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

Tadeusz Konwicki – writer

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 Obituary" (1976), "Rising and Setting of the Moon" (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")

Selected Bibliography:

• "Rojsty", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1956
• "Z oblężonego miasta / From the Beseiged 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 Occurrences", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1974
• "Kalendarz i Klepsydra / The Calendar and the Obituary", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1976
• "Kompleks polski / The Polish Complex", Warsaw: Alfa, 1989
• "Mała apokalipsa / A Small Apocalypse", Warsaw: Alfa, 1988
• "Wschody i zachody księżyca / Rising and Setting of the Moon", Warsaw: Krag, 1982
• "Rzeka podziemna, podziemne ptaki / Underwater River, Underwater Birds", Warsaw: Alfa, 1984
• "Nowy Świat i okolice / Nowy Świat Street and Vicinity", Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1986
• "Bohin", 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

Selected translations:

• English: "A Dreambook for Our Time / Sennik wspolczesny", The MIT Press, 1970 "The Anthropos-spectre-beast / Zwierzoczlekoupior", New York: S. Phillips, 1977 "The Polish Complex / Kompleks polski", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982 "A Minor Apocalypse / Mala apokalipsa", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983 "Moonrise, Moonset / Wschody i zachody ksiezyca", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1987 "Bohin Manor", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990 "Nowy Świat Street and Vicinity / Nowy Świat i okolice", New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991
• French: "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; "Bohini, un manoir en Lituanie", Paris: Robert Laffont, 1990; "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

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

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 Stawiński's short story "The Kanal" 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" (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, Swiebodzin).
  
  
• 1961 "All Souls' Day"
  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"
  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" (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' "
  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" (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" (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" (directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz).
  Konwicki co-wrote the script with Kawalerowicz after a novel by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz.
  
  
• 1965 "Pharaoh" (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" (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" 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" 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.

Author: Ewa Nawój, November 2003.

Browsing history