Polish author Stefan Chwin tells a gathering in Dublin about how growing up in post-war Gdansk influenced his decision to 'fill blank pages', writes Sorcha Hamilton
'IF YOU COULD imagine Dublin without any inhabitants, with everyone disappeared." That is what the city of Gdansk (Danzig) was like in 1944, when the parents of Polish author Stefan Chwin arrived to make a home there. The Germans had been expelled towards the end of the second World War, leaving behind an eerily desolate city. Tens of thousands of these German refugees later died when their ships were sunk by the Soviets in the Gustloff disaster.
Chwin, one of Poland's leading authors, describes himself as an "archaeologist of memory". He was in Dublin last month to read from his historical novel Death in Danzig, his first book to be translated into English. Organised by the Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation and the Polish embassy, the public interview was preceded by a documentary which touched on Chwin's experiences as a child living in the former home of a German family in Gdansk.
Chwin recalled as a boy discovering an atlas in the basement of his home, where some "young brat" had outlined the expanding territories of the Reich. He also remembers how, while out playing, he found a helmet with a single bullet hole. Living in this post-war society fuelled a certain fascination as a child with the strength and might of the Nazis.
Chwin has been compared to the author Gunter Grass, who wrote about a young boy's experience of Gdansk during the war, but from the German side.
"People in the West now may find it very difficult to understand this culture of fear," Chwin explains. His mother, who had been exiled from Warsaw, believed everything was temporary. "I lived in an era of transition - and this deeply influenced my family and my personal biography as well." There is an unnerving stand-off in his book when two Germans return to their former home in Gdansk and discover its new Polish occupants. "It's fascinating this whole issue, when we think about societies being moved," he says, "and living somewhere that others have lived."
DRESSED ALL INwhite, and with a long, perfectly silver beard, Chwin has a steely warmth about him. He was heartily received by a mainly Polish audience in Europe House in Dublin, where a small exhibition of contemporary Polish culture was on display. "I'm probably one of the few sitting here that is old enough," he says smiling, "to remember hearing Stalin himself speaking on the radio."
This bilingual event was chaired by Cathal McCabe, a fluent Polish speaker, who drew Chwin into a thought-provoking discussion about life as a writer. McCabe, who is the director of the Irish Writers' Centre, lived for many years in Poland and is the chair of the Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation.
"Writing is one of those mysterious things that is difficult to explain - or to identify the moment when you decided to sit down on your own and fill blank pages," he says. Perhaps it was always something Chwin was drawn to, an impulse to describe the fluctuating city of Gdansk. "It certainly a lot had to do with the environment I grew up in," he says.
"Writing allows us to become better than we are," he says. You can transcend your personality through writing and creating different characters, he believes. Chwin says he is envious, for example, of the "unerring intuition" of one of his female characters.
"The approach to literature is very different in a free capitalist society," Chwin says. It seems less important than in a society where freedom is under threat, where literature often becomes "an island", somewhere to question this imbalance. The Lisbon Treaty found its way into the discussion, when an Irish member of the audience asked Chwin about his thoughts about the outcome of the referendum. "While I would be very far from advising the Irish people, I greeted the decision with anxiety rather than happiness," he said. "I think a united Europe is a good idea, we gain more in comparison with what we lose. It's not just about economies, it's about a set of countries with comparative values."
He was also asked by a Polish member of the audience about how he regards Gdansk now. "When you think of the old culture of Gdansk, it has not been rebuilt," he says. "It used to be so mixed with Germans and Jews, but after the second World War you see none of that - it's still not very diversified at this stage."
This is Chwin's first visit to Ireland, now home to several thousand Poles who make up the largest immigrant community here. "When I was young I thought Ireland was the end of the world," Chwin says, "I thought it all stopped after that."
