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Martial law

RELATED STORIES

Hard times bring out the best in people
Julia Hartwig Poet
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Among the people who had moved from Łódź after their temporary stay in Łódź and returned to Warsaw, they moved into one of the houses in Warsaw, they occupied all… they were simply given a house to divide among the families. The Jastruns were also coming back and they lived there. We grew very close to these people especially those whose names I've mentioned here, and I have to say, these were hard times politically, hard to endure as citizens but in terms of friendships and relations with other people, they seemed to be much closer. This brings on an unnecessary lesson that when times are hard people sometimes... sometimes... it's not always the case, but sometimes they try to come together and support one another. So in this sense, it was as if two separate realities were co-existing. The same was true for schoolchildren who were being taught something slightly different in school – or at least there was an attempt to change their spirit – from what they were learning at home. Among writers, however, we felt the repression very keenly, these repressions were virtually constant. Every now and again the screw would be tightened and someone would find themselves blacklisted or something like that, but our friendships would benefit from this because people would come together and they'd want to help one another somehow. I have very uplifting recollections of this period, which wasn't at all easy and which ended with something that was very, well, something I found appalling which was the proclamation of martial law.

Więc wśród tych ludzi, którzy się... przenieśli z Łodzi – z tego... czasowego pobytu w Łodzi – do Warszawy, oni się przenieśli, zamieszkali w jednym z domów w Warszawie na... zajmowali właściwie wszystkie... dano im po prostu dom do podziału między rodziny. Jastrunowie między innymi także wracali i mieszkali tutaj. Bardzośmy się – muszę powiedzieć – w to środowisko wtarli – właśnie zwłaszcza mówię o nazwiskach tych, które... które wymieniłam – i muszę powiedzieć, że to był okres trudny politycznie, trudny do wytrzymania w sensie obywatelskim, ale jeśli chodzi o przyjaźnie i stosunki między ludźmi, to one były jak gdyby wtedy o wiele bliższe. Więc tu się nasuwa się taka jakaś... niepotrzebna nauka, że w czasie właściwie trudnym to... to ludzie się jednak czasem... czasem... różnie bywa, ale czasem usiłują się skupić i jakoś się podtrzymywać. I to był w tym sensie, że to jak gdyby to... toczyły się takie dwa... dwie rzeczywistości. To samo dotyczyło także dzieci w szkole, które czego innego w szkole były trochę uczone – a w każdym razie ducha im usiłowano trochę zmienić – a czego innego w domu. Wśród pisarzy natomiast było tak, żeśmy doskonale odczuwali represje, które były – bo... bo represje były właściwie nieustanne, co jakiś czas dokręcano śruby i kogoś tam na przykład wstawiano na czarną listę czy coś takiego – ale... ale właśnie przyjaźnie na tym jakby zyskiwały, ponieważ się ludzie skrzykiwali, chcieli sobie pomagać w jakiś sposób. Mam bardzo budujące wspomnienia z tego okresu, który wcale nie był okresem łatwym, a zakończył się czymś bardzo nie... właściwie dla mnie przerażającym, jakim był... było ogłoszenie stanu wojennego.

Born to a Polish father and a Russian mother, Julia Hartwig (1921-2017) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and author of children's books. She studied at the University of Warsaw, the Catholic University in Lublin and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Czesław Miłosz called her 'the grande dame of Polish poetry'. Julia Hartwig was one of the few poets in Poland who made masterly use of poetic prose. She translated poems by Apollinaire, Rimbaud, Max Jacob, Cendrars and Supervielle, and published monographs on Apollinaire and Gerard de Nerval. She also translated from English, and published a large anthology of American poetry which she co-edited in 1992 with her late husband, the poet Artur Międzyrzecki.

Listeners: Andrzej Wolski

Film director and documentary maker, Andrzej Wolski has made around 40 films since 1982 for French television, the BBC, TVP and other TV networks. He specializes in portraits and in historical films. Films that he has directed or written the screenplay for include Kultura, which he co-directed with Agnieszka Holland, and KOR which presents the history of the Worker’s Defence Committee as told by its members. Andrzej Wolski has received many awards for his work, including the UNESCO Grand Prix at the Festival du Film d’Art.

Tags: Łódź, Warsaw, Mieczysław Jastrun, Mieczysława Jastrun, Mieczysława Buczkówna

Duration: 1 minute, 49 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2010

Date story went live: 14 June 2011