There was probably no figure in Polish poetry who left behind more boating-related lines than Czesław Miłosz. 'Wherever I wandered, through whatever continents, my face was always turned to the River' [Trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass]. Or: 'Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!' [Trans. Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass].
In his text Rzeki Miłosza (Miłosz’s Rivers), Przemysław Dakowicz lists the names of 500 rives mentioned across Miłosz’s oeuvre. The fascination with rivers accompanied the poet since his childhood – as a young boy, he would draw maps of a perfect country, in which communication would be limited to rivers and canals.
And if rivers then also a kayak – he learned the ropes during his vacation with his aunt and uncle in Krasnogrud, in a mansion located by the Hołny Lake. During his studies at the Stefan Batory University he joined the Student Vagabonds Club. Their motto was shortened to the acronym ZNAJ! – which meant Zmarnowanej Niedzieli Ani Jednej (Not One Sunday Wasted). Among the members of the Club there were also other individuals who would later become famous and whose post-war fates unfolded in surprising ways, for instance Leon Beynar, later to be known as the historian Paweł Jasienica, film director and the chronicler of the Warsaw Uprising Antoni Bohdziewicz and the communist dignitary Stefan Jędrykowski. Each of the Vagabonds had his own nickname – Miłosz, for instance, was nicknamed Egg.
Years later, Miłosz likened this circle to the hippie movement, and that’s how he described their ideas in Native Realm:
One of the reasons for the club's existence, and its members' greatest source of pride, was contempt for the sword-carrying snobs, drunkards, and fools in the fraternities. The club was democratic and scorned social formalities. It supported anarchy and thumbed its nose at undue solemnity. In university processions, while the fraternities carried their banners we marched with our own symbol—a huge pilgrim's staff. A brotherhood of fanatics espousing action and youth, we opted for kayak trips, skiing, long hikes, and overnight stops in barns or in the forest. [Trans. Catherine S. Leach]
Water guide from 1936 written by Maria Podkówka-Okołów, photo: Polona.pl The wanderers undertook excursions short yet demanding, such as winter kayak trips up the Wilia river (accompanied by phrases such as ‘Fools are coming!’ shouted at them by the onlookers on the bank), but also longer ones, such as one from Wilno to Poznań. They also prepared a guide to water routes of the Wilno region (950 kilometres of trails).
The Vagabonds Club is linked to an impressive and rowdy adventure of the future Nobel Prize winner (later described in his essay ‘Journey to the West’), when – together with Stefan Jędrychowski and Stefan Zagórski – he attempted to travel from the Bavarian Lindau to Paris by water. They crashed their kayaks on underwater rocks of the Rhine, drowning their money and passports – but they did reach Paris eventually… on foot and by train.
Even bolder in his kayak-related enterprises was another Vagabond from Wilno, Wacław Korabiewicz, then a student of medicine and ethnography, after the war a doctor, a reporter and a traveller. In 1930, he and his 3 friends travelled on Orawka, Wag and Dunaj to the Black Sea and further to Istanbul. He described the expedition in his book Kajakiem do Minaretów (Kayaking to Minarets) published a few years later.
Wańkowicz: down Krutynia in Kuwaka
