, but rather emerges from many, creating one amidst them all. The song of the borderland cannot be sung by a man alone. It is structured on polyphony, thanks to which not even one voice will be dominated by others or obliterated. The silence of one voice makes the listener wait. The dynamic of the borderland is derived from the drama of failed encounters. When it does come to pass in the borderland, the Vergegnung that was so troubling to Martin Buber incites discussion and makes us aware of our own ignorance and narrow-mindedness. Not knowing a language when you need to communicate with someone else makes you realize the need to learn it. The same is true of the shame of not noticing differences, and the injury that can arise from someone’s unfamiliarity with other people's customs. This is the path of the borderland. Unsuccessful encounters do not break the dialogue off. Sometimes such events actually initiate dialogue

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by laying bare how difficult – and sometimes even impossible – it can be. Borderland constantly puts a man to the test with these failed attempts, and guarantees their occurrence. Thus, they draw us, too, into the drama of the path they are on. The path becomes overgrown and the space for such encounters disappears only when non-encounters take place, and when there are no situations that can put us to the test, when our isolation proves complete – often the result of an ideology characterized by hatred and threats. It is then that the temblors and tensions inherent to the borderland can explode into a destructive cataclysm. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. The Path of the Borderland. Sejny: Sitka, 2001]

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The Borderland: Ethos and Tradition

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I

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The Borderland: Ethos and Tradition

W

hether one searches through dictionaries, looks in maps, analyses old manuscripts, or wanders through many countries, the borderland will reveal itself in three elementary signs. Each of which is both a thought and a shape. These signs are limes, pontes, and agora. Limes means ‘borders’ – lines of division and exclusion, of conflict and isolation, but also markers of identity and the longevity of even cultural differences. Pontes means ‘bridges’ – the first victims of conflicts, fear of otherness, and multicultural crises. They symbolise an identity that is open and integrational, like a borderland, which inherently includes ‘the Other,’ the other side, trespassing. Today they bear witness to the difficulty of creating true intercultural communication, that is, the modern craftsmanship of building bridges. Agora means ‘space of co-existence’ – a civil ethos, an international matrix, which enables people of different languages, generations, and ideologies to live together in a community. The Central Europe is more of an ethos than geopolitics to me; it is an attitude which opposes: uprooting with membership; ideological mystification with bold reference to reality; provincial complex with strength of the province; sharply drawn borders with space of crossing and co-existence. The space I think about may be called the ‘borderland.’ In context of Polish history and culture, this choice, or, rather, this evocation of a nearly forgotten word restores important connotations. It consciously replaces the word ‘Kresy’ (‘Outskirts’), commonly used by the Poles when they want to name the all Eastern areas of the former Polish Republic, which now lay within the borders of Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. In Polish tradition the word has strong emotional undertone, linked to the glory of the multicultural Jagiellonian Commonwealth (also known as the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth). It is also linked to the romantic myth of the exotic East, traumatic memory of the old wars, and the sentiment for lost sources of culture. It is totally different for our Eastern neighbours. For them, ‘Kresy’ mean Polish imperial domination, assimilation of their national elites into Polish language and culture, paternalistic multiculturalism of the stronger, suppression of the minorities emancipation and independence aspirations. Regardless the strength of the ‘Kresy’ myth in Polish culture, a successful counterweight was made. The decisive argument was made by the community of Polish intelligentsia in exile gathered around the Paris journal “Kultura,” edited by the very influential Jerzy Giedroyc. Just after the II World War, the community declared war

on the Polish nationalism, historical resentments, and irrational national myths, such as “Poland from one sea to another.” It is a phenomenon, that such a forge of thinking was established in exile (in Maison-Lafitte, near Paris). It was a Polish tradition – and traditions of many Central European nations – that an exile usually created refuge for conservative attitudes. Such refuges were surprisingly efficient when it came to conserving the poisons of different national-messianic fantasies and, what is worse, sometimes they were able to be transplanted back on the homeland soil. In the exceptional forge of “Kultura” were working brilliant minds, such as Czeslaw Milosz, Witold Gombrowicz, and Juliusz Mieroszewski. The latter, an accomplished political essayist, poorly recognised outside of Poland, is passed as the author of the ULB concept (Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus). It assumed that the Poles – while thinking long-term, striving for independence, fighting the communism and the Soviet empire – should renounce ‘Kresy’ to the future independence of the neighbouring countries. It meant not only an agreement to the ‘loss’ of the symbolic cities of Polish spirit, such as Vilnius or Lviv, but also an active immersion in helping and co-operation with the Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians, in their

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Przemyśl, 1989. Mass influx of the Ukrainians to Poland after the opening of the border

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fight for independence. This tradition, after the year 1989, has developed new dynamics, and one of its contemporary carriers is the partner-like, not confrontational, word ‘borderland.’ The understanding and popularity of the word was strengthened partly through the activities of the Borderland Center in Sejny, which I lead. In contrast to a common belief endowing Central Europe with the character of an Arcadian myth, especially in relation to the multicultural heritage of tolerance, my Central European myth avoids idealisation and displacing the dark sides of reality. This does not mean that I would go to the other extreme and repeat another widespread belief, that the history of the region is an uninterrupted trail of cataclysms and tribal quarrels. The values I associate with the ethos of Central Europe could not come to life in the reality of an Arcadia, but only in the collision of interwoven dramas, differences and impossibilities. By themselves they may bring chaos and destruction, but when overcome (expressed not with a gesture of excluding or fencing off, but with a gesture of embracing, accepting, made familiar), it evolves into the beauty and wisdom of the Old Bridge in Mostar, the philosophy of dialogue of Martin Buber, from Lviv, and Emmanuel Levinas, from Kaunas, the dialogic poetry of Paul Celan, from Bukovina, or the writings of Danilo Kiš, one of the best antidotes to provincial nationalism. [Krzysztof Czyżewski, Ethos of the Central Europe, Dialog. Warszawa, 2010.]

In Sejny one can see clearly, that Poland’s access in the EU, a return to the Western community, for many Poles does not mean turning away from a historically important cultural center or a poor East of the continent. However Poland is concentrated on Brussels, the feeling of the outskirts of Europe was never lost in Sejny. One may get the opposite impression; that recently, with the strengthening of Poland’s connection to the Western structures, interest and feeling of responsibility for the edges of Europe is growing, especially for the Eastern neighbours.

Rita Sussmuth

Former Chairwoman of the Bundestag. Eulogy on the award of the Dialogue Prize for the Borderland Foundation by the Federal Union of the German-Polish Associations, Berlin, 11.11.2006

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The Borderland: the Map

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The Borderland: the Map

S

ejny and Krasnogruda lie near the so-called ‘Trójstyk’ (Tri-junction), an unusual place in this part of Europe where from the 15th century the borders of three states have met: formerly, the Polish Kingdom, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Teutonic Knights; today, these are Poland, Lithuania, Russia’s Kaliningrad District, and also Ukraine and Belarus, both divided from Poland and Lithuania by the Schengen line. We need to remember that in this small piece of the continent nothing is less stable than state borders. Here one can meet people, who, while never leaving home, at various times were citizens of three, or even four different states. This land is home to Poles, Lithuanians, Russian Old Believers, Protestants, Russian Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Muslims, Belarusians, Roma-Gypsies, Tatars, Ukrainians, Lemkos, and Karaite Jews; it also bears witness to the traces of the Yotvingians, Prussians, Jews, Russians, Germans, Armenians... “Long, long time ago, there was a country called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However later on, one could not find it on a single map, it does not mean, that it haven’t continued its complicated existence, similar to that of the existence of Languedoc, Savoy, or Transylvania” – wrote Czeslaw Milosz. For many, he was the last citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, long ago united with the Polish Kingdom. Both subjects created a single country for many religions and nations, unprecedented in the history of Europe, the Jagiellonian Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. This heritage – lost later on in the Europe of absolutistic powers, fever of nationalisms, and finally of the 20th century catastrophes – requires to be evoked now, or even requires to be rebuilt. However Sejny and Krasnogruda lie just at the border of Poland and Lithuania, whoever looks at the map of the former Commonwealth will find them nearly in the heart of both countries. The certificate of its contemporary topography is also young in comparison to the four-hundred-years-long-lasting of the united Poland and Lithuania – this “very long experiment.” Poland got united with Lithuania. Let us read it more closely: united got Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Jews and many other nationalities in the modern meaning of the term; united were the Orthodox, Catholics, Greek Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims; East opened westwards, Occident eastwards. But it is not the quantity of the enumerated religions and nationalities that are here the most essential. The important thing is that the host got united with the Other, his neighbour, a foreig-ner speaking a different language and of different faith. And so, without the Other, he would not be fully the host and, consequently, fully himself. This is the way Poland got united with Lithuania – “as husband and wife, two souls in one body”.

One can point to many shortcomings of this imperfect though unparalleled unit. For us, however, this feature is not fundamental, and the fact of the historical continuity of the Commonwealth – overcoming the frequent electoral crises, treasons, disloyalties, adverse interests etc. – created an opportunity for the long duration of the joint Polish and Lithuanian state, an event announcing truth in history. It triggered the opening which – thanks to availability of sufficient time and build-up of consecutive layers of existential substance – enabled the underlying working of the spiritual element establishing the real tissue of civilization, independent from good or bad surface weather of occurrences (including the mentioned earlier shortcomings). In this way, on the borderlands of Polish, Lithuanian, Ruthenian and Jewish worlds with the overlapping triple junction of Byzantium, Rome and Istanbul – was able to establish itself a permanent cultural paradigm. Its nature found its expression in the “event of connection”, in which the host not being able anymore to remain himself without the Other, became a co-host, and community expressed itself in co-relation. This cultural pattern shaped the ethos of borderland, trying to introduce into everyday custom and forms of spiritual life the values which constituted it: tolerance, dialogism, overcoming of divisions, civil and neighbourly patriotism, universalism, freedom/responsibility, self-criticism, openness to the world, and never oblivion. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Citizens of the Book.” A Book of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Towards the Traditions of European Community. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2008]

Is it possible to practice borderland? If we understand by the term a certain territory, then we should speak rather of cultivating or exploring borderland. Let’s add that a borderland does not necessary need to be a territory situated as a border, like a national border. A borderland may be a place through which borders run, with inhabitants speaking different languages, praying in different temples, or claiming different nationalities. However, in the multicultural region belonging once to the Jagiellonian Commonwealth the word ‘borderland’ means not only a place, but a certain ethos and tradition, explained best by the phrase ‘a person of the borderland.’ Such a person was regarded as tolerant, usually with mixed family roots, full of empathy, sober patriotism, immunity to national fears, fluency in languages, curiosity of the other, and, while remaining open to the world, giving most of his love to his homeland. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Line of Return. Of Practicing the Borderland, in Dialogue with Czeslaw Milosz.” Line of Return. Notes from the Borderland. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2008]

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The legend of the map

T

he map presents places, persons, historic events and spiritual heritage which together constitute the living tradition of the cross-cultural dialogue in the Central and Eastern Europe. The choice, perforce limited and symbolic, was dictated by the network of contacts and heartfelt affinities which originated during the performance of the activities of Sejny Borderland. The letters “BP” stand for Borderland Partners, persons or organizations working in a given location.

VILNIUS (Pl. Wilno, Lith. Vilna, Belaruss. Wilnja, Yid. Wilne, Russ. Vilnius) - the capital of the Republic of Lithuania, until 1795 the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in the Jewish tradition “the Jerusalem of the North”. A city of poets: Adam Mickiewicz, Czesław Miłosz, Abraham Sutzkever, Josif Brodsky and Tomas Venclova. BP: House of Memory, Association “Transylvania”, European Humanities University (expelled from Minsk by the Belarusian regime), “Znad Wilii” magazine and gallery, Irena Veisaite – president of the Foundation of Open Lithuania, Pranas Morkus – editor of “Siaures Atenai”. CHERNIVTSI (Pl. Czerniowce, Ukr. Czernivci, Rum. Cernăuţi , Ger. Czernowitz) – capital of the Chernivtsi district, Ukraine, until 1914 the capital of the Bukovina Principality, divided today between Ukraine and Romania. Under the treaty of Bukovina, signed in 1910, all the ethnic groups were granted equal rights and proportional participation in the local government, setting thus the example followed by other multicultural regions (e.g. Cyprus and Southern Tirol). A city of poets and writers: Eminescu, Icyk Mangera, Yuriy Fedkovych, Paul Celan, Rose Auslander and Gregor von Rezzori. BP: University of Chernivtsi, Centre Bucovina, Władysław Strutyński - director of the Polish House , Petro Rychlo – literature expert, translator of Celan. SADHORA (Pl. Sadagóra, Ukr. Sadgora, Yid. Sadigora or Sadiger) – once a small town, today a borough of Chernivtsi. A cente of Hasidic Judaism, founded by tsaddik Izrael Friedman.In 1941-1944, the Nazi concentration camp. The tsaddik’s court was once visited by young Martin Buber and his father. KRZYŻOWA (Ger. Kreisau) – former estate of von Moltke family, the remains of the estate are a sumptuous palace, restored after 1989. During the Nazi occupation it was the venue of the so called “Kreisau Circle” – an anti-Nazi organization one of whose founders was Helmuth von Moltke; after a failed attempt to assasinate Hitler's all the members of the Circle were executed. After 1945, the village was resettled by emigrants from the eastern borderland of the Polish Republic. The famous “Mass of Reconciliation”, was held here on 12.11.1989 with the

participation of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, prime minister of Poland, and Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of Germany. BP: “Krzyżowa” Foundation for European Agreement.

MOSTAR – the historical capital of Herzegovina, today in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The name comes from mostari – bridge guardians. The city is famous for its Old Bridge, built by an Ottoman neimar Hajruddin in 1566, the symbol of the co-existence of the Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. On 9.9.1993 the bridge was destroyed by Croatian forces during heavy fights with the Muslims, preceded by the war in which Croats and Muslims fought alongside against the Serbs. The restored bridge was opened on 23.7.2004. BP: Youth-Centre of Culture “Abrašević”, Ranka Mutevelić - director of Puppet Theatre, Husein Oručević – radio sound architect.

Szetejnie

SZETEJNIE (Lith. Šeteniai) – a village in the heart of Lithuania. Here, on 30.6.1991, in a manor house on the Nevėžis river, was born Czesław Miłosz. The manor house did not survive, restored was, however, the manor granary, housing since 1999, the Czesław Miłosz Cultural Centre. BP: Czesław Miłosz Birthplace Foundation. GÖRLITZ / ZGORZELEC – by the ruling of the Potsdam Conference a city divided between Poland and Germany. In 1945, the Nazis destroyed the Old Town bridge on the Lusitian Neisse restored only in 2004. The city of the master shoemaker and great mystic Jacob Böhme, who influenced both Mickiewicz and Miłosz. BP: Europa-Haus Görlitz Association, Zgorzelec House of Culture. NOWOGRÓDEK (Belarus. Nawahrudak, Russ. Nowogrudok, Yid. Nawaredok) – a town in the Grodno District, Belarus, formerly the capital of the Nowogródek Voividship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (until 1795.) and the Second Republic (until 1939). Adam Mickiewicz used the neighbouring lands as a background for the Polish national epic “Pan Tadeusz”, Chaim Grade wrote here his novel

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“Yeshiva” about the local, one of the best in Eastern Europe, Jewish school. BP: Regional Museum, Tatiana Cariuk – the founder of the “Pramien” Filomat Society

LA COMBE – a locality in the French Alps, chosen as his exile retreat from the Eastern Carpathians (Hucul land) by Stanisław Vincenz, philosopher and writer, the author of the superb borderland saga “On the High Pastures”. On settling here in 1947, Vincenz created here “a private Platonic Academy” participated by, among others: Czesław Miłosz, Jeanne Hersch and Konstanty Jeleński. TRIEST (It.. Trieste, Slov. Trst) – a seaport on the Adriatic, the capital of the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Among its rulers were Illyrians, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Germans, Venetians, and Habsburgs. In 1947-1954, the borderland of Italy and Yugoslavia acquired the status of the Free Territory of Triest, a UN protectorate. Today, Trieste is an Italian city with a middle-European spirit. Its cultural myth was co-created by such people as James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmunt Freud, Ivan Cankar and Umberto Saba. BP: Claudio Magris – writer, laureate of Borderlander Award.

GABOWE GRĄDY – a village situated in the Augustów Forests, a centre of the religious and cultural life of the Russian Old-Believers. Located here is their temple (molenna), cemetery and school with Russian as the language of instruction. BP: folk ensemble “Riabina”.

Stańczyki

STAŃCZYKI (Ger. Staatshausen) – a small village at the border with Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast). Situated here are impressive viaducts of the disused railway line, one of the highest constructions of this type in Poland (36 m). Their iron concrete design was modelled after the Roman aqueduct of Pont-du-Gardin, South of France. Built during the World War One by the residents of the East Prussia connected once local settlements. Today, the line leads nowhere. BP: “Wspólnota Mazurska” Association.

Krynki

KRYNKI – a small town in the Podlaskie Province at the border with Belarus. An Orthodox church stands here next to a Catholic church and a Jewish cemetery, one of the largest in Eastern Poland. It is the home town of Sokrat Janowicz, the most eminent of the Belarusian writers living in Poland, actively engaged in the movement for independent and democratic Belarus. BP: “Villa Sokrates” Association.

Tykocin

Grabarka

TYKOCIN (Lat. Tykocien, Yid. Tiktin) – one of the biggest pre-war centres of the Jewish culture in Poland. The town is the oldest historic architectonic complex in the Podlaskie Province. Restored was the Baroque Great Synagogue of 1642, still under reconstruction is the castle of king Sigismund II Augustus. BP: Museum of Jewish Culture. GRABARKA – the most important place of worship of Orthodox Church in Poland. The Holy Mountain of Grabarka is famous for curing ailments of body and soul, therefrom the thousands of crosses erected here by pilgrims from all over the world.

Grabowe Grądy

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WIGRY – formerly a Camaldolese Monastery built in 17th century on the Wigry Lake peninsula, near Sejny. The rooms of the hermitage houses are used today to accommodate tourists, for artistic workshops, galleries, and the Chapel of John Paul II who once stayed there. BP: Residential Arts Centre in Wigry.

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Łóździeje

Wigry

ŁOŹDZIEJE (Lith. Lazdijai, Yid. Lazdei) – a Lithuanian town, Sejny’s neighbour on the other side of the border. In the near village of Katkiskes is located a mass grave of 1535 Sejny and Łoździeje Jews murdered by the Nazi in 1941. In 1928-1931 taught here Salomea Neris, a great Lithuanian poet. In 1886 born here was the famous composer Joseph Achron. BP: Regional Museum.

Boksze Krasnogruda

BOKSZE (Lith. Bokšiai, Yid. Boksza) – a village founded

in 17th century, situated on the post-glacial Boksze Lake,. The birthplace (1862) of Morris Rosenfeld, a famous Jewish poet working in the New York proletariat quarter of Lower East Side, a disciple of Sejny heder.

KRASNOGRUDA (formerly Krasnohruda, Lith. Krasnagrūda) – a village populated mostly by Lithuanians, picturesquely situated between the lakes Gaładuś and Hołny. Its hills command a view of the surrounding areas of Lithuania, Belarus, Russia and Poland. The former property of the Kunats, relatives of Czesław Miłosz's mother, Weronika nee Kunat. The poet used to be a frequent guest here before the war and after 1989. On the centenary of his birthday, 30.6.2011, in the rebuilt manor, Borderland Foundation will inaugurate the activities of the International Dialogue Centre.

Puńsk

PUŃSK – the town is called the capital of the Lithuanians in Poland as this ethnic minority accounts for 80% of its citizens. Located here are schools with Lithuanian as the language of instruction, many cultural and social organizations, held re well known in the region fairs and folk events. BP: “Aušra” magazine, House of Lithuanian Culture, Józef Vajna – the founder of the Ethnographic Museum.

Sejny

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SEJNY (Lith. Seinai, Yid. Seini) – a town once inhabited by Poles, Lithuanians and Russian Old-Belivers. The first owners of the town were Dominican Friars who built here, in the 17th century, a monastery and basilica containing the miraculous figure of Our Lady of Sejny. In the 18th century the Friars invited to settle here Jews helping them to build their synagogue. In the 19th century, Sejny became an important centre of Jewish education. At the turn of the 20th century active here was the famous Lithuanian poet and simultaneously Bishop of Sejny, Antanas Baranauskas. Sejny became a centre of the shaping then Lithuanian national identity and independence movement, which in encountering similar tendencies on the Polish side led to the Polish-Lithuanian conflict of 1919-1920. The memory of the events of those times remain an unhealed wound in the bilateral relations until today. Since 1991 the restored buildings of the former yeshiva, synagogue and Hebrew grammar school have been the abode of the “Centre Borderland of Arts, Crafts, Cultures and Nations”. OLSZTYN (Ger. Allenstein, Lat. Holstein, Prus. Alnāsteini) – the capital of Warmia, in the past within the borders of both East Prussia and Poland. After 1989 an important centre of building the regional identity and Polish-German dialogue. The emblem of the multicultural character of the city is the Jewish Funeral House (1913), inhabited by Germans, Poles, Jews and Warmians, designed by the born in the city architect Erich Mendelssohn. BP: Wspólnota Kulturowa “Borussia”. BERLIN – a multi-cultural European metropolis, the area of a rather difficult integration of western and eastern Germans and immigrants, mainly from Muslim and postcommunist countries. Borderland organized here a New Agora symposium with the theme “Muslims – Partners in Dialogue”. BP: Polish-German “Dialogue” magazine, Forum of Central and Eastern European Culture in Potsdam, Bohdan Osadczuk – Ukrainian journalist and Borderlander, Arvo Pärt – Estonian composer and Borderlander. GRODNO (Belarus. Hrodna, Yid. Grodne, Lith. Gardinas) – the capital of a Belarusian oblast, near the borders with Poland and Lithuania. In the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania it happened sometimes that the town council was presided in turns by two mayors, Catholic and Orthodox. Later, more influential became Greek Catholics (Basilian friars). The Great Choral Synagogue, whose first construction on the initiative of rabbi Jaffe of Prague is dated for 1578, survived the Holocaust. In the Soviet times it was converted into an alimentary store; at present its again managed by the Jewish commune. At the turn of the 20th century, the imposed Russification processes were fought here by an outstanding Polish writer Maria Dabrowska. Today, the town includes 62% Belarusians, 24% Poles, 10% Russians and Ukrainians, Jews, Lithuanians and Tartars. BP: Regional Information Centre For Public Inititives “Third Sector”, Alexander Milinkiewicz - leader of the “For Freedom” Social Movement .

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DROHOBYCZ (Ukr. Drohobicz, Yid. Drobitsh) – a city in Galicia, today in Lviv Oblast of Ukraine. It is known in the world culture thanks the works by Bruno Schulz, a Jewish writer writing in Polish. During the lifetime of the author of the “Street of Crocodiles” the local community of the city included Poles (47%), Ukrainians (40%), Jews (10%) and Armenians, Germany, Russians and others. Also connected with the city were the writers: Ivan Franko and Kazimierz Wierzynski, and painters Maurice Gottlieb and Arthur Grottger. BP: Polish Studies Scientific-Informational Centre at I. Franko Pedagogic University, Alfred Schreyer – violinist, the last living student of Bruno Schulz. LUBLIN (Lat. Lublinum, Yid. Lublin, Ukr. Ljublin, Lith. Liublinas) – the central square of this largest Polish city situated east of the Vistula is called Lithuanian. The reason is it is here that halfway from Cracow to Vilnius, in 1569, the Act of Lublin Union was signed, the agreement between the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to create one federation covering the gigantic area of the Central and Eastern Europe. Referring to this tradition John Paul II used the famous words referring to the aspirations of the post-communist countries: “From the Lublin Union to the European Union”. Lublin is the city of Jewish sage called the Seer of Lublin to whom Martin Buber devoted his book “Gog und Magog”, and of Jasza Mazur - the famous “Magician of Lublin” by I.B. Singer. BP: “Gardzienice “Theatre Association , “Brama Grodzka” Centre, Centre of Culture, “Homo Faber” Association . LWÓW (Ukr. Lviv, Ger. Lemberg, Lat. Leopolis) – the largest city of the western Ukraine, formerly the capital of Galicia, one of the most important centres of Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Austro-German art and science. The only city in the world possessing three Catholic archbishoprics of different rituals: Latin, Armenian and Greek Catholic. Its spiritual tradition created philosophers and artists: Martin Buber, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Ivan Franko, Leopold von Zacher-Masoch, Bohdan Antonycz, Zbigniew Herbert, Stanisław Lem, Adam Zagajewski, the avanguard group Ba-Ba-Bu. BP: “Ji” magazine, “Dzyga”club and gallery , Centre for Humanist Studies at Lviv University. TÂRGU MUREŞ (Hun. Marosvásárhely, Ger. Neumarkt am Mieresch) – a city in Transylvania, Romania, situated in the the Szkler (a Hungarian ethnic minority) country. Today, it is inhabited by Romanians (50%), Hungarians (46%) and Gipsies (3%). During the so called “Black March” of 1990, it was a stage of Hungarian-Romanian conflict, one of the notorious, after 1989, outbursts of the “hibernated” under the communist era, ethnic conflicts. BP: Pro Europe League. PÉCS (Hun. Pécs, Croat. Pečuh, Ger. Fünfkirchen, Serb. Pečuj, Tur. Peçuy) – the capital of Baranyi, a border region between Hungary and Croatia, inhabited also by Germans, Serbs and Gypsies. The vestiges of its former inhabitants are the surviving synagogue and mosque. BP: University of Pécs.

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PRISTINA (Alb. Prishtinë, Serb. Priština) – the city that remembers the rule of the Romans, Serbs and Turks, it used to be part of the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Great Albania and Yugoslavia, and to on 17.2.2008 became the capital of the independent Kosovo. The price paid for heavy fights during the Albanian-Serbian conflict in 1996-1999 was the exile of the city's Serbian and Gipsy population. BP: Centre of the Humanities “Gani Bobi”, Skhelzen Maliqi - philosopher, Eqrem Basha – poet. SARAJEVO (Bosn. Sarajevo, Tur. Saraybosna, Lat. Seraium) – city-symbol both of a symbiosis of different cultures (on the famous Sarajevo agora – “charshiya“ stood next to each other Muslim, Orthodox, Jewish and Catholic temples), as its dramatic disintegration (beginning from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, and consequently the outbreak of the World War One, until the siege of 1992-1996 which entailed the death of 10 thousand of its inhabitants). The first “New Agora” symposium organized by Borderland in 2006 was inaugurated in Vijećnica, a library and former town hall built in the Habsburg times and burnt during the recent war. BP: “Krug 99”Association, Media Center, PEN Center. PRAGA (Tsch. and Slov. Praha, Yid. Prog, Ger. Prag) – one of the spiritual metropolis of the Central Europe whose myth owes a lot to the artists and writers connected with the city, such as: Franz Kafka, Jaroslav Hašek, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gustav Meyrink, Johannes Urzidil, Marina Tsvetayeva, Bohumil Hrabal, Vaclav Havel, Jan Patočka, Milan Kundera, Josef Škvorecký. BP: “Střední Evropa” magazine. BOLZANO (Ger. Bozen, Lad. Balsan) – the capital of Southern Tirol, now in northern Italy (autonomous border region of Upper Adyga). A borderland region inhabited by Tyrolese, Italian and Ladino (Retoroman) population. The ethnic conflicts in the region were opposed by the born here politician and teacher Alexander Langer, who became deprived of the right to participate in the local elections because of his refusal to state his own nationality during the general census; as a European MP took part in peace missions in Israel, Cyprus and former Yugoslavia; committed a suicide in 1995 BP: Alexander Langer Foundation. KALININGRAD (until 4.6.1946 – Pl. Królewiec, Ger. Königsberg, Lith. Karaliaučius, Prus. Kunnegsgarbs) – the capital of the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, bordering Poland and Lithuania. Founded in the 13th entury by the Teutonic Knights, the old capital of the Ducal Prussia. In 1945, after a siege that lasted many weeks, it was overtaken by the Soviet Red Army, the fights devastated the whole city and 100 000 of its citizens were killed. The city of Immanuel Kant, an important centre of reformation and publishing in national languages, e.g. Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, Belarusian and Polish PP: I. Kant Russian State University, Russian Writers Association.

KOWNO (Lith. Kaunas, Ger. Kauen, Russ. Kowna, Yid. Kovne) – in 1920-1940 functioned as the capital of Lithuania, today second largest city in the Lithuanian Republic. Until 1918 the districts on the left bank of the Niemen River belonged to the Kingdom of Poland, those on the other bank to Russia. A borderland city with a dynamically changing ethnic structure: Lithuanians (1919 – 18%, 1939 – 60%, 2002 - 93%), Poles (1919 – 45%, 1939 – 10%, 2002 – 0,3%), Jews (1919 – 30%, 1939 – 20%, 2002 – just a few). During the Holocaust the working here Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara issued around 10 000 “visas of life”, mainly to Polish Jews. The city is the birthplace of the philosopher of dialogue, Emmanuel Levinas. BP: Vytautas Mgnus University, Institute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Sugihara Foundation. KIEJDANY (Lith. Kėdainiai, Yid. Keidan, Ger. Kedahnen) – a town on the Nevėžis River in the heart of Lithuania, the biggest of the towns described in the “Issa Valley” by Czesław Miłosz. The former residence of the magnate dynasty of Radziwiłł, during Reformation a centre of Calvinism (famous grammar school and printing shop). Preserved are Catholic, Protestant (Calvinist and Lutheran), Jewish, Orthodox and Muslim temples. BP: Multiculturalism Center at the Regional Museum. GRAZ (Slav. Gradec, Old Pl. Grodziec) – the capital of the Austrian Styria, the place of the crossing of Roman, Slavonic, Hungarian, and Alpian Retoroman influences. In the 19th century, Stanko Vraz, a Slovene, met here Ljudevit Gaj, a Croat and the leader of the Illyrian Movement under whose influence the latter became a Croat writer – both laying the foundations for the unification of the Southern Slavs. In 1938, the city enthusiastically greeted Hitler, the local synagogue was burnt; it was rebuilt in 2000, on the anniversary of the “Crystal Night” utilizing the original bricks which in the war period were used to build the Gestapo headquarters. BP: “Lichtungen” magazine, International House of Authors. GDAŃSK (Kash. Gduńsk, Ger. Danzig, Lat. Gedanum, Yid. Danc) – a city and the symbol of the outbreak of the World War Two and the end of Communism (the cradle of the Solidarity Movement). In 1945, its German population was relocated and Polish settlers started to arrive (in 1939 it accounted for 10% of the inhabitants) from the so called Kresy (eastern fringes of the old Republic). The literary legend of the city co-create both the works of the German writer Günter Grass and the Polish writers with their roots in the eastern regions of the former Polish Republic: Paweł Huelle (Lwów), Stefan Chwin and Zbigniew Żakiewicz (Vilnius), Selim Chazbijewicz (of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatar descent), Aleksander Jurewicz (Lida, today in Belarus). BP: The Baltic Cultural Centre.

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The Borderland: the Atlantis

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The Borderland: the Atlantis

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he historical cataclysms and totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century wiped out the multicultural face of the region. They left in their stead traumatic memory, divisions between neighbors and national complexes. The legacy from the catastrophe has turned out to belong not only to the past, but is inherited by the young, because these resentments have an ability to be reborn, just like xenophobia and the longing for an escape from freedom. Everything was destroyed. The area was full of traces of the end of the world, the end of the ‘old civilisation’ – as Jerzy Stempowski called the borderlands of the former Commonwealth – devastated manors, empty cloisters, temples made into taverns or storehouses for fertilisers, trading routes suddenly disappeared in the face of borders freshly drawn after World War I, huge spans of bridges lost in the woods, connecting nothing and leading nowhere, abandoned cemeteries with engravings in lost languages... For over a hundred years people have, in general, departed from this place – and hid themselves in the recesses of distance, namelessness and silence, they moved to the cities, emigrated over the ocean, escaped the next storms of conflicts and wars, they were moved in cattle transports to the depths of the empire, deprived of their possessions and rights, uprooted... [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Line of Return. Of Practicing the Borderland, in Dialogue with Czeslaw Milosz.” Line of Return. Notes from the Borderland. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2008]

The traveler of the end of the second millennium after Christ has seen the world after the end of the world. He has seen a bridge blown up not to divide the two nations inhabiting the opposite banks of a river, but for everything around to forget about its unbearable beauty – work of a foreign genius – and to humble itself before the power of the armed forces. The traveler has found tombstones, or what was left of them, in different places, because they were used to pave the backyards, lay foundations for cowsheds, make stairs, pavements, or cobblestones… He has seen pedestals with their crosses cut off; or, Patriarchal crosses with the smaller crossbars cut off; or, circles with the Star of David ‘castrated’ out of them, as one of the survivor from the Atlantis told him. He has seen cloisters used for keeping cattle or parking tractors, and the Holy Scriptures used to support rotting ceilings. He has stopped by at a university famous of yore, but today stinking with urine, in which the intricate architecture, elaborate mosaics and frescos contrasted with coarse furniture, dust, and low level of teaching. He used to attend it, just a few decades earlier, now, one of the greatest poets of our century, but here no one from the thousands of students recognise him, but for the small

group of the initiated. On another university he witnessed a fierce fight for its national character, satisfying the needs of one or another national group, since the meaning of the word ‘universitas’ – as well as the meanings of other words from the old era – was long forgotten. He has seen manors and palaces made into kolkhozes or totally devastated and deserted. He has seen a dump on the ruins of an antique theater. He has seen old tenements inhabited by newcomers from close and remote provinces, where everything excessively beautiful – a bit extravagant in satisfying ambitions of a good taste, yet always joined with everyday usefulness by subtle threads – was recognised as superfluous and contemptible. The highest aspiration has become living in concrete blocks of flats with central heating, elevators, and rubbish chutes. Whereas the old districts, full of tenements with foreign and secret souls, were left for the poor, the social margins and what was rest of the old intelligentsia. He has seen cities which souls were destroyed from the inside, through tearing down the old districts for new parading squares with busts of the leaders. He has seen houses and whole villages, villas and whole city districts departed by fugitives, refugees, displaced persons, and emigrants, what was only a fragment of the great migration period, which trundled through the land in this century. The traveler has seen the world after the end of the world. The world goes on; life was more or less normal. And the end of the world wasn’t really noticed. A young man jumping in the pool from a platform does not know that some time ago a priest climbed it to read the Holy Scriptures. Lobotomy, that is, the erasing of memory. It does not concern him in person, but the world, from which he grows. An illness or a medicine? Of course, numerous testimonies are extant, however, written in other countries, on distant continents, often contradictory, or advocating myths… So maybe it all was just a myth? The end of homelands was described, the end of city districts, end of families, houses, or national groups, but there was never a description of a whole civilisation. And even if one might read somewhere such a description, none of the contemporary societies of Central and Eastern Europe would take note of this. It would mean that 'we' are the new barbarians, and that is not an image of ourselves we are willing to accept. However, when we throw away old objects, fragments of that world, when we let the old temples and schools decay, when we mistreat old people saved from the destruction by erasing the memory, we have lent our hand to the last act of the extermination of the whole civilisation. We run away from the fact. We tend to speak with some irony about the myth of a land that never truly existed. This is our Atlantis complex.

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The traveler wandering through Central European lands has been immersed in the twilight line and this experience of the end with the emerging emptiness let him feel the community of this civilisation space as a whole. It may be that it never before existed as fulfilled reality. Not until the end of this world and the emerging of the empty places has revealed the existence of a whole spiritual continent. Hence the sadness from losing something, which we have not yet managed to possess. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Atlantis Complex, or, Central Europe After the End of the World.” Line of Return. Notes from the Borderland. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2008]

After a period of researching, teaching, and creative artistic work, especially theatrical and musical, the ‘Borderland’ has in recent years become – mainly in Central Europe (in Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania, Transylvania, Bukovina) but also in the West – an important point reference for organisations and institutions aiming at oppose nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism. The ‘Borderland’ places the subject of a border in the center of its interests, around which circles the history of Poland as a country with a past of ever-changing, moving, and uncertain borders. They were moved after the II World War many kilometers to the West, so the country was filled with trauma of displacements and mass-migrations of people: in the West – the Germans fugitives and exiles; the Belarusians and the Ukrainians in the East; the Poles were moved from the Eastern lands to the so-called ‘Regained’ Territories in the West; the Jews were mass-murdered. In effect a country of great ethnical coherence came to life, regarded by other governments as harbinger of peace and an end to conflicts. In the meanwhile the ‘Borderland’ decided to move backwards. For their living and working place they took an area with many borders crossing. They are convinced that the co-existence of different nations, traditions, and ideologies is not only a problem, or an insurmountable difficulty, but – on the contrary – a possible chance for enrichment of all of us.

Helmuth Moroder

President of the Alexander Langer Foundation. Eulogy of the Borderland Foundation on the award of the Alexander Langer International Prize in June 2004

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Czeslaw Milosz

the Exile and the Returner

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Czeslaw Milosz: the Exile and the Returner

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he world in which Czeslaw Milosz grew up and to which he felt culturally connected, was the area of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania united with the Polish Kingdom. The language of the cultural elites of the GDL was Polish; the administration language was, at first, Old Belarusian and, later on, Polish. A true polyphony of cultures and nationalities existed there; the destruction of this world made many people ‘homeless.’ They never felt really 'at home' in the new national states created after the World Wars. To find his homeland in this new reality Milosz created a myth of the citizens of the GDL as an ethos for people living today, to remind others of their multicultural heritage, to engage in the processes of uniting of Europe and creating dialogue between quarreling neighbours. He experienced exile early. The poem “W mojej ojczyźnie” (“In My Fatherland”) begins with words, “W mojej ojczyźnie, do której nie wrócę” (“In my fatherland, where I will never return”), was written already in 1937 in Warsaw, Poland. It may be interpreted as an anticipation of the future fate of an exile. But even leaving Vilnius for the Congress Poland, not so very far away, was a kind of an exile. He was leaving his childhood garden and the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which meant crossing the border of two different cultures. He had to escape Vilnius, because he displeased the nationalistic Polish administration with radio broadcasts, where, with his boss, Tadeusz Byrski, he promoted the multiculturalism of the city, by inviting Belarusian choirs to sing or Jews to give religious speeches. He wasn't sad about it, because Vilnius's provinciality started to get to him and he wanted to see the world. Then there were further escapes, such as the one in 1951 from Stalin’s Warsaw to Paris, where he asked for political asylum. After ten years he escaped once more, this time from French intellectual and literary circles that did not understand the meaning of the Soviet Empire. For many decades he found a haven at the University of California at Berkeley, where he became professor of Slavic languages and literature. But it was not there on Grizzly Peak with its view of the San Francisco Bay that he could come to the end of his wandering. The journey went on. Milosz fulfills the paradigm of exile, so connected to the condition of a writer as ‘Europe’s child’ of the 20th century. However he lived long enough to transcend the pattern and open a new perspective. What became his later biography, he prepared earlier in his books. Successive poetry books, especially the poem Gdzie słońce wschodzi i kędy zapada (Where the Sun Rises and Where It Sets), the novel Dolina Issy (The Issa Valley), collections of essays witnessing his spiritual quests, such as Rodzinna Europa (Native Realm) or Ziemia Ulro (The Land of Ulro); they all, in a way, grew

from his disagreement for the finality of his fate of an exile. Nearly as important as his consciousness of exile was his admittance that he lived in the Land of Ulro, the land of disinheritance. An inextinguishable rebellion against such a place in the world of the contemporary human being made Milosz work his path of return. Because to return does not always mean to turn back and find the place from which we began. Josip Brodski's statement, that a man always DE-parts and, because of that, there is no return, aptly explains the human condition of the “liquid modernity” era, which knows no lasting Ithaca; hence there is no place of Ulysses's return. Also Milosz was conscious that there is no turning back, that a Heraclitean time flow is also a category of space. However, if he calls his living place the Land of Ulro, then any attempt of getting out of it is made on the line of return. Milosz's returning is DE-parting from the land of disinheritance. He came to Krasnogruda after over fifty years. [Krzysztof Czyżewski, “Line of Return. Of Practicing the Borderland, in Dialogue with Czeslaw Milosz.” Line of Return. Notes from the Borderland. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2008]

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Szetejnie, September 1989

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1989 Meeting:

Poet and Practitioners of Active Culture

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1989 Meeting: Poet and Practitioners of Active Culture

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ate September 1989. Three months after the elections won by Solidarity. After a few months Lithuania will pronounce independence. The border, however, is still fully protected. Soon, near the Polish and Soviet customs checkpoints, the Lithuanian one will appear. Czeslaw Milosz returns to his childhood home after over fifty years. But he can’t travel to Lithuania yet, so he tries to get as close as he can, to Suwalki, Sejny, to Krasnogruda, just at the border, where a ruined mansion stands that once belonged to his family. It happened there, on the Polish-Lithuanian borderland, that a returning Poet-Exile and young alternative artists met each other. In Milosz’s work they had read about the multicultural inheritance of the Jagiellonian Commonwealth, the memory of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, the cultural myth of the Borderland. To them it represented the ideas and actions of the circles of Jerzy Giedroyc and his journal “Kultura” in Paris. They had their own alternative culture experience from theater director Jerzy Grotowski’s concept of ‘active culture.’ As a result of the meeting they established Center “Borderland – arts, cultures, and nationalities” in Sejny. It was among the pioneer enterprises in the new Poland, which through the archeology of memory worked for the rebuilding of ‘homelands,’ multicultural heritage, and good relations between neighbours. At the same time, and from similar beliefs, emerged the Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, of outstanding merit to the Polish-Jewish dialogue, or the Culture Community “Borussia” and Krzyżowa Foundation (Kreisau Stiftung), concentrating on the issues of the Polish-German neighbourhood. They could be called the new barbarians, coming to an unknown province, where only traces remain of an ‘old civilisation.’ They couldn't read most of them. They didn't come from here. In their youth, they read books tempting with secrets of a fantastic world of cultural mosaic and rich spiritual life. Those were the books by Czeslaw Milosz, Jerzy Stempowski, Stanislaw Vincez, Bruno Schulz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jerzy Ficowski, and Tadeusz Konwicki. They build a peculiar myth in Polish culture, in which provinces and the borderlands of the Commonwealth gained importance. In comparison with the center of the country, life over there was much more interesting and the greatest people of our history were born there. This thought was so strong, that once Gombrowicz got offended by Milosz's remark, when the latter said the former comes from the central Poland. Then, Gombrowicz began to dwell upon his family roots in historical Lithuania.

They couldn't prove their roots. They had to work in their own way to get to the rich layers of the Jagiellonian culture. They were intrigued by the question of whether the borderland myth and ethos could be useful and whether it was possible to transpose it onto the contemporary reality of post-1989 Poland. Similar to the myth of the Central Europe, about which they had read in the essays of dissidents from the land of the Soviet camps. But those were books and ideas. Up to this moment they had been working underground in alternative culture. They sensed the emergence of a new space for public life and building new frameworks for social life. They did not know how to do it. They had to build their own workshop in which new tools of cultural and educational work would be worked out. At the same time they knew that it is impossible to begin from nothing. Their bridge had to grow organically from the earth; it had to be built from layers of memory, supported on credible, truthful foundation. Because so much was ruined, forgotten, and erased, they have needed continuity, reminding, and truth. The meeting with the Returner, who brought a book, in which memory, knowledge, and faith are saved, was for them a gift as important as a link in a chain. Milosz, following Mickiewicz, had been guided by fate on a line of exile, but he lived long enough that those following him found themselves on the line of return. When speaking with the young artists of the “Borderland,” Milosz seemed to care for one: that their idea wouldn't become an illusionary utopia and fade under the pressure of everyday needs; that the space around Krasnogruda would admit them permanently. Consequently, he brought them down to earth, into the dimension of everyday practice, which does not verify itself in fast and showy results and, because of that, it lasts. The history of the last centuries strengthened the feeling of uncertainty and brevity in this part of the world. Barely a rebuilding had been started after a cataclysm, already a new one came,

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leaving nothing but destruction; borders were changed, rulers were changed, and there was disrespect for the old, if not hatred only. And then the returning exile, who experienced everything, wanted to explain to them, that they meet in a strange moment in time, because they have a chance to build their life on the foundation of the long-lasting (longue durée), and that it is not once more only an hopeless perspective. The meeting with them, as well as with many other people, with whom the new was coming, was also a part of the very strong feeling of return that struck Milosz. It didn't come by itself. He worked on it with the same discipline, as when he was writing. [Krzysztof Czyżewski, “Line of Return. Of Practicing the Borderland, in Dialogue with Czeslaw Milosz.” Line of Return. Notes from the Borderland. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2008]

The activity of Krzysztof Czyżewski and the Borderland Foundation is a successful continuation of the eastern policy, worked out by “Kultura.” Its aims, fight against nationalism and communism, are still topical.

Jerzy Giedroyc

Laureate of the Great Scepter of the Culture Foundation in the year 1999 and the founder of the Small Scepter for Krzysztof Czyżewski and the “Borderland” team”

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The “Borderland” Center: Memory, Education, Coexistence

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The “Borderland” Center: Memory, Education, Coexistence

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he “Borderland” Center is a laboratory of innovative intercultural practices, built in the center of Sejny between the Polish and the Lithuanian Cultural Centers in the restored buildings of the former Jewish district. After an era of nationalism, war, and Soviet communism, after years of living separately, after an erosion of memory and silence, its creators undertook to rebuild the Sejny Agora, a space for meetings and dialogue, to inject the ‘connective tissue’ between people, generations, and nations, between the past and today, tradition and modernity. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Education at the Sejny Agora.” Culture in Dialogue. Ed. Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga, Robert Kusek. Krakow: Anna Lindh Foundation, 2008]

The beginning may be found everywhere and the space may be brought into cultivation once more; the space waiting for unsealing and forming. The experience of the “Borderland” is connected to bringing into cultivation the space of an old Jewish district, in a small town with multicultural traditions, where the Poles and the Lithuanians live, a town carrying a baggage of all the tragedies, conflicts, destructions, and ideologies of the 20th century. It is in a beautiful area, with settlements of the Old Believers and displaced Ukrainians, where one can find an overgrown Jewish, Evangelical, and Orthodox cemeteries, or, ruined manors and palaces, empty cloisters, bridges leading to nowhere, tracts ending half-way on the border. The area changes easily into the Central European space of a second province, which we have discovered for ourselves, very devastated, left aside from the main stream of the world events, full of secrets, unfinished cases from the past. It still seems to me that here is an area for a whole civilisation to be created, some great chance, which may be or may not be lost. When we have travelled to Sejny, we have arrived at a place full of unfinished cases from the past, conflicts, and tabooed subjects. While we have tried to get closer to this reality, we have had to constantly remind ourselves of the past of the contemporary world. We have not beenmaking a museum or a heritage park. We have been working with the youth on the new form of future and our own place in Europe. The more we have unsealed the place, the more we – the participants of the work, the children, their parents and grandparents – have had love and understanding for the people, that had lived here, and for the soil, that had taken them. Of course, there was pain,

and some traumas and tension are still there. However – as Czeslaw Milosz noticed in his word about the “Borderland” – we have dealt with “that, what in our part of Europe, is particular, certain, painful, and life-giving at the same time.” For it to be life-giving, we have had to stay there and get closer to the reality in the perspective of the long-lasting. We had to find there the provinces for ourselves. I hope that no-one will accuse me of backwardness or the intent to isolate myself from the world, Europe and the center. The awakening of a new province is a work made on “strengthening the quality” of the center and also a chance for securing this center against the provincial. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “The Time of the Provinces.” Line of Return. Notes from the Borderland. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2008]

Even though the past is a significant reference for us, and memory is the subject of our explorations, the centre seeks to confront the challenges of modern day and to make people ready to live in dignity in the future. The programme of the Pogranicze is based on the cultural practices of getting and enhancing knowledge through artistic workshops, individual creativity, travels and talks with people. The centre was set up and developed in the Polish-Lithuanian borderland. Does that imply that its only targets are places and societies similarly multicultural by nature? Definitely not! By borderland we mean any region where different people form one community or, if such community does not exist any longer, memory of it is preserved. Internal cultural, generational and social borders cut through our communities as well. Add to that the modern man’s mobility, ever new waves of migration, and what we call borderland will turn out to be any common living area, or at least an area that can potentially be inhabited by anybody wishing for cross-border citizenship. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Education at the Sejny Agora.” Culture in Dialogue. Ed. Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga, Robert Kusek. Krakow: Anna Lindh Foundation, 2008]

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Vilnius, Jewish cemetery, 2002 School of Borderland – workshops conducted by prof. Dovid Katz concerning the Vilnius Jews.

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Bridge-Builders: Laboratories of Intercultural Practices

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Bridge-Builders: Laboratories of Intercultural Practices

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orderland” initiated the creation of an international network of practitioners of multicultural dialogue, whose main task is to support the creation of centers working in cities and borderland regions and also working out of methods and promoting the craftsmanship of the bridge-builders. The aspiration manifests itself in such projects as the Borderland School, Intercultural Dialogue Colloquium in Caucasus (Tblisi) and Central Asia (Dushanbe), European Academy ”New Agora” (Sarajevo, Wroclaw, Sejny, Berlin), Bosnian Tryptych (Mostar – Sarajevo), Polyphonic Song of the Borderland (New York), Glass Bead Game (Birmingham, Bela Recka, Mostar, Hania, Baku, Tbilisi, Pec, Kiejdany, Lviv), the “Man/Woman of the Borderland” Award, Wandering Literary Café “Café Europe.” The gist of the activities is the effort in favour of the intercultural dialogue, in which – similarly as the human rights movement did in the 20th century – we try to find good answers to the challenges of the 21st century. We say ‘intercultural dialogue,’ ‘meeting with the Other,’ and ‘cross-border bond’ as if it was something available, easy to buy at a low price on the global market of post-modernity, where multi-culti products sell so quickly. That no-one gives long-term guarantee for them does not bother consumers of fast pleasures and exotic impressions. Yet building a bridge is a work of a lifetime, requiring sacrifices, hardships, and mastery of craftsmanship. It is the consciousness that one creates something extremely fragile that can be destroyed in one moment and needs to be guarded unceasingly. And each time you would need to start from the beginning. The assumption that much has been built already and that contemporary civilisation prepares us to live peacefully only misleads, and we need to realise it quickly.

The thing is not to cut off from it and not to leave it behind and forget. It is undoable, possible in an academic dispute, but in the living social tissue. Memory – if it won't undergo lobotomy, that is, a complete erasing, what makes one a cripple – lives and, even hidden or suppressed, has an effect on human beings and a community. That is why memory can't be left alone, if we do not want to speak about neimar as of a dilettante. Nevertheless, I want to underline that it is not the past that is decisive for the reality of the borderland. What is decisive is the future. And it does not mean a good history lesson, from which we learn to go forward without making the same errors. We still do not realise how strong a power is for human's, family's, and community's fate the presence of a future vector; that is, a future one can trust and which cannot be taken away from one, similar to private ownership, life's output, or dignity. That is why a neimar is, above all, an architect of future. Because without trusting the other, unapproachable bank, it is impossible to encourage people to build a bridge. Yet, building bridges is an activity so distant from the reality of the defensive strongholds, in which the experiences of the past locked them up.

[Krzysztof Czyżewski. “The Story of a Bridge and Closed Doors.” Line of Return. Notes from the Borderland. Sejny: Pogranicze 2008]

Time was taken away from culture. From the Greek and, later on, the Latin cultivare we came to the understanding of culture as the English event. Freedom from the deep dimension of time, that sews together everyday life into an essentional chain of duration, establishes one of the principle secrets of the craftsmanship of the peculiar animator called the neimar. It is an architect of building bridges in places and communities divided by rivers, memories, conflicts, identities, or faith. The exploration, finding the truth, and cultivating the past are the most important parts of his work, but not the decisive one.

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Wrocław, July 2007. Mirosław Balka’s “action” titled “Walking the Tightrope” during the New Agora symposium “Cosmopolis – Strategies for Multicultural Cities”

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International Center of Dialogue and the Pedagogical Province

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International Center of Dialogue and the Pedagogical Province

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is a project, the first of its kind in Europe,f o c u s e d on a center for intercultural research and practices. It refers to the Polish tradition of organic work and the European tradition of Bildung, whose literary equivalent were the ‘pedagogical provinces’ (Goethe, Hesse, and Janion). Such Pedagogical Province will be created in the renovated manor in Krasnogruda, previously belonging to the family of Czeslaw Milosz. It will be a new space for culture, engaged in a long-term programme connecting innovative cultural practices with the growth of local community, education with art, engaging the whole capital of the borderland region. The vision of the Province is not a literary myth, but a project-challenge, whose reality was worked out through the past two decades in “Borderland”, of gaining knowledge, preparing tools, building a team, gaining social trust and preparing a proper place. Described by Hermann Hesse ‘Kastalia’ – a pedagogical province – and the glass bead game practiced there picture the idea of the work of the practitioners of intercultural dialogue perfectly. It respects and stands on what is single, subjective, and distinct, at the same time it creates a space of meeting, communication, and mutual relations with other ‘beads,’ forming from it the gist of its actions. The model of multiculturalism based on differences and plurality, that is, on an archipelago of different islands, of which each defends its distinctiveness and identity, is replaced with a model of inter-culturalism or trans-culturalism, so a connection of all the beads in one whole, in which the whole ‘connection’ makes an equally important element as one ‘bead.’ Such an understanding of the glass bead game heads to create in the 21st century ‘the European pedagogical province’ where the culture of dialogue is practiced on a daily basis. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Education at the Sejny Agora.” Culture in Dialogue. Ed. Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga, Robert Kusek. Krakow: Anna Lindh Foundation, 2008]

The glass bead game, he wrote, “…is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture.” We know that the game always started with the simplest forms, from a single story, a quotation from a holy book, a specific date, an arrangement of stars or a theme of Bach’s

fugue. The players then looked for various references, constellations, consonances and correspondences for these elementary particles. Therefore, the sense of the game’s lay in its dialogue quality, heading towards the Other, which stimulated development and used the skill of joining together and creating binders. Hesse emphasised that just as in music the underlying principle of the game was interaction of all the absolutely necessary elements: craft, knowledge, technology, sensuality and spirit. [Krzysztof Czyżewski. “Education at the Sejny Agora.” Culture in Dialogue. Ed. Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga, Robert Kusek. Krakow: Anna Lindh Foundation, 2008]

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Krasnogruda, August 2008. Performance of “Issa Valley" after Cz. Miłosz

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