The revolutionaries of May

[János Székely]

Rob:

As a native I can testify that the three "Eis-Heiligen" plus Sophie
plus Urban (May 25) are  not specifically Polish. In GR you can find
the German term (as it relates to southeast Germany)but we have them
in Hungary too and as far as I remember the late Igor Zabel from
Slovenia also mentioned them as an element of folk meteorology. They
denote a quirk in Central European Continental climate, i.e. frequent
mid-May morning frosts after several warm weeks (deep in the flowering
period) that you don't have elsewhere.

On the other hand, I have never met any texts that called the Warsaw
Ghetto fighters "revolutionaries". It was an act of wartime resistance
rather than something intended as a social revolution.

János

2009/7/27 Rob Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com>:
>> Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:44:56 +0200
>> From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=E1nos_Sz=E9kely?= <miksaapja at gmail.com>
>> Subject: The revolutionaries of May

>
>
> I agree that the phrase "the revolutionaries of May" in GR is one that might
> resonate with the 1968 Paris Student Revolts. But there's really nothing
> else supporting that interpretation in the text.
>
> However, that first paragraph in Part 3 of GR does explicitly identify a
> temporal context: "In certain years, especially War years ... " And the
> three "ice saints" mentioned are specifically Polish:
>
> "In Poland, the Ice Saints are St. Pancras, St. Servatus and St. Boniface;
> St. Boniface's feast day falling on May 14. The trio are known collectively
> as the 'cold gardeners', the three days culminating in 'Zimna Zośka' (Cold
> Sophia's), the feast day of St. Sophia which falls on May 15."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Saints
>
> So my guess is that the most likely direct referent for the phrase is the
> Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, particularly considering the recollection of
> the encounter Slothrop has with the "tiny frost flower" daughter of a
> concentration camp commandant and her gruesome toys recounted just after
> this:
>
> "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Polish: Powstanie w getcie warszawskim; German:
> Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto) was the Jewish resistance that arose within
> the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II, and which
> opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population
> to the Treblinka extermination camp.
>
> "The insurgency was launched against the Germans on January 18, 1943. The
> most significant portion of the rebellion took place from April 19 until May
> 16, 1943, and ended when the poorly armed and supplied resistance was
> crushed by the German troops under the direct command of Jürgen Stroop. It
> was the largest single revolt by the Jews during the Holocaust."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_ghetto_uprising
>
> Details of time and place "in the zone" are as precise here as elsewhere in
> the novel. The last battle of the war in Europe was fought on May 14-15
> 1945, the Battle of Poljana in Slovenia, which is why in the text Slothrop &
> co "found the countryside at peace, this year, by a scant few days."
>
> And "Major-General Kammler" of the SS had replaced Walter Dornberger as the
> director of the V-2 program in August 1944 and had organised the move of the
> Peenemunde facilities to the underground Mittelwerke complex in August 1943.
> He is supposed to have committed suicide somewhere around the 9-10 May 1945,
> somewhere en route from the Tyrol to Prague, "on one of the main arterials
> of the spring's last dissolution and retreat." (282)
>
> best regards
>