During the First planet War, a movement was born in Polish architectural thought to discover or re-discover, authentically Polish kind in construction.
As a result, in the interwar period, any structures were created in Poland designed in the alleged "national style". In Kielce region lies the village of Suków, which is actually a displacement of Kielce. Here, on a tiny hill, the church of the Queen of Poland and St Augustine, built from 1930 to 1936 in the “national style”.
The creators and promoters of the "national style" wanted to accomplish an effect in fact archeobuturistic, although, of course, that word was not utilized at the time: conventional and modern construction. The church in Sukov sets an example. Its outer body imitates medieval architecture. It imitates well, clearly consciously, without falling into tackyness: it continues and does not pretend. This is not the Potemkin mediate Ages. The interior of the temple, on the another hand, has a modernist character, which in this case means – rather ascetic and empty, betraying the influence of Protestant white walls, free from the unmoderate decoration typical of churches of earlier centuries.
The chancel, which closes the main nave, looks like a stone wall – and it truly is. A large sculpture of St. Augustine and his mother, St. Monica, before the Cross crowns the altar painting. It is evident that it was cut in the interwar, erstwhile the West discovered the qualities of an archaic sculpture—African, pre-Columbian, island, ancient, mediate Eastern, Neolithic; the essential sacrilege recorded in its structure. The sculpture above the altar reminds me of works Zbigniew Pronazki (1885-1958)which in turn brings to head something of the Forest: totems, any Olmek and Toltek sculptures. (Why was his plan of the statue of Mickiewicz prepared for Vilnius in the 1920s? Among Lithuanian bors would be as he found.). But the faces of the Sukov saints besides have a memory of the dense profiles of the Greek sculpture.
The old cultures knew (or possibly rather: sensed?), what they do by forming stone colosses to pray before them. Mircea Eliade In the "Treaty on the past of Religion" of 1949, he dedicated a chapter to the craters, "revelations through stone". Besides, he thus developed older teachings F. W. J. von Schelling (1775–1854) about “the doctrine of revelation”. In large stones everyone can feel – even through the senses of the body, contact – the building of the foundations of the world, the roots of our reality.
St. Augustine and St. Monica in Sukov look at the Cross, which seems to be infinitely far distant and at the same time right in front of their faces. For this is the Lord Jesus on the Cross, not exceedingly above us, but at erstwhile at hand.
In the side chapel there are 2 glass cases. In the larger one, like the colorful angel wings: ornate of John Paul II. Crosses again, but tiny. Crosses of partisan distinctions. It's Kielecownia, parent of guerrilla troops during the war. So in a way, both cabinets are relics.
The mediate Ages stay the warp of our European culture, the skeleton of Europe's organism. The form of churches and buildings is not little than the form of civilization, due to the fact that these shapes are one. all large style, all large epoch tried to return to the mediate Ages to plunge into the origin of our collective existence again. Let us stress that the mediate Ages is besides the origin of Poland's existence.
Romanticism created its own mediate Ages. Later it was done by the creators of neo-Gothic and neo-Romanic styles in architecture. The second – neo-Roman – went highly well in a country without the first mediate Ages, and possibly for that reason missed – in the United States, where he entered it in the cityscape Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886). At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, medieval forms, patterns and concepts resurrected – each in their own way – the European Modern and the Art and Crafts movement. The thought of "New mediate Ages" gained popularity in the interwar period erstwhile a church was built in Suków.
Looking for a large occupation for you, my peers, my successors? This is our large task: we must make our own mediate Ages. Medieval for the 21st century.
Adam Danek
Think Poland, No. 33-34 (13-20.08.2023)
