Julian Przyboś

Poet and essayist, one of the most prominent authors of the Kraków Avant-garde. In his early period, his writing was inspired by the theories of Tadeusz Peiper; with time, his avant-garde poetics became enriched by landscape and reflective lyricism.

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Julian Przyboś, 1933, photo: Marek Skorupski / Forum

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Julian Przyboś

From 1912, he studied at a secondary school in Rzeszów, making his debut in 1917 with the sonnet Wschód Słońca [Sunrise], published anonymously in the secret pupils’ magazine Zaranie. In 1918, he joined a clandestine self-education circle that was part of the Polish Military Organisation. He took part in sabotage, participated in battles against the Ukrainians for Lviv, was wounded in the Battle of Sokolniki, and in 1919 was awarded the badge of honour of ‘Orlęta Lwowskie’. He graduated in 1920, and participated as a volunteer in the Polish-Soviet War. In autumn 1920, he took up Polish and philosophical studies at the Jagiellonian University. In 1921, together with his brother Stefan Przyboś, he reactivated the Literary and Artistic Circle, soon transformed into the Artistic Club Dionizy, under the aegis of which the almanac Hiperbola, containing four poems by Przyboś, was published in 1922. In 1922, he belonged to the group of Kraków-based ‘negative’ poets, and in the same year he published the poem Cieśla [Carpenter] in Skamander, which he considered to be his proper debut.

In 1923, he completed his studies (without a diploma) and began working as a secondary school teacher – he worked in Sokal (1923-1925), Chrzanów (1925-1927) and, after passing the qualifying exam, in Cieszyn (1927-1939). He joined the leftist group F 24 centred around the Almanac Front 24 (‘Almanac of New Art’). In 1923, he met Tadeusz Peiper and started to cooperate with Zwrotnica, the programme organ of the Kraków Avant-garde. In 1925-1927, he participated in editing the second series of Zwrotnica, on the pages of which he published important programme and polemical articles. He published his literary works, among others, in Kurier Literacko-Naukowy (1925-1926, 1939), Głos (1928-1930), Europa (1929-1930), and in the Cieszyn quarterly Zaranie Śląskie (1929-1938 with breaks, 1929-1932 on the editorial board). Between 1928 and 1930, he collaborated with the journal L'Art Contemporain – Contemporary Art, published in Paris and edited by J. Brzękowski and W. Chodasiewicz-Grabowska. Between 1930 and 1935, he belonged to the Łódź group a.r. (‘revolutionary artists’ or ‘radical artists’), and between 1931 and 1933, together with Jalu Kurek, he edited the magazine of the literary avant-garde Linia. From 1933, he was the patron of the activities of young writers associated with the periodical Nasz Wyraz. Between 1937 and 1939, he stayed in Paris and travelled around France, Belgium and Italy. He published poetry, articles on literary theory and visual arts in Droga (1933-1935), Pion (1934-1938), Kamena (1934-1935, 1937-1939), Miesięcznik Literatury i Sztuki (1935-1936), Okolica Poetów (1935-1936), Czas (1936-1939) and Nasz Wyraz (1938-1939).

The outbreak of war found him in Zaolzie, in October 1939 he found himself in Lviv, in December he took up a job as a librarian at the Ossoliński National Institute. In 1940, he was a member of the Mickiewicz Committee that organised celebrations in Ukraine to mark the 85th anniversary of the poet’s death; in September 1940, he became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine. In 1941, he was on the editorial board of Alamanach Literacki and Nowe Horyzonty. After Lviv was occupied by the Germans, he worked for a short time as a labourer in the city gardens. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 on suspicion of collaboration with the NKVD, he was released for lack of evidence. He left Lviv and settled in his hometown of Gwoźnica, where he made a living as a farm labourer until the end of the occupation, distributing his works in the form of manuscript collections or underground editions. After the liberation of Rzeszów in August 1944, he served as Head of the Information and Propaganda Department of the Provincial Office. In September 1944, he arrived in Lublin, became a member of the National Council, and later succeeded the chairman of the Education Commission. He was the first president of the reactivated Professional Union of Polish Writers (later, in 1948 and 1963, vice-president). He was among the founders of the Czytelnik Publishing Cooperative, and was on the editorial board of the Odrodzenie weekly, with which he moved to Kraków in January 1945. From 1945, he was a member of the Polish Workers’ Party (since 1949 of the Polish United Workers’ Party). He published poems, articles, and translations of French and German poetry in Odrodzenie (1944-50), Kuźnica (1945-1947), and Twórczość (1945-1968, with breaks). From 1947 to 1951, he stayed in Switzerland as an extraordinary deputy and minister plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of Poland.

After returning to Poland, he was director of the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków until 1955. He published poems, articles and literary reviews in Nowa Kultura (1952-1962 with breaks), Życie Literackie (1952-1959, 1962-1969), Dialog (1956-1957, 1963). In 1955, he moved to Warsaw and found himself on the editorial board of the weekly Przegląd Kulturalny. In 1958 he left the Polish United Workers’ Party in protest at the assassination of Imre Nagy. In 1964 he received the First Degree State Prize for lifetime achievement in literature. From 1965 to 1967 he was deputy editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Poezja, in 1968 on the editorial team of Miesięcznik Literacki. In 1966 he became vice-president of the PEN Club. He printed his poems and prose, among others, in Argumenty (1959-1962), Kamena (1960-1964), Współczesność (1961-1970 with breaks), Kultura (1963-1967), Tygodnik Kulturalny (1964-1970 with breaks), Życie Warszawy (1967, 1969), Nowe Książki (1967-1968, 1970). In 1969, due to deteriorating health, he moved to the House of Creative Work in Obory. He is buried in Gwoźnica.

Przyboś’s first two volumes of poems, Śruby i Oburącz [Screws and Both Hands], expressed a programmatic praise of modernity, a call for collective effort, and presented the heroes of the new civilisation. The poet described his own role in the collective effort as that of an active worker whose field is the written word. He wanted to derive a new poetics from modern technology, basing it on the principles of economy and functionalism, which involved a departure from traditional metre, increased ellipticity and metaphoricity, and the presence of characteristic motifs of the poetic imagination: the wheel, electricity, start-up.

The volumes Sponad [From Above] and W Głąb Las [Into the Woods] marked the beginning of his mature period. In it, there was a turn away from metropolitan civilisation towards nature, landscape and eroticism. The subject began to oppose his creative will to the surrounding world, which was served by the so-called creative figure, showing objects as if created by the subject’s efforts in the process of visual perception. External dynamism was transformed into internal dynamism, with a recurring motif of the wheel of the spectrum, especially its commissioning through human effort, the power of the word and the work of the imagination. The principle of functionalism led to the exploitation of the ambiguity of words, language became condensed and compressed according to the maxim ‘maximum imaginary allusions in minimum words’.

In the collection Równanie Serca [Equation of the Heart], social problems were added: solidarity with the struggling world, a sense of the otherness of one’s fate and a conviction of the inevitable annihilation of the existing order. In the same volume, the poet included a series of poems associated with Paris, among which was one of Przyboś’s best-known masterpieces, a brilliant example of the conversion of architecture into poetry – the poem Notre-Dame.

It was in the poetry tomes of the 1930s that Przyboś’s poetic style based on ellipsis and metaphor, most often unimaginative, finally took shape. A characteristic feature of this style also became the so-called ‘explosive figure’, showing the energy potentially inherent in objects and phenomena. His position was consolidated by the collections Póki My Żyjemy [So Long As We Still Live] and Miejsce na Ziemi [Place on Earth], which were manifestations of the inner independence of man and artist in the face of the cataclysm of war.

The post-war years saw a partial shift towards a new poetics, expressed in a move towards greater communicativeness, a change in the subject’s attitude from rebellious to accepting and instructive, and a return to the theme of work. In the late oeuvre covered in the collections (from the tome Narzędzie ze Światła [Tool of Light] onwards), the theme of one’s own identity and separateness became important, developed against the background of childhood memories and in topical polemics in verse, with recurring motifs of flight, light, the circle, and continuations of fixed lyric cycles (motifs of spring and the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris).

Przyboś’s poetic activity was accompanied by articles and essays on the problems of lyricism and other arts (especially fine arts), commentaries on his own work, and polemical speeches. In the interwar period, he formulated the slogans of functionalism and developed the categories of image and vision. After the war, he was mainly concerned with justifying innovativeness in art, at the same time attempting to reinterpret certain threads of cultural tradition, especially Romanticism (the collection Czytając Mickiewicza [Reading Mickiewicz]). He was interested in folklore (he compiled an anthology of Polish folk songs, Jabłoneczka 1953), and took an active part in literary life (his 1962 Oda do Turpistów [Ode to Turpists] provoked a violent polemic by Grochowiak and others, contributing to the consolidation of the term ‘turpism’ and a more precise self-definition of Grochowiak and the artists gathered around him). He was a translator from several Western European and Slavic languages, translating the poetry of Mayakovsky and Rilke, among others.

Selected works:

Śruby [Screws], Kraków 1925

Sponad [Both Hands], Kraków 1926

Sponad [From Above], Cieszyn 1930

W Głąb Las [Into the Deep Forest], Cieszyn 1932

Równanie Serca [Equation of the Heart], Warsaw 1938

Póki My Żyjemy [So Long As We Still Live], 1st edition – manuscript: 1943, 2nd edition: Kraków 1944

Miejsce na Ziemi [A Place on Earth], Czytelnik, Łódź 1945

Czytając Mickiewicza [Reading Mickiewicz], Warsaw 1950

Rzut Pionowy. Wybór Wierszy [Vertical Projection. A Selection of Poems], Warsaw 1952

Najmniej Słów. Poezje. Materiały Poetyckie [The Least Words. Poems. Poetic Materials], Objaśnienia, Kraków 1955

Linia i Gwar. Szkice [Line and Bustle. Sketches], vol. 1-2 Kraków 1956

Narzędzie ze Światła [Tool of Light], Warsaw 1958

Więcej o Manifest [More for the Manifesto], Warsaw 1962

Sens Poetycki. Szkice [Poetic Sense. Sketches], Kraków 1963

Na Znak [As a Gesture], Warsaw 1965

Kwiat Nieznany [The Unknown Flower], Warsaw 1968

Originally written in Polish by Bartłomiej Szleszyński, Polish Studies Department, University of Warsaw, July 2003, translated to English by PG, November 2022.

julian przyboś

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