Krakw, Poland: Books Abound 25 Years after Communism

Abstract

March–April 2014 • 5 photo : nico trinkhaus Kraków has always appealed to aesthetes. A century ago, an avant-garde modernist movement, “Young Poland,” rejuvenated the city with inventive representations of an age of insouciance. One of its members was Stanisław Wyspiański, a painter who also became a playwright . Wesele (Eng. The Wedding, 1990), which he wrote in 1901, remains a classic of the national repertoire . It is at once a reflection on the country’s insurrectionist past as well as a mystical, haunting evocation of a new Poland. During my October visit, banners everywhere announced Kraków as the 2013 UNESCO City of Literature . A statue honoring national poet Adam Mickiewicz stands in the market square. Europe’s first bookstore opened on the square in 1610, and books are still sold in the building. There are so many independent bookshops on the square and adjoining streets that they’ve chased Poland’s major chain store to the railway station. Posters and billboards heralded Alice Munro as last year’s Nobel laureate —as if she were a native daughter . In the city’s National Museum an exhibit called “Wisława Szymborska’s Drawer” contains her library and writings in tribute to a true Nobel native daughter. She died in 2012. Czesław Miłosz, another Nobel-winning poet born in what is today Lithuania , lived in the city after World War II, subsequently immigrated to the US and taught at Berkeley for many years before returning to Kraków. He died in 2004 and was buried in a local church. Each May the city plays host to an annual poetry festival named after him. After communism’s fall, dilettante playwright Sławomir Mrożek returned from Mexico City to live here; he died last year. Poet Adam Zagajewski also moved here; many of his verses evoke Kraków rapturously . At the seventeenth Kraków Book Fair, I met Andrzej Stasiuk, one of the country’s best contemporary writers; he lives in the Beskidy mountains an hour south of the city. Even Karol Wojtyła, born close to Kraków, felt a need to write plays like The Jeweler’s Shop in 1960, foreshadowing the theatrical persona that he took with him to the Vatican. The book fair took place on the final weekend of October, coinciding with autumn’s last hurrah. Held twelve streetcar stops from the center in stuffy event tents, it still drew thirty thousand visitors over four days. A number of writers at the fair took part in panels at the Fifth Conrad Festival held in a palace overlooking the market square. Historians, too, attended the Conrad Festival. Author and journalist Anne Applebaum’s latest book, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956, describes how communist leaders developed a language all their own. Iconic Polish intellectual Adam Michnik responded with a characteristic non sequitur: “So what? The pope speaks the same language as Luther.” The peasant girl in Wyspiański’s Wesele had Kraków’s obsession right: “Words, words, words, words.” Ray Taras is the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in European Studies for 2013–2014 at the University of Warsaw. Formerly director of Tulane University’s world literature program—before Hurricane Katrina forced its closure—he is the author of numerous scholarly books on nationalism and identities in Europe. notebook Kraków, Poland Books Abound 25 Years after Communism Ray Taras City Profile ...