The poet Jan Lechoń often said that Ola Watowa was the most beautiful woman in pre-war Warsaw; Mayakovsky (observed by Janina Broniewska) looked at her with admiration in the Wats‘ Warsaw flat; Wojciech Karpiński remembered their first meeting in Paris: "Ola Watowa, the wife of the poet, was sitting in a chair, fragile, beautiful, with an endearing smile. Her slender neck was adorned with a string of pearls" ("Książki zbójeckie" [The Robber Books], London 1988). Wat dedicated poems to his wife as well as his last volume "Ciemne świecidło" (Lumen Obscurum 1968).
Ola Watowa (also known as Paulina Watowa) was the daughter of Aron and Sara Lew. She studied at the Free University and in 1922 – against the wishes of her parents – started to study acting at the Dramatic School in Warsaw. In the spring of 1923, at a ball organized at the end of the school year, she met a group of actors and writers, among them the Futurist poet Aleksander Wat. At his request she resigned from the Dramatic School. They were married on January 24, 1927, in a Warsaw synagogue ("under a baldachin of dark red damask"). As a wedding present Wat dedicated to her a book of short stories "Bezrobotny Lucyfer" (Lucifer Unemployed), 1927. Watowa worked as a secretary in "Miesięcznik Literacki". Her only son, Andrzej (later an art historian) was born on July 23, 1931.
Her husband, Aleksander Wat was arrested for the first time in September 1931 on the charge of communist activities. Until the war the Wats lived in Warsaw and in September 1939 they managed to flee to Lvov. On January 24, 1940, Aleksander Wat was arrested by the Soviet secret police, together with a group of writers including, among others, Władysław Broniewski (the so-called Lvov provocation). In the small hours before dawn on April 15th Ola Watowa and her son were deported along with the wives of the other writers. After a three week journey in a cattle train, they arrived in Kazakhstan. Watowa was settled in Ivanovka near the small town of Zharma. She was made a laborer making bricks and transforming manure into fuel pellets. In 1941, after an "amnesty" for Polish citizens, Watowa moved to the Kolkhoz Antonovka near Shymkent. She was re-united with her husband at the beginning of 1942 in Kazakhstan. They were allowed to return to Poland four years later and reached Warsaw in April 1946.
The Wats left Poland in summer 1959 (the poet received a Ford Foundation scholarship) and lived in the south of France and Italy, and then later in Paris. In 1963 they were granted the status of stateless persons by the French Government. From December 1963 until mid 1965 they lived in California where Wat had been invited by the Slavic and East European Research Center in Berkeley.
Ola Watowa wrote a book of memoirs about her experiences "Wszystko co najważniejsze" (The Most Important Things), first recorded as a dialogue, and then changed into a monologue. In authorized translations it is called "The Second Shadow".
"The Most Important Things" is not only a book of reminiscenses but also an original literary work. The book consists of three parts. In the first, the author presents a colourful picture of literary life in interwar Warsaw, or rather a segment of that life seen through the events concerning the literary and publishing activities of her husband, although always shown from her own perspective. A small example: Ola Watowa accompanied Vladimir Mayakovsky when he went shopping during his stay in Warsaw in 1929. "I observed his excitement, his relish of the stay in Poland. He saw that people could freely express themselves, loudly, in restaurants, in the street. That nobody was afraid of others, nobody was suspicious. That there were no queues, there was plenty of everything. The only "political" accent in our conversation when we drank coffee in a small cafe in Kozia street was his joke that when the revolution came to Poland, Kozia street would be called "Watoczka" (Little Watowa)".
The second part of the memoir describes the deportation and the resistance against the Soviet secret police who wanted to force Polish exiles to take Soviet passports. This part also describes a young mother’s fight for survival with her son in extreme conditions. And – similar to reminiscenses of Wat who was in a state of mystical ecstasy under the influence of Bach’s music in a Moscow prison – it is a hymn about the beauty of nature and the world.
In the third sesction, Ola Watowa describes the return to Poland (in 1946) and the subsequent emigration, wandering, and attempts to find adequate forms of expression for her husband who suffered constant pain (at last it was a tape recorder; Wat recorded his talks with Czesław Miłosz and at night and in the early morning he "whispered" (new poems), and, finally, the death of her husband and her subsequent loneliness (she tried to overcome it by listening to Wat’s recordings). She had a gift for observation, for example in the description of the hands of the sick Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz in a Paris hotel in 1980: "They are strangely big, splayed, separate from him, living outside his body".
Stanisław Wygodzki, the poet then living in Israel, wrote to Ola Watowa on December 30, 1984: "The statement that this book was written by life itself is ridiculous. This book was written by a writer about herself and about the Man closest to her – also a writer".
The French philosopher Michel Terestchenko calls the memoirs of Ola Watowa a book that is "moving and sober" – an apt description because it describes the relationship between the emotional material of those memoirs and the matter of fact narration concentrated on detail, tone, and gesture, without complex language.
Maria Craipeau, in her introduction to the French edition of the book, writes: "No, she is not a saint. It is simply a woman who in the madness of this century gives her testimony that not everything is lost, that a man does not have to stay a wolf for ever". Tadeusz Nyczek, a Polish literary critic, says: "it is best to read her. When we look at Ola Watowa, who – discreetly and realistically – emanates from her book, we are able to find a few excuses for human kind" ("Gazeta Wyborcza", May 21, 2001).
Ola Watowa lived in the shadow of her husband, the well known poet, for whom she devoted her stage career and was his constant commpanion, for better and for worse, until his death by suicide in 1967. She devoted the rest of her life to his work. But her memoirs have their own value, they are a proof of her literary talent and her specific style - one of sober and precise insight and moving testimonial.
Dżamila Ankiewicz wrote a film screenplay on the basis of this book and Robert Gliński made the film "The Most Important Things". The film was awarded honors at the XVII Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia. Ola Watowa’s role was played by Ewa Skibińska.
In 2009, the "Zeszyty Literackie" (Literary Notebooks) were published, bringing to light the correspondence of Ola Watowa and Czesław Miłosz. These letters reveal an effort of many years devoted to preserving, deciphering and publishing the literary oeuvre of her husband left in manuscripts and recordings. At the beginning, while the Wats were still living in the States, there was a dramatic scene in a car: "Miłosz was driving, she sat in the back seat. She put her arms around his neck and said that if he did not take up the recordings, Wat would die" (Renata Gorczyńska: "Jestem z Wilna i inne adresy" [I Am from Wilno and Some Other Addresses], Kraków 2003).
In February 1985, in a short introduction to the posthumous edition of Wat’s essays "Świat na haku i pod kluczem", Ola Watowa wrote:
"Rewriting the whole literary work of Aleksander Wat I realized at once that his thought lives in those – usually not quite finished – texts [...]. Wat expresses his relation to many phenomena and problems: literary, political, social, religious, philosophical, and therefore I should save that thought. That literary legacy – being in the archives for the past 18 years – belongs not only to me but first of all to Polish culture".
Jan Zieliński, October 2009
Books:
- "Paszportyzacja" (Compulsory Soviet Passports) [Warsaw] 1981, Student Publishing House "Sowa" [and several other underground editions]. First edition in "Zeszyty Historyczne" ("Historical Notebooks") No 21 (1972). The text was subsequently incorporated in "The Most Important Things".
- "The Most Important Things". London 1984, Puls Publications (with the undertitle: "Talks with Jacek Trznadel"). This edition was published twice in Poland as samizdats (1985). Since 1989 the book has been published abroad, and since 1990 in Poland ("Czytelnik" publishing house) in the authorized monologue version prepared by Jan Zieliński.
Translations of memoirs:
- "L’ombre seconde". Paris – Lausanne 1989, Éditions de Fallois/L’Âge d’homme (translated by Christiane Giovannoni with the introduction by Maria Craipeau).
- "Der zweite Schatten". Frankfurt am Main 1990, Verlag Neue Kritik (translated by Anna Leszczyńska).
Letters:
- Czesław Miłosz, Ola Watowa, "Listy o tym, co najważniejsze" (Letters about the Most Important Things) Vol 1. Warsaw 2009, "Zeszyty Literackie" (ed. by Barbara Toruńczyk).
Books translated by Ola Watowa:
- Maxim Gorky, "Vassa Zheleznova". Warsaw 1950, PIW (The State Publishing Institute).
- Jacoba van Velde, "The Big Ward". Kraków 1961, WL (Literary Publishing House).