| 59→and director of a film based on Brzechwa’s novel, interpreted The Academy quite unambiguously. The doll made by Filip the barber is no longer Alojzy, a future jewel of the academy, but… Adolf. The king’s herald summons to defend the country and not to surrender a single button to the wolves […]. Wearing black uniforms and carrying torches aflame, the wolves that invade the kingdom of Mateusz march to the rhythm of ‘Strong jaws, strong will and we shall conquer the world,’ a hit by the heavy-metal band TSA, a scene redolent of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, a famous apotheosis of fascism.”128
Many readings of The Academy have referenced the war, which proves that the historical moment when the fairy tale was written and published has been recognised as one of its interpretive keys. It has been suggested that the character of Mr Inkblot was modelled on Janusz Korczak,129 Franc Fiszer, a popular Warsaw bon-vivant, Brzechwa himself or his father.130 A range of real-life antecedents have also been marshalled for Adaś Niezgódka, though more often than not he has been regarded as Brzechwa’s alter ego because, like the writer ←59 | 60→himself, he does not like barley soup and carrots, and he collects buttons from coats, jackets and blazers.131
These interpretive shreds, spectacular and interesting to readers as they are, sorely lack the coherence which could be expected in the case of a text as central to the history of children’s literature as The Academy of Mr Inkblot is. For The Academy is not merely a formal and rhetorical experiment performed on the literary fairy tale, but also, given the moment when it was written, an interpretation of history or, more precisely, of the Event, which, though disastrous, leads to the renewal of the world. This is why Mr Inkblot can be viewed not just as a master and a teacher who attempts to reclaim a world deformed by the disaster, but first and foremost as a wise melamed, a rabbi perhaps, who re-institutes the lost order.
The Academy, Adam and all the “A-boys” make up the space which is controlled by Mr Inkblot, the mentor. To assume that amassing protagonists whose names start with an A is a pure coincidence would be quite a stretch of the imagination. Of course, Mr Inkblot himself explains this onomastic elitism by citing his reluctance to memorise and litter his mind with other letters. However, Mr Inkblot’s reverence for the letter A – aleph in Hebrew – cannot but prompt further inquiries. Although in the phonetic transcription this vowel is just a variety of aspiration, it means more than all the other letters of the alphabet.132 The point is that, according to kabbalists, aleph is the sum of the three fundamental geometrical forms which are the cornerstones of the Hebraic alphabet. Specifically, these forms are: the point (corresponding to the letter yod from which everything took its beginning), the line (corresponding to the letter vav and symbolising erect posture) and the plane (two lines forming an L and corresponding to the letter dalet). With its shape formed by these three letters, aleph itself means the unity of God.133
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Władysław Panas insists that the Hebraic sign for aleph is similar to the Greek χ (chi), the first letter in chiasmos, i.e. the crossing. Panas understands it as tantamount to meeting the Other. If so, aleph is a record of encounter as it symbolises God and man with one hand gesturing up at the sky and the other down at the ground, the point of beginning.134
The idea of attending to the script and hidden meanings may by particularly germane to the story of Mr Inkblot. The dense fabric of evocations of writing (including inkblotgraphy lessons, the spinning of letters, the recording of dreams, china tablets with secrets inscribed on them, an expedition for ink and the very name of the eponymous character) makes this interpretive perspective particularly compelling. Importantly, Hebrew is a holy tongue (Lashon Hakodesh), for the letters of its alphabet possess such an extraordinary power and energy that they served as the primary tools of creation. It should be remembered that Jewish kabbalists dismissed the idea of the creation of the world out of nothing and argued that because God had created the visible world in emulation of the invisible Torah, all the creatures of this world imitated the letters of the invisible, mystical Torah.135
As a consequence of this doctrine, a specific approach to the interpretation of the world was developed in which the central axis is provided by philosophical reflection on individual letters of the visible Torah, while their order is believed to be reflected in the surrounding world.
Let us focus on another series of letters, one that lines up into a name. In Hebraic tradition, to relinquish the name means to give up on life and language because, as Jacques Derrida reminds, following Scholem: “Speech is name. In the names, the power of language is enclosed, in them its abyss is sealed.”136 Jews ←61 | 62→believe that God will use their names to call them to rise from their graves on the day of resurrection, and the Talmud suggests that God’s judgment can be revoked by changing one’s name.137
Adaś is certainly a prominent name in The Academy. Adaś in Polish is an endearing diminutive of Adam, and Adam is the term for the human being in Hebrew.138 Gematria ascribes to the letters used in this name the numeric value of 45, which is represented in ma, that is, “what?”139 The human being is thus a question about what s/he is or perhaps of what s/he becomes and what s/he intends to be. Within such an interpretive framework, the human being is potentiality itself, a pure possibility which is usually attributed to the child alone.
Adaś is twelve years old when he enters the Academy in order to be changed, improved and mended so as to turn from a loser into a man of success. He is to be helped by Mr Inkblot, the mentor of the boys. However, Mr Inkblot immediately explains what rules apply at his Academy: “ ‘Remember, boys,’ Mr Inkblot told us right at the start, ‘that I will not teach you your multiplication tables, nor grammar, nor calligraphy, nor all those sciences which are usually taught at schools. I will simply open your heads up and put some brains inside.’ ”140
What does it mean to “open the heads up” and “put some brains inside” in the context of Mr Inkblot’s “educational” interventions? His Academy is not a cheder, contrary to what the age of his students could imply.
The magnificent building of the Academy, situated amidst a park which borders with fairylands, does not resemble a cheder at all. The stately three-story edifice with its halls for study and play, the mysterious room which belongs to Mr Inkblot alone and the huge garden which is surrounded by a wall with a glass gate and innumerable gates leading to various fairy tales, resembles a well-organised institution, even though the Academy is free of an oppressive system ←62 | 63→of instruction. Bringing to mind a palace rather than a school, the building substantiates the fairy-tale status of Brzechwa’s narrative. When the students pass through the glass gate, they enter a space of promise which by no means exhorts them to “abandon all hope,” instead encouraging them to develop self-confidence.
Or is it a yeshiva perhaps? Under the First Republic of Poland (i.e. between the 15th century and the third partition of Poland in 1795), such schools were called Talmudic academies. They admitted thirteen-year-old boys after their bar mitzvah. The biggest yeshiva in pre-war Poland was situated in Lublin
