What a Tangled Web we Weave!

I haven’t really tackled Polish mystery novels all that often on this blog. I wrote something about them as a guest post for Beneath the Stains of Time— which was still known as Detection by Moonlight at the time. And last year I read a book by “Joe Alex”, a Polish author named Maciej Słomczyński who was the only person to have translated all of Shakespeare’s works. I hope that this year I’ll be able to cross the language barrier a bit more often and give readers a small taste of the stuff that is currently being written in Polish… and hey, we might even get a novel that slips through the cracks and gets translated into English.

What are the odds of that happening, you might ask? Well, the odds are better than you might imagine, because I’ve found one. Zygmunt Miłoszewski is an award-winning Polish author, author of one of the few Polish crime novels to cross the language barrier into English. The novel is Uwikłanie, translated as Entanglement and published by the Bitter Lemon Press in 2010.

The setting is modern-day Poland and our hero is Teodor Szacki, a public prosecutor in the nation’s capital, Warsaw. He’s about 35 or thereabouts, and he’s married and has a daughter. He’s also got a tough job, one that can get depressing as hell. Take this latest case, for instance. A body was found in a Catholic convent, rented as a retreat centre. At the time, it was being used by a psychotherapist for a weekend of group therapy sessions, where each session revolved around a different person. The point of each session was for the participants to role-play as important people in X’s life, and X would have to come to terms with [insert your favourite psychological issue here]. One pseudo-scientific explanation later, we find out that a child’s heart disease can be caused by his father’s failure to attend his parents’ funeral. Sounds like a fun time!

'Tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil

Maciej Słomczyński

Joe Alex was the pen name of Polish author Maciej Słomczyński (1922-1998). His most famous accomplishment is that he was the only person in the world to translate the complete works of William Shakespeare – an accomplishment I mention because it is relevant to today’s review. Unfortunately, his translations have been criticized as unclear, unfaithful to the source material, and lacking “literary value”—whatever that is. Still, the accomplishment itself is an impressive one, and it is a work of Shakespeare’s – sort of – that lends his novel Jesteś tylko diabłem (You’re Only a Demon) its title.

I say “sort of” because the text in question is The Birth of Merlin, which although originally credited as a co-production between Shakespeare and William Rowley, most scholars nowadays agree that Shakespeare didn’t write any of it. Another reason I say “sort of” is because the book kicks off with the following quote of The Birth of Merlin, translated into Polish… and the lines I have highlighted are all condensed into the phrase “Jesteś tylko diabłem”.

Morderstwo odbędzie się…

Bishop: What do you think when you see a beautiful woman?

Father Mateusz: I thank God for making me a man.

Bishop: And when you see an unattractive woman?

Father Mateusz: I thank Him for making me a priest.

—Ojciec Mateusz (Father Mateusz), Season 1 Episode 3

I was raised in an entirely Polish family, and in fact, the Polish language was the first I learned. My parents thought it really important to instil in me traditional Polish values, the Catholic faith, and a knowledge of the Polish language and culture. It was one of the reasons I was sent to Polish School every Saturday for years—some kids got to sleep in and watch cartoons on Saturday mornings; I had to go to school.

But thanks to all this, I’ve gotten to know the Polish language like a native speaker, and as it turns out, it was a good thing to learn. Today, at Detection by Moonlight, penned by fellow blogger TomCat, I’ve volunteered my services and written aguest blog about the detective story in Poland: why it’s taken so long to flourish and what gems can be found there. I’ve made some hopefully-enticing allusions to books that should be reviewed over here, hopefully in the coming weeks. Please take a moment to look at TomCat’s blog and discover the world of Polish detective stories.

Should this count as a crossover review? Well, since I've crossed space and time and taken over TomCat's blog, I'll go ahead and say yes. Plus, this gives me a page to place in my "Criminal Record" to account for the work.

And what does my post title mean? It's actually the Polish title for A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie, but it translates out to "A Murder Will Take Place..."