Ryszard Kapuściński and Hanna Krall — two ways of writing …

Ryszard Kapuściński and Hanna Krall are among the most important names in Polish reportage, yet they represent two different ways of thinking about literary non-fiction. Both write about history, violence, memory and human experience at its limits. Both use literary form without giving up their grounding in reality. What differs is the scope of their vision, the rhythm of the narrative and the way the reporter is present. Kapuściński more often looks at great processes: decolonisation, revolutions, dictatorships, the fall of empires. Krall concentrates on an individual life, especially on the experience of the Holocaust, on memory and on survivors. In Kapuściński the individual leads to the history of the world. In Krall the history of the world is inscribed in a single life.

Travel was central to Kapuściński’s work, taking him through Africa, Latin America, Asia, the Soviet Union, Iran and Angola. In The Shadow of the Sun he tries to assemble many years of African experience into a mosaic of scenes and reflections. In Imperium he tells of the USSR through the memory of childhood, journeys and images of collapse. In Shah of Shahs he analyses the Iranian revolution, and in The Emperor he creates a parabolic portrait of absolute power. His reportage is often a movement from the concrete to synthesis. A single gesture, object or conversation is meant to reveal a political, social or historical mechanism.

Hanna Krall usually works differently. Her reportage is more intimate, condensed, built around silence and telling biographical detail. Instead of a wide panorama of the world we often receive the story of one person, one survivor, one family, one sentence that cannot be forgotten. Krall does not need a sweeping geopolitical scene to speak of history. A fragment is enough: a conversation, a document, a photograph, a recollection, a discontinuity of memory. Where Kapuściński builds a great metaphor of the world, Krall often leaves the reader with a detail that is not closed off by explanation.

The difference also concerns language. Kapuściński can be rhythmic, vivid, metaphorical. He can stylise speech, as in The Emperor, or compose a collage of notes, photographs and recordings, as in Shah of Shahs. In The Shadow of the Sun he moves from observation to anthropological reflection, and in Travels with Herodotus he combines professional memoir with the essay form. His language aims at generalisation. Krall is more spare. Her sentences are often short, taut, precise. Pause, omission and what is left unsaid all play a major role. It is a different literary mode: less panoramic and more concentrated, often painful in its restraint.

The two also place the reporter differently in relation to the protagonist. Kapuściński is often the witness of a great process. Even when he withdraws into the shadows, his presence follows from travel, risk and the attempt to understand a foreign world. In Another Day of Life the reporter’s loneliness becomes part of the story of war. In Travels with Herodotus the author writes openly about his own learning of the world. Krall more often acts as a listener and an editor of memory. Her presence can be discreet but very precise: a question, an abridgement, a decision about what to leave without comment. In Kapuściński the reporter is often a guide through the chaos of history. In Krall the reporter often makes sure the reader hears the fragility of a single voice.

What they share is a refusal to treat reportage as a straightforward record of events. For both, reportage is not simply a way of conveying information. It has form, rhythm and responsibility. Kapuściński shows that reportage can speak of power, revolution and empire with the force of literature. Krall shows that a few sentences can carry a weight of history greater than extensive explanations. Both belong to a tradition in which fact is not raw material for sensation but an obligation. It must be understood, given a form, and not betray the person who stands behind it.

They also differ in their attitude to context. Kapuściński usually aims at a broad background. If he writes about Angola, decolonisation appears, civil war, the Cold War and the drama of a city abandoned by the Portuguese. If he writes about Iran, he is interested in modernisation, religion, the secret police, revolution and revenge. Krall often reduces the background to a minimum, trusting that an individual life will itself reveal the catastrophe. This does not mean the absence of history. On the contrary: history is so strong in her work that it need not be constantly explained. It enters a biography and stays in it as a wound, an accident, a silence or the absurdity of survival.

A comparison of Kapuściński and Krall is useful for students and readers because it shows two paths of literary reportage. The first leads through the world: travel, conflict, revolution, the meeting of cultures, the image of a system. The second leads through fate: a conversation, memory, an individual experience, a detail saved from oblivion. Neither is better in itself. Each suits a different subject and sensibility.

One could say that Kapuściński asks: how does history work when it embraces whole countries, continents and empires? Krall asks: what does history do to a single human being? Kapuściński more often seeks the mechanism. Krall more often leaves the wound. Kapuściński orders chaos into a great story. Krall can show that chaos cannot be closed off. Together they form two poles of the Polish school of reportage: the global and the intimate, the synthetic and the fragmentary, the essayistic and the spare. Read side by side, they let us better understand how much literary reportage can encompass.

This comparison also has a craft dimension. From Kapuściński one can learn to build a broad context, to lead the reader through an unknown world and to draw a mechanism out of observation. From Krall one can learn the art of compression, trust in silence and responsibility for a single detail. Kapuściński shows how a detail can become the metaphor of a system. Krall shows how a detail can remain a detail and yet carry the whole weight of history.

For a school or academic reader, a good exercise is to set side by side the passages concerning the witness. In Kapuściński the witness often travels, takes risks and tries to understand a foreign order. In Krall the witness has often survived, remembers in fragments, speaks with difficulty or does not want to speak at all. In both cases the reporter must decide how far they may enter someone else’s story. This ethical question is shared by both authors, even if their literary answers differ.

Ryszard Kapuściński and Hanna Krall — two ways of writing reportage

See also

See also

Related texts

Share this article: