Andrzejewski, Jerzy & Kirkup, James [tr] - The Gates of Paradise (1960)
‘Can a novel be called short when almost every sentence has significance ? The Inquisitors has the density of a bar of uranium.’ ’This is what John Davenport wrote in The Observer about Andrzeyevski’s first novel; and his second, Ashes and Diamonds, was greeted with a storm of praise from the critics. The Gates of Paradise is his best to date.
The theme of this allegorical novel is the Children’s Crusade, which was started in a French village by Jacques the Foundling, around whose banner a great procession of children sets off to the Holy Land to capture Christ’s tomb from the infidel Turks. As they go, the young pilgrims confess their sins to the elderly cleric who accompanies them, and as they tell him the story of their pathetic lives, he gradually discovers why each of them has joined the Crusade. The one thing their reasons have in common is that they all arise from love; not, as one would expect, the spiritual love that a crusade should inspire, but human, carnal love. ’The lives of these touching, defenceless, passionate children are depicted with complete frankness and clarity. Innocent and depraved alike are cut off from all guidance and protection, except that of the appalled priest; and the result of his guidance is described, at the climax of the book, with unforgettable power.
The Gates of Paradise is written with extraordinary skill; candid, delicate, earthy, it gives us a new and ironic insight into the nature of idealism, and it looks at love and lust with the visionary passion and anarchy that are common to the saint, the artist and the adolescent. It is also remarkable for an audacious technical feat, brilliantly reproduced in James Kirkup’s translation; it is written in a single sentence, whose continuous movement gives the reader a sense of almost hallucinated participation in the slow, relentless progress of the wandering children, haunted by passions and private dreams.
GEORGE ANDRZEYEVSKI was born in Warsaw in 1909 and has lived there all his life. His first book, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1936. Two years later his first novel won him two literary awards. Since the war his prolific output of novels, plays, short stories and articles has gained him a leading position among Polish writers, and his last few novels have won him international recognition.
