Longing for Balance

Abstract

Abstract The article presents a biography of Andrzej Bobkowski (1913–1961), a Polish émigré writer associated with the Paris-based Instytut Literacki [Literary institute] and the monthly Kultura. Bobkowski belonged to the “1910 generation,” along with Czesław Miłosz, Zygmunt Haupt, and Witold Gombrowicz. He grew up in a family environment that was Protestant and Catholic, bourgeois and aristocratic, military and civilian, with high regard for intellect and physical strength. In 1936, he graduated from the Warsaw School of Economics and began working as a clerk in an office of an iron mill. In March 1939, he and his wife moved to Paris where they witnessed the outbreak of World War II. In Paris, Bobkowski started writing a diary that, redacted, would be published in 1957 in Paris under the title Szkice piórkiem. Francja 1940–1944 [Wartime notebooks: France 1940–1944]. During the war, Bobkowski was active in the Polish Office at the Atelier de Construction de Chatillon near Paris. After the war, he joined cultural initiatives of the Polish anti-communist emigration. Discouraged by the political situation in Europe, he left for Guatemala in 1948, but continued to publish in émigré journals.