what is Kamchadal literature?
The Kamchadals is a collective name given to the Koryak and the Chukchis, the two main peoples that inhabit Kamchatka and the extreme northeast Siberia. They are fishers or reindeer herders. They are rather tiny ethnic groups, all together they are scarce tens of thousands. They used to be more numerous up to the 18th century when the smallpox epidemy and the fights against Russian Cossack colonizers curbed their demography down. Their nomadic or semi-sedentary life, in yaranga tents in the tundra, is certainly very harsh.
The history of writing in Koryak is a matter of the 20th century. Literacy came to this part of the world with the Soviet program of "civilizing" the autochthonous peoples of Siberia. Truly autonomous literary development happens just in recent decades, but it is based upon a long tradition of orally transmitted myths, often speaking of the Great Raven.
Bibliography
Karen Langgard and Kirsten Thisted (eds.), From oral tradition to rap. Literatures of the Polar North, Ilisimatusarfik/Forlaget Atuagkat, 2011.
The history of writing in Koryak is a matter of the 20th century. Literacy came to this part of the world with the Soviet program of "civilizing" the autochthonous peoples of Siberia. Truly autonomous literary development happens just in recent decades, but it is based upon a long tradition of orally transmitted myths, often speaking of the Great Raven.
Bibliography
Karen Langgard and Kirsten Thisted (eds.), From oral tradition to rap. Literatures of the Polar North, Ilisimatusarfik/Forlaget Atuagkat, 2011.
I have readWacław Sieroszewski, Beniowski (1914)
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I have written... nothing ...
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a blurred image of Russian colonisation
I deliberately bought a copy of Beniowski, the historical novel written by Wacław Sieroszewski, in search of a literary image of the Kamchadal cultures. But it's not the first time that the Polish author deceives me. The historical hero of the novel, Maurycy August Beniowski, had been condemned to a stay in Kamchatka for his participation in Bar Confederation in 1768. Also, Sieroszewski shared the same destiny in the Russian empire, sent to Siberia for his patriotic activity at the end of the 19th century. The book could have been quite a pertinent image of the Kamchadal life. Nonetheless, despite the ethnographic interests of the writer, the Koryak and the Chukchis hardly appear as blurred figures in the background. The novel presents the colonial administration, the Cossacks serving as the most faithful colonial resource of the tsars, and the Russians depicted both as colonial administrators and convicts. Beniowski merges quite smoothly in this society, distinguishing himself, right upon arrival, by his mastery of chess. The novel, often seen as an inspiring, patriotic text by the contemporary far-right critics, in my eyes is a document of the Polish interconnectedness with, and participation in the Russian empire, their sound contribution to its colonial enterprise in North Asia. Sieroszewski, just like many others, was a part of it. He is thus just a colonial writer, for whom the colonized peoples are colourful splashes on the snow, at best. They are absent producers of strange carvings in mammoth bone, as if belonging to the mineral together with the samples of mountain gemstones, inscribed in the naturalist collection gathered in the hut of the Cossack Niłow. Those tiny traces of indigenous absence are framed in multiple signs of the superior, Russian culture: the icon with its eternal light is a beacon of true home even in this farthest, most desolate frontier of the empire. The naturalist collection is a proof of civilised exploration that goes on.
Mdłe, błekitnawe światło wsączało się do izby ze dwora przez duże okna z miki, przykryte z zewnątrz taflą lodową. W rogu przed pozłacanym ciemnolicym obrazem płonęła w malinowej szklanej bani na srebrnych łańcuchach nigdy nie gasnąca "lampada". Było ciepło, pachniało kwasem chlebowym, miętą i mirrą. Pod ścianą między oknami na mocnych krzyżakach stał długi stół, nakryty zielonym suknem, na nim leżały rozrzucone papiery, śliczne ułamki kryształów górskich, okazałe kły morsa, dziwaczne rzeźby czukockie z kości mamutowej oraz jakieś próbki błyszczących rud; w górze na przybitej do ściany podstawce siedział z rozpostartymi skrzydłami wypchany orzeł kamczacki (p. 12).
It is a sign of an utter destitution for a convict, if he is forced to live with the Chukchis. It is not the case of the Polish aristocrat from Podolia, who plays chess with the superiors and squeeze silver roubles into the greedy hands of the inferior personnel. He is a European, and also for him, just like in the well-known Disraeli's saying, the East is a career.
Wacław Sieroszewski, Beniowski, Warszawa: Sic!, 2013.
Kraków, 28.08.2022.
Mdłe, błekitnawe światło wsączało się do izby ze dwora przez duże okna z miki, przykryte z zewnątrz taflą lodową. W rogu przed pozłacanym ciemnolicym obrazem płonęła w malinowej szklanej bani na srebrnych łańcuchach nigdy nie gasnąca "lampada". Było ciepło, pachniało kwasem chlebowym, miętą i mirrą. Pod ścianą między oknami na mocnych krzyżakach stał długi stół, nakryty zielonym suknem, na nim leżały rozrzucone papiery, śliczne ułamki kryształów górskich, okazałe kły morsa, dziwaczne rzeźby czukockie z kości mamutowej oraz jakieś próbki błyszczących rud; w górze na przybitej do ściany podstawce siedział z rozpostartymi skrzydłami wypchany orzeł kamczacki (p. 12).
It is a sign of an utter destitution for a convict, if he is forced to live with the Chukchis. It is not the case of the Polish aristocrat from Podolia, who plays chess with the superiors and squeeze silver roubles into the greedy hands of the inferior personnel. He is a European, and also for him, just like in the well-known Disraeli's saying, the East is a career.
Wacław Sieroszewski, Beniowski, Warszawa: Sic!, 2013.
Kraków, 28.08.2022.
