Highcastle by Stanislaw Lem

Author:Stanislaw Lem [Lem, Stanisław]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press

Chapter V

The director of our school was Stanisław Buzath, a small man with a big, commanding voice, but he was also a good historian and a decent person. Geography was taught by Professor Nawrocki, called the Conductor because he silenced us with a special bell, pushing a button in his office. Lewicki and Bleiberg took turns teaching physics. I was once given a good smack by the former while he was lecturing on the properties of mercury, because I sat in the first row and in my eagerness to impress him with my knowledge completed all his sentences for him. He hit me so hard that I saw stars. A terrible disappointment: I had hoped to be singled out in another way. Miss Maria Lewicka, his namesake but no relative, taught Polish. I was always first in that class, and wrote long compositions, hardly ever able to finish them in the allotted forty-five minutes. She wrote many wonderful comments in red ink in my notebook—especially when the topic was open. That was my favorite kind of composition. Alas, I abused my special position by rarely studying or preparing for class. From the required reading list I chose only what I liked, and the Szymonowiczes and Kasprowiczes were ignored. Hence my gaps in Polish literature, which were not always filled later. I took advantage of the fact that Lewicka never called on me, and now present the sad case of a man who has been graduated from college but does not know the first thing about grammar, for in that subject I was negligent, spoiled by the confidence placed in me. Once, writing a homework assignment, I did a shameful thing. On my voyage to the planet Venus—that was the theme, which combined the requirements of composition with my own interests—I lifted a large chunk of text from a book by Professor Wyrobek on the wonders of nature: in striking prose, a description of Venus with its primal jungles and thick clouds. So my literary career began, in gymnasium, with a simple act of plagiarism. I think I did try to add something of my own, some nonsense about the Venusians (the errors of youth, how they take their revenge in later years!), but saw it was inferior to the expressiveness and vividness of Professor Wyrobek’s vision. Our Polish teacher conducted her classes in the modern way, encouraging free discussion. Having owned up to some sins, I wish to balance the picture a little by adding here that I was not indifferent to everything in Polish class, that it was not just on “Venusian” topics that I had things to say. Lewicka’s method encouraged independent thinking. On the other hand, it required a little cooperation and industry from the student, and not every student was up to that.

Mathematics was taught by Professor Zarycki, one of the more unusual members of the faculty, a Ukrainian whose daughter was involved in the assassination attempt on Minister Pieracki. Zarycki was probably in his fifties,

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