Ficowski's first volume of vese was published in 1948, titled Ołowiani żołnierze / Tin Soldiers. In total Ficowski published 14 poetry collections. At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s Ficowski travelled around Poland with a Gypsy caravan, learning their language, habits and culture. The writer devoted many years to the Gypsies. Cyganie polscy / Polish Gypsies, a book of essays on the history and the lives of Gypsies came out in 1953. The subsequent volume Cyganie na polskich drogach / Gypsies on the Polish Road was published in 1965. Ficowski was also a friend of the Gypsy poet Bronisława Wajs-Papusza. Her first volume of poetry which came out in 1956 was translated by Ficowski. It was the first volume of Gypsy poetry published in Poland bearing Wajs-Papusza's name.
The war and the horrifying mass murder of Jews created in Ficowski the need to rescue this culture from oblivion as well. One of the results of this interest was the poem List do Marka Chagalla / A Letter to Marc Chagall which came out in 1957. Still, the personage he focused on most was Bruno Schulz. In 1967 Ficowski published essays on the life of the artist, entitled Regiony wielkiej herezji / Regions of the Great Heresy. Ficowski confessed he had already fallen in love with Sklepy cynamonowe / Cinnamon Shops during the war. Once he learned about the author's tragic death Ficowski made the decision to further his study of both Schulz's literary and artistic works, and to provide them with commentaries as a form of literary tribute.
In protest of the changes proposed to the Constitution by the Polish United Workers' Party, which set to legalise the leading role of the Communist Party in addition to establishing an eternal friendship with the Soviet Union, Ficowski signed the "Letter of '59". It was the beginning of his activity with the opposition. In the following year, his works were banned and the ban was maintained until 1980. From 1977 Ficowski published in samizdat, mainly in "Zapis". In 1978 he became a member of the Workers' Defence Committee. He went to the Radom trials, and worked out statements as well as appeals for the Workers' Defence Committee, including the appeal published on November 11th, 1978, the sixtieth anniversary of Poland's regaining of her independence. His volume of poetry Gryps / Kite was published by NOWA, an independent publishing house in 1979.
During the martial law Ficowski continued his cooperation with circles opposing the Communist government. In 1981 and 1984 he managed to go to Israel and Great Britain to study Jewish literature. The writer died in Warsaw on May 9th, 2006.
In September 1999, The Borderland Foundation and Borderland of Arts, Cultures, Nations Centre awarded the "Man of the Borderland" prize for the first time and Ficowski was named the winner. When the chair of The Borderland Foundation, Krzysztof Czyżewski described the criteria for the win in an interview to Tygodnik Powszechny:
In the case of Jerzy Ficowski, the criterion was being Jerzy Ficowski. (...) Jerzy Ficowski contributed his whole life and work to popularising the borderland ethos, a mind-set of tolerance and openness, treating the distinctiveness of others with understanding and respect, overcoming prejudices and stereotypes, building bridges of closeness between people of different nationalities and religions.
Wcielenia Jerzego Ficowskiego - według recenzji, szkiców i rozmów z lat 1956-2007 / The Incarnations of Jerzy Ficowski. Based on Reviews, Essays and Talks from the Years 1956-2007 comprises five chapters arranged according to theme, each of which presents the broad scope of Ficowski's activities as a poet, friend of the Gypsies and an expert on Gypsy culture, Bruno Schulz enthusiast and translator of Spanish and Russian poetry, as well as an oppositionist, a rebel and, finally, an artist.
The book's editor Piotr Sommer writes in the book's introduction:
I tried to select the best and most interesting articles written about Jerzy Ficowski during the last 50 years. They are very diverse in many respects, although most of them were originally created as reviews. There are only a few essays going beyond the review format or beyond a write-up of a single book. I nonetheless hope that this anthology serves not only as a collection of major essays and reviews, that it does not only remind the crucial interviews with the poet which have been published before, but that in addition it merges this 81-voice polyphony in a rather consistent shape.
Source: PAP & Piotr Sommer's Wcielenia Jerzego Ficowskiego - według recenzji, szkiców i rozmów z lat 1956-2007
- Wcielenia Jerzego Ficowskiego - według recenzji, szkiców i rozmów z lat 1956-2007
edited by Piotr Sommer
Wydawnictwo Pogranicze, Sejny 2010
170 x 232, 770 pp., hard cover
ISBN: 978-83-61388-76-0
www.pogranicze.sejny.pl