R.Dêbski. Photo T. Koprowski

Mr Consul General, Professor Skrzynecki, Mrs £acek, Ladies and Gentlemen!It is with a great pleasure that I have accepted the invitation to participate in the launch of a book, which is an autobiography of Peter Skrzynecki, a distinguished, award-winning Australian author of Polish descent. This pleasure comes not only from the unquestionable literary charm of the work, but also from the meaning that it presents to the author himself, who has the courage to engage the reader in intimate, moving, and sometimes even shocking events of his life, which shaped him as a man. He has the courage to engage the reader in the enterprise of looking for meaning in his past.

The Sparrow Garden - as this is the book that I am referring to – is a yearning, a quest for understanding the meaning of a man’s life path, or – as the author himself put it – resolving of certain “traumas” that he had experienced. In order to achieve his aim, the author visits his family home, childhood playgrounds, talks to people who once were close to him and his family and investigates archives. He presents his findings in the form of artistic impressions and recollections.

What would my parents say – writes the author – if they saw me here in the dark, trying to make sense of a past they’d wished to forget.

Understanding and coming to terms with ones life path is a difficult task for anyone. We might even risk to say that it is a hopeless task, one that we may get close to achieving, only to move away from it, because what today seems important, may strike us as trivial when placed in a different present context or from the perspective of new life plans. Then what are these “traumas” that the author confronts? In which nooks of his past does he look for meaning?

The author’s parents were war emigrants, Labourers of Australia, who came to Australia obligated by a contract to undertake any job offered to them by the government. To use the metaphor employed by the author himself, they were like the biblical Israelites, who cross the Red Sea in their quest for the Promised Land. To these immigrants, The Old World and the New World were separated by a very distinct boarder, a road or railway barrier, similar to the one that was in the camp where the Skrzynecki family found themselves after their arrival in Australia. The book documents the experiences of post World War II immigrants, who perceived emigration as a fate that was forced upon them, unconditional and final. Skrzynecki writes that emigration only changed his parents on the surface; inside they always remained true to themselves.

An understanding of emigration as something forced and final – documented in “The Sparrow Garden” – is today a key to understanding the generation of immigrants who came to Australia after World War II, that is before the integration of world economic, political and cultural systems; before the times of cheap intercontinental air travel, global media and the Internet. To these people, identity, who they were, was closely linked to their geographical location, their place of birth, and then after emigration it was realised daily through the contrast with the new surrounding reality, new land and culture, and perhaps amplified by this experience. Hence the nostalgia for lost values, attempts to replicate their cultural system in the new place of settlement and determination to pass this system on to their children.

The road barrier in the immigrant camp separates not only the past from the present, but also the present from the future:

“A barrier at the main gate
sealed off the highway
from our doorstep –
as it rose and fell like a finger
pointed in reprimand or shame;
and daily we passed
underneath or alongside it –
needing its sanction
to pass in and out of lives
that had only begun
or were dying”

An officer whose job is to determine the family’s language skills before they could be granted Australian citizenship also stands on the path of the Skrzynecki family to the future. The guardian of national values ridicules the author’s father and his poor skills in English. Many decades had to pass before Bruce Woodley’s bicentennial anthem (1988) in which read that “we are one but we are many” and that “from all the language and earth we come” became a voice that could be sung with a true belief by the citizens of Australia.

On the boarder of the Old World and the New World, the identity of a young boy, and then a young man is born. On the one hand – a prayer, the lives of saints and the fear of hell; on the other – the chirping voice of cicadas, the flutter of parrot wings, endless roads covered with red dust and “having a go” at everything around, for example at catching eels. This fascination with nature and commune with it, so evident from the perusal of the book, is so much in character with what we today know as the “Australian spirit” or “Australian Legend” to use the words from Russel Ward’s celebrated book. The contrast of these two worlds and two value systems is regulated by the wisdom of the author’s parents. We for example learn that the mother teaches the boy that he cannot always have what he wants.

As well as to experiences linked to the emigrant fate of the family and the parents’ backgrounds (the mother is Ukrainian, the step-father - Polish, the figure of the biological father - enwrapped in mystery), to the passage of time and the death of his parents, the author attributes the meaning of the past to chance, to events that could have happened to anyone anywhere, but they happened to him. A shooting of homeless dogs, a drowning of a boy, an accident with a circular saw are all critical incidents, loaded with meaning, which he remembers to this very day, despite the passage of time.

In December last year, I visited the W³adys³aw Jagie³³o gymnasium in Tenczynek, near Kraków, where a friend from years ago is now the principal. I met with the schoolchildren, talked about living in Australia, and answered questions. I gathered from these meetings that there was a great interest in Australia in Poland that was matched by the lack of knowledge about it, which relied too much on stereotypes and popular symbols.

The principal, also a history teacher, and I started a project, in which kids in Poland and Polish language student here use the Internet to exchange information on a range of topics, among them the topic of Polish emigration. It seems that Polish schools do not teach much about it, though it seems to be a very important issue, particularly in view of the over 10 million people of Polish origin living outside Poland and the fact that Polish, as indicated by recent surveys, is now the most popular language taught as an ethnic minority language (community language) in the EU countries.

Migration and the various human dilemmas related to it, growing up in a multicultural environment, identity development in such conditions are all important issues not only in Australia, but also in Poland which stepped on the path of growing multiculturalism and plurilingualism the moment it entered the European Union. In this context, I am very glad that “The Sparrow Garden” can be read in Poland in Polish and I am convinced that the book will be a popular reading there. Perhaps excerpts from it should be on the list of obligatory or recommended readings in Polish schools, as they are here in Australia.

Artistic depictions of Australian nature, being discovered anew by the discerning eyes of a boy who came from Europe, reflection on the meaning and translatability of Polish and English words and concepts they denote, descriptions of human relationships, intimate and detailed, are the main qualities of the language which make “The Sparrow Garden” a reading that is exceptionally beautiful, moving and instructive.

Here I would also like to pay tribute to the excellent Polish translation of the book, skilfully accomplished by Mrs Marianna £acek, including not only the prose, but also the poetry contained in the book. I also envy Mrs £acek the rare opportunity to get intimate with botanical and ornithological encyclopaedias in search of Polish equivalents of the names of birds and plants native to Australia. I certainly owe it to the book that I now know that brunfelsja is a poisonous plant belonging to the Solanaceae family, silver-eyes is, very simply, Zosterops lateralis, that is a small bird belonging to the passerine birds, and Sechium edule is a climbing plant, which bears pear-shaped fruit which taste like kohlrabi.

What I have just said may be interpreted as a joke, but no joke is in fact intended. I honestly think that the frequent reference made to facts – historical, geographical or botanical – the detailed and particular language of descriptions are the true strengths of the book as well as of its excellent Polish translation.

I would like to thank the hosts for inviting me to assist with the launch of the Polish translation of “The Sparrow Garden”. I must say that I have benefited from this invitation personally. I am currently working on a monograph devoted to the Polish language in Australia. As part of this monograph, I am considering the concept of identity and how it has changed over the recent decades. “The Sparrow Garden” will be a wonderful resource for my work.

Robert Debski