05 September 2014
Highlights of the Polonica collection
Polish early printed books in the British Library collections, although small in number, include many rare items. The collection is also known by its Latin name Polonica, meaning written documents of Polish origin or related to Poland. So what constitutes a Polonicum in the BL collections?
The criterion is based on geographical and linguistic principles. This means that the collection contains books in Polish published in any country and books in other languages published within the historical boundaries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It should be emphasized that the frontiers kept changing over the centuries. This narrow approach excludes a large number of books by Polish authors whose works, written mainly in Latin, were published in Western Europe. However, the criteria established in the 19th century by the great Polish bibliographer and librarian Karol Estreicher, and used ever since in Polish bibliography allow for a broader practice. Therefore works by such distinguished authors as Copernicus, Cromerus or Sarbievius are included in the Polonica collections by the Polish standards.
The strength of our collection is enhanced by the wide range of subjects covered from religious works, political tracts and legal documents to historical volumes, astronomical treatises, poetry and prose. It represents the intellectual life of the Polish-Lithuanian state and is an excellent source of information for researchers of that period.
The collection contains over 2000 items. The 16th century treasures include books by Mikolaj Rej, the “father of Polish literature”, the first Polish grammar by Piotr Stojenski-Statorius (1568), the first codification of law in the Kingdom of Poland (1506) and the first printed history of Poland (1521). The richness of the collection also lies in the variety of early Polish Bibles.
Zwierciadlo (Kraków, 1567-8; C.125.e.20) by Rej is a work written partly in prose and partly in verse in a vividly colloquial language. It reflects the author’s view on the mentality and behaviour of the Polish gentry of that century (see two images below). A full set of images of this work are available here.
Commune Incliti Poloniae regni… (Kraków, 1506; C.107.g.14) is known as Łaski’s Statues. Łaski, Chancellor and Primate of Poland, was asked by the Sejm (Polish Parliament) to bring together all the legislation up to that time. The Statues remained in force until the last partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.
Commune Incliti Poloniae regni… (Kraków, 1506; C.107.g.14)
The most notable among the bibles is the Radziwiłł Bible (Brest-Litovsk, 1563; C.11.d.6). It is the first complete Protestant Bible translated into Polish and represents some of the best usage of the Polish language at the time (see three images below). This copy was once a treasured possession of Bishop Józef Załuski, co-founder of the first Polish national library (1747), plundered by the Russians in 1795. It bears his signature and was marked by him with six stars as rarissimus.
Hippica by Krzysztof Dorohostajski (Kraków, 1603; C.185.b.1) is one of the finest books of the 17th century collection. This handbook on horse-breeding and horse-training was very popular among the Polish aristocracy and gentry, who were great lovers of horses (images below).
Among the 18th century items the most remarkable is the first modern constitution in Europe and one of the world’s greatest documents of freedom Ustawa rządowa (‘Government Act’; Warsaw, 1791; Cup.403.l.8) enacted on 3 May 1791 (see picture below). Images are available here.
Magda Szkuta, Curator Polish Studies
01 August 2014
The unvanquished city: Warsaw Uprising 1944
Hundreds of books have been published in Poland about the Warsaw Uprising. However, 70 years later the Poles are still divided whether it was the right or wrong decision to launch it.
In July 1944, after almost five years of German occupation, Poland was a theatre of heavy fighting between the Red Army advancing from the east and the German forces retreating to the west. At the order of the leadership of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa or AK) the uprising, which aimed to liberate the capital from the departing Germans, began on 1st August at 5 pm (called W-hour). The AK was the largest underground resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe numbering at its peak around 400,000. The timing coincided with the Red Army approaching Warsaw. Intended to last a few days (there was ammunition in hand for three to five days), the uprising came eventually to a bitter end on 2nd October. This was due to the unimaginable bravery of the insurgents and civilians alike.
A network of street barricades (picture above from Wikimedia Commons) constructed by civilians, home-made grenades and guns as well as arms captured from the enemy were the insurgents’ weapon against the overwhelming German forces armed with tanks, planes and artillery. The Red Army was idly standing on the eastern bank of the river Vistula watching the burning city from a distance. Airdrops of supplies by Allied planes were not allowed by the Soviets to reach Warsaw until mid-September. Inevitably, there were shortages of food, water, medicine and ammunition in the city. Although the living conditions were appalling, the people of Warsaw were in high spirits fighting for the freedom of their country. Life went on as much as the circumstances permitted with theatres, cinemas, post offices open and 130 newspapers and periodicals published overall. The Scout Postal Service was in operation throughout the rising. Mail, newspapers and messages were delivered around the fighting city by 10 to 15 year-old scouts of the Gray Ranks.
Tragically, 63 days of heroic and lonely struggle resulted in the death of some 200,000 inhabitants and 18,000 insurgents with additional 6,000 wounded, not to mention the physical and cultural destruction of the city, as described in Władysław Bartoszewski and Adam Bujak’s book Abandoned heroes of the Warsaw Uprising (Kraków, 2008; LD.31.b.1915). Moreover, Polish society was deprived of a large portion of its intellectual elite. Following the surrender of Polish forces 700,000 civilians were expelled from the city and 15,000 insurgents sent to POW camps. Before the demolition began Warsaw had been plundered. Trains laden with goods including works of art, books, manuscripts, maps, furniture dismantled factories etc. were leaving Warsaw for the Reich. Nothing of value was left. Then in the course of a few months Germans razed the rest of the city to the ground. Street after street, house after house the city of Warsaw ceased to exist. As the result of all the fighting in the capital during the Second World War 85% of the buildings were levelled including schools, hospitals, libraries, museums and historical monuments.
Grave of Polish soldiers in Warsaw in 1945 (from Wikimedia Commons)
The tragic fate of the city was a combination of political and military miscalculations by the Polish leaders of the underground resistance and global politics played by the “Big Three” – Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 is considered one of the greatest tragedies of the Second World War.
Magda Szkuta, Curator Polish Studies
Further reading
Norman Davies, Rising ’44: ‘the battle for Warsaw’ (London, 2004) YC.2006.a.1738.
18 July 2014
Jan Karski (1914–2000), a man of exceptional courage, high moral values and humanism
The Polish Parliament declared 2014 to be Jan Karski Year to celebrate the centenary of his birth. Born Jan Kozielewski in Łódź and raised in a Catholic family, he spent his early life in the parts of the city which had been populated by the Jews. He studied law and diplomacy at Lwów University and joined the Polish Foreign Service in 1935. He also completed a military training and achieved the rank of second lieutenant. At the outbreak of the Second World War Karski was imprisoned by the Soviets, but managed to escape the Katyn massacre by being handed over to the Germans during a prisoner exchange. Another lucky escape, from German hands, saved him from being imprisoned in a POW camp in the General Government.
Photograph of Jan Karski from Righteous Among The Nations
He joined the Polish resistance movement soon after he had successfully reached Warsaw in November 1939 and became a courier for the Polish underground. His mission was to convey information on the situation in occupied Poland to the Polish Government in Exile, based first in France, and, after her surrender to the Germans, in London. He secretly crossed the German borders four times. During a mission in June 1940 Karski was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, but with the help of the local resistance in Nowy Sącz (southern Poland) he made a narrow escape. He continued his underground activities until 1942. After secretly visiting the Warsaw Ghetto and a concentration camp Karski eventually had to leave Poland. He had been wanted by the Gestapo since his daring escape.
In Britain, Karski reported on the Nazi atrocities and extermination of European Jews in German-occupied Poland to the Polish government officials and Allied leaders, also meeting with the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. He then travelled to America where he gave his testimony to President Roosevelt and spoke to other statesmen, politicians, journalists, diplomats and writers about what he had witnessed. However, his heroic efforts to awaken the moral conscience of the Western leaders to the horrendous plight of the Jews were to no avail. They had other priorities. This experience haunted him for the rest of his life.
He used a variety of false identities in the underground and applied for a visa to the United States in 1943 as Jan Karski. After the war he settled down in the States and became an American citizen under this name. His autobiographical book Story of a Secret State was first published in Boston in 1944 (8095.aaa.17) and was later translated into various languages and published all over Europe and republished in the United States.
He kept silent about his war activities for over 30 years. He spoke publicly for the first time when he gave an interview for Lanzmann’s Shoah in 1978.
A recently published illustrated biography, Jan Karski: photobiography (Warsaw, 2014; YF.2014.b.1532), is a fascinating chronicle of his life. It includes photos of Karski’s family, friends and himself alongside documents, notes, maps of his travels and quotes. Short narratives scattered throughout the book provide the historical background of the period.
Magda Szkuta, Curator Polish Studies
14 May 2014
Polish reportage - reality versus fiction
Reportage as a literary genre is a product of the 20th century mass society. Mass communication, the ease of travel, cultural diversity and the impact of global media have strongly contributed to the development of this genre. However, some elements of reportage were present in the works of writers of the previous centuries. The word ‘reportage’ came to some languages, including Polish, via French. The Polish school of reportage has a long tradition in Poland’s cultural and political heritage.
Melchior Wańkowicz (1892-1974) is considered the father of Polish reportage, and his contemporaries included Ksawery Pruszyński (1907-1950) and Arkady Fiedler (1894-1985). His first book, a result of his journey to Mexico, was published in 1927. However, Wańkowicz, a war correspondent for the Polish Armed Forces, only rose to fame after his eye-witness account of the battle of Monte Cassino was published in 1945, Bitwa o Monte Cassino (Rzym, 1945-47; 9101.dd.43).
An ace of Polish reportage was Ryszard Kapuściński (1932-2007), a reporter and writer of international prestige. He started his literary career as a poet and then turned to journalism in the darkest period of the communist era. For many years he was the only foreign correspondent of the Polish Press Agency. In 1955 he had to hide from the authorities for publishing a critical article about working conditions in one of the largest industrial sites in Poland. Ironically, the totalitarian system paved the way for the success of Polish reportage. Due to the lack of freedom of expression, writers had to use Aesopian language to convey the hidden meaning of their intentions. Reportage seemed an ideal genre for this purpose. Kapuściński’s The Emperor (London, 1983; X.809/67171), written in 1978, is about the collapse of the absolutist regime of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia. All autocratic systems have many things in common, and thus, unsurprisingly, the book has been regarded as an allegory of communist power in Poland.
Ryszard Kapuściński (Photograph by Mariusz Kubik from Wikimedia Commons CC-BY 2.5)
When asked about the definition of reportage, Kapuściński used to emphasize two elements: a writer has to travel with the aim of describing a particular event, and the event must be thoroughly documented by him. Moreover, good reportage is a synthesis of private experience and wider historical context. The writer not only describes the events he has seen with his own eyes but is expected to provide a comprehensive explanation for them. His narrative journalism often assumed the shape of literary fiction where facts were mixed with imagination. Before starting his own writing, Kapuściński avidly engaged himself in reading a large number of works related to the topic of his subsequent book. Amusingly, he used to travel with a suitcase predominantly containing books, and on one occasion they were accompanied by a pair of jeans and a frying pan, which aroused the astonishment of a customs officer.
Kapuściński favoured personal perception over objectivity, and therefore his books are full of his reflections on life. Focused on the situation of man, entangled in the complexities of modern life, Kapuściński felt that his moral duty was to report on wars, conflicts and poverty. He observed and experienced them over a period of forty years of extensive travel in the Third World. Advocating the equality of cultures, he hoped that his writing, even if marginally, might contribute to reducing tensions and hostility between peoples.
Kapuściński has many followers in Poland. A large group of young Polish reportage writers, such as Jacek Hugo-Bader, Wojciech Tochman, Mariusz Szczygieł, Beata Pawlak, Wojciech Jagielski and others, adopted a similar style focusing on personal experience rather than on factual description. Witold Szabłowski, a journalist and writer, also belongs to the school of literary reportage shaped by Kapuściński. He studied political science in both Warsaw and Istanbul, and specialises in Turkish affairs. Zabójca z miasta moreli (Wołowiec, 2010; YF.2012.a.9212) is a collection of stories from Turkey. The book provides an in-depth picture of social, cultural and political life in modern Turkey and touches upon shocking incidents that tear Turkish society apart. This reportage, translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones under the title The Assassin from Apricot City (London, 2013) will represent Poland’s literary output at this year’s European Literature Night at the British Library on 14 May.
Magda Szkuta, Curator Polish Studies
Witold Szabłowski
16 December 2013
Christmas Music and Popular Songs: Free Concert at the British Library
When: Mon 16 Dec 2013, 13.00 - 14.00
Where: Entrance Hall, British Library
Admission free
Join the British Library & British Museum Singers for a programme of Christmas Music and Popular Songs. This concert has become an annual fixture and, as always, the programme will consist of a sprinkling of European Christmas music including items sung in the original French, German, Spanish, Czech, Polish and Russian alongside a generous helping of familiar English carols and popular songs from all ages. The concert will be conducted by Peter Hellyer.
The British Library & British Museum Singers
The Polish carol to be performed in the concert is ‘W zlobie lezy’ (‘Jesus lying in the manger’, better known to English-speakers as ‘Infant holy, infant lowly’). It is believed that this carol originated in the 17th century and it is attributed to Piotr Skarga, a Polish Jesuit, preacher and the leading figure of the Counter-Reformation. The music is based on the polonaise composed for the coronation of King Ladislaus IV Vasa.
‘Il est né, le divin enfant’ (‘He is born, the divine child’) is a traditional French carol, which was first published in 1862 in a collection of Christmas carols entitled Airs des noêls lorrains compiled by a church organist, Jean-Romary Grosjean. And the Austrian carol ‘Stille Nacht’ is, of course, familiar in both its original German, and in English as ‘Silent Night’; during the First World War, in the Christmas truce of 1914 German, English and French soldiers are said to have sung it together, all in their own languages, across the lines.
Peter Hellyer, Musical Director British Library & British Museum Singers and Curator Russian Studies
13 December 2013
From the Parnassus of the Peoples
As the year 2013 numbers its last days in the calendar, I would like to say a few words about a very special anniversary not widely known. Yet it should be commemorated and cherished as a great manifestation of human spirit and hope, and especially remembered on 15 December – the birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto, also celebrated worldwide as Esperanto Book Day.The book to be celebrated today was published 100 years ago by the great idealist, polyglot and prolific translator Antoni Grabowski (1857-1921, portrait (right) from Wikimedia Commons). Antoni Grabowski was a chemical engineer and the author of the first Polish chemical dictionary Słownik chemiczny (1906). He is known as “the father of Esperanto poetry”, although his main contribution to the development of literary language in Esperanto was his work as a translator. Modern writers, such as the prolific Icelandic Esperanto poet Baldur Ragnarsson, trace their fascination with Esperanto poetry to Antoni Grabowski.
I wonder how often you would find poems by Thomas Moore, Richard Wagner, Paul Verlaine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aleksandr Pushkin, Taras Shevchenko, Adam Mickiewicz, Sandor Petofi – to name just a few – under one cover ? Not often, I guess. Antoni Grabowski, prominent Polish pioneer of Esperanto, achieved precisely this: he united them all in a book called El Parnaso de Popoloj (‘From the Parnassus of the Peoples’). He himself translated 116 poems, from 30 languages, into a language itself only 26 years old. The modest-looking book was published in Warsaw in 1913 (BL shelfmarks: 1913 edition:F5/3998; facsimile reprint from 1983 YF.2008.a.112020)
Memorial plaque to Antoni Grabowski in Wroclaw (from Wikimedia Commons)
Do people still write poetry in Esperanto? Yes, they do. As soon as the new language was created and the first manual published in 1887 it started to inspire poetical souls in many nations. And it never ceased to inspire. Another interesting phenomenon is now observed worldwide: poetry originally written in Esperanto is more and more translated into other, “proper” languages. I came back in October from Kolomea not only with love and admiration for this small Galician town full of history and culture, but with a lovely book entitled Verda Antologio. Part 1. Poezio ('Green Anthology, part 1. Poetry'; YF.2013.a.22723), published in Ukraine in 2013. For the first time this anthology presents to readers 33 Esperanto poets (including Antoni Grabowski, of course) from the 19th-21st centuries in Ukrainian translations.
How to celebrate Esperanto Book Day? Here are just a few suggestions: by reading some poetry in Esperanto (the first collection of Esperanto poetry, edited by Antoni Grabowski, La liro de la Esperantistoj [The Esperantists’ Lyre] (1893), has been digitised by the Austrian National Library or by listening to the original poem by Antoni Grabowski on YouTube.
During the terrible years of World War One in Warsaw Antoni Grabowski, ill and separated from his family, survived by translating the Polish epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz Pan Tadeusz (1834).
Illustration by Andriolli from an edition of Sinjoro Tadeo (Warsaw, 1955) 11588.r.17.
The translation Sinjoro Tadeo was first published in Warsaw in 1918 ( YF.2004.a.24909). “It profoundly influenced the style and vocabulary of later poets, and it is for this reason that Grabowski, although primarily a translator, is important for the study of early original Esperanto literature, both poetry and prose,” writes Geoffrey Sutton. On Esperanto Book Day the first stanza of Sinjoro Tadeo addressed by Mickiewicz to his homeland Litwa (translated into English as Litva or more often Lithuania, to describe the historical region in Eastern Europe) resounds in my mind:
Litvo! Patrujo mia! simila al sano;
Vian grandan valoron ekkonas litvano
Vin perdinte. Belecon vian mi admiras,
Vidas ĝin kaj priskribas, ĉar hejmen sopiras.
Litva! My country, like art thou to health,
For how to prize thee he alone can tell
Who has lost thee. I behold thy beauty now
In full adornment, and I sign of it
Because I long for thee.
(English translation by Maude Ashurst Biggs. From Master Thaddeus, or The Last foray in Lithuania (London, 1885) 11585.cc.18)
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies
Further reading:
Banet-Fornalowa, Zofia. Antoni Grabowski: eminenta Esperanto-aganto (Warsaw, 2001) YF.2006.a.29512
Sutton, Geoffrey. Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto 1887-2007. (New York, 2008). YC.2008.a.12495
15 November 2013
Under the spell of the Tatras
When preparing for my autumn trekking in the High Tatras, a mountain range that stretches between Poland and Slovakia, I came across the name of the English traveller Robert Townson (1762–1827), who was also a scholar and scientist. He was one of the first foreign visitors to that region. His book Travels in Hungary, with a short account of Vienna in the year 1793 (London, 1797; 982.i.6) includes a chapter on the Tatra Mountains, entitled ‘Excursions in the Alps’.
The Tatras cover an area of 785 square kilometres. In comparison with the massive Alps in Western Europe the Tatras are a tiny range called by the French “pocket mountains”. Nevertheless, the Tatras, which are part of the long Carpathian chain, are the highest mountains in Central Europe. Undoubtedly, Townson called the Tatras ‘Alps’ because of their alpine character with rocky peaks, grazing pastures, rushing streams and splashing waterfalls. Townson explored the Tatras’ flora and fauna, and was also the first to take height measurements of some of their mountains using the barometric method.
A view in the Tatras from Townson’s Travels in Hungary
The area, inhabited for centuries by the Slavs, Germans and Hungarians, produced a distinctive culture known as the Góral, meaning highlanders. This culture has survived to the present day due to the area’s geographic isolation. Until the end of the 19th century the only means of transport on the Polish side was horse-drawn carts. It took two days to travel a distance of 105 km from Kraków to Zakopane. The Tatras were discovered for their beauty as early as the 16th century but only in the second half of the 19th century was the region developed as a popular tourist destination.
Panoramic view of the Tatras from Lomnicky Štit (©Magda Szkuta)
Due to the remoteness of the Tatra region there was no designated border between Poland and the Kingdom of Hungary until the late 18th century (Slovakia had been part of the Hungarian domain since the 9th century), so the mountains were a no man’s land. The Polish Kingdom was partitioned by its neighbours Russia, Prussia and Austria in the course of three decades, and finally lost its independence in 1795. The Polish side of the Tatras fell to the Austrian partition.
In 1867 the Austro-Hungarian Empire was established and the mountains became an agreed border between the two states of the monarchy; however, the border itself was not demarcated. Before long this led to territorial disputes. Over the centuries the lands around the Tatras belonged to Hungarian and Polish settlers. In 1889 Count Władysław Zamoyski purchased Zakopane and the surrounding areas. This was the source of conflict over the ownership of those lands that culminated in the International Arbitration Court in Graz. Subsequently in 1902 the Court demarcated the Austro-Hungarian border which after the First World War became the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The breathtaking scenery, clean air and unique culture of the Tatras attracted numerous visitors to the area from all three partitions of Poland. Zakopane became an intellectual and cultural centre at the beginning of the 20th century and since then has been a magnet for many artists, writers and musicians. Stanisław Witkiewicz, writer, painter and architect, created the Zakopane style in architecture that shaped the distinctive character of the previously small village. Karol Szymanowski, one of the greatest Polish composers of the 20th century, lived in Zakopane, and his music was influenced by the folk music of the Tatra highlanders.
Magda Szkuta, Curator of Polish Studies
Karol Szymanowski's museum in Villa Atma. Image from Wikimedia Commons).
30 October 2013
In search of the lost palace in Białowieża National Park
We are all so switched on to social media these days that we sometimes forget how recent a development this has been. Every so often, when I go into Facebook, I am confronted by wonderful photographs posted by the Białowieża National Park, a nature reserve in the primeval forest straddling the Polish-Belarusian border. Known for being the last place in Europe that bison still live, the reserve hosts scientific conferences and is a popular resort for walkers and cyclists, as well as for people who simply come to look at the animals and enjoy the enveloping quiet of the forest all around.
But just a decade ago, Białowieża was all but unknown outside Poland and certain scientific circles, and its web presence was negligible. At that time, I was involved in researching the history of the place – originally for a friend’s book (Greg King, Court of the Last Tsar, BL shelfmarks YC.2006.a.13165 and m06/.22031); but we also gathered enough information for a long magazine article.
Białowieża Park started life as a hunting ground for the Lithuanian and Polish kings, and the forest’s (few) inhabitants enjoyed a tax-free status on condition they looked after it. In due course, following the partitions of Poland, it fell into the hands of the Romanovs, who set about restocking a forest now much damaged and depleted by invasions. Tsar Alexander III, a particularly enthusiastic huntsman with solidly bourgeois tastes, built himself a massive lodge there in the 1890s, transforming the simple estate into an imperial park, complete with outbuildings and landscaped grounds. Polish presidents and Nazi viceroys used it later, but the palace was damaged in World War Two and subsequently torn down. Today, the scientific study centre stands in its place.
The Hofmarschal’s House, one of the remaining outbuildings (©J.Ashton/C.Martyn)
The estate gets odd mentions in memoirs and histories of the late imperial period – particularly of Nicholas II’s reign – but practically nothing was written about it in detail. It took Greg and me some time to even work out where it actually was, but both of us have a particular interest in architecture, and were fascinated by the first picture we saw of the turreted behemoth that had been Alexander’s palace.
Getting to Białowieża in 2004 proved a reasonable challenge. There was no direct route by public transport from Warsaw, and the resulting car trip took many hours longer than anticipated, mainly due to farm vehicles passing very slowly along the little roads. On the other hand, it was very peaceful and relaxing! The town of Białowieża, two uneven roads lined with wooden houses, has probably not changed greatly since Tsarist days, save for the addition of two modern hotels. The park opens from the end of one street, and in its gatehouse – one of the few remaining traces of Alexander’s gothic fantasy – was an exhibition on the history of the palace. In Polish, of course.
The Palace in its heyday
These days, there are plentiful photos of the whole estate on the net, and a boutique hotel cashing in on the Tsarist connection has opened in the disused imperial station. There is a direct bus from Warsaw and lots of websites in English.
Janet Ashton, WEL Cataloguing Team Manager
Some more BL resources on Białowieża Palace:
Białowieża, carska rezydencja, by Swietlana Czestnych, Karen Kettering (LF.31.a.3514)
Saga Puszczy Białowieskiej, by Simona Kossak (YA.2003.a.20990)
Białowieża : zarys dziejów do 1950 roku, by Piotr Bajko (YF.2004.a.2209)
11 October 2013
To Kolomea with love
I dare say that many of us can talk with enthusiasm about the “dream cities” of our childhood and present a long list of names. Something in the name itself, or even the way it was pronounced for the first time we heard it, catches our imagination and makes us dream about visiting them. The usual “list of suspects” includes Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, Barcelona...
Well, they all were on my own list. Yet there was another town, much closer to my native Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine. It was even in the same region of Western Ukraine, known also as Eastern Galicia. It could be that the humorous aphoristic songs, called “kolomyiky”, which my dear father Vasyl liked to sing on many joyful occasions, are “guilty” of my particular attraction to this town.
Type “kolomyiky” in our electronic catalogue Explore the British Library and you will find some interesting material. These cheerful Ukrainian folk songs (only two lines, with fourteen syllables each), as well as the folk dance with the same name, have rightfully merited their own Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH). Polish-Armenian painter Teodor Axentowicz painted his vivid Kolomeyka in 1895 (picture from Wikimedia Commons).
Yes, my other dream city bears the name of Kolomea, Kolomyia in Ukrainian. The English–language Wikipedia presents a yet incomplete list of famous people (Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian) who were born there or spent a good part of their life there. The town itself has its rightful place on the European literary map too with the Austrian writer’s Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s (picture right from Wikimedia Commons) erotic novel Don Juan von Kolomea (Don Juan of Kolomea), published in German in 1866. English-language readers are familiar with his Venus in Furs but the story of the Ukrainian Don Juan from Galicia has only recently became available (as an e-Book only) in an English translation by Richard Hacken as “Don Juan from Colomea”.
Jewish, Ukrainian and Polish publishers have flourished in Kolomea for many centuries. The famous publisher Yakiv Orenshtain (1875-1944), a native of Kolomea, established in 1903 the “Halyts’ka Nakladnia”, which published books in many languages and also specialised in postcards, capturing the beauty of the town and scenes from colourful multi-ethnic Galician life (see one of Orenshtain's postcards below). Our Ukrainian Collection recently acquired some lovely books about old postcards from Kolomea (YF.2006.b.2068 and YF. 2006.b.2080)
My long-standing dream of visiting Kolomea (after Paris, London, Vienna, Barcelona etc.) is finally going to become a reality. I am going there to a conference to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first journal of Ukrainian Esperantists, called Ukraina Stelo (The Star of Ukraine). It was published in 1913-1914 and revived after the horrors of the First World War in 1922 in what was then the Polish Republic. The Austrian National Library has digitised this rare publication and now it is available to all. Yes, Kolomea was also an important centre of teaching and publishing in Esperanto. The memorial plaque to the editor of Ukraina Stelo, Orest Kuzma (1892-1968), another famous citizen of Kolomea, will be solemnly unveiled.
Hope to send to my colleagues in European Studies a modern multilingual postcard from Kolomea - with lots of love.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Ukrainian and Esperanto Studies
25 September 2013
Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920-2013)
Germany’s renowned literary critic, the “Pope of Literature”, Marcel Reich-Ranicki died on 18 September 2013. Reich-Ranicki was an institution in Germany. His programme Literarisches Quartett (“Literary Quartet”) was a fixed point of the weekly schedule on German TV channel ZDF from 1998 until 2001. The programme’s passionate discussions attracted even those otherwise not so interested in literature to the screen to watch. Yet he mainly had built his reputation through newspaper essays, his reviews featured in the “Feuilleton” (culture section) of the heavyweight Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (British Library shelfmark MF522NPL).
Reich-Ranicki was of Polish-Jewish origin and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust. From 1948-49 he worked as a diplomat in the Polish Consulate-General in London; in 1958 he settled in the Federal Republic of Germany. Within a short time he grew to be an established figure in West German literary life and became associated with the literary association “Gruppe 47”.
He wrote more than fifty books, including works on Goethe, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. The British Library Catalogue has over a hundred entries for works by him, edited by him, or about him, including Sieben Wegbereiter: Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts: Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin, Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht. (Stuttgart, 2002; YA.2002.a.38364). His autobiography Mein Leben (Stuttgart, 1999; YA.2000.a.4908) was top of the German bestseller list for several years running, and has been translated into English by Ewald Osers as Marcel Reich-Ranicki: the Author of Himself (London 2001; YC.2001.a.21184).
Marcel Reich-Ranicki portrayed in a graffiti mural outside a bookshop in Menden, Germany - a demonstration of his huge public impact and high popular profile. (Image by Mbdortmund from Wikimedia Commons)
Marcel Reich-Ranicki was a friend of literature, freedom and democracy. His death marks the end of an era – not least because it so happens that two of his great contemporaries and friends – Hans Werner Richter, the founder of Gruppe 47, and Walter Jens – also died during the last year.
Dorothea Miehe, Curator German Studies
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