Jerzy Pomianowski in his apartment in Powiśle district, Warsaw; photograph: Tomasz Barański/East News
Writer, translator, essayist, expert on Russian issues. He has published works under the pseudonyms of Michał Kaniowski, Hanna Kostek, and Dyonizy Aczkolwiek. Born on January 13th, 1921 in Łódź.
Jerzy Pomianowski was born into a family of assimilated Jews. His father Stanisław Birnbaum was a textile technician, and his mother Janina, née Kliger, worked as a Polish language teacher. In 1938 Pomianowski earned his secondary school certificate at the Polish Public Secondary School for Boys in Łódź where he attended courses on Polish language and propaedeutics of philosophy taught by Mieczysław Jastrun. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Pomianowski entered the Philosophy Department of the University of Warsaw (where he attended the seminar taught by Tadeusz Kotarbiński). Encouraged by
Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, he made his literary debut in the "Próby" weekly with an article entitled Na śmierć Leśmiana" / "On Leśmian's Death.
In the 1970s Pomianowski worked for the Parisian "Kultura" journal as a translator for the Literary Institute in Paris (under a pseudonym of Michał Kaniowski). He translated works of the Russian dissidents, including a three-volume The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
In 1999 Pomianowski established "Nowaja Polsza", a monthly published in Russian, and since then he has been its Editor-in-Chief.
Jerzy Pomianowski is a renowned translator of the Russian literature. His translations include: works by Chekhov, Lyev Tolstoy, Evgeny Shvarts, and Mikhail Bulgakov; poetry by Akmatova, Mandelstam, Pushkin and Slutsky; as well as essays by Andrei Sakharov and Mikhail Heller. Above all, Pomianowski is a translator of Isaak Babel's works. He translated nearly all of his novels and plays, and published a translation of the unabridged version of Dziennik 1920" / "1920 Diary.
Jerzy Pomianowski received many distinguished awards, such as: Union of Polish Stage Authors and Composers - ZAIKS Award (1989), Polish PEN Club Award (1990), Dariusz Fikus Prize (2004) awarded by the Rzeczpospolita daily for an "extended promotion of a dialogue between Poles and Russians" and Jerzy Giedroyc Prize (2006). In 1998 he was awarded the Commander Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland, and in 2005 the Grand Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of establishing cooperation between the Polish and Russian nations, as well as literary and journalistic activities. Pomianowski himself values most highly the Juliusz Mieroszewski Prize awarded by Jerzy Giedroyc in 1997.
On January 13, 2011 Jerzy Pomianowski celebrated his 90th birthday.
Source: editorial materials, www.biblioteka-analiz.pl.