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The Painted Bird

Jerzy Kosiński

3.92 · Rating details · 21,895 ratings · 1,686 reviews

Originally published in 1965, The Painted Bird established Jerzy Kosinski as a major literary figure. Called by the Los Angeles Times "one of the most imposing novels of the decade," it was eventually translated into more than thirty languages.

A harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II, The Painted Bird is a dark nov ...more

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Paperback, 234 pages

Published August 9th 1995 by Grove Press (first published 1965)

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Mar 07, 2009 Paul Bryant rated it liked it

Shelves: holocaust-literature, novels

Reading this one is like opening an oven door and the WHITE HOT BLAST OF HATRED from every page sears your flesh, scars your brain, and when you finish it you cram it shut with relief and throw it quickly into a box marked “Charity” although giving this to anyone would not be any kind of charitable act unless they need something to keep the fire going. What kind of a shitstorm do we have here?
For some reason I thought this was the story of a kid caught up in the Holocaust, i.e. a ghetto and co Reading this one is like opening an oven door and the WHITE HOT BLAST OF HATRED from every page sears your flesh, scars your brain, and when you finish it you cram it shut with relief and throw it quickly into a box marked “Charity” although giving this to anyone would not be any kind of charitable act unless they need something to keep the fire going. What kind of a shitstorm do we have here?
For some reason I thought this was the story of a kid caught up in the Holocaust, i.e. a ghetto and concentration camp story. But it isn’t. It’s the story of 7 year old kid (not named) who is sent to the remote Polish countryside by his parents in an attempt to keep him safe. Fat chance of that. The parents appear to have been a little over-optimistic. The kid avoids the Germans, mostly, but he can’t avoid the Poles. For the next five years he hops from one ghastly peasant village to another, being taken in by a series of grotesque caricatures - psychopaths, sadists, rapists the lot of them. Every Polish peasant immediately takes him for a Gypsy and from then on thinks it’s okay – almost compulsory - to inflict the maximum torment their tiny Polish peasant brains can imagine. Did I say Polish peasant? Yes, very specifically : this book is a hymn of hate to the Polish peasant. There’s only a handful of Germans in the whole 285 pages and one of those is quite kindly . What this novel is saying in a SCREECHINGLY LOUD voice is that you couldn’t have found a better place for your Holocaust than Poland – everyone truly madly deeply hated the Jews – and the Gypsies. They really did. They sat around and gleefully told each other that at last the Jews were getting their comeuppance.

Historical note : of the 5.8 to 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, 75% came from either Poland or Russia. 90% of all Polish Jews were murdered. ALL of the six extermination camps (as opposed to concentration camps) were in Poland.

Cinematic note : Claude Lanzmann says the same thing as Jerzy in his epic documentary “Shoah”.

Back to the book. There’s a big problem with it. Actually, there are about ten big problems, but the biggest is credibility. Is all this stuff to be believed? I mean, come on, Jerzy! This phantasmagoria of bestiality, rape, murder, torture, more rape, incest, beating, this unceasing onslaught directed against this small boy? Here’s a few quotes :

Without saying a word Garbos used to beat me unexpectedly (p154)

I did as I was told but he continued the beatings. (p155)

As soon as the priest had left, Garbos took me inside, stripped me and flogged me with a willow switch (p156)

Garbos would practice at first casually and then more eagerly new ways of flogging me with a willow cane (p159)

…he beat me and kicked me until he was out of breath (p160)

I went round in a daze and was beaten for neglecting my work (p160)

He thought I was mocking him on purpose and I got an even worse beating (p161)

He started to beat me more often (p165)

he was beating me harder than usual (p166)

Okay, this chapter has more beats per minute than most, but there’s at least one gross outrage inflicted on this kid once every five pages or so, either by adults or by every other kid he encounters. You get the idea that this must have been one aggravating revolting brat of a kid. No one even smiles at him until page 213. You get so you aren’t taking this stuff as seriously as you really know you should be. You catch yourself wincing and saying “Ewwww, that was a good one!” like when Linda Blair's head goes round in The Exorcist.

Credibility : I kind of think that fiction should tell the truth, but I also know it’s made up. Hmmm. Serious fiction should tell the truth about humans, because unserious fiction just peddles the lies, myths and distortions we’re all too familiar with. So if you’re writing about Holocaust racism, as Kosinski is, you should make your story credible. I don’t want to be saying hey, ten pages without a rape-murder, I bet there’s one coming up soon – oh, here it is. In this way The painted Bird resembles something like Justine by de Sade – no plot, no characters, just lots of gruesome vignettes strung together. The reader is stultified.
Such a sensational novel brought Kosinski a lot of attention, and when you take a look at this guy, he turns out to be very interesting. He was like one of those 19th century “adventurers”, guys with dubious backgrounds who suddenly explode through the social firmament, charming and wowing the glitterati, then being revealed as frauds and charlatans. By subterfuge JK got himself out of communist Poland and within five minutes he’d created this best-seller in his second language. I say "created" because there’s some doubt about whether he actually wrote it. JK let it be understood that TPB might be autobiographical, and most of its first readers and reviewers accepted it as such – right now Amazon quotes the Merriam-Webster Encyclopaedia of Literature : “The ordeals of the central character parallel Kosinski's own experiences during World War II.” But this was exposed in 1996 as a big fat lie when a biographer discovered that Jewish Jerzy and his family lived in Poland together throughout the war protected by all their Polish friends. No brutality, no ghettos for JK. So the best guess might be that JK took most of the stuff in his novel from unidentified Polish-language accounts of survival during the war, then paid translators to help him render the material into English. This isn’t a bad thing, but it isn’t the last word in scrupulousness either. Critics have noted that all of JK’s novels are in different styles because he always worked with different translators and editors. (or, it has been whispered, different ghost-writers.)
Back in Poland the communists banned it, which is nicely ironic as the adult who rescues the boy, finally, and becomes a father to him, briefly, is a communist and teaches the kid all about the workers’ struggle. But you can see their point – this is an anti-Polish novel – no, an anti-Polish-peasant novel – no, an anti-Polish-peasant-during-WW2 novel – well, definitely one of those.
In the end, this novel is a failure. But it's a brave, reckless, dangerous, blazing failure.
Cinematic PS : I was watching Reds the other week and was mightily impressed by the actor playing Zinoviev. He had a hell of a face, hell of a haircut and a delivery that made his few scenes the most memorable of the 3 hour movie. And yes, that actor was Jerzy Kosinski. What a geezer!
...more

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Nov 28, 2013 Glenn Russell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The cover of the Mass Market Paperback edition from the 1970s of The Painted Bird features a small section of Hieronymus Bosch hell-landscape -- dressed in sickly green and wearing a white hood, a creature with a man's body and head of a long-beaked bird walks on crutches carrying a large wicker basket on its back, and in the basket a small black devil with spiky fingers touches the shoulder of a wary young boy as he whispers into the boy's ear. This is an apt cover for Jerzy Kosinski's fictiona ...more

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Sep 18, 2012 Emily May rated it it was ok

Shelves: historical, classics, 2012

Warning: I talk about a really gross and disturbing scene from the book in this review, please do not read if you're going to be upset and/or offended by talk of graphic sexual violence.

This book is one of my dad's favourite books of all time, I don't know how many years he's been telling me to read it now and we've always had similar opinions on books before. But The Painted Bird did not live up to my expectations and the whole idea of it just left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Pretty much anyon Warning: I talk about a really gross and disturbing scene from the book in this review, please do not read if you're going to be upset and/or offended by talk of graphic sexual violence.

This book is one of my dad's favourite books of all time, I don't know how many years he's been telling me to read it now and we've always had similar opinions on books before. But The Painted Bird did not live up to my expectations and the whole idea of it just left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Pretty much anyone who's ever had some level of history education will have heard of some of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, no matter how many times you read about human beings burning the children of other human beings and watching people slowly starve to death because of their race, religion or other factors, it is still just as shocking and horrifying. One of the areas sometimes neglected in these accounts of wartime cruelty is the suffering of non-German Jews and it may come as a shock to some to learn that more than 70% of those Jews murdered during Hitler's reign were actually from Poland and Russia. Also, all six extermination camps - as opposed to concentration camps - were located in Poland. [ * ]

So when Jerzy Kosinski came stumbling out of communist Poland with a story about a young boy who was sent to the Polish countryside by his parents to hopefully protect him from the horrors going on in that area of Europe during this time, a young boy who moved from remote village to remote village, finding and enduring the worst kind of horrors imaginable along the way, most of Kosinski's readers wrongly assumed that this book was autobiographical. Rather than correcting his audience, Mr Kosinski rode the wave of popularity and did nothing to change these misconceptions. I suppose if someone wanted to give me a million for something I hadn't done I'd probably take the money and run too, so I don't really care that the author wasn't more vocal with the truth of this book. But... what I do think is that the knowledge that this novel is complete fiction - even if this stuff did happen somewhere - turns a potentially moving tale into a gratuitous torturefest.

Just to compare this with S. - another fictional book about atrocities committed during war - I'm not saying that people cannot write successful fictional stories set during the holocaust or that it needs to be a memoir to be effective. But, where S. is a deeply moving tale that focuses on the internal effect had by the abuse which the captors inflicted upon their victims, The Painted Bird tells of a series of gruesome acts that vary from extreme beatings, to brutal rape scenes, to a man gouging out another man's eye with a spoon... and you have to ask yourself what he achieved other than making you feel physically ill at times. Pointless, mindless, disgusting scenes of violence that seem to me to be nothing but shock tactics.

After a while of reading all these disturbing scenes, you start to feel like you're in a Saw movie, like the author is trying to create scenarios that are each more repulsive than the last just to play with the characters a bit more, make their lives a bit worse. Like raping a woman with a glass bottle and then kicking her abdomen until the glass shatters and she bleeds to death. And I do not mind reading gross scenes of violence as long as I feel it contributes something and isn't just there to keep me wide-eyed long enough that I forget the book isn't very well written and there's been no character development. I find it somewhat insulting to all those people who genuinely suffered during the holocaust that Kosinski would use it in a such an awful, emotionally-manipulative way.

I feel like if I'd really wanted to experience violence, torture and rape without being moved in any way, then I could have just watched Game of Thrones. At least that has hot men for me to look at. ...more

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Oct 25, 2017 BlackOxford rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: slavic

The Real Spoils of War

In his Being There, Kosinski meditated on the consequences of being socialised entirely through television. The Painted Bird considers how a child might be socialised (if that doesn’t stretch the meaning of the word beyond its limits) to the chaos of war and the morally-deprived society in which it takes place. It’s not pretty.

(view spoiler) The Real Spoils of War

In his Being There, Kosinski meditated on the consequences of being socialised entirely through television. The Painted Bird considers how a child might be socialised (if that doesn’t stretch the meaning of the word beyond its limits) to the chaos of war and the morally-deprived society in which it takes place. It’s not pretty.

(view spoiler)[The unnamed protagonist loses contact with his parents at age six, and isn’t reunited with them until after he turns twelve. During their separation, the boy is subject to the cruelty of the peasant society of rural Poland with its superstitious explanations of all natural phenomena, including the boy’s dark hair which makes him anathema as either a Gypsy or a Jew. He is also from time to time subject to equivalent cruelty by the invading German Army, not because he is either a Gypsy or a Jew but because he is an orphan with no obvious productive contribution to military efficiency.

After a period of understandable confusion, the boy tries desperately to make sense of his new reality. His first attempts involve treating his situation in terms of some rational standard: if he works hard, keeps his mouth shut, and obeys, he reckons he should be safe. Of course, he isn’t. Cruelty increases without apparent cause or reason.

Running away, the boy learns how to survive alone in a forest wilderness. But his isolation makes him vulnerable to capture by either the peasants or the Germans. Without communal protection he becomes doomed to a life of excruciating slavery.

He then discovers what he thinks is both community and an explanation of his plight in the Christian religion. Prayer, he believes, is the answer to his suffering. If he can build enough credit with God, he will be delivered from injustice.

But pray as he might nothing improves. In fact he is subject to extreme sexual abuse. He concludes not only that there is inherent, possibly irresistible, evil in the world but that the odds apparently favour those who side decisively with the Demon who embodies evil. This Manichaean turn may be distasteful but it appears the only way to achieve justice for his tormentors. Captured by evil, he becomes mute.

His next epiphany occurs with the defeat of the Germans by the Soviets. He is taken in, cared for, and politically indoctrinated by soldiers of the Red Army. He sees what power is meant to be: protection of the weaker by the stronger. The fact that the reader may know of a dissonance between theory and practice in Soviet society is irrelevant to the boy’s experience. He perceives this new form of power as salvation.

But salvation is only temporary. Placed in an orphanage with all the other mutilated and mentally damaged children of war, new skills of survival are required. Justice, in particular, cannot be left to social institutions, but must be seen to personally and proportionately to the offences involved. He becomes a street kid, a child of the night, a friend to low lifes and misfits. And he is comfortable.

Until his parents appear. Suffering a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, the boy considers his estranged parents as an inconvenient constraint on his freedom and potential. His fantasies and grandiose dreams of success are threatened by parental supervision. His peace is shattered by the existence of an annoying younger step-brother. He is fundamentally unfit for family life.

The rediscovery of his voice on the ski slopes of Switzerland is a rather ambiguous conclusion that the boy doesn’t comment upon. It’s unclear whether Kosinski is suggesting some sort of post-traumatic recovery or merely an explanation for how the first-person story is told at all. It is nevertheless clear that his life will never be normal in any sense of the word. (hide spoiler)]

Postscript

This article appeared in my 'feed' several days after I finished reading Kosinski. It is a re-interpretation of the Book of Job that is remarkably congruent with the thrust of Kosinski's narrative.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articl... ...more

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Jun 13, 2019 Robin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, semi-autobiographical, literary-fiction, debut, poland, 2019

Recently, I said to a teacher of mine (as almost a point of pride) that I admire books that are void of sentimentality. He responded with, "Have you read Jerzy Kosinski?"

No, I hadn't. So I immediately sourced a copy of The Painted Bird thinking, sweet, giddy-up! I've read plenty of ruthless books. I'm no wilting daisy, no stranger to pages penned by an extra sharp quill.

But this book... this book is hardcore.

Based at least in part on the childhood experiences of the author, this 1965 novel foll Recently, I said to a teacher of mine (as almost a point of pride) that I admire books that are void of sentimentality. He responded with, "Have you read Jerzy Kosinski?"

No, I hadn't. So I immediately sourced a copy of The Painted Bird thinking, sweet, giddy-up! I've read plenty of ruthless books. I'm no wilting daisy, no stranger to pages penned by an extra sharp quill.

But this book... this book is hardcore.

Based at least in part on the childhood experiences of the author, this 1965 novel follows the life of a 6 year old Polish boy who is sent away by his parents at the onset of WWII. He's meant to stay with a witchy peasant woman in a far away village, but that doesn't last for long. The boy is forced to survive in an unfriendly, rural area where he is despised by everyone who sees him because of the darkness of his hair and eyes. They don't know whether to hate him because he's a gypsy, or a Jew. Either way though, he is in trouble.

Written in episodes, each chapter is a story of a new set of circumstances, a new horror show, a new twisted fairy tale, unlike anything you've read before. The child witnesses and endures the worst the world has to offer at the hands of the Polish peasantry. Often I had to put it aside to let my brain rest from the relentless pummelling it was taking, let the evil images have a chance to fade, before picking it up again.

This book gives voice to the horrors of war, to be sure, and in particular the Nazi brand of horrors. But what struck me most about this scathing novel is its merciless illustration of the death of innocence. The main character starts off like any child, with the naive hope that he will be reunited with his parents and be returned to a safe, comfortable life. But with each episode, another hope is extinguished, another ideal is destroyed. This boy slowly loses faith in both God and people as he realises "every one of us stands alone". And how, given his experiences, can he come to any other conclusion?

The title is taken from the chapter that features Lekh, a peasant who captures birds, and has the cruel habit of painting them in bright colours before setting them free. Then he watches as the flock, who can no longer recognise the bird as one of their own, viciously attacks and kills it. The boy is undoubtedly the painted bird, who cannot be seen as belonging anywhere he goes. He's left to a mixture of his own instincts and the random, careless luck of the world, in order to survive.

I don't know that I would "recommend" this book to anyone, due to its extreme nature. I know that it has been criticised for exaggerating or exploiting the terrors of the Holocaust, as well as painting the Polish peasants as sadistic, ignorant filth. But personally, I have no problem believing that such horrendous things happened, and even worse, that the innocent hearts of children were hardened into existential lumps. I think it is of utmost importance that this controversial story be read by those who dare - to show us how close we all are to walking alone, and remind us to clutch tightly to each other and our humanity, above all else.

Now, who's getting sentimental here?? ...more

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Sep 13, 2016 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, 20th-century, historical, literature, war, horror, fiction, poland

Malowany Ptak = The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosiński

The Painted Bird is a 1965 novel, by Jerzy Kosiński, which describes: World War II, as seen by a boy, considered a "Gypsy or Jewish stray," wandering about small villages scattered around an unspecified country in Eastern Europe.

The story begins by introducing the war and linking it with the boy. The young boy's parents are hiding from the Germans, and he lives in a village, with an elderly woman. When the woman dies, he is left to care for himsel Malowany Ptak = The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosiński

The Painted Bird is a 1965 novel, by Jerzy Kosiński, which describes: World War II, as seen by a boy, considered a "Gypsy or Jewish stray," wandering about small villages scattered around an unspecified country in Eastern Europe.

The story begins by introducing the war and linking it with the boy. The young boy's parents are hiding from the Germans, and he lives in a village, with an elderly woman. When the woman dies, he is left to care for himself.

From here, he journeys to another village, where local townspeople turn him over to the Germans. He escapes and travels to another village, where he sees Jews and Gypsies headed to concentration camps. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و چهارم ماه آوریل سال 2008 میلادی

عنوان: پرواز را بخاطر بسپار؛ نویسند: یرزی (یژی) کوزینسکی؛ مترجم: ساناز صحتی؛ تهران، هاشمی، 1363؛ در 298ص؛ شابک 9647199082؛ چاپ سوم 1383؛ چاپ چهارم 1385؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان لهستانی - امریکایی - سده 20م

پرواز را به خاطر بسپار، یکی از بزرگوارترین رمانهای پس از جنگ دوم جهانگیر است، که میلیونها نسخه از آن، به فروش رفته، و به همه زبانهای مهم دنیا ترجمه شده است؛ این رمان شعری است ناب، درباره خشونتی که کودکی معصوم، خیالپرداز، و شاعر، متحمل میشود؛ سفری ست مصیبت زده، غمبار، و واقع بینانه، در روح انسانها، و حماسه ی خوابی ست کابوس زده، که هنوز بشریت به طور کامل از آن، بیدار نشده است، علاوه بر اینها این رمان یکی از زیباترین رمانهای جهان است، و برغم این زیبایی، سراسر واقعی است؛
ا. شربیانی ...more

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Sep 03, 2018 Violet wells rated it liked it

I read in the introduction that Kosinski was attacked on several occasions by Polish nationals after publishing this novel. This because it's a merciless mockery and indictment of Polish Catholics and in particular the peasantry. In the 19th century literature tended to romanticise rural communities. A stance that rarely quite rings true nowadays. This novel perhaps exaggerates to the other extreme. However, one of the most memorable images in The Shoah documentary is the Polish farmer showing h I read in the introduction that Kosinski was attacked on several occasions by Polish nationals after publishing this novel. This because it's a merciless mockery and indictment of Polish Catholics and in particular the peasantry. In the 19th century literature tended to romanticise rural communities. A stance that rarely quite rings true nowadays. This novel perhaps exaggerates to the other extreme. However, one of the most memorable images in The Shoah documentary is the Polish farmer showing how he warned the Jews heading for Treblinka of their imminent fate. He makes a throat slitting gesture and then shows all his teeth in a wide grin. In that moment you realise he wasn't warning those Jews at all; he was mocking them. It's a sad fact that the populations of Germany's enemies often implemented Nazi policy much more comprehensively and enthusiastically than Nazi allies. Italy for example has a much better record than Poland (or France for that matter) for its behaviour towards Jews. By all accounts there was little racism in Italy. There are several cases of the Carabinieri destroying a population census in a district rather than handing it over to the Nazis. Italians hid Jews; there are virtually no cases of them betraying them for cash. I read recently that the Gestapo received tens of thousands of letters from French civilians denouncing Jews. Poland has perhaps the worst record of all. If you were a Jew in Poland, you had an enemy on the other side of virtually every wall.

I don't know any details of Kosinski's wartime experiences. Clearly they left him embittered and hating the country of his birth. However, he was a Polish Jew and survived so must have had help from Christian Poles. A subtext of this novel is the importance of formal education. The Polish peasantry are characterised as uncouth ignoramuses, medieval in their religious beliefs and philosophy. Witchcraft is still the prevailing belief system.

But this is a novel, not a memoir, and should be evaluated as such. As a novel it has flaws, a couple of them fatal in my view. The Painted Bird is a very episodic novel. In fact, it's sometimes like the same short story written over and over again. This is certainly one flaw. There's also a sense that Kosinski gets carried away with his fascination for sadistic brutality. At times it reads like Holocaust porn, horror piled upon horror with a sense he's rather enjoying himself and inviting us to share his voyeuristic fascination. Less is more is a concept that completely escapes him. He piles on the atrocities, especially those of a sexual nature and it begins to make for very uncomfortable reading. Not because one is shocked; rather that one is embarrassed on the author's behalf by his obsessive fascination for depravity. This is particularly evident in a chapter when Ukrainian mercenaries terrorise a village. The acts these men subject the villagers to become almost comical in their escalating depravity. It's like the Marquis de Sade meets Monty Python. In fact you sense the novel's popularity was fed by all the perverted sex in its pages rather than as any kind of moving dramatization of the Holocaust. It's a shame because he writes very well and at times offers subtle and memorable insights into the dark side of human nature. Also, as an act of catharsis I dare say it provided benefits for him and you certainly can't begrudge him that. But it probably would have been a better novel had he waited until he was less avid to shock his readers. The Holocaust is shocking; we don't need anyone to exaggerate how shocking it was, even if with a mischievous ironical twinkle in the eye. ...more

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Apr 02, 2020 Amalia Gkavea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, literary-fiction, 1940s, 20th-century, european-literature, european-history, poland, wwii-literature, polish-literature

''We are here in the company of death.''
Jewish concentration camp inmate

A young boy finds himself lost, wandering in the countryside of an unnamed Eastern European country during the Second World War. The boy, mute and nameless, faces a world torn apart, a society that doesn't need any kind of war to change. It is a world stripped off all traces of kindness, compassion, and humanity, a world that preys upon a child in its most vulnerable moment.

''As these brightly coloured creatures soug ...more

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Jun 03, 2015 Ines rated it really liked it

The story we find told by Kosinski, is nothing more than the reality of the evil experienced by hundreds of children and people during the Second World War. Violence and extreme brutality, but unfortunately they happened and lived in that period. The wickedness recounted in this story I never met in any other book read so far, where in a historical epoch the destiny of your life was dictated by belonging and physiognomy...
The extreme cruelty of the ancient popular beliefs in the rural world desc The story we find told by Kosinski, is nothing more than the reality of the evil experienced by hundreds of children and people during the Second World War. Violence and extreme brutality, but unfortunately they happened and lived in that period. The wickedness recounted in this story I never met in any other book read so far, where in a historical epoch the destiny of your life was dictated by belonging and physiognomy...
The extreme cruelty of the ancient popular beliefs in the rural world described here, is not something invented, but meandering and coexisting with the Christian faith.
What scandalizes here is the impossibility and total absence of a good and healthy tenderness, denied to all the hearts of history...
And here, however, I block and reject the idea that the author wants to give as written above.
I firmly believe that everywhere in the world there is always a pure man of heart, of a 'soul that loves you regardless....
I refuse to believe that man’s heart is always born fearful and kneeling to the world of evil and hatred.

La storia che troviamo narrata da Kosinski non è altro che la realtà del male vissuta da centinaia di bambini e persone durante la seconda guerra mondiale. Violenza e brutalità estreme ma pur sempre purtroppo accadute e vissute in quel periodo. La malvagità raccontata in questa storia mai l' ho incontrata in nessun altro libro letto sino ad ora, dove in un epoca storica il destino della tua vita era dettato dall' appartenenza e fisionomia...
la crudeltà estrema delle antiche credenze popolari nel mondo rurale qui descritta, non è qualche cosa di inventato, ma serpeggiava e conviveva insieme al fede cristiana.
Ciò che scandalizza qui è l' impossibilità e la totale assenza di un bene e tenetezza sana, negato a tutti i cuori della storia....
e io qui però mi blocco e rifiuto l'idea che vuol dare l'autore, in ogni dove del mondo c' è sempre un uomo puro di cuore, di un 'anima che ti ama a prescindere....
mi rifiuto di credere che il cuore dell' uomo nasca sempre timorato e inginocchiato al mondo del male e dell'odio. ...more

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Nov 06, 2013 Bookcase Jim rated it really liked it

After reading some of the reviews on here, I'm hoping that this will bring some sanity to the steaming heaps of hyperbole. Comparisons to the Saw films, torture porn, and complaints that the violence was simply all too gratuitous are the backbone of reviews that completely miss the point and should be dismissed out of hand.

"The purpose of a picaresque narrative is to present to the reader a picture of society and societal involvement that one would otherwise rather ignore, not all truths being ...more

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Oct 07, 2016 Chrissie rated it did not like it

Shelves: hf, disliked, returned, ww2, classics, 2016-read, audible-uk

Human depravity in the extreme - this book in a nutshell.

Before you pick up this book, think twice. The author originally said it was autobiographical. It is now classified as fiction. IF it were autobiographical it would be easier to swallow; you'd think that is just plain what happened. The book is incredibly difficult to read. It is surreal in tone, filled with graphic sexuality and violence. What is delivered is man at his worst told in such a way as to make the reader cringe. To what purpos ...more

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Jun 17, 2010 Jonfaith rated it it was amazing

The officer surveyed me sharply. I felt like a squashed caterpillar oozing in the dust, a creature that could not harm anyone yet aroused loathing and disgust. In the presence of such a resplendent being, armed in all the symbols of might and majesty, I was genuinely ashamed of my appearance. I had nothing against his killing me.

Much as Nietzsche detonated a shaped charge and blew away all hope of a totalizing meta-narrative, it was books like The Painted Bird which left me ashamed, almost perma ...more

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May 11, 2013 Yuri Kruman rated it it was amazing

Let fools argue about Kosiński's biography and "authenticity" of experience. His supreme ability to tell a child's horrific coming-of-age story in rural Nazi-controlled Poland, where the peasants are just as gruesomely sadistic, with adult credibility and moral authority without overreaching or sentimentality, is a dark and bittersweet triumph of humanity and then also of literature.

IMHO, the book was not written as an invective against Polish peasants or Nazis alone, any more than it is solely ...more

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Dec 13, 2016 Nate D rated it really liked it

Shelves: 60s-re-de-construction, read-in-2016, poland, wwii

The undiminished, unending nightmarish brutality of this novel might become an exercise in repetition and gratuity, were it not for undiminished horror contained in its subjects, taken both narrowly (the holocaust) and more broadly (the bottomless capacity of humans to inflict atrocities upon other humans). Early phantasmagoric and folkloric aspects and presentation as a series of episodic 'fables' creates an expectation of the hope/fear rhythms of a fairytale, but the first side of that equatio ...more

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Jul 06, 2007 Lisa (not getting friends updates) Vegan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: all interested in holocaust literature, anyone who doesn't need to avoid disturbing books

Shelves: reviewed, historical-fiction, z1983, fiction, readbooks-male-author-or-illust, holocaust, novel, zz-5star

I read an earlier edition than this. I’ve read many, many holocaust era books and I’d already read quite a few when I read this one. And this says a lot, but this one might be the most horrifying one of them all. This was one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read and yet I loved the book. I read it thinking it was non-fiction; years after I read it, I read that it was fiction, but that doesn’t diminish at all the impact I feel from reading it. It’s truly amazing what people can do to each ...more

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Apr 12, 2009 Kim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: warfare, cultured, mmix

This review is serving as a spiritual tug of war. The Battle of the Conscious. I really don’t know what to think. I hesitate between 2 and 3 stars and Yeah, I know… I’m a heartless bitch. The guilt tells me to rate it higher because of all the persecution and just plain ol’ Horrors that this kid dealt with. As if I’ve lost some humanity if I don’t appreciate this more. But… another part of me is just not feeling it.

It sort of feels like rubbernecking.

Like, it starts off right away with explodi ...more

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Apr 12, 2015 Frank Eldritch rated it really liked it

Shelves: classic-contemporary, book-diet-2015-2016

On deciding for the title of this novel, writer Jerzy Kosinki was inspired by the symbolic use of birds in literature which "allowed certain people to deal with actual events and characters without the restrictions which the writing of history imposes". He states that there was a certain peasant custom he witnessed as a child before in which he describes it as follows:

"One of the villagers' favorite entertainment was trapping birds, painting their feathers, and then releasing them in the air

...more

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Dec 14, 2018 Timothy Urges rated it liked it · review of another edition

From God’s point of view it seemed to make more sense if everyone lost the war, since everyone was committing murder.

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Feb 22, 2011 Kathryn rated it liked it

Shelves: war, gruesome-horror, historical

The night before last, I fell asleep holding my laptop, while on the couch. I could have sworn I had saved my work, which just so happened to be a review for this book, but upon logging onto Goodreads today I noticed that I did not have a review for The Painted Bird. Every time I am certain I have everything planned out in terms of writing and posting reviews, I do something stupid, such as falling asleep with my computer. Sadly, falling asleep while contemplating and discussing a book does not The night before last, I fell asleep holding my laptop, while on the couch. I could have sworn I had saved my work, which just so happened to be a review for this book, but upon logging onto Goodreads today I noticed that I did not have a review for The Painted Bird. Every time I am certain I have everything planned out in terms of writing and posting reviews, I do something stupid, such as falling asleep with my computer. Sadly, falling asleep while contemplating and discussing a book does not bode well for my opinion of the book but before you read any further, I by no means wish to discourage anyone from picking up this one of a kind novel.

I was bored at times, becoming lost in the extreme violence, graphic descriptions of torture and sexual acts, and in what semblence of story progression that existed. I also experienced huge problems connecting with the main character, a six-year-old boy. I have a six-year-old boy, so I like to think I have a basic understanding of the average developmental stage for the age, which not mesh with this book. I found it difficult to imagine the main character in such a setting and that the majority of the people he met were only interested in hurting him. This novel is not about a bad case of indifference, as is most often found in books about World War II and the Holocaust. This book is about hate and sadism, about evil born out of poverty and ignorance. Maybe this reflects more about me than the book, but I find it impossible to believe that the main character could encounter so much active and persistent evil. Maybe if the book had followed a young man or adult, the story would be more believable, barely. I just have this inclination to believe that people are less likely to harm a child. This book is saying that because he was a child, he was harmed more. His age, naivety, and innocence certainly allowed people increased opportunities to prey upon him but I just can not believe that these qualities encouraged the abuse on the scale found in this story.

The Painted Bird was ridiculous, at times, in its extremes. If half of the atrocities had been edited out, then I would have found the story much more compelling and terrifying. Please excuse the horrible pun, but the entire novel felt like overkill. Yet maybe this was the author's intention. Holding back on the amount of evil was not a characteristic of events of this period in history. So maybe I am considering this novel from too much of a literal perspective. The fact that I am unsure of the author's intentions bothers me. I tend to be unconcerned if my interpretation of a book is backwards from the intentions of the author. Once a book is published, the equivalent of releasing the work into the wild, an author must be open to personal interpretation but this book does not really allow for that in my opinion. The story is straightforward and predictable and full of pointless violence, at times. Is the author commenting on the effect of immense abuse? On the will to survive? Xenophobia? Does the author provide any cause and effect? Do we see how the events in this book have shaped the boy? (view spoiler).

I feel a good historical novel should scream the whole bit about those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. This book did no such thing. It more or less screamed abuse!, molestation!, torture!, assault!, murder!, bestiality!, war!,....come and find it within these pages!....on and on and on, rather akin to a circus act. Every physical hurt you can concieve of, with little mention of the mental and emotional backlash. I guess the reader is meant to understand that the inner emotional pain exists, just not enough for me. There was a bit involving the contemplation of good, evil, religion, and lack of faith, and though I really liked these parts of the book, I still feel that the inner workings of the boy's mind were glossed over.

The book tends to focus on sensationalistic violence. There is zero dialogue, something I did not notice at first but bothered me once I did. I did love how the author worked in the superstitious and local beliefs, especially concerning Gypsies and traditional remedies. The book felt as more of a manual, full of instructions on how-to-become-a-successful-witch-by-casting-curses-while-traveling-through-the-Polish-countryside. I also immensely enjoyed the Red Army scenes. All of the historical aspects of the book were quite entertaining.

Learning about the author has also been interesting. He was accused of plagiarism, which always sparks my interest for some odd reason, and he was not a favorite of the critics, which endears him to me more than not. He seemed to be an immensely intelligent man and his suicide the fodder of cult followings. I agree with other reviews mentioning the lack of sophistication of the writing in The Painted Bird, largely due to the predominantly juvenile tone. It was not until the last few pages that I realized the author meant to do this, maybe an attempt to allow readers to better connect with the main character. I really do not care if this is the case, as it did not work, and I read the entire book wondering why the writing felt overly simple. Realizing at the end that it was intentional and that I am too simple to pick up on the fact does not improve my feelings for the book. These types of story qualities should be effortless and conveyed seemlessly, without the reader even noticing. I want to become lost in my books, not Miss Analytical.

When I enter the stage of making excuses for a book, of trying to explain the whys with many what-ifs and/or probablies, then it tends to reflect an unsatisfied overall feeling. A seemless and stellar read means that I become so very lost that I do not notice anything about the book, nothing at all, except for what it makes me feel. A book about the things I've already mentioned should have me sobbing. I generally do not read Holocaust books as I can not tolerate the imagery but I did not develop enough of a connection to warrant massive reactions with this book. There was one scene that nearly did me in but it was not about the main character. It was about another boy. I set the book aside for nearly a week after this scene but once I returned, I wanted the entire thing to end. Even after all of my comments, I will still probably read more by this author. I have heard that his voice changes rather dramatically from book to book, so maybe a second attempt is worth my time. ...more

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Jan 02, 2019 MJ Nicholls rated it it was amazing

Shelves: eastern-europe, novels, picaresque, senryu-reviews

Senryu Review:

A wartime childhood
of persecution and pain
in fable-like prose.

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Dec 22, 2009 The Crimson Fucker rated it really liked it

The first rock thrown again
Welcome to hell, little Saint
Mother Gaia in slaughter
Welcome to paradise, Soldier

Is all BS! All of it! We a failure as a society, as a species, as individuals! We suck! There’s no way in hell anybody can convince me other wise! You know why? Cuz like millions of years ago some sort of ameba divided itself in 2... You know what the first thing it did when It separated itself? It attacked the other weaker part… and that’s what we been doing for fucking millions of years The first rock thrown again
Welcome to hell, little Saint
Mother Gaia in slaughter
Welcome to paradise, Soldier

Is all BS! All of it! We a failure as a society, as a species, as individuals! We suck! There’s no way in hell anybody can convince me other wise! You know why? Cuz like millions of years ago some sort of ameba divided itself in 2... You know what the first thing it did when It separated itself? It attacked the other weaker part… and that’s what we been doing for fucking millions of years now! One its born and life fuck you in the butt! That’s it! Some people may call me emotionally damaged because I laugh at others demise… what they fail to noticed is that when I’m laughing is because that person had a hell lot of chances to avoid all the shit that befall him/her! As somebody said… “a fool deserves all the foolery that befalls him” or something like that! Anyway, that’s how I see it! But this poor kid broke my heart today! Damn man! This poor little kid was just walking around and shit went down on him and only him! There was nothing he could do to avoid it! He was just there walking minding his own busyness and BANG! It felt like the whole universe decided to defecate on that poor kid! Superstitious crazy old ladies hitting him (x), getting molested by crazy nympho (x), being chased by fucking Nazis (x), people telling him he has a demon inside of him and making him feel horrible for being “different” (x), being molested by some crazy chick and falling in love with her just to later watch her getting freaky with her father, brother and a goat (mother fucking check!), watching some crazy cock blocker bitches put a glass bottle inside the local nympho’s vagina and then kicking her to death (again holy fuck, check!), that’s pretty much all I’ve seen so far! I’am finish reading it tomorrow… I’m pretty hard to impress and easy to amuse… I mean I’m a sick fuck! But god damn! I’m impressed! And shock! And disgusted! And depressed!
...more

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May 10, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war
The Painted Bird is pitilessly graphic and graphically merciless…
“One day, when the pigeon was trying as usual to consort with the hens and chicks, a small black shape broke away from the clouds. The hens ran screaming toward the barn and the chicken coop. The black ball fell like a stone on the flock. Only the pigeon had no place to hide. Before he even had time to spread his wings, a powerful bird with a sharp hooked beak pinned him to the ground and struc ...more

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Jul 08, 2017 Jack Tripper marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Here's the cover of the 1970 Pocket mass-market I just picked up (213 pages). Though I'll have to wait til I'm in the mood for something soul-shatteringly depressing. Or so I hear. ...more

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Jul 03, 2014 James Morcan rated it it was amazing

The Painted Bird had a profound effect on me as a teen (and I don't care about all the controversy surrounding the life of the author Jerzy Kosiński). It was intense and shocking to read about an orphaned Jewish boy (not much younger than myself at the time of reading) on the run and trying to avoid being captured or killed in WW2 Europe.

Savage. Bleak helplessness. But also the feeling that sometimes, unfortunately, "this is real life"...

I think somehow humanity needs to understand the nature o ...more

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Jun 04, 2019 BAM Endlessly Booked rated it really liked it

Shelves: guardian-list, audiobooks, library, holocaust-and-wwii-fiction

I’m pretty sure Kaz is reading this....

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Feb 02, 2014 Zoeytron rated it it was ok · review of another edition

It was clear from the beginning this story was not going to be on the light side, and being a reader who typically tends toward darker material, that did not deter me in any way from launching into this book. Not even sure from whence it came, but it has been languishing in one of our bookcases for years. I almost wish I had left it there, unread. At my age, I am well aware of the inequities of life.

The atrocities seen by and committed to the little boy in the book are almost continual, before ...more

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Feb 01, 2016 Greta G marked it as not-to-read

From some reviews:
A white hot blast of hatred
A shitstorm
A macabre fairy-tale
Too heavy to bear
A catalog of horrors
Rubbernecking
A sadean pornography

Thanks but no thanks

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Nov 27, 2016 Ms.pegasus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, history

The darkness of this book is tangible and unmitigated. The narrative voice is that of a six year old boy living in Poland at the onset of World War II. By the conclusion of the war, Kosinski has stripped every vestige of innocence from this boy, and extinguished any faith the reader might have had in humanity.

The boy is dark haired and olive skinned. An alien in the villages of the fair-haired. He speaks a different language, or at least a strange dialect. Wherever he wanders, peasants either s The darkness of this book is tangible and unmitigated. The narrative voice is that of a six year old boy living in Poland at the onset of World War II. By the conclusion of the war, Kosinski has stripped every vestige of innocence from this boy, and extinguished any faith the reader might have had in humanity.

The boy is dark haired and olive skinned. An alien in the villages of the fair-haired. He speaks a different language, or at least a strange dialect. Wherever he wanders, peasants either shun him, fear him, or capture and abuse him. Lurid superstitions about evil gypsies and malignant Jews were alive in these isolated villages even before the Nazis unleashed their official policy of genocide.

The title is a revolting indication of what will unfold. To amuse themselves, peasants would capture a bird and paint its feathers. The garishly arrayed bird would then be released. Exhilarated by its freedom, the bird would rise to rejoin its flock. There, its former companions would attack the painted bird and peck it do death. The peasants would watch as the painted, blood-covered corpse plummeted to the ground.

Kosinski, the most disciplined of writers, never lets up. He begins with subtle parallels. A pigeon tries in vain to join a flock of hens. When a hawk swoops down, the flock leaves the pigeon isolated, and it becomes easy prey. The boy befriends a squirrel in the forest only to watch helplessly as a band of boys capture the squirrel and set fire to it. Another gang of children tosses him into an icy river and laughs as he floats away, clinging to a large fish bladder. The atrocities are not limited to rejections of the outsider. A jealous husband gouges out the eyeballs of a young farmhand as the boy watches. A crowd of women viciously beats and stones to death a character named Stupid Ludmila, mentally damaged from being raped and beaten. Kosinski recounts incident after incident with horrifying intensity. In each case, the impressionable boy is a helpless observer of the suffering victim. The reader too is helpless — a helpless witness to these uninterrupted scenes of brutality and to the demise of the impressionable boy's innocence.

He perceives the adult indifference to sadistic brutality. He moves through a progression of conclusions. A witchy folk healer named Olga shelters him. “From her I learned for the first time that I was possessed by an evil spirit, which crouched in me like a mole in a deep burrow, and of whose presence I was unaware.” (Location 482). He struggles to make sense of the brutality he sees. The aura of magic surrounding the rituals of the Catholic Church suggests prayer will provoke God's intervention. “Suddenly the ruling pattern of the world was revealed to me with beautiful clarity. I understood why some people were strong and others weak, some free and others enslaved, some rich and others poor, some well and others sick. The former had simply been the first to see the need for prayer and for collecting the maximum number of days of indulgence” (Location 1823) Magic and power are his sole tools for constructing understanding. Later, the boy concludes “What mattered was that a man should consciously promote evil, find pleasure in harming others, nurturing and using the diabolical powers granted him by the Evil Ones in a manner calculated to cause as much misery and suffering around him as possible.” (Location 2168) Certainly the Germans had embraced evil; this was the explanation for their power. When, finally, the Russian Army advances and he is taken in by a soldier named Gavrila, he learns: “In this world there were realistic ways of promoting goodness, and there were people who had dedicated their whole lives to it. These were the Communist Party members.” (Location 2664) Conveniently, his new mentors are unaware of Stalin's atrocities. (The extended passage extolling the hero whom the reader knows to be Stalin is one of the more intricate bits of irony in the book).

The transformations we witness continue to spiral into a void of tangled emotions: Power is the key, and it doesn't require magic. It merely requires the will to act. Emotions like the desire for vengeance can fuel such action, he learns from Mitka. At an orphanage center, he and another boy discover a railway switch. If shifted, any passing train will be diverted to a path of destruction. “To be capable of deciding the fate of many people whom one did not even know was a magnificent sensation. I was not sure whether the pleasure depended only on the knowledge of the power one had, or on its use.” (Location 3045)

The writing is powerful. Here is Kosinski describing the boy's passage down an icy river. “The current carried me toward a shore obscured by a deepening shadow. I began to discern the marshes, the tall swaying clumps of rushes, the hidden nests of sleeping ducks. The bladder moved slowly through the scattered tufts of grass. Waterflies hovered nervously on every side of me. The yellow chalices of lilies rustled, and a frightened frog belched from a ditch. Suddenly a reed pierced the bladder. I stood on the spongy bottom”. (Location 585)

I was deep into this book before I realized there would be no traditional light at the end of the tunnel. The ending Kosinski does provide is actually dismissive of the reader's hopes. (view spoiler)

This was a relentlessly ugly book, just as Kosinski intended. In an afterword to the second edition, he describes his reaction to living in Switzerland in 1963. He was struck by the comfortable complacency of the emigree community. With their assets secured by Swiss banks, and their lives protected by the wartime posture of Swiss neutrality, they were indifferent to the atrocities committed across Eastern Europe. Many were even Holocaust deniers. He wrote THE PAINTED BIRD to confront that passivity.

By conceiving a novel of relentless horror, he denies the reader the space for distancing. In his landscape there can be no particularization: a single historic anomaly, specific villains to be blamed, localized prejudices unleashed. Through the considerable power of his fiction, he is making a bleak statement about human nature. He challenges us: Prove me wrong he seems to declare. It's a difficult proposition in the light of subsequent history. Yet, it is also a challenge — to affirm our belief in humanity through engagement.

NOTES:
I read this book after reading Kosinski's much more accessible book, BEING THERE

This blog entry makes a comparison between Kosinski and Gorky that I found interesting
http://spoilerdessert.blogspot.com/20...
...more

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Jul 22, 2015 David M rated it it was ok

Speaking of Pasolini's Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (the most horrible movie ever made, by a considerable margin: just 100 minutes of children being tortured and raped), Italo Calvino wrote, “the idea of situating Sade’s novel in the times and places of the Nazi-Fascistic republic seems the worst possible one from all points of view. The horror of that past that is in the memory of so many who lived it cannot serve as background to a symbolic and imaginary horror constantly outside the [realm] ...more

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Nov 01, 2014 Philippe rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, fiction

It was a high school teacher who first acquainted me with this book. The Painted Bird really hit me when I read it as an adolescent. The afterglow of this crescendo of violence stayed with me for a long time. Rereading the book after a few decades I better see its flaws. There is something two-dimensional and contrived about it that an experienced reader will flinch from. Still there are scenes which are difficult to put out of one’s mind (but now I would situate them earlier in the story rather ...more

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About Jerzy Kosiński

Jerzy Kosiński

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Kosiński was born Josef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity his father gave him to use, Jerzy Kosiński. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate. The Kosiński family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers, who offered assistance to Jewish Poles often at great personal risk Kosiński was born Josef Lewinkopf to Jewish parents in Łódź, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity his father gave him to use, Jerzy Kosiński. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate. The Kosiński family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers, who offered assistance to Jewish Poles often at great personal risk (the penalty for assisting Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland was death). Kosiński's father received help not only from Polish town leaders and churchmen, but also from individuals such as Marianna Pasiowa, a member of the Polish underground network helping Jews to evade capture. The family lived openly in Dąbrowa Rzeczycka near Stalowa Wola, and attended church in nearby Wola Rzeczycka, obtaining support from villagers in Kępa Rzeczycka. They were sheltered temporarily by a Catholic family in Rzeczyca Okrągła. The young Jerzy even served as an altar boy in a local church.

After World War II, Kosiński remained with his parents in Poland, moved to Jelenia Góra, and earned degrees in history and political science at the University of Łódź. He worked as an assistant in Institute of History and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1957, he emigrated to the United States, creating a fake foundation which supposedly sponsored him; he later claimed that the letters from eminent Polish communist authorities guaranteeing his loyal return, which were needed for anyone leaving the communist country at that time, had all been forged by him.

After taking odd jobs to get by, such as driving a truck, Kosiński graduated from Columbia University. In 1965, he became an American citizen. He received grants from Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967, Ford Foundation in 1968, and the American Academy in 1970, which allowed him to write a political non-fiction book, opening new doors of opportunity. In the States he became a lecturer at Yale, Princeton, Davenport University, and Wesleyan.

In 1962 Kosiński married Mary Hayward Weir who was 10 years his senior. They were divorced in 1966. Weir died in 1968 from brain cancer. Kosiński was left nothing in her will. He later fictionalized this marriage in his novel Blind Date speaking of Weir under pseudonym Mary-Jane Kirkland. Kosiński went on to marry Katherina "Kiki" von Fraunhofer, a marketing consultant and descendant of Bavarian aristocracy. They met in 1968.

Death

Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses towards the end of his life, and was under attack from journalists who alleged he was a plagiarist. By the time he reached his late 50s, Kosiński was suffering from an irregular heartbeat as well as severe physical and nervous exhaustion. Kosiński committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by taking a fatal dose of barbiturates. His parting suicide note read: "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity". ...more

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Quotes from The Painted Bird

“There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.” — 74 likes

“It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.” — 55 likes

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