Andrzej Bobkowski

Andrzej Bobkowski (born October 27, 1913 in Wiener Neustadt in Austria , †  June 26, 1961 in Guatemala ) was a Polish writer and essayist .

biography

Bobkowski was born in 1913 as the son of the Polish Army General Henryk and his wife Wanda. The father's job led to frequent changes of residence. From 1924 to 1926 Bobkowski attended grammar school in Toruń , later he finished his school days at Bartłomiej Nowodworski grammar school in Kraków . It was here that he met his future wife Barbara. In 1933 he began to study at the Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie (SGH). After completing his studies, worked in a mining company in Katowice .

In March 1939 he emigrated with his wife to France, where he lived for a short time in Châtillon near Paris. He was already holding a visa for Buenos Aires in order to work in the Polish iron ore trading post when German troops invaded France. He remained active in various functions in the economy, had to work in an ammunition factory, represented the interests of Polish workers, traveled through France and finally closed the factory. After the war ended, he tried to work in various fields, including the YMCA and a Polish bookstore. So he got into the circle of the editors of the Polish exile magazine Kultura , befriended Andrzej Chciuk and Józef Czapski . On June 25, 1948, he emigrated with his wife to Guatemala, where he began to work with model airplanes. His view of the fall of Europe, which had given up the values ​​that made his rise possible, had moved him to emigrate. In 1957 he fell ill with a brain tumor and died from it in 1961. In the following years, his wife arranged the written estate and sent it to the Instytut Literacki publishing house owned by Jerzy Giedroyc in Maisons Laffitte.

plant

Bobkowski published a short humoresque while he was still a student. Editing the Razem Młodzi Przyjaciele circular with Chciuk , he published his essay Nekyja in the first edition of Kultura published by his friend Jerzy Giedroyc . Until the early 1950s he also published in various Polish newspapers from London ( Wiadomości ) to Krakow ( Tygodnik Powszechny and others). In 1957 he published his detailed diary notes from occupied France in Kultura. They tell of the cunning and mischievous struggle - often on a bicycle - in chaotic times of war and the self-assertion of privacy in times of uniform dictatorship. A story followed, The Fall , and a play, Schwarzer Sand . After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, various correspondence with the important Polish writers in exile appeared.

In his oeuvre Bobkowski shows himself to be a great advocate of individualism and a critic of all collectivism, which aroused great interest in the founding years of the Third Polish Republic and continues to be relevant.

Publications

• Szkice piórkiem (Francja 1940-1944) . Biblioteka "Kultury"; 22,2, Paris, 1957 = London 1985 = Warszawa, Towarzystwo Opieki nad Archiwum Instytutu Literackiego w Paryżu: Wydawn. CiS, 1995, ISBN 83-86907-00-2 .
  • En guerre et en paix: journal 1940–1944 , traduit du polonais par Laurence Dyèvre. Ed. Noir sur blanc, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-88250-023-8 .
  • Війна і спокій, Французький щоденник 1940–1944 . Translated from Polish by Oles' Herasym. Kiev, Krytyka, 2007.
  • Sadness? What the fuck for? Diaries from France . Volume I, 1940/41. Translated from the Polish by Martin Pollack . Rospo Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-930325-30-6 .
• Coco de Oro. Szkice i opowiadania . (= Biblioteka Kultury. 194). Instytut Literacki, Paris 1970 = Officyna Liberałów, Warszawa, 1989 = Wyd. UMCS, Lublin 1998, ISBN 83-227-1171-9 .
• Opowiadania i szkice . Oficyna wydawnicza Interim, Warszawa 1994, ISBN 83-85083-34-0 .
• Jerzy Giedroyć - Andrzej Bobkowski Listy 1946–1961 . Czytelnik, Warszawa 1997, ISBN 83-07-02491-9 .
• Spadek . Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Lublin 1997, ISBN 83-227-1025-9 .
• Potłuczona mozaika: Andrzeja Bobkowskiego myśli o epoce . Towarzystwo opieki nad archiwum Instytutu Literackiego w Paryżu: Wydawn, Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Lublin 2002, ISBN 83-227-1913-2 .
• Przysiągłem sobie, że jeśli umrę, to nie w tłumie: Korespondencja z Anielą Mieczysławską 1951–1961 . Wałbrzych, Wyd. Ruta, 2003, ISBN 83-89267-20-9 .
• Listy do Tymona Terleckiego: 1956–1961 . Więź, Warszawa 2006, ISBN 83-60356-12-2 .
• Z dziennika podróży . Więź, Warszawa 2006, ISBN 83-62610-44-1 .
  • Notes de voyage d'un Cosmopolonais. traduit du polonais by Laurence Dyèvre, Ed. Noir sur blanc, Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-88250-368-8 .
• Zmierzch: i inne opowiadania. Więź, Warszawa 2007, ISBN 978-83-60356-30-2 .
• Point równowagi. Wydawnictwo literackie, Kraków 2008, ISBN 978-83-08-04075-1 .
• Listy z Gwatemali do matki . Twój Styl, Warszawa 2008, ISBN 978-83-7163-494-9 .
• Ikkos i Sotion oraz inne szkice . Więź, Warszawa 2009, ISBN 978-83-60356-34-0 .
• Tobie zapisuję Europę: Listy do Jarosława Iwaszkiewicza . Więź, Warszawa 2009, ISBN 978-83-60356-71-5 .
• Andrzej Bobkowski - Aniela Mieczysławska, Listy 1951–1961 . Więź, Warszawa 2010, ISBN 978-83-60356-91-3 .
• Listy do Aleksandra Bobkowskiego 1940–1961 . Więź, Warszawa, 2013, ISBN 978-83-62610-43-3 .

literature

• Łukasz Mikołajewski: Disenchanted Europeans: Polish émigré writers from Kultura and the postwar reformulations of the West. (= Exile Studies. 16). Peter Lang, Oxford a. a. 2018.
• Maciej Urbanowski, Andrzej Bobkowski: The Other Modernity. In: The Sarmatian Review. 35, 2015, pp. 1552-1555.
• Katarzyna Jerzak: Life in Translation: Exile in the Autobiographical Works of Kazimierz Brandys and Andrzej Bobkowski. In: J. Neubauer, BZ Tötök (Ed.): The Exile and Return of Writers from East-Central Europe. A compendium. Berlin / New York 2009, pp. 400-415.
• Mieczysław Dąbrowski: Cultural and literary spaces of double emigration (France - Latin America). In: Exclusion. 2006, pp. 139-180.
• Krzysztof Kurek: Bobkowki, Andrzej. In: Encyklopedia polskiej emigracji i Polonii. Volume 1, Toruń 2003, p. 562 ff.

Web links

• Biography
• Literature by and about Andrzej Bobkowski in the bibliographic database WorldCat