Jan Goślicki albo Jan Maurycy Amstisławski
The monographic part of the periodical devoted to the life and works of Jan Goślicki and Annemarie Frascoli is divided into three chapters, each preceded by an introduction by Paweł Bem. The foundation of the first chapter: Jan Goślicki – żywot epistolarny, is composed of Jan Goślicki’s correspondence with eminent representatives of Polish (not exclusively) humanities, selected from Polish and foreign archives. The letters presented in this chapter include those exchanged by Goślicki and Jerzy Giedroyc, Czesław Miłosz, Jerzy Stempowski, Peter Lachmann, and Jan Józef Lipski as well as correspondence addressed by Goślicki to Kazimierz Wyka, Karl Dedecius, Leszek Kołakowski, Wiktor Weintraub, Jan Błoński, Jeanne Hersch, Ludwik Flaszen, Renata Gorczyńska, and Annemarie Frascoli. Epistolographic material was supplemented by complementary texts: a review of a book by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, commissioned by Jerzy Giedroyc but never presented in “Kultura” (published in Paris), and preserved in the author’s archive, as well as texts by Goślicki’s living correspondents (Lachmann and Gorczyńska), written specially for this issue. In her reminiscences Gorczyńska explains the circumstances of the exchange of letters with Goślicki, while Peter Lachmann addresses his former correspondent in a brief electronic message. Jan Goślicki was an outstanding letter writer and presumably his lifetime achievement consisted of correspondence, which enabled him to contact the most outstanding intellects of twentieth-century Europe. Published fragments of his vast correspondence provide a modest albeit evocative conception of the worldwide constellation of correspondents which he managed to create. The Goślicki archive preserved relatively few examples – he treated the letters he received as rubbish and their best part has not survived. The sole exception was the most copious collection composed of letters from Miłosz, whose majority was preserved. Fortunately, the recipients of Goślicki’s correspondence were much more meticulous, thus making it possible to locate some of the letters addressed to them. The unique entire correspondence with Giedroyc has been preserved thanks to the “Kultura” editor who copied and stored all letters. The presented letters were selected owing to their literary, scientific, and publicistic merits, in other words, their importance as source material – today they serve as their author’s biography. It is a known fact that the correspondents with whom Goślicki maintained longer contacts were numerous and came from different countries. Their letters are also evidence of Goślicki’s reflections about books which he planned to write and which for assorted reasons were never published. Moreover, they remain a valuable document concerning the Polish post-1968 emigration. Chapter two: Goślicki, czyli poza kanonem, is a collection of Goślicki’s texts and translations scattered in books and periodicals, as well as his up to now unpublished essays and translations preserved in his private archive. The material begins with Wprowadzenie, an unpublished typescript envisaged as an introduction to a never written book about the art of writing, a specific pointer for adepts of literature and readers interested in the magic of language. Successive three texts deal with the life and works of the Swiss author Friedrich Glauser, whom Goślicki described as an anti-Swiss Helvetian. To a considerable extent these commentaries serve as a guidebook to the nuances of Swiss culture and literature. Glauser remains unknown in Poland despite Goślicki’s efforts – he translated a number of the Swiss author’s novels. The successive text – an introduction to the Polish edition of Le sang du ciel (issued as: Krew nieba) by Piotr Rawicz, a French novel which in its time enjoyed considerable success in France; in Poland it remained unpublished up to the time it was translated for Wydawnictwo Krakowskie – concerns one of the prime problems broached by Goślicki, i.e. that of literature (im)possible in the wake of the Holocaust. A further fragment deals with André Kamiński, yet another author unknown in Poland, who, in contrast to Rawicz, was Goślicki’s personal acquaintance. Other Goślicki texts and translations are testimony of their author’s meaningful literary canon. They include an unpublished translation of Über das Marionettentheater (On the Marionette Theatre) by Heinrich von Kleist (in the Goślicki archive) as well as an earlier unpublished translation of Kleist in Thun by Robert Walser, a translation of a fragment of poetic prose by Franz Kafka, a collection of quotations from works by Karl Kraus, poems by Abraham Suckewer, the poem: Lamarck by Osip Mandelstam, and texts by the English poetess Anne Beresford. The chapter also includes Goślicki’s introduction to a book by Tomas Venclova about Aleksander Wat, translated by Goślicki, an article on the works of Martin Buber, an introduction to, and a translation of an article by Paul de Man, Goślicki’s master and teacher, described in one of the letters addressed to Jerzy Giedroyc as “one of the best structuralists in the world”, a translation of a paper on the study of foreign languages (after all, Goślicki was a polyglot) read in Solura by Peter Bichsel (born 1935), a Swiss man of letters, teacher, and friend of Max Frisch; the coda of this part of our issue consists of a fragment of the conclusion of Goślicki’s book: Sztuka reklamy, the outcome of a course conducted by him at the School of Commodity Service and Management at the Cracow University of Economics during the first half of the 1990s. Chapter three: Goślicki, czyli rozpacz zorganizowana, contains material pertaining to Goślicki’s appearance at the Piwnica pod Baranami cellar cabaret during the 1990s, upon returning to Poland. His letters to Ludwik Flaszen or Annemarie Frascoli, published in the first chapter, cast light on the backstage aspects (literally and not in so many words) of work pursued by the company headed by Piotr Skrzynecki, who introduced Goślicki as a “poet” or an “intellectual”. The title of Goślicki’s five minute-long Rozpacz zorganizowana (Organised Despair) sketches refers to the wisdom of the Hasidic rabbi Nachman of Bracław, who supposedly maintained that contrary to diabolical depression caused by the spleen despair is a thing of the heart, an important and valuable gift bestowed by the Lord, of which one should not totally divest oneself. In order to avoid a surplus of despair, however, it should be limited to several minutes daily and the remaining time be granted to joy. The chapter in question presents Goślicki‘s translations of the “founding” Nachman parables as well as a letter to an unknown addressee, preserved in the archive and concerning work connected with the Piwnica, including translations of poems by Paul Celan, also used in performances on this Cracow cabaret stage, records of Goślicki’s performances and occasional appearances connected with the Piwnica, previously published in “Dekada Literacka”, and, finally, translations of Celan’s poetry and essays dedicated to the works of Ludwik Flaszen, Goślicki’s long-term friend, in which Goślicki discovered on occasion unexpected but highly convincing affinities by choice with the Paul Celan–Ludwik Flaszen constellation. Collected texts by Jan Goślicki are accompanied by reproductions of corresponding works by his wife, Annemarie Frascoli, a Swiss artist for years co-working with him and author of compositions frequently closely connected with her husband’s literary texts. An excellent example of such husband-and-wife cooperation are reproductions of Frascoli’s illustrations, published in this issue and intended for Goślicki’s translations of parables by Nachman of Bracław and poems by Suckerwer or Paul Celan. A separate section is dedicated to Frascoli’s individual compositions, indirectly associated with texts by Jan Goślicki, although their themes often noticeably refer to historical and philosophical questions broached both by husband and wife.
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