The classic expresses brutal vitality,
while “Imagine” is a symptom of its disappearance
“It is like a well-made horror film.”
Bronisław Wildstein
Watching the party nomenklatura sing the “Internationale” was a specific experience of the communist era. Participants in successive plenums, congresses and other meetings broadcast in the media began and ended in the same way: standing at attention, though not in a completely unanimous chorus, intoning this song, written during the Paris Commune.
Fat men with fat faces, with the herringbone-lean Jaruzelski standing out, roared menacingly: ‘Arise, wretches of hunger’, providing an unforgettable aesthetic experience for observers. ‘Arise, wretched of the earth,’ wailed the pompous types from Moscow’s imposition in charge of Poland.
In Western Europe, I discovered that quite a large group of people still sang the “Internationale” of their own free will. In communist countries, there were none of these unless they did it for risky kicks like I did, thundering in custody ‘to let the chain fall from the free spirit, and to destroy and burn the house of bondage’. Instead of being recognised for exceptionally knowing more than the chorus of the workers’ anthem, I received the opposite reaction from the hacks.
In France, we were invited to a chateau near Paris by trade unionists from the CFDT, a socialist syndicate that worked with “Solidarity”. It was a leisurely weekend, and the main event was a sort of marriage arranged by one of the union leaders to a woman nearly 30 years his junior. When we rolled into the dining hall on Sunday, somewhat worn out, we found that the new tenants of the castle were also functioning, primarily families with children who also wanted to take advantage of the beautiful site and its picturesque surroundings. The frowning trade unionists, on seeing them, pulled themselves together and began, as much as they could muster, to roar the “Internationale”. It was aimed at the bourgeoisie with whom they found themselves unexpectedly under the same roof.
Not only did we not join in, but we expressed our reluctant astonishment. The newcomers, whom the trade unionists tried to provoke and who indeed stared at them unsympathetically – which is easy to understand – were presumably just as wealthy, as evidenced by their choice of the same weekend holiday destination. Our behaviour provoked indignation from the CFDT brothers. A friend of ours from the union averted a looming crisis by explaining that the “Internationale” had a bad connotation for us and that, as uninformed people (Poles, after all), we could not understand its objectively progressive character.
With the collapse of communism, the “International’s” singing also declined, compromising the orthodox version of Marxism, which was based on a vision of the messianic role of the working class gaining power through an apocalyptic revolution. In time, a new variant of this emerged, namely John Lennon’s ‘Imagine.’ Comparing the two versions allows us to understand the evolution of today’s revolutionary imagery.
The old version is pathetic – the new is lyrical. In the old one, the lump of the world is moved from its foundations; it leads to battle and toil; there is much blood, fire and sweat; tyrants tremble, and vultures’ claws are filed down. Version two is persuasive. Just imagine – it suggests. Imagine that there is nothing that formed human civilisation. There is no religion, and therefore no paradise or hell, no property or countries, i.e. nations, nothing to fight for or sacrifice; we live only in the present moment, and there is only the sky above us as a natural phenomenon because that is the only way Lennon can be understood. And all this is sung in a sweet voice that sends us back to the vocal and intellectual displays of ten-year-olds in school catechism class.
There are two “Internationals”
Agnieszka Kołakowska has written that she prefers not to imagine such a world. I understand her. ‘Imagine’ is like a well-made horror film in which we see a demonic grimace beneath a child’s delightfully smiling face. Lennon offers us a dehumanised void. He delightfully convinces us that destroying the human world is more possible than we think. That neither he nor the throngs of his followers, belting out this anthem in response to aggression and terrorism, understand any of this is even more frightening. We will enter the new utopia easily, quickly and unknowingly. When we start to die, it will be too late.
The old “Internationale” thrilled with apocalyptic-Genean passion and exalted us with blood and destruction.‘Imagine’ seduces us with a seamless dream. Whatever the consequences, the classic “Internationale” expresses brutal vitality. ‘Imagine’ is a symptom of its disappearance.
Tłumaczenie Jan Czarniecki
For the original in Polish see:
https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/700597-imagine-lennona-jest-jak-dobrze-zrobiony-horror
