Lem & His Planet

wnetrze-mediateki_projekt_lem.jpg, default, Lem & His Planet, Centrum Kultury i Języka Polskiego Planeta Lem (Planet Lem Center of Polish Culture and the Polish Language), designed by JEMS Architekci, photo: inve, center, #000000

#language & literature

Did one of the greatest visionaries of Polish literature predict that he would be given his own planet for his birthday?

Stanisław Lem was a very sociable person. While writing his biography and reading his correspondence, I was rather surprised by this, because I had imagined him as an introvert who felt most comfortable in the world of books and imagination. However, I discovered that he, quite simply – like many writers – set aside time for reading, imagining and writing, but also time for meeting with family and friends. Few things made him happier than celebrating his brother-in-law’s imieniny (name day), which he often intentionally spelled the way it sounds in a local dialect – ymieniny.

Lem generally liked to play with language – that’s why we love him so much, after all – but in this transformation, one can perhaps detect positive emotions. Because sometimes we attend boring imieniny parties out of a sense of obligation, but other times we’re happy that someone’s ymieniny is coming up again. In accordance with Polish tradition, birthdays weren’t celebrated very exuberantly within Lem’s circle of friends and family. Thus, during Lem’s lifetime, a tradition was established in which name days were celebrated within a very intimate group – while we, his readers and fans, were left to celebrate his birthdays, which were elevated to the importance of a public jubilee.

Lem wasn’t very fond of these jubilees. It’s easy to understand why – it’s one thing to celebrate with close, trusted friends, and quite another to have a ceremony at which an official representative presents a diploma, an artistic performance dazzles the audience and an eminent personage gives a laudatory speech, while everyone critically evaluates how well one’s tie matches one’s shirt.

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Stanisław Lem in front of his house on Narwik Street, Kraków, 1960, photo: Piotr Barącz / PAP

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If Stanisław Lem were to observe the wonderful celebrations of his 100th birthday from the afterlife, he would certainly enjoy their splendour – like most people, he was eager for praise and awards. But he would be even happier about not having to participate in them. In one of his letters, he expressed joy that a certain visit to a hospital that took a dramatic turn – an infection developed, and Lem was very close to the other side – had at least one positive consequence. Thanks to these complications, he had a solid excuse for his absence at the ceremony when he was awarded a medal by the Minister of Culture.

In light of the above, the design of the Planet Lem Literature and Language Centre – perhaps the most Cracovian element of Lem Year 2021 – seems perfectly suited to Lem’s personality. It combines splendour with discretion. It’s definitely closer to an ymieniny party at a friend’s house than to an official ceremony hosted by the Minister of Culture with marble columns, silver and candelabras. Due to its location near the typical routes taken by locals and tourists in Kraków, it has a chance of becoming a place that people visit regularly, spontaneously, without planning a visit in advance. It’s very much in the spirit of Lem. And of Kraków.

In the golden period of Lem’s work, which was more or less from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, a regular item in his daily schedule was an afternoon stroll through the city. He had a car, but most of the time, he explored the city on foot because it was inconvenient to drive in the centre of Kraków – even before the era of bans and restrictions. Thus, he would leave his Wartburg, Fiat or Mercedes somewhere and head to a few of his regular places. He would visit his favourite sweet shops and his favourite publishing house, Wydawnictwo Literackie (both on Długa street), the editorial office of Tygodnik Powszechny newspaper on Wiślna Street, the headquarters of the Polish Writers’ Union on Krupnicza Street, and the Cracovia Hotel, where foreign newspapers and magazines were put aside for him. He stopped by regularly, whether or not he had business to take care of.

I apologise to everyone in Kraków for stating such obvious things about Lem, but this isn’t how things work in all cities. For example, during the same period in Warsaw, it was virtually impossible to go on foot to all the most important editorial offices and publishing houses to exchange gossip with the entire journalistic and literary community. And it’s not only because the distances were greater, but simply because a culture of spontaneous literary meetings had never developed there. Not every city has it.

During his semi-emigration in Berlin and Vienna, Lem missed these meetings in Kraków. He also had friends and literary collaborators in Berlin and Vienna, but these are not the kinds of cities where people spend time with each other without making advance arrangements to meet in this or that café, at this or that hour… And this kills half the pleasure.

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Planet Lem Literature and Language Centre, designed by JEMS Architekci, photo: investor’s publicity materials

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The design of Planet Lem pays tribute to this tradition that is so closely connected to both Kraków and Lem. It’s a building that simply invites you to come in, whether or not you have some business to take care of. Maybe we’ll take a look at the exhibition? Maybe we’ll attend a literary event and join the discussion, or maybe we’ll grow bored of it and leave halfway through? Maybe we’ll drink a cup of coffee and nibble on something sweet? Or maybe we’ll just sit in the pleasant atmosphere to read something on our smartphone – as Lem predicted nearly 70 years ago in The Magellanic Cloud?

By doing any of these above-mentioned things – or all of them – we will be honouring the traditions of Lem and Kraków. And if, during this visit, we run into an acquaintance and engage in a lively discussion about science, politics, literature or cars, we’ll truly find ourselves on the same planet where Stanisław Lem lived and worked. Lem’s identity was moulded by two cities: Lwów, where he spent the first quarter of the century and where his most terrible, but surely also happiest (and sweetest!) memories were formed, and Kraków, which turned him into not only a writer, but also a philosopher, activist, citizen, father and husband. In short – a mature man.

After 1945, the Lem family left Lwów and ended up in Kraków. This resulted from a series of lucky coincidences – just like in the life of Professor Cezar Kouski, one of Lem’s apocryphal authors of ‘a book within a book’. They came close, firstly, to not surviving the war at all, and, secondly, to not making their way from Lwów to Wrocław, Katowice, Łódź or Warsaw. Kraków wasn’t the most typical city for settlement of the Poles who had been relocated from the Eastern Borderlands after World War II.

If Lem hadn’t ended up in Kraków, he wouldn’t have become a writer. He would have chosen some other career path, in which he would certainly have done great things. Perhaps he would have become an engineer or inventor in accordance with his original dreams, or perhaps a doctor in accordance with his parents’ dreams, or perhaps, in accordance with his own later dreams – a philosopher.

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Kraków from above, Robert Neumann / Forum

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He could only become the writer we know today in Kraków, where there were the editorial offices of Polish newspapers and magazines such as Przekrój and Tygodnik Powszechny, the headquarters of Wydawnictwo Literackie, the Jagiellonian University, Piwnica pod Baranami, and the extraordinarily dynamic and rebellious local branch of the Polish Writers’ Union (not in all cities did it attract so many outstanding, mutually inspiring personalities). The building that serves as a monument to Lem must therefore be a monument to the city of Kraków as well.

The building will also make indirect reference to the city of Lwów. Skład Solny (The Salt Warehouse) was built in this place because, from the Middle Ages onwards, a trade route ran through this spot which connected Kraków with Lwów (and in a broader context, Western Europe with the Levant and the Orient). The neighbourhood of Podgórze developed in a chaotic and artificial manner over the past 250 years. It was a separate city for a long time, often divided from Kraków by a national border, and during World War II by the ghetto wall. During the communist period, this was not the postcard Kraków that tourists saw. There were factories here, ruined buildings, army barracks, and workers’ hostels. Life itself. I myself view this neighbourhood rather from a tourist’s perspective, because although I often come to Kraków on business, I always try to include in my schedule at least one carefree stroll for pleasure. And in Kraków, a carefree stroll is always a pleasure (well, perhaps I should say ‘almost always’ – because it depends, after all, on the season).

The right bank of the River Wisła first appeared on the map of typical tourist walks about a decade ago. First of all, it’s very close to the ‘postcard’ areas of the city. Second of all, the new construction projects here (especially the ICE Congress Centre and the headquarters of the Kraków Festival Office) mean that there is more and more reason to come to this area.

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Planet Lem Literature and Language Centre, designed by JEMS Architekci, photo: investor’s publicity materials

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From the point of view of urban planning, Planet Lem will help the city reclaim areas where development has been blocked for a long time. And from a geographical point of view, it will open up Kraków towards Lwów, emphasising its age-old position at the crossroads of European east-west and north-south trade routes. This is also very much in the spirit of Lem. For us, the author of Solaris is an extremely Polish and Cracovian writer. But for Germans, he’s a writer who has explained Eastern Europe to them. And for Russians, he’s a writer who has explained Western Europe.

Pre-war Lwów was a city of three alphabets, five languages and four religions – and the capital of Polish secularism and free thought. As a polyglot and someone who treated all religions with respect, but at a distance, Stanisław Lem was a true son of his native city. A place designed as a tribute to Lem must therefore be a place of reflection on language. Different cultures, alphabets and civilisations should also meet here. East and West, North and South, Kraków and Lwów.

In many of Lem’s works, an important part of the plot is set in a library or bookshop, or their futuristic equivalent. Ijon Tichy, Trurl, Hal Bregg and Kris Kelvin seek answers there to the questions that torment them.

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Planet Lem Literature and Language Centre, designed by JEMS Architekci, photo: investor’s publicity materials

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In this, Lem presented himself, of course. As a student working on an overview of current specialist press for Mieczysław Choynowski’s seminar at the Jagiellonian University. As a pioneer of Polish futurology, studying the latest global trends in order to write Summa Technologiae, which has remained amazingly up-to-date, nearly 60 years later. As an attentive reader of American newspapers that were set aside especially for him in the press kiosk at Hotel Cracovia – and so on.

I hope that Planet Lem will also have a well-stocked linguistic and literary media library. And that it will be accompanied by a decent bookshop. This project commemorating Lem, the great master of science fiction, should be a place where you can stop by to purchase a gift on your way to someone’s ymieniny party. Can there be a better gift than a good book?

Originally written in Polish , Jan 2021, translated by Scotia Gilroy, Aug 2021

Wojciech Orliński is a journalist and writer whose works, amongst others, include the biographies Lem: Życie Nie z Tej Ziemi (Lem: A Life Out of This World) and Człowiek, Który Wynalazł Internet: Biografia Paula Barana (The Man Who Invented the Internet: A Biography of Paul Baran).

This article is presented in partnership with Tygodnik Powszechny.

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