Surprised by Paderewski

One evening a couple of months ago, during a class on memoir writing, our instructor handed out a poem by Wisława Szymborska - a Polish poet and essayist and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. I kid you not, my whole face lit up like a kid’s would at the sight of an ice cream sundae. It’s possible I may have actually squealed and clapped my hands like a seal. Now, I don’t typically swoon over poetry. This time, however, there was a good reason for it: Wisława Szymborska is Polish, and my American teacher knew about her.  

Let me explain.  

While I do realize that prominent Poles are, in fact, known around the world, I can’t help reacting with glee when I’m presented with actual proof of this. Like when a Polish movie is nominated for an Oscar or a Polish athlete wins a medal, or a book my son is reading mentions someone like Marie Skłodowska-Curie. And I know exactly where this reaction comes from.

Ever since childhood, I’ve had this ingrained notion that Poland is somehow inferior - an idea which may have sprouted when I was five or six years old and still living there. My dad would send us packages from America, big cartons containing the sparkliest, softest, most colorful clothes and toys I had ever seen. Not to mention the toilet paper! All we had in Poland in the eighties was this rough, grayish stuff made from makulatura - wastepaper - and let me tell you, it chafed. But my dad sent us rolls of delicate, fancy, light pink American toilet paper, which seemed to me like it must have been created for the angels. It felt almost sacrilegious to use it for…well, you know. 

I can guess what you must be thinking right now. Why is she rambling on about toilet paper when she promised us Paderewski? 

Hang on, I promise I’ll get there. Try not to be bathed in such hot water, as the Polish would say.

Image by Robert Fotograf from Pixabay

Image by Robert Fotograf from Pixabay

Anyway, a couple of years later, my mom, sister, and I joined my dad in the U.S. From then on, Poland didn’t stand a chance. The very fact that we were here and not there spoke volumes. America was the promised land, after all - the land where we could have everything that Poland was not able to provide. Then there was the teasing when I began school - because I couldn’t speak English, because my name was strange, because instead of fruit roll-ups I brought liverwurst sandwiches for snack. (Don’t even get me started on jokes about dumb Poles.)

Suffice it to say, my self-esteem took a pretty big hit, and the way I perceived the country of my birth slowly shifted. I missed it and loved it, of course, but my understanding of it was being molded by America’s in-your-face grandiosity all around me. The unfortunate thing was, I knew very little in those days of Poland’s history and of her heroes. And, everywhere I looked, the country of my birth was absent, missing. Occasionally in school we read world literature but there were never any stories from Poland. I’d hear about other countries but never about Poland. It was never Poland. At least that’s how it seems in my memories.

A few months ago I was rereading some of my diary entries from when I was twelve and spending my first summer in the Kashubian village of Lipnica. I had to chuckle at my younger self. Twelve-year-old me was genuinely surprised that Polish boys were cute and that Polish pizza was good! (Word for word quote from my diary: “…it did taste like a real pizza.” Yeah.) I’d been expecting both to be second-rate somehow - that’s how deep-rooted in me this notion of Poland’s inferiority was. I couldn’t help it, but I was absolutely ecstatic to find even the smallest bits of proof which chipped away at this fallacy. Because whenever that happened, it also made me think that maybe, after all, I wasn’t inferior, either.

I may be a few decades older now, but my reaction to those bits of proof is still exactly the same.

Like when my instructor gave us that Wisława Szymborska poem. Or last fall, when I finally learned about Ignacy Paderewski.

It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, googling him. I was working on my memoir, writing about my childhood home and the street on which I’d lived - Ulica Paderewskiego - when curiosity struck. (Curiosity and, I admit, a case of procrastination. You know the kind: what can I read about on the internet now which will delay the hard work in front of me?) I’d always known Paderewski was a concert pianist, but that was the full extent of my knowledge. No big deal, I thought. Just your run-of-the-mill dead guy who’d been brilliant at piano a really long time ago. Nothing interesting. Nothing to see here.  

Oh, how ignorant I’d been for so long…

Imagine my great and utter astonishment when I learned the following:

Image from Adobe Stock

Image from Adobe Stock

  • Paderewski was pretty much a rock star of his time. Seriously. He was an international celebrity who was awarded his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

  • During his fifty years of performances, he played on every continent and in every state in the U.S. He was the first to give a solo concert at the new Carnegie Hall, and he also played at the 20,000-seat Madison Garden.

  • He was so well-known that he was referenced in a 1953 movie written by Dr. Seuss. In the movie, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, students are told that their teacher will “make a Paderewski out of them.” How cool is that?!

  • Aside from being a concert pianist, Paderewski was also a composer, philanthropist, activist, politician, and patron of art and architecture.

  • His largest single philanthropic contribution was $28,600 to the cause of disabled American veterans.

  • To date, Paderewski’s Manru is the only Polish opera ever performed in the Metropolitan Opera in its 135-year history.

  • Paderewski was passionate about the cause for Polish independence, traveling to the United States as a representative of the Polish National Committee to garner President Woodrow Wilson’s support. (Poland, at the outbreak of World War I, had not existed on the map for 119 years, having been partitioned among its neighbors Russia, Prussia, and Austria.)

  • As the head of the Polish delegation, Paderewski was at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. He became prime minister of the newly independent Poland.

  • Paderewski started a vineyard in Paso Robles, California. The wines made from his grapes won several awards, including a gold medal at the 1933 California State Fair. Paso Robles has held an annual Paderewski Festival since the early 1990s.

  • His funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City was attended by 4,500 mourners inside the church, and a crowd of 35,000 outside.

So, it’s probably safe to say that Paderewski is most definitely not your run-of-the-mill dead guy who was brilliant at piano a really long time ago. Wouldn’t you agree?

I’m going to leave you with this quote from the introduction to The Story of a Modern Immortal by Charles Phillips: 

“It is difficult to write of Paderewski without emotion. Statesman, orator, pianist and composer, he is a superlative man, and his genius transcends that of anyone I have ever known. Those of us who love Poland are glad that she can claim him as a son, but let her always remember that Ignace Jan Paderewski belongs to all mankind.” (Edward M. House)

So take that, all you streets on which I’ve lived in America, all you streets with boring and ordinary names like Chestnut and Parkerview and South Main. You are no match for Ulica Paderewskiego.

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