The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma by Tadeusz Dolęga-Mostowicz

The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma 

by Tadeusz Dolęga-Mostowicz

(translated from the Polish by Ewa Małachoska-Pasek and Megan Thomas) 

A review

What is the best-known Polish novel you’ve never heard of? I’ll hazard a guess and say it’s The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma by Tadeusz Dolęga-Mostowicz.  First issued in 1932 as Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy, it is now being published by Northwestern University Press in a translation by Ewa Małachowska-Pasek and Megan Thomas, the first one ever in English.  As Benjamin Paloff explains in his introduction to the work, this novel had such an impact in Poland that it has penetrated popular culture and parlance where the word “Dyzma” is used for “a phony, a fraud, especially one whose trickery depends on others’ assumptions, self-deceptions, and moral shortcomings”.  Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There (1970), later adapted into a film featuring Peter Sellers, was immediately recognised by Polish critics to be a plagiarised version of Dolęga-Mostowicz’s novel.  Ironically, the original Dyzma is making his debut in the English-speaking world fifty years after his copy did.  It is a twist of fate which seems strangely apt considering that this is a novel about an impostor and trickster.    

The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma is set in the (then contemporary) Poland of the 1930s.  With the declaration of the Second Polish Republic in 1918, Poland had become an independent state, after having been previously ruled by the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. This novel is a biting satire on the ruling class which took over the country, portrayed as a society corrupt at its heart, built on an unhealthy and unholy alliance between the political class, Polish nobility and big business.  We meet the protagonist, Dyzma, as a down-and-out, unemployed clerk, eking out a hand-to-mouth existence.  Having acquired, by pure chance, an invitation to a high-class party, he decides to gate-crash the event, with no other expectation than to eat his fill for free.  However, an altercation with bigwig Terkowski, hated and feared by all, marks him out as a brave straight-talker, exactly the “strong man” needed in politics.  No one is more surprised at this than Dyzma himself.  As his fame grows and he becomes the darling of the upper classes, Dyzma cunningly manages to survive by lying through his teeth, recycling other people’s opinions, surrounding himself with trusted collaborators and, when necessary, relying on the power of his newly-found riches and connections.  In the circles he frequents, Dyzma’s ignorant silences are seen as proof of his wisdom; his uncouth behaviour is excused as a mark of his strong, magnetic personality; his demeaning attitude towards women is admired (including by some of his conquests) as the embodiment of the virile.   

What I found brilliant about this novel is that Dyzma beguiles even us readers, even though we know he is a fraud.  He is presented, not unfavourably, as an anti-hero. His often comic escapades, sometimes redolent of early Waugh (there’s a brilliant set-piece involving Dyzma’s appointment as the leader of a cabal of high-society witches), make him a surprisingly endearing character, one we root for as he hoodwinks a corrupt and morally bankrupt political class.  It is when Dyzma’s actions become unequivocally indefensible that we realise that, like many others in the novel, we have also been taken in by the protagonist (and his creator).    This is not light-hearted comedy but a dark and cynical satire.  And real satire always has a moral heart.   In this case, the message is as relevant as ever.  By all means, take the ruling class to task.    But be equally careful of charismatic figures who portray themselves or are portrayed as political saviours.  Be careful of those jesters who promise to short-circuit the system, and yet end up using it for their own ends. Close to a century after its publication, as the culture of the “strong man” seems to be gaining ground again, the novel comes across as a frighteningly timely one.

Paperback, 312 pages

Expected publication: September 15th 2020 by Northwestern University Press (first published 1932)