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Volcano and Miracle: A Selection from The Journal Written at Night
This kaleidoscopic collection of more than 100 journal entries from one of Poland's greatest living writers includes semifictional tales, based on historical sources, that mirror the fragility of the human life. Here also are brilliant critical pieces on Soviet Communism and figures such as Kafka, Mann, Camus, and Dostoevsky.
- GenresEssaysPolish Literature
288 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1996
About the author
Gustaw Herling-Grudziński
94 books63 followersGustaw Herling-Grudziński (May 20, 1919 - July 4, 2000) was a Polish writer, journalist, essayist and soldier. He is best known for writing a personal account of life in the Soviet gulag - A World Apart.
He was born in Kielce. His studies of Polish literature at Warsaw University were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War (German invasion of Poland). During the Fall of 1939 he co-founded an underground resistance organization "Polska Ludowa Akcja Niepodległościowa, PLAN". As the organization's courier he traveled to then Soviet occupied Lwów (Lviv), but was arrested in March 1940 by the NKVD and sentenced on fabricated espionage charges. Imprisoned in Vitsebsk and a gulag in Arkhangelsk region for 2 years, he was released in 1942 under the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement. He joined Gen. Władysław Anders' Army (Polish II Corps) and later fought in North Africa and in Italy, taking part in the battle of Monte Cassino. For his valor in combat he was decorated with the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration.
In 1947 he co-founded and initially co-edited the political and cultural magazine Kultura, then published in Rome. When the magazine moved to Paris, he settled first in London and finally in Naples, Italy, where he married Lidia, a daughter of the philosopher Benedetto Croce. He also wrote for the Italian "Tempo presente" run by Nicola Chiaromonte and for various dailies and periodicals.
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Works
His most famous book, A World Apart, was translated into English by Andrzej Ciolkosz and published with an introduction by Bertrand Russell in 1951 (the 2005 edition would feature an introduction by Anne Applebaum). By describing life in the gulag in a harrowing personal account, it provides an in-depth, original analysis of the nature of the Soviet communist system. Written 10 years before Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it brought him international acclaim but also criticism from Soviet sympathizers.
A selection from the Journal Written at Night, a journal that he wrote for 30 years, was translated by Ronald Strom and published as Volcano and Miracle (1997). A collection of his short stories, The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories (2003), has been translated by Bill Johnston.
Awards
He was the winner of many literary prizes: Kultura (1958), Jurzykowski (1964), Kościelskis (1966), The News (1981), the Italian Premio Viareggio prize, the international Prix Gutenberg, and French Pen-Club. In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.
He was born in Kielce. His studies of Polish literature at Warsaw University were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War (German invasion of Poland). During the Fall of 1939 he co-founded an underground resistance organization "Polska Ludowa Akcja Niepodległościowa, PLAN". As the organization's courier he traveled to then Soviet occupied Lwów (Lviv), but was arrested in March 1940 by the NKVD and sentenced on fabricated espionage charges. Imprisoned in Vitsebsk and a gulag in Arkhangelsk region for 2 years, he was released in 1942 under the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement. He joined Gen. Władysław Anders' Army (Polish II Corps) and later fought in North Africa and in Italy, taking part in the battle of Monte Cassino. For his valor in combat he was decorated with the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration.
In 1947 he co-founded and initially co-edited the political and cultural magazine Kultura, then published in Rome. When the magazine moved to Paris, he settled first in London and finally in Naples, Italy, where he married Lidia, a daughter of the philosopher Benedetto Croce. He also wrote for the Italian "Tempo presente" run by Nicola Chiaromonte and for various dailies and periodicals.
-----------------------------------------
Works
His most famous book, A World Apart, was translated into English by Andrzej Ciolkosz and published with an introduction by Bertrand Russell in 1951 (the 2005 edition would feature an introduction by Anne Applebaum). By describing life in the gulag in a harrowing personal account, it provides an in-depth, original analysis of the nature of the Soviet communist system. Written 10 years before Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, it brought him international acclaim but also criticism from Soviet sympathizers.
A selection from the Journal Written at Night, a journal that he wrote for 30 years, was translated by Ronald Strom and published as Volcano and Miracle (1997). A collection of his short stories, The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories (2003), has been translated by Bill Johnston.
Awards
He was the winner of many literary prizes: Kultura (1958), Jurzykowski (1964), Kościelskis (1966), The News (1981), the Italian Premio Viareggio prize, the international Prix Gutenberg, and French Pen-Club. In 1998 he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 15, 2016
The author was a Polish Jewish writer and journalist (1919 – 2000) who fought in the underground against the Nazis and Soviets and was imprisoned in a Soviet work camp during WW II.
This collection is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, mainly articles for an Italian newspaper column he wrote as he lived much of his post-war life in Naples. The pieces are organized chronically from 1970 to 1993. Some of the earliest pieces involve so many long-lost names of early Communist politicians that they are of interest only to Russian scholars. One good piece that is understandable to the lay reader is a comparison of Stalin and Caligula. And here’s a good quote that relates to what some have called our current “post-truth: environment: “Bolshevism was a religion in the sense that its dogmas transcended clear proof or were contrary to it. Those who embraced Bolshevism became insensitive to scientific proof and committed intellectual suicide.” [pp. 180-81.]
Many of the best articles are related to literature. There’s a piece on Kafka’s five years’ worth of love letters to his fiancé, Felice Bauer. Who knew Kafka had a fiancé? There’s writing about Nietzsche’s dementia-filled final days in Turin. There is an essay on the remarkable similarities between two tales of scriveners; Bartleby by Melville (1856) and The Overcoat by Gogol (1841). There are pieces on Gogol in Rome and Thomas Mann in Naples; the mix-up at Chekhov’s funeral, where people followed the wrong casket to the grave. And other essays on Conrad, Camus, Ignazio Silone, Flaubert and Defoe. He compares Conrad’s Secret Agent to Italy’s Red Brigades active in the 70’s and early 80’s.
Here’s an interesting literary idea: Herling expands on a quote by Andrzej Ciolkosz that incandescent lighting dispelled the dark and created a flat and shallow illusion of clarity that changed the way that novelists look at people: candles and oil lamps cast them in an enigmatic dimension on the fragile border between the seen and unseen, between the graspable and ungraspable. All that was lost with modern lighting.
The title (it could also be Devil and God) reflects the uncertainty of life in earthquake and volcano-prone Naples. There are many stories about and references to earthquakes. I looked up the death toll of modern earthquakes in Naples and southern Italy: 40,000 in 1783; 11,000 in 1857; 3,000 in 1883; 200,000 in 1908; 2,000 in 1930; 4,000 in 1980.
The beauty of a collection of essays and vignettes like this is that you pick up all kinds of information you would not otherwise be aware of. There’s a meditation on the plague years in Naples inspired by a painting of the year 1656. A good quote: “Plague is synonymous with the decay of the bonds that link people.” [p. 223.] One story is about an early (1600’s) citizens’ revolt where the poor established their own government (quickly quelled). In an essay on Platonov’s novel Chevengur, Herling writes that that author taught us to value love of what is near rather than love of what is afar. (Local, not global?) There’s a reference to Italy’s Schidler: Giogio Perlasca who saved more than 5,000 Jews in Hungary.
Since the author was imprisoned, we learn of many (so many!) death camps, work camps, prison camps, notably the massacres near Katyn Forest in 1940 where Stalin ordered the death of as many as 22,000 imprisoned Polish police, priests, landowners, government officials and intelligentsia. In fact the author is probably best-known for his account of his life in a Soviet gulag, A World Apart, published in 1951.
This collection is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, mainly articles for an Italian newspaper column he wrote as he lived much of his post-war life in Naples. The pieces are organized chronically from 1970 to 1993. Some of the earliest pieces involve so many long-lost names of early Communist politicians that they are of interest only to Russian scholars. One good piece that is understandable to the lay reader is a comparison of Stalin and Caligula. And here’s a good quote that relates to what some have called our current “post-truth: environment: “Bolshevism was a religion in the sense that its dogmas transcended clear proof or were contrary to it. Those who embraced Bolshevism became insensitive to scientific proof and committed intellectual suicide.” [pp. 180-81.]
Many of the best articles are related to literature. There’s a piece on Kafka’s five years’ worth of love letters to his fiancé, Felice Bauer. Who knew Kafka had a fiancé? There’s writing about Nietzsche’s dementia-filled final days in Turin. There is an essay on the remarkable similarities between two tales of scriveners; Bartleby by Melville (1856) and The Overcoat by Gogol (1841). There are pieces on Gogol in Rome and Thomas Mann in Naples; the mix-up at Chekhov’s funeral, where people followed the wrong casket to the grave. And other essays on Conrad, Camus, Ignazio Silone, Flaubert and Defoe. He compares Conrad’s Secret Agent to Italy’s Red Brigades active in the 70’s and early 80’s.
Here’s an interesting literary idea: Herling expands on a quote by Andrzej Ciolkosz that incandescent lighting dispelled the dark and created a flat and shallow illusion of clarity that changed the way that novelists look at people: candles and oil lamps cast them in an enigmatic dimension on the fragile border between the seen and unseen, between the graspable and ungraspable. All that was lost with modern lighting.
The title (it could also be Devil and God) reflects the uncertainty of life in earthquake and volcano-prone Naples. There are many stories about and references to earthquakes. I looked up the death toll of modern earthquakes in Naples and southern Italy: 40,000 in 1783; 11,000 in 1857; 3,000 in 1883; 200,000 in 1908; 2,000 in 1930; 4,000 in 1980.
The beauty of a collection of essays and vignettes like this is that you pick up all kinds of information you would not otherwise be aware of. There’s a meditation on the plague years in Naples inspired by a painting of the year 1656. A good quote: “Plague is synonymous with the decay of the bonds that link people.” [p. 223.] One story is about an early (1600’s) citizens’ revolt where the poor established their own government (quickly quelled). In an essay on Platonov’s novel Chevengur, Herling writes that that author taught us to value love of what is near rather than love of what is afar. (Local, not global?) There’s a reference to Italy’s Schidler: Giogio Perlasca who saved more than 5,000 Jews in Hungary.
Since the author was imprisoned, we learn of many (so many!) death camps, work camps, prison camps, notably the massacres near Katyn Forest in 1940 where Stalin ordered the death of as many as 22,000 imprisoned Polish police, priests, landowners, government officials and intelligentsia. In fact the author is probably best-known for his account of his life in a Soviet gulag, A World Apart, published in 1951.
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April 13, 2023the journal written at night
'the corpse was placed in a zinc casket tagged "fresh oysters"'
so gustaw herling reports of the death and funeral of chekhov in his 'the journal written at night' (excerpts of which have been translated and published as 'volcano and miracle' in honour of gustaw's new home in naples).
chekhov was a doctor he was used to base materiality, the dreadful comedy of things, the body of a general arrived at the moscow station at the same time as chehov's body - some of chekhov's mourners followed it to the cemetery by mistake.
'the sterility of diaries and memoirs comes from a mania for bookkeeping.'
- gustaw herling, 7th may 1973, maisons-lafitte.
gustaw discusses diaries (and collections of franz kafka's letters to felice bauer(or to milena jesenka). he tries to explain why he does not like cesare pavese's published diary 'il mestiere di vivere' (the business of life)
'in general I do not like diaries that are too personal. they almost always force the author to play the game in such a way that the future reader gradually, step by step, gets the upper hand. does this make me look all right? and this?... there is a part of man, as it should be, which no one, except for god, has the right to enter. paradoxically a good diary, or in any case one that is worth reading, is one in which the author only rarely pokes his antennae out of the shell- and then draws back at once...'
in august 1950 pavese had committed suicide. herling finds this gesture stronger and better composed even than his diary.
'... I assign diaries special status on the periphery of literature... this is not the case with pavese. his diary is literary in the most dangerous sense of the word: in the sense that he is bound to his 'persona', which is put on public view, and his life is dominated by literature...'
'late one evening early last december, soon after the earthquake...' - gustaw herling, may 1981
gustaw has been invited by one of his military friends to witness the relief operation by the italian military. in lucarna and irpinia - the epicentre was eboli (he says) at the gateway to the region - this was relatively untouched, but the village of tora alta has been entirely destroyed. the few standing structures were to be demolished and the ground sown with lime to dissolve the corpses that can not be safely dug out for fear of further collapses.
'handwritten leaflets appeared here and there discussing un evento escatologico... the precise details were to be found in the bible, and it had to be 'prepared for with unceasing prayer'. the area was swarming with magicians, palmists, fortune-tellers, and preachers...the shepherds of sottomonte fled with their sheep to the snow-covered heights, straight into a trap they took for a promise of salvation. 'the whole world won't perish... god would not allow it'.'
after experiencing the earthquake in naples gustaw had taken to staying up all night, he was not sleeping, spending his nights sitting up reading crime and punishment. the opportunity to go and see instead was a relief. they drive up into the mountains largely in silence 'people do not realize how insidiously, in certain circumstances, they can be infected by the rhetorical.'
and yet he is a writer. this is (often) precisely his job.
when he gets there he promptly comes down with a fever. he is soon sent home. he is no longer a young man. he sees the ruins. the sees the villagers return to stare at the ruins of their town.
his military friend finds himself attempting to teach the dead-eyed village children to keep them from going back to look - he reads them fables and fairy stories, in a corner they reconstruct a nativity scene with the damaged and dusty materials that come to hand.
it is the notion that 'the whole world won't perish... god would not allow it' that gustaw criticizes.
'the corpse was placed in a zinc casket tagged "fresh oysters"'
so gustaw herling reports of the death and funeral of chekhov in his 'the journal written at night' (excerpts of which have been translated and published as 'volcano and miracle' in honour of gustaw's new home in naples).
chekhov was a doctor he was used to base materiality, the dreadful comedy of things, the body of a general arrived at the moscow station at the same time as chehov's body - some of chekhov's mourners followed it to the cemetery by mistake.
'the sterility of diaries and memoirs comes from a mania for bookkeeping.'
- gustaw herling, 7th may 1973, maisons-lafitte.
gustaw discusses diaries (and collections of franz kafka's letters to felice bauer(or to milena jesenka). he tries to explain why he does not like cesare pavese's published diary 'il mestiere di vivere' (the business of life)
'in general I do not like diaries that are too personal. they almost always force the author to play the game in such a way that the future reader gradually, step by step, gets the upper hand. does this make me look all right? and this?... there is a part of man, as it should be, which no one, except for god, has the right to enter. paradoxically a good diary, or in any case one that is worth reading, is one in which the author only rarely pokes his antennae out of the shell- and then draws back at once...'
in august 1950 pavese had committed suicide. herling finds this gesture stronger and better composed even than his diary.
'... I assign diaries special status on the periphery of literature... this is not the case with pavese. his diary is literary in the most dangerous sense of the word: in the sense that he is bound to his 'persona', which is put on public view, and his life is dominated by literature...'
'late one evening early last december, soon after the earthquake...' - gustaw herling, may 1981
gustaw has been invited by one of his military friends to witness the relief operation by the italian military. in lucarna and irpinia - the epicentre was eboli (he says) at the gateway to the region - this was relatively untouched, but the village of tora alta has been entirely destroyed. the few standing structures were to be demolished and the ground sown with lime to dissolve the corpses that can not be safely dug out for fear of further collapses.
'handwritten leaflets appeared here and there discussing un evento escatologico... the precise details were to be found in the bible, and it had to be 'prepared for with unceasing prayer'. the area was swarming with magicians, palmists, fortune-tellers, and preachers...the shepherds of sottomonte fled with their sheep to the snow-covered heights, straight into a trap they took for a promise of salvation. 'the whole world won't perish... god would not allow it'.'
after experiencing the earthquake in naples gustaw had taken to staying up all night, he was not sleeping, spending his nights sitting up reading crime and punishment. the opportunity to go and see instead was a relief. they drive up into the mountains largely in silence 'people do not realize how insidiously, in certain circumstances, they can be infected by the rhetorical.'
and yet he is a writer. this is (often) precisely his job.
when he gets there he promptly comes down with a fever. he is soon sent home. he is no longer a young man. he sees the ruins. the sees the villagers return to stare at the ruins of their town.
his military friend finds himself attempting to teach the dead-eyed village children to keep them from going back to look - he reads them fables and fairy stories, in a corner they reconstruct a nativity scene with the damaged and dusty materials that come to hand.
it is the notion that 'the whole world won't perish... god would not allow it' that gustaw criticizes.
November 2, 2025
many interesting details, but style is at times tiresome.
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January 21, 2009Herling was an unexpected find. I love his fictional journal entries as well as his literary pieces on Kafka, Dostoyevsky and other writers.
September 18, 2016
To constantly return to and learn from. Magnificent book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews