Polish writers rarely dwell on cities. Roman archaeologists, on the other hand, turn to their poets of yore to help them identify and recreate the ruins they have dug up. But Warsaw would be more
difficult to reconstruct after reading its writers’ poetry and prose. Even Prus and Żeromski apparently mention it only in passing, using it solely to provide settings for their novels’ plots […]. I have known Warsaw at different times and I, too, remember best its distinctive aura, which resembles no other city’s, the din of its many quarters, its people’s bearing: in a word, that which is most ephemeral, of which even less survives than of its old walls. Whenever I come upon wood cobbles, cobblestones or concrete pavement squares in another city, the distant jumbled sounds of Warsaw’s streets appear to come floating back into my ears.
Jerzy Stempowski
