Elena Poniatowska summons all her family demons

‘In the Polish lover’ crosses his biography with that of his ancestor, the last king of Poland, revealing the rape from which his first son was born

The now 90-year-old Mexican writer and Cervantes Prize winner Elena Poniatowska (Paris, 1932) signs her most personal and ambitious book. In the nearly 900 pages of ‘The Polish Lover’ (Seix-Barral), he evokes all his family demons. He goes through the history of the Poniatowskis, the aristocratic Polish saga from which he originated, and traverses it with his own life, with his joys and sorrows. Among them, the rape he suffered at the age of 22 and from which his first child would be born. The abuser was a notable writer and intellectual, Juan José Arreola, who died in 2001 and whom he refers to only as “the teacher.” By narrating the episode that has been silenced for years, he fills “a black hole” in his biography.

It tells of the rise and fall of the last king of Poland, Stanislaus II Poniatowski, his blatant ancestor. It goes back to 1742 when little Stanislaus listens to the family exploits without imagining what fate has in store for him: a passionate relationship with Catherine the Great, her accession to the throne and the plots to destroy her kingdom. .

Two centuries later, at the age of nine, Elena arrives in Mexico, fleeing the war that is setting Europe on fire. He devotes himself to a life devoted to writing, marked by encounters with politicians and guerrilla fighters, but also by love affairs and terrible losses. “They are parallel lives united by love and its misadventures, by the appreciation of literature and fine arts,” explains the author from her home in Mexico City.

“I always had the childish itch to tell the truth,” justifies her belated need to tell about her rape. “I couldn’t leave that hole, that black hole in my life. I discussed it with my son, who read what I wrote and was fine with it. He was the only one he had a moral obligation to do it with,” he said. Poniatowska, who admits it was “liberating” for her family to end 64 years of silence. “I had a religious upbringing and I swore to always tell the truth before a scout flag. Guilt torments you and more with such an education. I am very guilty and have a greater tendency to speak ill of myself than of others,” she explains.

She gave birth to her son Mane in Rome, in a nunnery. “Nobody spoke to me for three months. It was like the bully girl. Even the aunt who accompanied me and who was thinking of adopting my son said that they would let me write novels, but they wouldn’t follow them,” he says ironically.

He believes in the lessons of the past and that “today’s leaders could learn a lot from Poniatowski,” his noble ancestor, an enlightened man who paid dearly for his love affairs with the all-powerful Catherine of Russia. “When you fall in love, you stay ‘cuchiplanchado’, as we say here, and so he stayed, crushed by the whims of Catalina la Grande,” explains the writer with a mischievous smile. The tormented lover then had to fight against Russia, which wiped Poland off the map in the 18th century.

It covers the history of Poland over the past two centuries, marked by Russia’s ill-fated neighborhood “which has been fatal to Ukraine, as it always has been to Poland.” “The Russians are expansionists. They appropriate and eat the land and lives of their neighbors. They invade everything,” he laments. “Putin has not set the slightest example of a generous or intelligent man. He is a tyrant and his actions are those of a tyrant,” he sums up.

Poniatowska does not share with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador his desire to demand that Spain apologize for its misuse of the conquest. “So many years have passed that it seems absurd to me that you should ask for forgiveness. I do not endorse what López Obrador is asking for. It’s anachronistic,” he says.

Poniatowska’s work is a mirror of last century Mexico, but what he sees now, with drug trafficking, unleashed violence, femicides, murders of journalists and rampant poverty, stings him. “It is a reflection that hurts us a lot. I am a feminist and femicide and abuse of women are a drama. Farm women who do the household here for miserable salaries or for nothing are mistreated’, he says. «I met a girl who had to sleep on the floor next to the lady. Let it be her doormat and support her stamping when she gets up,” says this equality fighter. “You should always expose the mistreatment and abuse of the powerful,” he claims.

‘La Poni’, as her people call her, reaches the age of 90 with her head in place, in acceptable health and without losing the desire to go to war. “I work like an ant every day,” says the spirited writer. He meets his Sunday appointment with the readers of the newspaper ‘La Jornada’ and longs for the interviews ‘I’ve done all my life’. “I adore them. I really enjoy going to the other person and asking. When I was trying to make editorials, get a political opinion out of my own chest, I was bored. I was pontificating and it was not my way of being. My best virtue is listening. I listen so much that I can’t hear my own voice anymore,” he concludes.

Source: La Verdad

Wayne

I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.