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A constant fiesta in Paris
Julia Hartwig Poet
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At this time, during this martial period, during martial law, we went abroad for a year-long trip and we stayed in France for a year-and-a-half. These are... that's where my book Always Returning was written. In this book there are... in fact, it is a document because it recalls people who are no longer alive but used to be our friends. So I return to this book with a degree of sentiment because I recall situations that were pleasant. The actual stay in Paris was exceptionally enjoyable, we had adequate living conditions. Initially, we lived with the Pallottines and then we moved to an international house of art where painters, writers and musicians all lived together so that sometimes music could be heard in the corridors although this wasn't disturbing. We lived very high up with a large terrace overlooking Paris, so it was like a constant fiesta, reminiscent of Hemingway.

W okresie wojenym... w stanie wojennym wyjechaliśmy na roczny pobyt za granicą – byliśmy wtedy we Francji półtora roku. To są... i tam powstała książka moja Zawsze powroty. W tej książce znalazło się... właściwie jest ona dzisiaj już dokumentem, ponieważ zawiera wspomnienia o ludziach, którzy już nie żyją, a wtedy byli naszymi przyjaciółmi. Także ja w... wracam do tej książki z pewnym sentymentem, bo przypominam sobie sytuacje, które były mi miłe. Sam pobyt paryski był nadzwyczajnie przyjemny – mieliśmy warunki znośne. Mieszkaliśmy początkowo u Pallotynów, a potem w takim domu międzynarodowym sztuki, gdzie malarze... gdzie mieszkali malarze, pisarze i muzycy, tak że czasem na korytarzach słychać było muzykę, ale ona nie przeszkadzała. Mieszkaliśmy na bardzo wysokim piętrze z dużym tarasem na Paryż, także to było nieustające święto, jakby powołując się na Hemingwaya.

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: France, Always Returning, Zawsze powroty, Paris, Pallottines, Ernst Hemingway

Duration: 1 minute, 5 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2010

Date story went live: 15 June 2011