Election is about to come up, might there still be a chance to unexpectedly veer off course? Or even break away? Or even stay. And do some good in the city.
If the date is to be believed, Maciej Słomczyński penned these three sentences on July 14th, 1969. This sentence opens a short, seven-page text “From the Translator,” concluding the eight hundred and seventeen pages of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in the PIW edition.
PPR’s mintage of 40,000 (+200) copies descended like a ghost and powerfully changed the face of “this land”. And Słomczyński’s sentences will remain with us long into the 21st century.
“There is a great group of fortunate people in the world who dismiss as obvious nonsense everything they cannot understand at first glance. These people demand from art only the utmost swiftness in duplicating what is closest and best known to them. In short, they demand what they do not have to learn and can grasp without much effort, which in turn would have to lead to the development and refinement of that delicate internal apparatus that serves man to generate emotions.”
The first sentence astounds for its prophetic accuracy over half a century ago. By what miracle or whim of imagination could almost the entirety of todays so-called “political class” in the city be so faithfully and laconically described? At the end of the sixties, the concept of “class” as something that describes society was, of course, widespread in communist Poland, but to predict that in half a century’s time something as abstract as the “political class” would coincide (in its own mind) with the “group of lucky ones” is unfathomable.
The third sentence is the most distant from our known version of the present day. Słomczyński could not have foreseen that instead of the “delicate internal apparatus,” in the twenties of the 21st century we would increasingly bold in using an external apparatus, not delicate at all, but propulsive and omnivorous, shortly called Media.
If the date on the drawing is to be believed, Rob Krier in 2007 warned Łódź not against the sin of omitting to realize the New Centre of Łódź. He warned us against our dreams. Rob wanted to be a priest, he must have known a lot about sin. The concept of sin, especially inherited sin, original sin, seems completely out of place with contemporary culture of the city. It is common to monotheistic religions important to European culture: Judaism and Christianity. From the perspective of religious studies, it can be treated as a distortion present in the religions of Mesopotamia and Egypt of the notion of culpability towards one of the many deities (ἁμάρτημα – an omission, an oversight, a failure to hit the target, see: Iliad, bk. IV, 491). Most often, “sin” is considered a concept necessary to explain the limitation of one’s own possibilities of action and one’s own mortality.
Meanwhile, the concept of sin also plays an important role concerning visions of the future. In Łódź, of course, this nearest future. The one right after the elections…
Let’s try to imagine a reality in which all the desires of everyone are simultaneously fulfilled.
Will it be a “heavenly” moment or rather a “hellish” one?
The ambivalence of such a vision is a moment justifying the ever-increasing pressing for some political institution to “watch over” and protect against unfavorable developments.
Most interesting are the ties of “sin” to the category of “security” of the City Spirit, so often invoked today. In architecture, do we expect this from the City Architect?
