Writer, author of twenty novels, film director and screenwriter (the founder of the "Polish cinema des auteurs"); born in Lithuania in 1926.

On this page we publish following articles: Tadeusz Konwicki's biographical note - originally published on pages www.polska2000.pl; his profile as a writer - by Przemysław Kaniecki and his profile as a film maker - by Ewa Nawój.





Konwicki is the conscience of Polish society and the crazed mirror in which it is reflected. He is one of the writers who have left the most lasting impression on post-war Polish literature and culture. He is regarded as a spokesman for the yearnings, attitudes, hopes and rage of several generations.

"From the Besieged City" (1956) inaugurates a Vilnius cycle that would include the novels "A Hole in the Sky" (1959), "The Anthropos-spectre-beast" (1969), "A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents" (1974) and "Bohin" (1987). These works, among Konwicki's most beautiful, evoke the region around Vilnius as a land of growing up and of initiation into the sense of life, of learning about love and death, a land where feelings are born and where the reconciliation with existence - a Faustian acceptance of duration - occurs. The portrait of contemporaneity, a sterile region and acid-etched time, is most intense in the cycle of novels that includes "A Dreambook for Our Time" (1963), "Ascension Into Heaven" (1967), and "Nothing or Nothing" (1971). They share an analysis of social memory that contains the evil of wartime and Stalinist evil, as well as the construction of a protagonist who is first unable to accept his own identity because it contains elements of guilt, and then is unable to establish that identity because the way to it is blocked by the lack of a connection between his own person and the present moment around him. That present moment is a vision of a police state in which the population, under constant surveillance, slowly loses its own contours and collapses into a shapeless mass. This image is deepened in the next cycle, which includes the best-known works of literature to be published outside the purview of state censorship: "The Polish Complex" (1977), "A Minor Apocalypse" (1979) and "Underground River, Underground Birds" (1984).

Konwicki's direct engagement in social issues grew steadily after the publication of "Nothing or Nothing". This engagement was counter-balanced by a cycle of "lying journals". These constituted non-required writing and were engaged neither in politics nor in literature. They cannot be read either as fiction or as fact, and are diverse in terms of their genres and aesthetics. These works - "The Calendar and the Hourglass" (1976), "Moonrise, Moonset" (1982), "Nowy Świat Street and Vicinity" (1986), "Northern Lights" (1991) and "Slander Against Myself" (1995) are collections of journal entries and essayistic interludes, fragments of literary works and social indiscretions. Their freedom, charm, wide range of wit and humors make them, like Gombrowicz's "Diaries", true literary pearls and frequent objects of imitation.

"(...) I write above all for the reader, with the intention of giving pleasure, amusing, stunning or destroying. It is impossible to write without the other person." ("Half a Century of Purgation")

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

Selected Bibliography:

• "Rojsty", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1956
• "Z oblężonego miasta / From the Besieged City", Warsaw: Iskry, 1956
• "Dziura w niebie / A Hole in the Sky", Warsaw: Iskry, 1959
• "Sennik współczesny / A Dreambook for Our Time", Warsaw: Iskry, 1963
• "Wniebowstąpienie / Ascension Into Heaven", Warsaw: Iskry, 1967
• "Zwierzoczłekoupiór / The Anthropos-spectre-beast", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1969
• "Nic albo nic / Nothing or Nothing", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1969
• "Kronika wypadków miłosnych / Chronicle of Amorous Incidents", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1974
• "Kalendarz i Klepsydra / The Calendar and the Hourglass", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1976
• "Kompleks polski / The Polish Complex", Warsaw: Alfa, 1989
• "Mała apokalipsa / A Minor Apocalypse", Warsaw: Alfa, 1988
• "Wschody i zachody księżyca / Moonrise, Moonset", Warsaw: Krag, 1982
• "Rzeka podziemna, podziemne ptaki / Underground River, Underground Birds", Warsaw: Alfa, 1984
• "Nowy Świat i okolice / Nowy Świat Street and Vicinity", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1986
• "Bohiń", Warsaw, 1991
• "Zorze wieczorne / Northern Lights", Warsaw: Alfa, 1991
• "Czytadło / Page-Turner", Warsaw: Niezalezna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992
• "Pamflet na siebie / Slander Against Myself", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1995
• "Pamietam, że było gorąco / I remember it was hot", Krakow: Znak, 2001
• "Kalendarz i klepsydra" (uncensored original version), Czytelnik 2005
• "Wiatr i pył" ["The Wind and the Dust"], Czytelnik 2008.

Selected translations:

• English: "A Dreambook for Our Time / Sennik współczesny", The MIT Press, 1970 "The Anthropos-spectre-beast / Zwierzoczłekoupiór", New York: S. Phillips, 1977 "The Polish Complex / Kompleks polski", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982 "A Minor Apocalypse / Mała apokalipsa", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983 "Moonrise, Moonset / Wschody i zachody księżyca", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987 "Bohin Manor / Bohiń", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990 "New World Avenue and Vicinity / Nowy Świat i okolice", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991
• French: "L'Ascension", Paris: Gallimard, 1971; "Béthofantôme", Paris: Ed. Rupture 1978; "La petite apocalypse", Paris: Robert Laffont, 1981; "La Clé des songes contemporains", Paris: Robert Laffont, 1983; "Bohini, un manoir en Lituanie", Paris: Robert Laffont, 1984; "Fleuve souterrain, oiseaux de nuit", Paris: Robert Laffont, 1986; "Chronique des événements amoureux", Paris: Laffont-P.O.F., 1987; "Le complexe polonais", Paris: Laffont-P.O.F., 1988; "Le Nouveau Monde", Paris: Laffont-P.O.F., 1989; "Le Trou dans le ciel", Paris: Critérion, 1992; "Roman de gare contemporain", Paris: Robert Laffont, 1994
• German: "Kronik der Liebesunfälle", Berlin-Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1978; "Die polnische Apokalypse", Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1982; "Angst hat grosse Augen", Wien: Europe-Verlag, 1973; "Die neue Strecke", Berlin: Dietz, 1951; "Modernes Tagebuch", München: Biederstein, 1964; "Auf der Spitze des Kulturpalastes", Hamburg: Claassen, 1973
• Danish: "Den lille apokalypse", Kopenhagen: Brundum, 1984
• Finnish: "Isoäitin tarina", Hämeenlinna: Tammi, 1997; "Pieni ilmestyskirja", Helsinki: Tammi, 1983
• Spanish: "Nochebuena polaca", Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1984; "Un pequeño apocalipsis", Barcelona: Mario Muchnik, 1987

Tadeusz Konwicki's books have also been translated into Czech, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian and Russian.

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Tadeusz Konwicki - writer

"I am the last man who remembers the beginning of the 19th century" - maintains Tadeusz Konwicki and I think we can believe him that the Vilnius Region, where he grew up, did not change much since Mickiewicz's times, from the civilization and culture point of view. Such a place shaped Konwicki and he would be going back there - to its refreshing sources - in the mature period of his work.

• Bitter-ironic beginnings

Konwicki, born on June 22nd, 1926, in Nowa Wilejka, orphaned by his father at the age of three, is - because of his mother's health problems - given under the care of a widespread family. From 1932 he lives permanently with great aunt and uncle Blinstrub in Kolonia Wileńska, in a very religious, traditional house, in the atmosphere of the January 1863 Uprising's cult.

Just before the war Konwicki starts to attend the King Zygmunt August secondary school in Vilnius where he stays for a year. After the war break he continues learning at underground courses, passing his matriculation exams in 1944. He escapes from obligatory work at clearing the forest and works in a German army hospital for "volunteers". When in July the Vilnius Uprising breaks up, Konwicki joins the Eighth Oszmiana Brigade of the Home Army. In autumn, after a period of hiding at a farm near Vilnius, he comes back to the partisans - already anti-Bolshevik; his group hides in the woods until the end of April.

In May 1945 Konwicki with a few friends crosses with false documents the new Polish border in order to find contacts with local partisan groups but the continuation of fighting is impossible. Konwicki starts to work with the former German properties in Gliwice and after a few months goes to Cracow where he starts to study Polish literature at the Jagiellonian University.

Konwicki gets the job of a proofreader in the monthly "Odrodzenie" and he soon starts working as a reporter and a graphic artist in "Dziennik Polski" ("Sketches from the Coast"). In "Odrodzenie" he is being promoted, writes reviews of new books and films, draws, is a technical editor and finally, when the monthly moves to the ruined Warsaw, Konwicki moves too. In summer 1947 he has his debut as a poet, and then, encouraged by Tadeusz Borowski and Roman Bratny, he writes his first short story ("Corporal Koziołek and Me").

Konwicki's first novel "Rojsty", in its bitter-ironic tone close to his first partisan stories, would not be published in 1948 because of censorship (the book would appear only in 1956 with many censor's interferences). In spite of the fact that the book describes anti-Soviet partisans in the Vilnius region in a demythologized way, in spite of the fact that it is a score-settling account of the imperial patriotic ideology and shows its links with romantic tradition - the novel is stopped because of the very fact of the Vilnius Uprising. The same happens to the second novel - "New Days". Like all the Konwicki's works it contains many autobiographical tracks and shows maturing of the main hero (who not long ago fought with Red Army) into accepting the idea of socialism.

• Time of "the pimpled"

In such a situation Konwicki's book debut is a social-realistic story "At the Building Site", written after the experience of working at Nowa Huta (October 1949 - March 1950).

In the next few years Konwicki is a committed writer and journalist and he belongs to the so-called group of "the pimpled". He publishes ideological reportages and articles, among others in "Nowa Kultura" and "Sztandar Młodych". In 1953 he joins the Party; at that time he already works on proofcopies of "The Power" - a political, extense and multi-layered novel about the difficulties with establishing new system into the country, about young people from different political options who have to make complicated ideological choices. The novel criticizes the so-called right-wing deviation, suggestively convinces to the communists' programme and encourages belief in the slogans launched by the constructors of the new system. Nevertheless the novel is published only at the beginning of 1954, at the time when Konwicki, although still faithful to socialist ideas, begins to be sceptical towards dogmatic restrictions and pro-regime propaganda.

The scepticism is present in two of the Konwicki's books: "The Hour of Sadness" which deals mainly with the problem of love and marital infidelity (a subject then almost unimaginable) and "From the Besieged City" - about an intelligent man who escapes abroad because he cannot stand constant ideological interference into his private life. In both books Konwicki clearly defends the right of people to self-determination, to intimacy, to the mere possibility of having ideological doubts. The first book is published in the second half of 1954, although in January it was severely criticized at the discussion of the Basic Party Organization at the Polish Writers's Union (it was described by Leopold Tyrmand in his "Diary 1954"). The second novel is published only on the wave of the thaw in 1956, in quite different situation.

• Sucker's bitterness

October 1956 opens new chapter in Konwicki's work. After many years (among others in "The Calendar and the Hourglass" and in the extensive interview with Stanisław Bereś titled "Half Century of Purgatory") the writer admits that this period of time was for him very painful, mainly because of outlook about-turns of his ideological mentors.

"Those who ideologically moulded me in some way, who instructed me, who were teaching me [...] - all those people suddenly said one day: and you, sucker, you believed that? Were you naive to such an extent?" ("The Shadow of Foreign Army", reprinted in the volume "The Wind and the Dust")

Konwicki reveals his situation and mental state in the book "The Hole in the Sky" (1959), this seemingly charming book for young people about a group of children from the Vilnius Region before the war, but in truth a story about disappointed belief in ideals. The world of Polek Krywko, the main hero, is destroyed when his friends make fun of him because of his naive belief in some mysterious people for whom everybody still waited. He also shares the same feelings about which he was reading in a diary of a strange man who had hanged himself as he lost the sense of life.

This "diary of the hanged man" is a surprising break in the fluent traditional narration of "The Hole in the Sky". It cannot be explained by realistic logic. This whole part of the book signalizes that Konwicki begins artistic quest drifting towards surrealism. What is more, in the "diary" we can see something that recognized and defined Tadeusz Lubelski, the most eminent researcher of Konwicki's work: the motive of the road which symbolizes the creativity and which would be the main principle of later books.

The result of the quest, the development of first sketches of oneiric and self-orientated traces in "The Hole in the Sky" is "A Dreambook for Our Time" (1963). This is one of the masterpieces of the Polish post-war literature: suggestive psychological prose with differentiated narration and precise "story within a story" tale that sums up generational experiences of war times and difficult post-war choices. "A Dreambook for Our Times" is a cult book, not only for Polish readers but also for the Russians.

The novel has several platforms: the contemporary motive that takes place on Soła river where a water tank is being built, and retrospectives which show the childhood and youth of the main hero Paweł. Retrospectives are the pictures of crucial moments of his life, mainly connected with anti-German and later anti-Soviet partisans, but also with the betrayal of friends from the partisan group after the war, while joining the party. The past literally gets into Paweł's presence what is also visible in the diversity of time and place in the contemporary motive. It was discovered by Jan Walc, the author of the first Ph.D. thesis about Tadeusz Konwicki, who described traces which pointed to the fact that the action took place simultaneously in the sixties on Soła river in Galicia, and before the war in the Vilnius Region (e.g. in Galicia there was no January Uprising, the history of which defines the valley; real Soła does not flow south, the direction in which flow many eastern rivers).

Nevertheless Walc warned against disregarding the contemporary picture present in the book. The novel is not only an analysis of past and historic experience but also a testimony of a modern man being lost in the world without axioms, of a man besieged by ideologies and forced to constant choosing.

• Only love

Konwicki himself undertook the discussion with the critics who did not see (or did not want to see) that "A Dreambook..." is oriented towards the present time. He did so writing next novel, ostentatiously contemporary, entitled "Ascension" (1967).

Its main hero wakes up in the evening and cannot remember who he is. He goes for a whole night journey into the sixties' Warsaw (during Gomułka's period), not realizing that it is an after death journey in the beyond. Incidentally the beyond in many respects emerging from the Warsaw reality reminds in many aspects of the Vilnius Region.

The hero-narrator, called by his mates Charon, tries to overcome his amnesia and constructs alleged life histories that make up another panorama of the generation's experiences present in Konwicki's work. In "memory exercises" the hero brings back what he thinks the most important, timeless, what he wants to save: he has philosophical thoughts about a river, forest and the sky. The value which he saves from his dark adventures that end at the top of the Palace of Culture is love.

"Ascension" is a legendary book. Last but not least as a novel with the political double meaning. Konwicki shows the Polish reality as the totalitarian world (the writer soon would be crossed off the list of the party members). The legend was helped by its publication story - the authorities considered it a scandal and the book had only a few reviews and limited distribution.

Many literary critics and historians consider this novel as the most outstanding prose work of Konwicki.

• Anti-fables for adults and children

The focus on the contemporary times is also visible in next novels: "The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast" (1969) and "Nothing or Nothing" (1971). These are extremely gloomy books, showing the hopelessness of the reality after March 1968 and anti-intellectual witch-hunt combined with disgraceful antisemitic propaganda that results in mass emigration of Polish citizens of Jewish origins.

Also the first book is in fact about March 1968, although it is supposedly written for younger children and is ornamented with Danuta Konwicka's illustrations and many jokes and adventures. "The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast" is a story of a boy from Warsaw who - together with his dog Sebastian - goes for trips to the Vilnius Region from before the war. But a reader finds among colourful adventures some signs that hero-narrator is really a little boy dying in a hospital. The problem of death in a book for children makes Konwicki one of the precursors of the anti-fable trends in literature for young people.

"Nothing or Nothing", the book that closes the "existential triptych" (the first two parts are "A Dreambook for Our Time" and "Ascension"), is a book exclusively for adults. Its main motive was based - similarly to "Ascension" - on the authentic sensational events: a series of murders committed by a "vampire". The main hero who suffers from "consciousness epilepsy" is not aware that it is him who - during his attacks - kills women. Suspected by the police he escapes and travels around Poland. This motive allows Konwicki to show - in an allusive form - the entrapment of people in the Polish People's Republic.

On another level of the book there are Lithuanian partisan groups and - towards the end - the vision of the end of the world. The talks of boys from Lithuanian and Byelorussian forest about their planned beautiful and just future at the beginning of the book are confronted with the reality of the contemporary motive, show the collapse of hope for better life after the war which is expressed in the title hopeless alternative. Helena Zaworska in her review of "Nothing or Nothing" wrote: "The title presents therefore total, desperate, nihilist negation? Perhaps not the negation but rather conviction about total helplessness of a man against chaos and absurd that destroy him."

"A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents" (1974), written in the convention of almost kitsch affair of young people from the beautiful times before the war in the Vilnius Region, was also on one level the story of the times after March 1968. Not by accident Witold, mysterious stranger who in the odd circumstances visits enamoured Witek, and who wakes up near the end of the book in his flat in contemporary Warsaw, commits suicide not far from the Gdańsk Railway Station (from which Polish Jews were leaving the country). But the book remains an expression of hope, another one in Konwicki's work, that lies in art. The author gives sympathetic plot based on popular literature construction, additionally accompanied by sensational excerpts from before the war newspapers, and stresses the hopeful potential in the artistic creativity as well as points to the existential strength of even the most banal literary returns to the "childhood country".

The novel was made into a film in mid eighties by Andrzej Wajda with Konwicki playing the Stranger.

• About "transparent captivity"

With "A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents" Konwicki closed his second prose triptych of books both for children, and for adults, and with a new book he opened another cycle: combination of a diary and memoirs. "The Calendar and the Hourglass" (1976) is his first silva rerum type of a book, i.e. the work that combines different literary genres. The book, written in a form of quasi-diary, is a collection of observations, anecdotes, memoirs, confessions concerning the writer's participation in building the socialist system in Poland, journey descriptions, portraits of friends, both those who died recently (heart-breaking reminiscences of the writer Wilhelm Mach and the painter Aleksander Kobzdej) as well as those still living (among others: writers Antoni Słonimski and Stanisław Dygat, actors Gustaw Holoubek and Andrzej Łapicki). The book was famous just because of that last group of artists' portraits, often scandalous, on the border of gossip, albeit showing the heroes in the universal perspective. "The Calendar..." was also widely read because it contained a great many allusions drawing a picture of society which vegetates in mock autonomy. "The Calendar...", funny, perverse, provocative and moving, is really a treatise about the necessity of freedom.

"The Polish Complex" (1977) is another link of such deliberations although with less allusions and more evaluations formulated very clearly especially in the essayistic intermedia. Konwicki openly describes the conditions of the Polish society in the seventies. He strives for synthesis although he does it through literary means only. Parabolic situation of people in a queue waiting to buy Russian gold from the main, Christmas motive, is confronted in an ironic way with a solemn letter of a patriot who loves Poland - or rather its idea very different from real Poland - and with pictures from the January Uprising: tragic history of one of its leaders, Zygmunt Mineyko, and moving scene from the life of Romuald Traugutt who meets his wife while going to lead the Uprising.

Such a book cannot be published officially and is printed as the 3rd number of the independent underground magazine "Zapis".

• Eschatology plus a prescription for dandruff

"The Polish Complex", bitterly synthesizing social questions, is the first link of the next cycle of Konwicki - namely political books. In spite of the bitter context this first part of the triptych does not directly attack a reader and the dangerous eastern neighbour is shown by means of circumlocution and allusions. The second book is drastic and provokes the highest emotions. "A Minor Apocalypse" (1979) is the most famous, in Poland and in the world, Konwicki's novel, and one of the best known Polish underground books.

The main hero and narrator is a writer Tadeusz K. so it is very close to the author's person, also very characteristic for Konwicki's books and films - main heroes are always "close" to him, they live in places similar to the Warsaw flat of Konwicki, have similar fears, complexes and similar past. "A Minor Apocalypse" starts with two opposionists coming to the flat of Tadeusz K. They want him to burn himself to death in a protest against plans to incorporate Poland into the Soviet Union as another republic. The hero, caught in forceps of moral blackmail, walks the streets of Warsaw until the final evening at the Palace of Culture. On the way he meets people of many different political options, talks with them, meets a Russian girl Nadieżda (Hope) and falls in love. For a moment he goes through underground passage to the ball room awaiting prominent guests and has to stand the presence of his alter ego, Tadzio Skórka, who five times quotes Tadeusz K.'s earliest novels (fragments of real Konwicki's books) and who, apart from being the writer's admirer, is working for secret service. This dark plot is intertwined with essayistic intermedia full of black humour, erotic and medical advices (e.g. prescription for skin problems), quotations of dreary poems of his friends.

Poland in "A Minor Apocalypse" is a country in death throes. Everything breaks down, the most important bridge falls down, nobody bothers to clean the ruins from the town centre. People are under strong Soviet influence, all the time they are asked to show their identity cards, nobody knows what day it is and the only calendar which shows proper date is locked in a well guarded place. But the book is not only the picture of economic, political and moral disintegration of Poland at the end of Gierek's years. It is also very bitter and unprecedented settling accounts with the opposition which is, in fact, similar to the regime that it fights.

"You are the secretion of this system, a rib from the body of this tyranny. You are from Dostoevsky's 'The Possessed' and from the stories of Żeromski and Strug" - says Tadeusz K. He mentions the names of two writers, extremely important for Polish intellectuals and for Konwicki himself who with their uncompromising work shaped moral conscience of the intelligentsia. "A Minor Apocalypse" gets wide recognition in Poland and in the world and provokes the most extreme reactions. The reviews contain the whole spectre of opinions from admiration to sharp polemics. Gustaw Herling-Grudziński in his "Journal Written at Night" published regularly in "Kultura" (Paris) wrote:

"blubber and a satirical puppet show are [...] mechanically mixed and not nuanced and balanced; and mixed with such love of 'antics' and 'kicks' that the mixture becomes almost without exception [...] a parade of national hysterics." ("Kultura", 1979, No 10)

Jan Kott (London "Wiadomości", 1980 No 1) argued with the opinion that the novel visions were hysterical. He compared their authenticity with "Gogol's Petersburg nightmares" and other works, who for Kott were the context for reading the novel, were among others the third part of Mickiewicz's "Dziady" and Kafka's "The Trial" (motive of the "sentence"). Herling-Grudziński, in his answer to Kott ("Kultura", 1980 No 4) specified the earlier notion of hysterics as "demonization of Russians which enlarges and deepens the sick savouring of lack of strength; while most of that what is today in Poland 'corpse-like and ghostly' - and what can be opposed - is a product of the Soviets". Konwicki - in a vast interview "Half Century of Purgatory" - would maintain his opinion that russification and sovietization were one and the same although he stressed his fascination with the great Russian literature.

Konwicki for "A Minor Apocalypse" gets the Mieczysław Grydzewski Prize (for the best book published in exile in 1979) and Italian Premio Letterario internationale "Mondello" (1981). In the nineties the well-known director, Costa Gavras, made the film based on the novel.

• "Back to the yoke"

Strong anti-Soviet accents appear also in "Moonrise, Moonset" (1982). It is enough to say that in this book Konwicki makes the suggestion (spoken about in the world only after twenty years) that KGB [the Soviet Committee for State Security] was responsible for the attack on the pope Jan Paweł II.

But it is not only a political book. The second Konwicki's silva rerum is full of anecdotes, memoirs (the heart-breaking portrait of Dygat, a beautiful epitaph for Mieczysław Piotrowski, slightly and unjustly forgotten artist and writer), portraits of friends (e.g. funny chapter devoted to Stanisław Lem); it is a kind of a notebook describing problems connected with film adaptation of Miłosz's "The Issa Valley" and it includes the beginning of an unfinished novel and - horror of horrors! - fragments of "New Days", the unpublished (for censorship reasons) novel from the turn of the forties and fifties, dealing with after the war times and full of belief in the socialist system. "Moonrise, Moonset" is one of the least known books of Konwicki and it is, in fact, one of the best.

After the proclamation of the Martial Law in 1981 Konwicki closes his political triptych with "Underground River, Underground Birds" (1984). The plot is about the hero who wanders about, afraid of being interned. The Seventh (in Konwicki's work the only symbolic name, meaning the seventh post-war uprising, after 1944, 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976 and 1980), hears knocking on the door, escapes from the balcony and starts his wandering through Warsaw with stencils of illegal poems in his bag. In the prologue, epilogue and intermedia among thirteen chapters Konwicki puts visional pictures of the Vilnius past and the beyond. Poetry, carefully carried about in the bag, turns out to be worthless and the chase - only imagined. Thus the book is very ironic (also self-ironic) and is, as well, the polemics with the underground literature which, in Konwicki's opinion, lost its strength.

The consequence of such conviction is "New World Avenue and Vicinity" (1986) - "return to the yoke" (the statement from the book) - the return to the official publicating. This silva rerum is written with the thought of a censor whom Konwicki ostentatiously mentions in the book, writing, for example, directly to a censor and constantly arguing with him. The book closes another triptych and is similar in the form to "The Calendar and the Hourglass" and "Moonrise, Moonset" but more article-like with whole chapters full of anecdotes, portraits, memoirs, travel descriptions (a quasi-guide of Warsaw, walks in the New World Avenue) and self-commentaries. Those appear also as a reflex of talks with Stanisław Bereś, recorded simultaneously, that would make a vast interview "Half Century of Purgatory", published at the same time but as the underground publication and abroad.

• A Jew in a manor house love-affair

A year later Konwicki publishes in a state publishing house "Bohin Manor" (1987), one of his most beautiful and most widely read novels. "Bohin Manor" is an example of popular literature, in this case of a manor house love affair, the genre that played important role in Polish literature of the 19th century ("On the Niemen River" by Eliza Orzeszkowa) but was later trivialized in popular and epigonic works (e.g. Maria Rodziewiczówna) and trashy novels (infamously immortal Helena Mniszkówna).

On the pattern of a love-affair, taking place in a manor after the January Uprising, Konwicki builds the commentary on the condition of society of the Martial Law times and, at the same time, he changes the pattern. Firstly, to create his own autotematic realization ("I come back with great difficulty through the dunes of past time, through swamps of days and forests of hours to my grandmother Helena Konwicka [...]. And maybe I am chasing her through areas of premonitions, through lakes of longing, through thick fogs of uncertainty"). Secondly, to make a kind of social provocation (which was stressed by Stanisław Bereś in an extensive review published under an pseudonym in the magazine "Aneks", No 48/1988; reprinted in "The Review of Contemporary Fiction", vol. 3/1994, devoted partly to Konwicki). The lover in this manor house love-affair is a Jew and "Bohin Manor" is a book directed against Polish anti-Semitism, the book that reminds us about common Polish-Jewish past.

At the beginning of the nineties Konwicki goes back to the Jewish subject in "Northern Lights" (1991). The book was again a silva rerum type - a number of loosely connected thoughts of the writer, journey reports (among others from Japan and Australia), impressions about three Poles-Jews (Leopold Tyrmand, Adam Michnik, the editor Zofia Łuczek), the portrait of Konwicki family and a small tale, in the central part of the book, about a Jewish fugitive: "A Few Days of War Which Maybe Was Not". In it, in accordance to the title, the war does not really exist - only love counts and the unusual change of a hero who fell in love and stopped being afraid. Love annuls the evil around and gives new sense to life.

• "I go off the ring"

"Page-Turner" (1992), published soon after "Northern Lights", speaks about love in a similar way. It turns out to be the only value that is worth saving in the world full of chaos. But here it is the contemporary world, contemporary Poland. The novel, written with clear sarcasm, is a very unpleasant diagnosis of the society's condition after 1989 and with that book Konwicki makes a gesture which is then expected of him, i.e. he once again takes the role of a writer who presents in his work the picture of Polish community. By putting such a mirror in the construction of the treatise about repetitions, the treatise about the fall of the world of culture, the world of language, the own world, the author uses up all his fictional devices and shuts behind him the door to fiction.

And with "Slander Against Myself" (1995) Konwicki shuts behind him the door to the whole literature. "Slander..." is a farewell silva rerum, teasing but not scathing, written for pleasure, both of readers and his own. Przemysław Czapliński ("Gazeta Wyborcza", December 6th, 1995) noticed that in his review, underlining the fact that it is the kind of noncommittal writing - the meeting with the author has to be selfless, "with a good friend", with somebody well liked. In the television talk with Stanisław Bereś Konwicki says about his last - openly declared by himself as the last - book:

"I would call it a kind of scenario which I write for the meeting with my readers. It is such a form that encourages the reader to nod or to not agree, or to finish the thought that I started. Anyway, to participate in the creative process which was always my ambition, from the very beginning of my writing. I wanted to find such a literary formula which would take the reader, together with me, into the plan of action, would encourage him to collaborate, participate, to create with me some psychological event, or - to put it modestly - some intellectual event."

Konwicki strongly announces his silence, in many commentaries, among others in the television interview with Bereś ("I go off the ring and leave a place for next generations"), but first of all in "Kwartalnik Artystyczny" No 2/1996, in the questionnaire "Why I write". He says:

"Suddenly I got old. I am bored and disheartened. How can I answer such a question? That I should not have written at all and that I put my pen away with a sigh of relief (probably for ever)."

And, unfortunately, he really put away his literary pen. He has not published so far (after "Slander...") any new book. Later he writes several articles (the cycle "Horizon of events"), gives only a few interviews and one long (but about his films, "I Remember It Was Hot", in a talk with Katarzyna Bielas and Jacek Szczerba, 2001), and in 2008 he allows for publication of his short prose pieces in the volume "The Wind and the Dust".

This last book which contains - in a chronological order - short stories, introductions to books and albums, reminiscences of friends, answers to questionnaires, satires, the never realized scenario "A Bit of Apogee", essays, articles and drawings from the forties and fifties, and is a panorama of Konwicki's activities as a writer and director. In a way it sums up more than half a century of unusual, manifolded artistic creativity of the artist.

Author: Przemysław Kaniecki, November 2009; translated by Alicja Skarbińska-Zielińska

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Tadeusz Konwicki - film

Konwicki's adolescence coincided with World War II, and his education, like that of many of his peers, took place at clandestine courses. Taken to Germany as a forced labourer in 1941, Konwicki managed to escape, passed clandestine baccalaureate exams in 1944 and joined the Home Army underground forces. After the war he enrolled in a Polish literature and language course at Krakow's Jagiellonian University and, from 1947, continued his studies at Warsaw University. Never graduating, Konwicki took to journalistic and literary work, contributing to a number of magazines and completing a script writing course for young writers organised by Bolesław Lewicki at the Higher School of Film in Łódź.

Konwicki worked for "Odrodzenie" and "Nowa Kultura", chiefly as a film critic, and was a literary manager of three film-making groups: "Kadr" in 1956-58, Kraj in 1970-72 and "Pryzmat" in 1972-77. His screenwriting debut occurred in 1954, followed by the film directing debut four years later.

In 1966 Konwicki got dismissed from the Polish United Workers' Party, an organisation where he had been a member since 1952, for signing a letter of protest following the expulsion of Leszek Kolakowski from the Party ranks. In the 1970s Konwicki sided with the opposition, a choice of consequence for his work. Indeed, most of the books he wrote in the seventies and eighties were published by underground publishers. A collection of scripts "The Last Day of Summer", which came out officially in 1971, was an exception, but the following publication of "An Apogee", a scenario appearing in instalments in "Literatura", was stalled by the censorship a year later. Konwicki stopped directing and did not resume it until "The Issa Valley" in 1981.

In 1982 Konwicki was a signatory of the Polish intellectuals' appeal against the imposition of the martial law, and in 1984 took part in the European Cultural Unity Congress in Venice.

Konwicki's film-making was recognised by the Grand Prix for "The Last Day of Summer" at the International Festival of Documentary and Short Feature Films in Venice in 1958, the Special Award for the script of "How Far, How Close to Here" at the San Remo Film Festival, and the "Eagle" Polish Film Award for Life Achievement in 2001.

It is not only owing to his own film-making that Konwicki's name looms large in the history of Polish film-making. He has also been behind a number of other directors' major projects. He is particularly credited as the literary manager of the "Kadr" film-making group headed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and was instrumental or provided the inspiration for the making of many important films of the Polish school movement by such directors as Andrzej Munk, Andrzej Wajda and Kazimierz Kutz. It was Konwicki who recommended Jerzy Stefan Stawiński's short story "Canal / Kanał" to Wajda when it was still a manuscript.

While Konwicki's prose and essays written before the political thaw of 1956 have the typical characteristics of toeing the ideological line of the authorities and, indeed, are ideologically committed, his film-making, dating mostly from later years, is almost free of that fault. The start was rather unfortunate, with Konwicki co-writing the politically committed script of "Career", a movie directed by Jan Koecher. Yet as early as in 1958 Konwicki directed "The Last Day of Summer", his first own film, and a picture of importance for a few reasons. Firstly, it turned Konwicki from a man of letters flirting with the cinema into a fully-fledged film-maker who, to quote Tadeusz Lubelski's later phrase, "was leaving behind the era of social realism" ("Kino" 6/2001) with its impact on his literary works. Secondly, to quote Lubelski again, "Konwicki's film debut took our film-making right into the very centre of European pursuits". Indeed, Konwicki was a forerunner, for "The Last Day of Summer", often compared to the achievements of the French New Wave, went on the screens while the French film-makers were only just putting together the principles of the New Wave breakthrough. This formally ascetic film, made by a group of friends with an extremely cheap budget and using a semi-amateurish method, was an unprecedented success. The protagonists, their vivid memories of the war rendering them unable to achieve true proximity, were iconic for Konwicki who, when interviewed by Konrad Eberhardt ("Film" 51/1960), confessed to conscious avoidance of direct representations of the calamities of war and choosing instead to focus on the psychological impact. And this is where the value of "The Last Day of Summer" lies. It is in such an approach to the war that Boleslaw Michałek ("Film" 28/1964) saw the beginning of the other, non-heroic stream of the Polish school, which was later to produce such films as Konwicki's "All Souls' Day", Jerzy Passendorfer's "Return", Kazimierz Kutz's "Nobody is Calling" and Wojciech Has's "How To be Loved".

War-stigmatised protagonists would populate Konwicki's forthcoming films and books. The past dwelling in the present - Konwicki's recurring topic - would be approached with increasingly complex formal means and various tones, balancing between solemnity, irony and grotesque, and mixing realism with onirism.

Konwicki belongs to a generation for which the war experience was all the more shattering given that it occurred in their young years with their first exultations, fascinations and loves. This is why, as noted by Jacek Fuksiewicz in "Tadeusz Konwicki", a biography written in 1967, Konwicki creates protagonists who hate their past and at the same time are fascinated by it. This is true of "All Souls' Night", "Salto", "How Far, How Close to Here", as well as of Konwicki's prose. His stories grow out of his biography, yet they are not simply autobiographical.

"I write books and make films about myself", says Konwicki when interviewed by Eberhard. "In other words, I describe myself in the conditional mode, past imperfect or future tense. I create situations in which I behaved or could have behaved or wish I had behaved in certain way."

This mixture of tenses and modes has produced Konwicki's own style, a blend of the living and the dead, of the true, the likely and the untrue, used to vivisect individuals as well as national myths and stereotypes and manifesting itself especially in "Salto" and "How Far, How Close to Here".

Konwicki made his films using mostly self-written scenarios. The two adaptations, "The Issa Valley" after the novel by Czesław Miłosz, and "Lava" after "Dziady / The Forefathers' Eve" by Adam Mickiewicz, were films based on Konwicki's own scripts. In "The Issa Valley" the director and the writer share the sense of nostalgia for the lost Arcadia of childhood. Mickiewicz's "Dziady", in turn, was to Konwicki the very essence of Polish national myths, the myths playing a foremost role in Konwicki's own works. After all, his entire output is, in a way, the performing of the spirit-evoking rite close to that of Mickiewicz's "forefathers' eve".

The public did not respond to Konwicki's "Dziady" (1989) as favourably as could have been expected. The screening coincided with the radical and difficult transformations of the system, and the public was in a shock over the change.

"In 1969 our elite was ready to give up their lives for each performance of 'Dziady'. Twenty years 'Lava' did not have much of an audience", said Konwicki in an interview given to Andrzej Werner ("Kino" 1/1991).

Konwicki has not made a single film after that. Instead, in 1994 he reached out for a new experience, staging Maxim Gorky's "Yegor Bulychov and Others" at Warsaw's Ateneum Theatre.

As a script-writer, Konwicki has successfully adapted several literary works for other directors. "The Pharaoh", "Mother Joan of Angels" and "Austeria" are the best examples. Of particular note is "A Chronicle of Amorous Incidents", directed by Andrzej Wajda, where Konwicki adapted his own novel.


Filmography

Director and script-writer:

• 1958 - "The Last Day of Summer / Ostatni dzień lata" (co-directed with Jan Laskowski)
  Two lonely people meet on a deserted beach, trying vainly to get closer to each other, prevented by memories of the past dramas. The woman is particularly haunted by the war memories, the noise of aeroplanes reminding her of the death of the pilot she loved.
  Turning limitations into strengths, Konwicki made a film whose power lies in the acting of just two actors set in the wilderness. Meticulously shot, the film is profoundly symbolic and, despite the seeming inaction, quite dynamic owing to the studied close-ups of the actors' faces and the use of the American plan. Of note is Jan Laskowski's camera work.
  Awards: 1958 - Grand Prix at the International Festival of Documentary and Short Feature Film in Venice; Main Prize for an experimental film at EXPO 58 in Brussels; 1st Prize at the International Film Festival in London; 1974 - Cinema Lovers' Award for the Best Film of the 30 years of the Polish People's Republic, Świebodzin).
  
  
• 1961 - "All Souls' Day / Zaduszki"
  Tragic memories of the war past stand in the way of getting truly close by two feeling-hungry, handicapped people. Both lost their beloved and the woman is additionally plagued by the sense of guilt for her boyfriend's death. A weekend spent together in a small town bringing back the painful memories nearly destroys the relationship which both of them need so badly.
  Awards: 1962 - Special Jury Award at the International Film Festival in Mannheim; mention of the Folk Universities Association
  
  
• 1965 - "Abitur", a story in "Augenblick Des Friedens (Baccalaureate /Peace Time)", a Hamburg television film of three parts, the other parts directed by France's Georges Franju and Germany's Egon Monk.
  The plot is set during World War II. A young Pole is about to take his baccalaureate exams at underground courses, but his mind is preoccupied with the desire to join the partisans. His story is intertwined with those of a German and a Russian. The serious content is offset by the jocular tone.
  
  
• 1965 - "Salto"
  A Mr Kowalski-Malinowski (Smith-Brown) comes to a small town, telling a number of versions of his life story, all apparently related to the locality. The visitor attracts attention, builds a strange, self-contradictory legend and undermines the sleepy quietness of the semi-surrealist town. A mocking picture of a war veteran, with equally mocking representations of national attitudes, deriving from the national mythology and represented by the locals. Stefan Morawski wrote these words about "Salto" in Film 31/1965: "Now the dramatic war veteran reveals the face of a buffoon, the drama turns into a tragic farce, the rituals and incantations ingrained in the national consciousness are parodied, and war suffering is shown in a grotesque light".
  Awards: 1967 - Honorary Diploma at the International Film Festival in Edinburgh
  
  
• 1972 - "How Far from Here, How Close / Jak daleko stąd, jak blisko"
  A portrait of a man who analyses his life on his 44th birthday. The past and the present, the actual and potential developments blend in a dreamy vision. "The protagonist seems to assume that travelling in time is possible, and things happen in an imaginary, invented time which he fittingly adjusts and changes", said Konwicki in the Film Press News 1/1972. The film is a formally complex analysis of what is commonly referred to as the Polish fate.
  Awards: 1972 - The Warsaw Mermaid of the Film Critics' Club at the Polish Journalists' Association in the feature film category; Special Jury Award at the Lubuskie Film Summer in Łagów; 1973 - Special Award for Screenplay at the San Remo Film Festival.
  
  
• 1982 - "The Issa Valley / Dolina Issy" (based on a novel by Czesław Miłosz)
  Like its literary basis, the film is a nostalgic return to the country of childhood, lost not only because of passing time but also literally, for in the aftermath of World War II the Vilnius region where both Konwicki and Milosz grew up turned to be beyond the borders of Poland. A contemplative story of growing up, the inevitable passage of time, and destiny.
  
  
• 1989 - "Lava. The Story of Adam Mickiewicz's 'Dziady' / Opowieść o 'Dziadach' Adama Mickiewicza. Lawa"
  An avant garde adaptation of Adam Mickiewicz's "Dziady /The Forefathers' Eve", supplemented with a reflection on the historic role of the drama and its presence in the Polish national identity.
  Awards: 1989 - Award of the Lodz Museum of Cinematography at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia; 1990 - Golden Tape 1998 Award of the Film Writers Group of the Polish Film-Making Association; The Warsaw Mermaid of the Film Critics' Club at the Polish Journalists' Association in the 1989 feature film category; The Don Quixote Award of the Polish Federation of Film Debating Societies; Award of the Chairman of the Cinematography Committee; Special Jury Award for a creative interpretation of a literary work at the Gdynia Polish Feature Film Festival.

Scripts:

• 1954 - "Career / Kariera" (directed by Jan Koecher).
  Konwicki, who co-wrote the script with Kazimierz Sumerski, confided in an interview given to Katarzyna Bielas and Jacek Szczerba and published as "Tadeusz Konwicki. I remember it was hot" in Krakow in 2000 that the idea was Wiktor Woroszylski's and that he was involved in an initial stage of the scrip-writing process. A propaganda story of a spy from the West attempting to recruit collaborators in Poland. Published as "The Iron Curtain" (Warsaw 1955).
  
  
• 1956 - "Winter Dusk / Zimowy zmierzch" (directed by Stanisław Lenartowicz)
  A psychological drama set in a provincial town. A conflict between the father and his son. The son, who returns from the army, has let down the girlfriend who had been waiting for him. Stylistically close to the German expressionism, the film was artistically innovative following the age of social realism.
  
  
• 1960 - "Mother Joan of Angels / Matka Joanna od Aniołów" (directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz).
  Konwicki co-wrote the script with Kawalerowicz after a novel by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz.
  
  
• 1965 - "Pharaoh / Faraon" (directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz).
  Konwicki co-wrote the script with Kawalerowicz after a novel by Bolesław Prus
  
  
• 1967 - "Jowita" (directed by Janusz Morgenstern).
  The script was based on "Disneyland" by Stanisław Dygat.
  
  
• 1982 - "Austeria" (directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz).
  Konwicki co-wrote the script with Kawalerowicz and Julian Stryjkowski after a novel by Stryjkowski.
  
  
• 1985 - "Chronicle of Amorous Incidents / Kronika wypadków miłosnych" (directed by Andrzej Wajda). Konwicki based the script on his own novel. A subtly delineated picture of a the budding, first love of Witek and Alina and a nostalgic vision of Vilnius in the pre-war days. Konwicki played the ambiguous Stranger, both a guardian of memory, an aged Wiktor re-visiting his lost adolescence, and a writer as such.

Adaptation of novels by Tadeusz Konwicki:

• 1972 - "Wings / Skrzydła" directed by Krzysztof Wojciechowski after Konwicki's novel "The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast"
  
  
• 1993 - "La petite apocalypse", a loose interpretation of Konwicki's novel by Costa-Gavras.

Documentaries starring Tadeusz Konwicki:

• "Passerby / Przechodzień" by Andrzej Titkow, 1989;
• "Tadeusz Konwicki. An Attempt at the Artist's Portrait. Warsaw 1989" by Mieczysław B. Vogt, 1990;
• "Kowalski-Malinowski. About Konwicki's 'Salto' " by Grzegorz Jankowski and Jacek Szczerba, 1998;
• "Quite a Major Apocalypse" by Andrzej Titkow, 2002;
• "The Sun and the Shadow / Słońce i cień" by Jan Holoubek, 2007.

Author: Ewa Nawój, November 2003; updated: November 2009.

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