Polish language and history in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Kolin, Philip C.

Stanley Kowalski's Polish ancestry in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (NY: New Directions, 2004) has perplexed and prejudiced critics. Given the Creole demographics of New Orleans in the 1940s, Stanley's Polish identity seems out of place and has sustained stereotyping him ethnically as brutish and cruel. Danusha V. Goska, for instance, maintains that "the image of the uncultured Bohunk had been depicted in popular literature before [Streetcar], but it entered the canon" with Williams's play which "dramatizes the racists' fear of miscegenation, and its twin conviction that America, overwhelmed by an influx of inferior others, was committing 'race suicide'" ("The Bohunk in American Cinema," Journal of Popular Culture 39.3 [2006]: 414). Stanley's wife Stella, her sister Blanche, and his friends spew racial barbs at Stanley throughout Streetcar. Cataloguing these insults, "Pig-Polack-disgusting-vulgar-greasy!" (131), Stanley explodes in Scene 8. Because of his Polack roots, Stanley is vilified as the enemy of the arts, poetry, and music. Accordingly, Blanche warns her baby sister, "Don't hang back with the brutes" that is, the tribe of her Polish husband (83). But like other signifiers in Streetcar, there is a great deal of metaphoric and cultural slippage in Stanley's ancestry. A rich Polish history lies behind Stanley's name, showing how far removed he is from the ideals of his ethnic homeland, as well as one of the most significant pieces of music in Streetcar through which Blanche herself is symbolically associated with Polish culture.

The name "Stanley" was extremely popular in the America of the 1940s when Streetcar premiered. Perhaps due to the increasing numbers of families of Slavic descent, 106 men out of 1200 were called Stanley (thinkbabynames.com/ meaning/Stanley). The root of the Polish name is, of course, Stanislaw, which means "someone who is famous due to his estate" (Wladyslaw Kopalinski, A Dictionary of Myths and Cultural Traditions [Warsaw: PIW, 1985]). This etymology fits Stanley Kowalski who equates space with power. He ruthlessly controls his estate, even if it is a small Elysian Fields apartment. "I am the king around here, and so do not forget it!" he boasts to Stella and Blanche (131). Almost all the action in Streetcar occurs on his turf/estate-the poker games where he bullies Mitch, fights with his fellow poker players, beats Stella, and rapes Blanche. Everything bears his stamp--his liquor (143), his phone (133), his child, his rules. Keen to expand his estate, Stanley interrogates Blanche about how Belle Reve was lost since "In the state of Louisiana ... what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband and vice versa" (40-41). Throughout Streetcar he battles with Blanche over territory, especially the bathroom, and finally presents her with a bus ticket "to Laurel. On the Greyhound. Tuesday" (136). But Stanley's fame through his estate, promised in the Polish meaning of his name, is hardly flattering or honorable. He has fallen short of its high standards.

Stanley's name also ironically links him to, but stresses his differences from, the patron saint of Poland, Stanislaus, the eleventh-century bishop martyred by King Boleslaus the Bold over disputed property claims; the king had appropriated land legitimately belonging to Holy Mother Church (Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland [NY: Columbia UP, 2005] 1:85). Onomastically suggesting an ironic kinship with Poland's patron saint, Stanley feels empowered in any contest over territory whether it concerns Belle Reve or where he thinks his cronies should bowl. Further undercutting Stanley's behavior in light of his patron saint's courageous deeds, St Stanislaw, portrayed with a sword in his hand, was often invoked by those going into battle. Stanley, however, acquires a far less saintly reputation as a mean, drunken fighter. As Pope John Paul II observed, "Wherever the sons of Poland have gone, they have brought with them devotion to the great patron" (Apostoloc Letter, Rutilans Agmen, 8 May 1979 www.vatican.va_rutilans-agmen_enhtml). Stanislaw Kowalski's behavior as a brawler undermines any fidelity to his Polish namesake.

Stanley's surname resonates with other important Polish etymologies/ allusions. As many critics have pointed out, "Kowalski" is a derivative of "kowal," or blacksmith, an occupation that suits Stanley who "always smashed things" (72). "Kowal" also suggests the tools of the smith's trade, the bellows, and, through a related Polish word, "kowad," the anvil. Semantically, too, the last name "Kowalski"--a derivative of "kowal"--signifies the average man, as John Smith does in English, and thus mocks the democratization that Stanley seeks for himself but refuses to concede to others. Moreover, "kowal" is related to "kowac," a form of the verb "kuc" meaning to forge and appears in such figurative/proverbial Polish sayings as "Czlowiek jest kowalem swego losu" ("A man is the blacksmith of his own fate"; I am indebted to Prof. Joanna Kurowska of the University of Chicago for all Polish translations). Coupling these two idiomatic meanings of "kowal," then, we find an apt image of Stanley Kowalski: "A man is the blacksmith of his own fate." Wrapped in the bravado of his Polish name, Stanley frequently declares that he is the master of his fate. He tells his buddies: "You know what luck is. Luck is believing you're lucky. Take Salerno. I believed I was lucky. I figured that 4 out of 5 would not come through but I would ... and I did. I put that down as a rule" (163). As in the military, Stanley forges his own success in business. We learn "he's the only one of his crowd that's likely to get anywhere" (53). Hands down, too, he is lucky in cards and all types of gaming. Most tragically, though, Stanley seals Blanche's fate as well--"That man is my executioner" (111), she confesses to Mitch, four scenes before Stanley rapes her.

Blanche is also subtly linked to Polish culture and history through the Varsouviana, the polka or waltz, that triggers memories of her gay husband's suicide at Moon Lake and pushes her further into madness. The Polish translation of the song's title is "Female Citizen of Warsaw," which on the surface seems discordant when applied to the francophile Blanche, but as a fugitive forced to live under her Polish brother-in-law's roof, Blanche, metaphorically at least, becomes a resident/inhabitant of the capital of Poland commemorated in the name of the tune. Heard at least half a dozen times in the play, the Varsouviana gets "caught in my head" (140), says Blanche, as it reminds her of excruciating betrayals. Further illuminating Blanche's tragic association with Poland, the "Varsovienne," or Varsouviana, holds a sacrosanct place in Polish history. Sung at the 1831 uprising of the Poles against the Russian partition of Poland, the music was written by Karol Kurpinski and the original French words were translated into Polish by Karol Sienkiewicz ("Warsaw," The New Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., 27:98). Of course, the "Varsouvienne" alludes to the French national anthem, the "Marseillaise," but without celebrating its patriotic victory. In 1831, the Poles were defeated and the intelligentsia were driven out of their homeland. Played as background music for Blanche's lapses into a nightmare world, the Varsouviana symbolizes the plight Blanche faces as she loses her struggle for freedom on Stanley's estate. Ironically, she shares the fate of the Polish intelligentsia who had to emigrate.

In light of Blanche's symbolic connection to a song with a hallowed place in Polish culture, audiences should not automatically demonize references/allusions to Stanley's ethnicity. For this reason, it is difficult to agree with Goska that "Blanche abandoned her too sensitive husband while acting out her own inner Bohunk, lured by the light of the primitive as represented by overtly Polish music" (412) or with Sam Staggs who quipped that "Blanche had low-brow tastes" (When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of "A Streetcar Named Desire" [NY: St. Martin's, 2006]). Viewing Blanche's tragedy in light of the painful and ironic panoply of Polish history further destabilizes attempts to stereotype and, thus dichotomize, Poles and Southern belles in Williams's most famous play.

Philip C. Kolin, University of Southern Mississippi