Writing in Isolation: Stories From Prison & Beyond

stan-wojenny-gebarzewo-fot_tomasz-kaminski-ag-kt23.jpg, full-width, Gębarzewo isolation facility where dissidents were kept during martial law, photo: Tomasz Kamiński / Agencja Gazeta, Writing in Isolation: Stories From Prison & Beyond

#language & literature

Notes from prison, detention, internment and other places of isolation – in this respect, Polish writers and poets have quite a substantial output. Some, of course, chose their own seclusion for various reasons, where it was easier for them to concentrate.

I could work at home, but whenever I’d sit down at my desk and get down to work, my wife would come into my room, always feeling lonely, and start talking to me,’ confessed Józef Hen, a regular visitor to the ZAiKS [Society of Authors] house in Konstancin, as noted by Julia Hartwig. ‘If I hadn’t left home, I wouldn’t have written a single book.

In this text, we will look at the output of people who wrote even under conditions of enforced confinement.

The authors of books written under prison conditions – either during the investigation phase or after being sentenced – must, however, be clearly separated into two groups. The first group consists of criminals trying to benefit from their criminal past by producing more or less successful works of fiction. In the case of the other group of people deprived of liberty, we are dealing with prisoners of conscience detained by the services of an oppressive state for ideological and political reasons.

In both cases considered here, the literary works were created while their authors were kept in isolation. In spite of the unfavourable conditions and the supervision – exceptionally thorough in the case of political prisoners – the writers managed to create and smuggle out both significant works and those that, with time, proved to be less up-to-date and of only symbolic and historical value.

Criminals writing fiction

Urke Nachalnik

Thumbnail — Urke-Nachalnik, 1935, photo: Wikimedia Commons

Urke Nachalnik was born Icek Farbarowicz (1897–1939), a writer of detective fiction. Coming from a Jewish family, the writer was a criminal with the nickname Urke Nachalnik for most of his life.

He spent seven years in Rawicz prison. There, he learned the Polish language, became familiar with the works of eminent writers and began to write poems and detective stories. Stanisław Kowalski, a teacher of Polish, persuaded him to prepare a book and, with the author’s consent, edited it for spelling and grammar. And so Życiorys Własny Przestępcy (A Criminal’s Memoir, 1933, with a foreword by Stefan Błachowski, PhD, University of Poznań) was published by the Patronat Society for the Care of Prisoners, Rawicz branch. Urke Nachalnik wrote the following dedication in his novel:

To all those who have been pushed into the abyss of society’s outcasts by fate and who are striving to reform, this work is dedicated by the author.

After his release from prison, Urke Nachalnik tied his life to literature. Through his contacts with publishers in America, he regularly published short stories in Yiddish. He expressed himself more freely in them, which earned him even more recognition. In pre-war Poland, several of his novels were published in Polish. These included Żywe Grobowce (Living Tombs, a continuation of Życiorys...), Ludzie Bez Jutra (People Without a Tomorrow), W Matni (In a Quagmire).

Together with his wife, he settled in Otwock. He stayed there during the Nazi occupation. From the ghetto there, he would travel to Warsaw to acquire weapons, making plans to organise an armed resistance movement. He was supposedly captured during a sabotage operation and killed in hand-to-hand combat on the way to his execution. According to another version of events, he supposedly rescued Torah scrolls from a burning Otwock synagogue, for which he was arrested and executed by the Germans.

5 Polish Writers Who Won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Sergiusz Piasecki

Sergiusz Piasecki (1901–1964) was a Polish writer, political columnist, cocainist, smuggler, adventurer, pre-war intelligence officer and Home Army soldier.

His biography could be the plot of a whole series of action novels. In prison, he wrote three novels: Kochanek Wielkiej Niedźwiedzicy (Lover of the Great Bear), Ruda Ewa (Red-Haired Eva), Droga Pod Mur (Road Leading Up Against the Wall).

Kochanek Wielkiej Niedźwiedzicy is the popular story of a smuggler operating in the Polish-Lithuanian border region, translated into several languages. The novel was written while Piasecki was serving a 15-year sentence for robbery attacks (one on Jewish merchants, the other on a narrow-gauge railway).

We lived like kings. We drank vodka by the glass-full. We were loved by pretty girls. We walked on depths of gold. We paid in gold, silver and dollars. We paid for everything: for vodka and music. We paid for love with love, for hatred with hatred. [‘Kochanek Wielkiej Niedźwiedzicy’]

Piasecki was discovered and then successfully advocated for by Melchior Wańkowicz. Before World War II, Piasecki’s books were bestsellers, and he became the idol of salons, not only literary ones.

During the German occupation, Sergiusz Piasecki was active underground. He broke into the Gestapo headquarters in Vilnius and stole documents, including those testifying to the traitorous collaboration of some members of the Polish underground. He was also an executor of death sentences delivered by underground courts. Unconvinced of the veracity of the accusations against Józef Mackiewicz, Piasecki refused to carry out the sentence.

In communist Poland, he was completely banned from publishing, his name was not to be mentioned and all his books were removed from libraries. Sergiusz Piasecki’s most important books include Piąty Etap (The Fifth Stage), Kochanek Wielkiej Niedźwiedzicy, Trylogia Złodziejska: Jabłuszko, Spojrzę Ja w Okno…, Nikt Nie Da Nam Zbawienia (Thief’s Trilogy: Apple, I Will Look in a Window…, There Are No Supreme Saviours), Zapiski Oficera Armii Czerwonej (Memoirs of a Red Army Officer) and Siedem Pigułek Lucyfera (Lucifer’s Seven Pills). The dust of history has not settled on his work.

Jerzy Nasierowski

Jerzy Nasierowski (born 1933) is a theatre, film and radio actor and writer. He committed many burglaries, including one in 1965 when he stole several clocks from the flat of painter Franciszek Starowieyski. He also received a sentence of 7 years in prison for tax offences.

In January 1972, the corpse of a strangled woman, identified as Anna Wujek, was found in a flat in Warsaw. There were clearly traces of a burglary. The murder case with a robbery motive was led by Jan Płócienniczak, the captain of the investigation department of the Warsaw Citizen’s Militia.

In 1973, Jerzy Nasierowski was sentenced in a highly publicised trial to 25 years in prison for complicity in the murder committed by his young lover during a robbery attack. The accused never confessed to the murder. While serving his sentence, he wrote the autobiographical Zbrodnia i… (Crime and...).

This 800-page queer-prison epic tells the backstory of the thuggish sex affairs of a 36-year-old actor and a 16-year-old plumber set against the panorama of communist Poland.

When I'd shave him, Mr Nasierowski, I’d always tell him that he’d end up going with a tag on his toe. He laughed. He believed to the end they’d pardon him. And so? That’s how he went...

[‘Zbrodnia i…’]

The author shows the salon life of Warsaw at the time and the shocking erotic life behind the prison wall. At the same time, it is the story of more than ten years of a stigmatised intellectual’s struggle with the prison community and the prison authorities.

Thanks to Roman Bratny’s intercession, the author of Zbrodnia i… was pardoned by Henryk Jabłoński, the chairman of the Council of State, and released in 1983. Nasierowski’s book, which was halved by the fading censorship, was published by Wydawnictwo Literackie. It turned out to be the bestseller of 1988 (some 70,000 copies were sold). The first full author’s edition of the prison epic was published in 2018 by Korporacja Ha!art.

Between 1990 and 1994, Nasierowski published four books, which provided him with a source of income. He published a novel in episodes, Ten Pedalski PRL Według Nasierowskiego (That Faggy Communist Poland According to Nasierowski), on the web portal Gaylife.pl. In the early days of his literary work, he used the pen name Jerzy Trębicki.

The defiant creating behind bars

Władysław Bartoszewski

Władysław Bartoszewski (1922–2015) was a historian, publicist, journalist, writer, social activist, politician and diplomat. He was an Auschwitz prisoner, a soldier of the Home Army with the rank of second lieutenant and an activist of the Polish Underground State, as well as participating in the Warsaw Uprising.

Persecuted by the communist regime and convicted on charges of espionage, he spent the time from November 1946 to August 1954 in communist prisons. In 1955, the authorities admitted that he was wrongly convicted.

He worked for Tygodnik Powszechny (Popular Weekly). During the 1980s, he participated in various opposition activities; among others, he co-established the Society for Academic Courses and lectured at the ‘Flying University.’ From 1974 to 1985, he taught Polish history at the Catholic University of Lublin. He was active during the formation of the Solidarity Trade Union and interned from 13 December 1981 to 28 April 1982.

From the first moment of my internment, I was aware that there was a need, perhaps even a necessity, to document the course of events. In the first hours, however, this was not possible. We ended up in Białołęka Prison on the night of 12-13 December 1981. […] But already on 15 December, we found ourselves with a group of colleagues from Białołęka in the internment centre in Jaworze near Drawsko. And there, I grabbed a notebook, and immediately, still having everything fresh in my memory, I started to reconstruct what had happened during the past days. […] This diary was not controlled by anyone unauthorised during my stay in Jaworze (or at least I know nothing about it). As my internment became prolonged, however, the problem arose of how to protect these notes, which were already many pages long, from possible confiscation, destruction and forfeiture. [‘Dziennik z Internowania’]

Władysław Bartoszewski’s Dziennik z Internowania (Internment Diaries) is a unique record of the experiences of a group of the most eminent Polish intellectuals interned after the imposition of martial law in December 1981. A hero of the underground struggle during World War II, a prisoner of Stalinism and a pioneer of Polish-Jewish and Polish-German reconciliation, he was one of them. His diary is a chronicle of the Jaworze camp, everyday matters and conversations with friends.

Between 1983 and 1990, Władysław Bartoszewski was a guest professor of political science at three universities in Germany: Munich, Eichstätt and Augsburg.

Wiktor Woroszylski

woroszylski wiktor portret en_4222486.jpg — Wiktor Woroszylski, Warsaw, 1995, photo: Jacek Domiński / Reporter / East News

Wiktor Woroszylski (1927–1996) was a poet, prose writer, translator of Russian literature, author of works for children and young people and film reviewer.

In April 1982, the censors removed from Woroszylski’s collection Jesteś i Inne Wiersze (You Are and Other Poems) the piece ‘Pewnej Zimy w Pewnym Mieście Robotnicy Ostrzegają Przechodniów Żeby Nie Przyłączali Się do Nich’ (One Winter in a Certain City, Workers Warn Passers-by Not to Join Them), dedicated to the workers’ protests in the 1970s and the brutal actions of the communist authorities. Then, in October 1982, the same office refused to allow the publication of four more poems by the poet which were to appear on the front page of the magazine Tygodnik Powszechny. All of them made reference to the events that occurred at the turn of 1981/1982 and Woroszylski’s imprisonment; three of them had appropriate annotations as to their place of origin: Białołęka, Jaworze, Darłówko. At the time, the censors stopped ‘Nie Denerwuję Się’ (Don’t Get Upset), ‘Spotkanie’ (The Meeting), and ‘Byle do Wiosny’ (Just Until Spring), and on 18 October 1982 – a piece telling of the last moments spent in confinement:

Corporal Jan Maciejewski,

holding onto the ground with his legs apart

is on duty by my body for the last time

Intently

he shuffles through my underwear and letters

and gropes me with the shovels of his hands

as if brushing aside the invisible residue of my existence

There is something of purification

and sanctification

In such a solemn moment

I gaze at its priest and think

what would my wandering be worth

for so many months in the afterglow of this Elysium

if, in the end, I had neglected to hold in my eye

Corporal Jan Maciejewski

his fawn moustache and the swallow’s nest above his neck

flushed cheeks

his skin-tight calves

and fat, nimble fingers

whose touch forever

burned its mark on me

[originally in ‘Wezwanie’, no. 4 (1982)]

Anka Kowalska

Anka Kowalska (1932–2008) was a poet, prose writer, journalist and activist of the democratic opposition in the People’s Republic of Poland. She graduated in Polish philology from the Catholic University of Lublin in 1955.

The author of the famous Pestka (Pip; can also mean ‘no big deal’, trans.) was a member of the Workers’ Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) from 1976 – she ran the Radom file, edited the Komunikat (The Communiqué) and was the informal secretary of the Editorial Committee. The so-called korkowiec – the precise language of KOR documents – is to a large extent her work. She also ran a repression information bank. She was active in Solidarity.

Interned from 13 December 1981 to 1 June 1982, she was sent to the camp in Gołdap and then was transferred to Darłówko.

Those with concussions were finally taken to the hospital

those lamed in the last transport are already walking

and the one lying face to the wall for the third day

is a hysterical woman

after all, the Children’s Home is taking care of the child

Behind the door of the room marked CHAMBERMAID

today they are interrogating Wrocław

the police from Gorzów have arrived

the car with the Warsaw licence plate is not here

they are surely drinking in Suwałki

Letters came from home to several women

from which we know that seven weeks ago

her husband was arrested

her grandmother was healthy

her father had had a heart attack but was feeling fine

Gołdap, March [1982]

Released from internment thanks to the organisation Médecins du monde (Doctors of the World), she went to France for treatment, returning in 1983. In the 1970s and 1980s, she collaborated with the second-circulation magazines (i.e. magazines published without the permission of the censorship, trans.) Puls, Zapis (variously translated as Blacklisted, The Record or The Register, trans.), Biuletyn Informacyjny KOR (KOR Informational Bulletin), Kultura Niezależna (Independent Culture), Krytyka, as well as with the Paris-based Kultura and Zeszyty Historyczne (Historical Notebooks).

Aldona Jawłowska

Aldona Jawłowska (1934–2010) was a sociologist and a professor of humanities at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences of the University of Warsaw. From the earliest years of her academic career, she was driven to action by social sensitivity, energy and non-conformism.

In 1968, she took part in a student strike, something few employees of the University of Warsaw (UW) dared to do. She was later harassed for that. When she left the UW and started working at the Polish Academy of Sciences, she engaged in the creation of Solidarity there. She became involved with the KOR and the Society for Academic Courses.

During martial law, she was detained the day before her habilitation colloquium. She knew that she was facing internment for her earlier activities, so she lived in a different flat. She went into her own for a while to get her books so she could prepare for the colloquium. They intercepted her there.

Every month, there was a change in the military unit on duty at the centre. New arrivals underwent compulsory training. Those who came first were told that they were to guard prostitutes transported from all over Poland; another version was that we were caught with guns in our hands. Those who came later were told that mainly Jewish women and single women, ‘anarchists without families’ and ‘the dregs of society’ were staying here.

Gołdap [1982]

From 1982 to 1990, Aldona Jawłowska was the author of the magazine Karta (Card) and an associate of the Krąg Publishing House. Her health was poor, and she did not take care of it. She did, however, care about others. She was always surrounded by a bunch of dogs – she’d adopt them or find homes for them. She also gave generously to shelters and pounds for homeless animals.

Scattering in the Dark: A New Anthology of Polish Female Poets

Ireneusz Iredyński

Ireneusz Iredyński (1939-1985) was a famous prose writer, outstanding playwright, screenwriter, poet, songwriter, author of numerous radio plays, as well as a prisoner with a three-year sentence, convicted in a trumped-up trial for alleged attempted rape.

He began publishing as a teenager. His real career began in 1960, after the appearance of the mini novel Dzień Oszusta (A Cheater’s Day), following a previously published detective story under a pen name. The book was well received by the critics, decidedly less enthusiastically by the authorities. The author became a symbol of the moral corruption of artists.

For he drew the wrath of Comrade Wiesław himself, a locksmith by trade, full of complexes regarding writers, who – using Iredyński as an example – wanted to punish the young rebels. […] ‘That man lives the way he writes,’ he yelled furiously while brandishing and pounding his debut copy of ‘Dzień Oszusta’ against the rostrum. [‘Obława: Losy Pisarzy Represjonowanych’ by Joanna Siedlecka]

First Secretary of the Party Władysław Gomułka misinterpreted the novel’s character of a conman manipulating people as praise for nihilism and cynicism. Meanwhile, the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland fought against any ‘Western miasma’ or other ‘incorrect content’. Moreover, the writer’s lifestyle, with its propensity for alcoholic excesses, certainly did not help him. At Citizen’s Militia headquarters, Iredyński was repeatedly recorded as ‘an alcoholic and a troublemaker, leading a hooligan lifestyle’.

In 1966, the writer and his friend, the director Edward Żebrowski, were charged with attempted rape and sentenced to three years in prison in a trumped-up trial accompanied by a hate campaign in the press. Żebrowski was released after eight months, while Iredyński served the entire sentence. He did not break down in prison, thanks to, among others, the support of his first wife, Masza Kapelińska, a painter and an actress at Tadeusz Kantor’s Cricot 2 Theatre, and a circle of friends. This is evidenced by Listy z Więzienia (Letters from Prison), which he sent to Masza from the prison in Sztum and the prison hospital in Gdańsk.

At that time, he was already the author of the acclaimed drama Żegnaj, Judaszu (Farewell, Judas), which began a tour of Polish theatres, first staged by Konrad Swinarski in 1971 at Kraków’s Teatr Stary.

I think that a literary character is a projection of the writer’s imagination, his dreams, his dilemmas, his knowledge, his dialectics and, of course, the subconscious. I’m interested in the extremes; in them, the tendencies of our years are revealed most clearly. The dying of a certain world is unfolding before our eyes; our future is covered up. My protagonists are the personification of anxieties. [‘Dobra Proza i Dramat to Dla Mnie Przeżycie: Z Ireneuszem Iredyńskim Rozmawia Halina Murza-Stankiewicz’, ‘Wiadomości’, no. 14 (1972)]

He wrote hundreds of works, continuing to write until the end of his life. He died on 9 December 1985 in Warsaw from acute pancreatitis.

Lothar Herbst

Lothar Herbst (1940–2000) was a poet and opposition activist during the communist era. He was born into a German family in Wrocław but emphasised that he felt Polish and Silesian, although he did not renounce his origin. He began his studies at the Faculty of Polish Philology at the University of Wrocław in 1962, receiving his doctoral degree in 1975.

He became involved in opposition activities, was one of the founders of the Agora literary group and co-publisher of the magazine of the same name, in which he advocated freedom of speech and thought. After August 1980, he was elected president of the Wrocław branch of the Polish Writers’ Union. He was interned under martial law from the end of December 1981. In the detention camps, he wrote a series of poems titled Polska Więzienna (Prison Poland).

Slowly, incessantly, in our own or

prison jackets marked Correctional Centre

on our backs, we circle the walkway,

immersed in grief or hatred,

fear and contempt,

waiting to be called,

for a visitation, for an interview, to see a doctor

here we are,

inhabitants of a new planet of the absurd

Nysa, 13 March [1982]

At the internment centre, he co-organised the Free University of the Interned, of which he became a rector. Twenty-one lectures were given, and foreign language courses were held. There was a cross-section of the entire prison at these lectures: from professors to workers.

After his release from internment, he returned to opposition activity. He edited the independent quarterly Obecność (Presence) from 1983. Lothar Herbst was arrested again in 1985 and released after a few months due to a serious eye disease. Thanks to the intercession of writers and German politicians, he was allowed to go to West Germany for treatment.

He spent his time abroad not only undergoing treatment but also representing the interests of Solidarity. He returned to Poland after the start of the Roundtable Talks and became a member of the Solidarity Citizens’ Committee in Wrocław. On 15 March 1990, he became the editor-in-chief and, in 1993, the chairman of the board of Polish Radio’s Wrocław broadcasting station.

Psychedelics in the Work of 6 Famed Polish Writers

Jan Krzysztof Kelus

Jan Krzysztof Kelus (born 1942) is a poet, composer, singer, translator and sociologist by profession. He was a respected bard of the democratic opposition, the author and performer of ballad protest songs reflecting the mood of the 1970s and 1980s, such as ‘Na Pzystanku PKS-u’ (At the Bus Stop), ‘Piosenka o Jacku Staszelisie’ (Song About Jacek Staszelis), ‘Piosenka Pasożyta Społecznego’ (Song of a Social Parasite), ‘Sentimentalna Panna S.’ (Sentimental Miss S.).

In the pages of his Dziennik 1978 (Diary 1978), Marian Brandys called him ‘the favourite singer of the opposition’, who in his songs most accurately reflected the shape of the reality of the time.

One could risk saying that Jan Krzysztof Kelus’s songs were as much political as […] reading a book could constitute a political act in a time when extending a helping hand to a person unlawfully deprived of his livelihood was a transgression against the system and when mentioning one or another fact from history meant undermining the rule of law and therefore bore the hallmarks of a political struggle. In this sense, ‘Piosenki ze Starej Kasety’ [Songs from an Old Cassette] and ‘Z Nieskończoną Wciąż Piosenką’ [With a Still Unfinished Song] are political material.

[‘Poza Państwowym Monopolem – Jan Krzysztof Kelus’ by Krzysztof Gajda]

His at one time clandestinely recorded songs, some of which were created in prison conditions, are now listened to only occasionally – naturally, without the same strong emotions that accompanied listeners at the time they came into being.

Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik (born 1946) is a publicist, essayist, writer, historian and political activist. In 1968–89 he was a dissident and one of the main activists of the democratic opposition in the People’s Republic of Poland. He has been editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza since 1989.

He was imprisoned and repressed as a political prisoner on more than one occasion prior to 1989. Michnik wrote some of his books during successive stays in communist prisons – for example, Z Dziejów Honoru w Polsce (On the History of Honour in Poland), written in a cell in Mokotów Prison, or the essays that made up the book Polskie Pytania (Polish Questions).

For me, General, Sir, imprisonment is not a particularly painful punishment. On that December night, it was not I who was proscribed, it was freedom; it is not I who is imprisoned today, it is Poland. For me, General, Sir, it would be a punishment if I had to denounce or wave a baton at your command, shoot workers, interrogate the imprisoned and hand down disgraceful convictions. I am happy to have found myself on the right side: among the victims and not among the oppressors.

[‘List do Generała Kiszczaka’]

Defencelessness does not deprive one of dignity. Cowardice and betrayal, hatred and the executioner’s profession deprive one of it. […] I believe therefore that we will be victorious. We will strengthen Solidarity, and Solidarity will block the path of the totalitarian plague.

[‘Przed Wyrokiem’]

Most of the sketches in Polskie Pytania – including those quoted here in excerpts: ‘Letter to General Kiszczak’ and ‘Before the Sentence’ – were written by Adam Michnik while he was under communist-era arrests and in prisons. In both of these texts, emblematic statements are made that became the credo of the Polish opposition. They were published in various émigré publications, whether in underground or official circulation.

Marek Karpiński

Marek Karpiński (born 1948) is a philologist, publicist, writer and was an opposition activist during the communist period. Son of Zbigniew Karpiński, brother of Wojciech and Jakub, Marek Karpiński is the author of several books, including Najstarszy Zawód Świata: Historia Prostytucji (The Oldest Profession in the World: The History of Prostitution) and Historia Szpiegostwa (The History of Espionage).

He studied at the University of Warsaw from 1967. He was expelled from the university for his participation in student protests during the March events of 1968. He then studied at the Catholic University of Lublin, finally graduating in Polish Philology at the University of Warsaw in 1978. He was a researcher and doctoral student at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ISP PAN). From 1976, he collaborated with the Workers’ Defence Committee and the Committee for Social Self-Defence KOR; in 1977, he signed the declaration of the Democratic Movement.

From the second half of the 1970s, he was active in the independent publishing movement; among others, he gave his flat to the Głos (Voice) printing house. He joined Solidarity and was the union’s publishing manager in the Mazovia Region. On 13 December 1981, he was interned and released on 18 November 1982.

It is momentarily quiet and peaceful as the fashion for making stamps, bookplates, postcards, etc., has taken hold. They are scraped with a nail file in a piece of linoleum torn up from the floor. Then, one of us makes an appointment with a doctor, complaining of a fungal infection. He obtains Pigmentum Castellani, a purple salve with which you print. Inks are also made from shoe polish and pen refills. Each cell has its own recipe… And all this lino printing has one good side – it’s labour-intensive.

Białołęka, 22 March [1982]

At the detention centre in Białołęka, he published the independent magazine Koniem Przez Świat (Across the World on a Horse). He lost his job at ISP PAN at that time. He found employment as a labourer.

He worked as an editor for cultural magazines from 1989, and he was a spokesman for the Minister of Culture and Arts from 1990 to 1991; then, during the presidency of Lech Wałęsa, he became an official in the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland and from August to December 1995 – undersecretary of state and presidential spokesman. He was one of the co-founders of Christian Democracy of the Third Republic of Poland and a member of the group’s government. He served as vice-president of the Lech Wałęsa Institute (1995–2005). Later, he was a lecturer at the Leon Koźmiński Academy; he is now retired.

Antoni Pawlak

Antoni Pawlak (born 1952) is a poet and a publicist. He made his debut in 1975. He was a member of the editorial board of the independent literary quarterly Puls in 1979–80 and the author of the cult Książeczka Wojskowa (Military Service Book).

He was a participant in the 1980 Gdańsk Shipyard strike, worked with the Cultural Commission of the Solidarity Trade Union Mazovia Region in 1981 and was interned during martial law.

S. once managed to stockpile a larger supply of alcohol. After drinking, he decided to become a hero. Enough of captivity; it was time to escape. He went down to the ground floor, quietly opened the door and found himself eye-to-eye with a confused guard. It was night. For a moment, they both peered at each other. Finally, S. couldn’t stand it anymore:

– I’m getting the fuck out of here.

The guard shrugged his shoulders.

– I’m escaping – S. supplied.

– So, get the fuck out of here – replied the guard.

The crestfallen S. slowly strolled back to his room.

– So, how’d it go? – asked Jacek.

S., throwing himself on the bed, muttered:

– It’s damn hard to escape from this Jaworze.

Jaworze [1982]

Request
The commandant of the local facility, Capt. M. Ostrowski, informed me that if I wanted to engage in any form of literary creativity, I would have to obtain permission from the so-called ‘managing authority’. I therefore hereby request permission to write a poem – the anticipated theme of the work is the longing for a woman. The main idea of the planned piece could be summarised as follows – separation is a bad thing. At the moment, it is difficult for me to determine the kind of metaphor structure and the meter of the poem. I am able to surmise that the poem will be composed according to the principles of what is called Peiper’s ‘fourth system’ with some intonational-syntactic regularities.

Thank you in advance for your favourable response to my request.

Antoni Pawlak

Jaworze

Every other day, I would write requests to the authorities at various levels, realising that the officials there were totally bureaucratic and that they would respond to every application. I also knew that if I jotted things down, they would take them away when I was released, but they could not take my official documents. So, I kept a sort of ‘diary of requests and replies’, which I later used for my underground publication of something called the ‘Book of Complaints and Petitions’. And General Ćwiek did not respond to that request. Only Commander Ostrowski informed me laconically, ‘You may practice creativity’. So, I ‘practiced’ it. But as my trust in the authorities was not very great, I wrote down poems on cigarette paper and gave them to my family during visits.

Jaworze [1982]

He worked in the editorial office of Gazeta Wyborcza between 1989 and 1993, he was the winner of the Kościelski Foundation literary award in 1983, and he was spokesman for the mayor of Gdańsk between 2007 and 2017.

_Literature:

_{Władysław Bartoszewski, Dziennik z internowania: Jaworze 15.12.1981–19.04.1982, Warsaw 2006}

_{Marian Brandys, Dziennik 1978, Warsaw 1997}

_{‘Dobra proza i dramat to dla mnie przeżycie: Z Ireneuszem Iredyńskim rozmawia Halina Murza-Stankiewicz’, Wiadomości, no. 14 (1972)}

_{Krzysztof Gajda, Poza państwowym monopolem – Jan Krzysztof Kelus, Poznań 1998}

_{Wiktor Henryk Gardocki, Cenzura wobec literatury polskiej w latach osiemdziesiątych XX wieku, Białystok 2017}

_{Julia Hartwig, Dziennik tom 2, Kraków 2014}

_{Ireneusz Iredyński, Listy z więzienia, Warsaw 2015}

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jan krzysztof kelus

writers

polish writers of the XX century

polish writers

poets