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A year without my husband

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Does political freedom deter good writing?
Julia Hartwig Poet
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What made you decide to come back from the States?

It wasn't an easy decision because just at that time, Artur received a proposal to take up a permanent job in Canada. They wanted someone who could speak English and French as in his case. We considered it for a while but then we decided that if we were to go off to Canada, then our distance from Poland and Polish affairs will be so great that we would be quite lost and we didn't want this, to say nothing of the fact that we were counting on resuming our writing once we returned. And we had wonderful friends in Poland with whom, amongst whom we wanted to live, who always supported us and we supported them in return. And I have to say – I've already said this – I think that it's when times are at their hardest that these friendships are sometimes strongest and most resilient. And then comes freedom, just as with writing, in the same way this period of the Polish People's Republic; I don't agree that it was completely fruitless even though it was awful, but some very good literature was written in that time. There were still writers there from before the war, Iwaszkiewicz was there, Słonimski, there was a whole... a whole group of people from that time still. These days, meaning in this time when we are free and unrestrained, literature is left to itself and doesn't really know what it should be doing with itself – that's my personal opinion. We don't really know which direction to follow, what we should be doing but I think this will become clear because I am always of good faith, especially where poetry is concerned because we have put the word out globally that Poland produces very good poetry, so we have to live up to this. I'm sure it varies but... there's a proliferation of dilettantish writing which is so hideous that it could block the flow because when a heap of rubbish is thrown across a path, it makes it hard to pass by. People who pick up a volume of poetry once in their lives which they won't like or will even find offensive will never again pick up another volume if they had to overcome their resistance only to see this, ‘No, this doesn't interest me'.

Jak to się stało, że Państwo postanowili wrócić ze Stanów?

Nie była to łatwa decyzja, bo akurat Artur dostał taką propozycję, żeby dostać stałą posadę w Kanadzie – chodziło o człowieka, który mówił po angielsku i po francusku, to był właśnie jego przypadek. I trochęśmy się nad tym zastanawiali, ale potem postanowiliśmy, że jak jeszcze do tego do... do Kanady doszturcujemy, to już naprawdę nasza odległość od Polski i polskich spraw będzie tak duża, że... że się po prostu zagubimy – po prostu było nam szkoda. Nie mówiąc o tym, że liczyliśmy na to, że jednak jak wrócimy, zaczniemy znowu pisać i... i udzielać się. I mieliśmy wspaniałych przyjaciół w Polsce, z którymi... pośród których chcieliśmy żyć, którzy zawsze nas wspierali, a my ich z powrotem także. I muszę powiedzieć, że właśnie – już to chyba mówiłam – że właśnie w najcięższych czasach to te przyjaźnie są jak gdyby czasem najsilniejsze i najtrwalsze. A potem przychodzi wolność – tak jak z pisaniem – tak samo ten okres właściwie peerelowski – jestem niezgodna z tym, że on był zupełnie bezowocny, chociaż był okropny, ale wtedy powstała bardzo dobra literatura. Jeszcze byli pisarze przedwojenni, jeszcze był Iwaszkiewicz, jeszcze był Słonimski, jeszcze byli... jeszcze, no, właściwie cała... cała ich ekipa ludzi jeszcze z tamtego czasu. A... a teraz – znaczy w tym okresie kiedy już jesteśmy swobodni i wolni – to właściwie ta literatura jest taka puszczona samopas i właściwie nie bardzo wie, co ma z sobą zrobić – to jest moje osobiste zdanie. Po prostu nie wiadomo w jakim kierunku iść, co robić, ale myślę, że to się wyklaruje, ponieważ jestem zawsze dobrej wiary, zwłaszcza jeśli chodzi o poezję, bo... bo... z której zrobiliśmy sobie już reklamę na świecie – że w Polsce jest bardzo dobra poezja – no więc trzeba się tego trzymać jakoś. Różnie pewno bywa, ale... bo... bo mnoży się tak deletanckie pisanie i tak jest ohydne, że właściwie może zupełnie zahamować drogę, bo to jak się... rzuci dużo śmiecia na drogę, to przejść trudno. Ludzie, którzy wezmą do... raz w życiu tomik poezji, ktory im się nie spodoba albo nawet ich obrazi, już nigdy w życiu nie sięgną po tomik, jeżeli przezwyciężyli się i żeby ich tłumaczyć. „Nie, to właśnie, to mnie nie interesuje”.

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: Canada, Poland, Polish People's Republic, Artur Międzyrzecki, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Antoni Słonimski

Duration: 2 minutes, 25 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2010

Date story went live: 14 June 2011