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21 November 2009

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Stefan Chwin
languages: Polish  / English 
 

Born in 1949, a novelist and essayist. Chwin also writes adventure-fantasy tales for younger readers and illustrates them himself. He has also written critical and historical studies of literature. He lives in Gdańsk and works at the university there. He has won Andreas Gryphius' Prize in 1999.

The author of the enthusiastically received "Hanemann", a novel about Gdańsk as a Free City in the 1930s, during the war, and under Polish administration afterwards. Under the stony gaze of the Spirit of History who resides first in the Nazi-controlled Rathaus and next in the communist Security Bureau, the Robinson Crusoes who survived the wreck of the old Gdansk, and the newcomers who have arrived from the east, try to start over in life. The death of his beloved in the sinking of a passenger ship affects the eponymous Hannemann, a professor of anatomy, more than does the wartime destruction of the city. Without the woman he loves, nothing brings him comfort. Chwin masterfully describes a world of things expiring in fires, falling into the hands of strangers, and decaying in an alien atmosphere. This is all a symbol of vacancy and abandonment, of the foreignness of the world and of the fact that there is no returning to the past. Chwin includes stories of famous suicides: Kleist and his friend Henrietta Vogel, and the Polish writer Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and his companion. These legends of death are puzzles, tasks set for meditation.

Chwin's first novel, "The History of a Certain Joke" is a return to the world of a childhood marked by memories of the Stalinist era and the recollection of the Nazi period inculcated at home and in school. It is an attempt at reconstructing places in Gdansk and events have changed over the years into a treasured spiritual genealogy, into a private literary myth. The memory of injuries, hurt and sacrifices returns, as does the fascination with the otherness and intimacy of Polish-German relations.
""Perhaps the real trick is to die at the right moment." (Stefan Chwin, "Hanemann")
"While working on 'Hanemann', I often had the strange impression that I was entering a world where I had already been, that I recognized old places, streets, trees, objects, and people. As if I had seen it all before." (Stefan Chwin)
Bibliography:
  • "Krótka historia pewnego żartu. Sceny z Europy Środkowowschodniej / The Brief History of a Certain Joke: Scenes from East-Central Europe", Krakow: Oficyna Literacka, 1991
  • "Hanemann", Gdańsk: Marabut, 1995
  • "Esther", Gdańsk: Tytuł 2000
  • "Złoty pelikan / Golden Pelican", Gdańsk: Tytuł 2003
For younger readers, under the pseudonym Max Lars:
  • "Ludzie-skorpiony / Scorpion People", Bydgoszcz: Pomorze, 1984
  • "Człowiek-litera. Przygody Aleksandra Umwelta podczas akcji specjalnej w Górach Santa Cruz / The Letter Man: The Adventures of Aleksander Umwelt During the Special Operation in the Santa Cruz Mountains", Bydgoszcz: Pomorze, 1989

Translations:

  • German: "Tod in Danzig" Berlin: Rowohlt, 1997; "Die Gouvernante", Berlin: Rowohlt, 2000
  • Russian: "Hanemann", Moscow: Mezhdunarodnaya Literatura, 1997

Source: www.polska2000.pl; copyright: Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza.

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