English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary by Tadeusz GrzebieniowskiReview by: J. PietrkiewiczThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 38, No. 90 (Dec., 1959), pp. 277-278Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205156 .

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REVIEWS 277

solidarity is 'mechanical'; social control, to some considerable degree, patriarchal, and ritual and religion play a central part in it by reinforcing and reaffirming social solidarity and social values. Like all human com?

munities, Orasac is constantly undergoing social change and this change is, in general, towards greater division of labour, decreased localism, secularisation, and increasing demands for higher personal consumption.

Two of the things that differentiate Orasac from the majority of Euro?

pean peasant communities are the relics of the zadruga, an extended patri? archal, patriolocal family unit, and the clan system. One would have liked to have learned more about the fate of the zadruga and its internal

composition than Dr Halpern tells one. One would like also to know very much more about the clan system. Dr Halpern gives one, incidentally, many facts about it, but it is clearly something that should be treated

systematically, and no such treatment except of an excessively formal and non-functional kind, is attempted.

The third feature of Orasac which is of unusual interest is, of course, that here we have a comparatively primitive village community in a communist society. Admittedly, Yugoslavia's communism is exceptional in its divergence from the patterns of the Soviet world. All the same, one would like to have seen a lot more information on the impact of com? munism?or its failure to have an impact?than we are given. Halpern has clearly not thought much about the problems of social change. If he had he could not but have provided us with a valuable book. As it is, all he has done is to provide a reasonably pleasant, no doubt objective, but

essentially dull catalogue of aspects of Serbian village life. It is extremely alarming to learn from the blurb that, having completed this research in

1954, Dr Halpern has since done 'research in India, East and South

Europe, Scandinavia and Alaska'. It would be nice to think that he will have time to return to Orasac and practise some of the techniques of

investigation and analysis which social anthropology can offer in order to produce a second and better study of what sounds like a most attrac? tive society. As it is, both the student of Slavonic affairs and the sociologist can use this transparently honest book as a source on an important subject while wishing that it had been something more.

London D. G. MacRae

Summary Notices

English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary. Compiled by Tadeusz Grze- bieniowski. Wiedza Powszechna, Warsaw, and Methuen, London, 1958. xxiv + 368; xi + 307 pages.

Mr Grzebieniowski has compiled a useful dictionary which includes

many modern terms and offers a wider selection of idiomatic expressions than its recent predecessors. It has another advantage over them: Polish words are at last given in modernised spelling. Two popular dictionaries,

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278 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

compiled by J. Stanislawski and W. Kierst respectively, were often re?

printed during and after the war, but the offset reproduction made the

changes in spelling impossible. Mr Grzebieniowski, however, might have improved the treatment of

Polish verbs. Like his two predecessors he seems to have designed his book

primarily for Poles, and ignores the obvious needs of the English student of Polish. Both the aspects and the more difficult forms of verbs are again overlooked, which is a great pity. How, for instance, can the student hope to conjugate correctly verbs like ciqc, dqc or kazac, if only their infinitives are given? The English-Polish part of the dictionary, however, does in? clude a list of irregular verbs, and moreover, forms like 'gave', 'shook', 'taken' are entered separately.

Finally, an ominous sign of technical imperfection has been noticed in the review copy. In the Polish-English section, pages 193-209 really belong to the previous part and are repeated here by mistake, thus ousting from the dictionary nearly all Polish entries under the letter 'R'. This

English intrusion happens just after the word radykalny and ends with the word 'practical'. The omission of sixteen pages is certainly radical, but one hopes that the practical nature of the dictionary is not similarly affected in other copies.

London J. Pietrkiewicz

Geschichte der polnischen Literatur. By Karel Krejci. Translated by Otti Utitz. VEB Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle (Saale) 1958. 574 pages. Biblio?

graphy and index.

This translation from Czech (Dejiny polske literatury, 1953) has appeared with a number of changes and adaptations five years after the original edition. As a history of literature it gives an incongruous impression, for the facts presented?and there is certainly no lack of them?are made to coexist with irrelevant political propaganda which keeps nagging at almost every artistic achievement in Polish letters.

The chapter headings set the tone: e.g. Die Literatur der Epoche des

Feudalismus, or Die Literatur in der ?eit des Imperialisms bis zum ersten Welt-

krieg. The author, however, does not show what is feudal about Kocha- nowski's laments on the death of his daughter, nor does he throw new

light on other classics with the help of this much superimposed method. As all the literary events are intended to have social significance, the

background of each period is packed with more facts from outside litera? ture proper, which in turn overburden the survey and blear the impact of individual writers and works. In consequence, this didactic tendency levels out most subtleties of form and prevents the author from bringing out contrasts in truly original poets, such as Twardowski, Norwid or

Kasprowicz. It is not surprising therefore that the pedestrian poets like Asnyk and

Konopnicka come out best in Professor Krejci's survey: it is, in fact, their didacticism that has been rewarded. The same can be said of the choice

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