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Polish Cultural Institutes
Ministry of Culture and National Heritage - Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych
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Adam Mickiewicz Institute ul. Mokotowska 25 00-560 Warsaw tel. (+48 22) 44 76 100 fax (+48 22) 44 76 152 www.iam.pl ![]() about us
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Jan Kott, born in Warsaw in 1914, was the Polish critic and theoretician of the theatre who was best known around the world. He had lived in the United States and lectured at Yale and Berkeley sine 1966. A poet, translator, and critic of literature and the theatre, he was also one of the finest essayists of the Polish school. He died in 2001. When he began writing after the war, he was closely identified with the communist authorities, an editor of "Kuźnica", and a theorist and codifier of the "socialist literature" that fulfilled the requirements of Marxist thinking about art. However, he never became a panegyrist of "socialist realism". Along with Györgi Lukacs, he promoted the "great realism" according to which the literature of the "New Poland" was to be modelled on Dickens, Balzac, Stendahl or Tolstoy. As the authorities tightened the screw, Kott found himself pushed to the margins of political life. He renounced his membership in the communist party in 1957. A long-time theatrical reviewer, Kott won fame for his new readings of the classics, and above all of Shakespeare. Around the world, his "Sketches on Shakespeare" became the most widely read work of criticism by any Polish author. He interpreted Shakespeare in the light of the philosophical, existential and political experience of the twentieth century. He added insights from his own unusually colorful personal experiences; this autobiographical accent became the hallmark of his criticism. Kott juxtaposed Shakespeare with Ionesco or Beckett, but above all he juxtaposed Shakespeare with the everyday experiences of the citizens of totalitarian countries. He took a similar approach to his reading of Greek tragedy and its contemporaneity. He made the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles into records of universal experience: the cruelty of fate, the refusal to accept the world and the gods and kings who govern it. For Kott, theatre was always more than another one of the fine arts. It was rather a figure of human life and a means of coping with the world. Since the 1960s, Kott had written not only books but also articles in such leading American journals as "The New Republic", the "Partisan Review", and the "New York Review of Books". Aside from Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, he also wrote about Japanese theatre, Brook, Kantor and Grotowski. He translated extensively, including Sartre, Diderot, Ionesco and Moliere. Source: www.polska2000.pl; copyright: Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza. Selected Bibliography Essay Collections:
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![]() Museum of Modern Art in New York will host a screening of Bartek Konopka's Oscar nominated documentary "Rabbit à la Berlin" on February 28. On February 22, a play by Dorota Masłowska "Miedzy nami dobrze jest" will premiere at Teater Galeasen in Stockholm. The European Fairy Tale Centre in Pacanów (Świętokrzyskie region) will open on February 24, 2010. Art from the collection of Kraków's Czartoryski Museum will be on display in the Castle in Niepołomice, starting in spring 2010. This is due to renovation work in the Czartoryski Museum scheduled to end in 2012. Niepołomice Castle will host around 1700 works of art, including paintings by Paolo Veneziano, Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Lorenzo Lotto. On February 12, "The Ghost Writer", the newest film by Roman Polański, will officialy screen at the Berlinale Film Festival. A week later, on February 19, the film will premiere in theaters in Poland, Switzerland, and in the U.S. On February 10, 2010 in Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Krystian Zimerman will give a Chopin piano recital marking the Chopin Year celebrations in Italy. The 46th Wrocław Jazz Festival "Jazz nad Odrą" will start on February 28. The festival will last until March 6, 2010. For more info see www.jnofestival.pl. The 7th edition of "Misteria Paschalia" in Kraków will take place on March 29 - April 5, 2010. In honor of the Chopin Anniversary Year, 1st Chopin International Piano Competition in Hartford, Connecticut, will be held from February 20-21, 2010. Tchaikovski Gala with Grzegorz Nowak as conductor - London, Cadogan Hall, February 18, 2010. Krystian Zimerman at Chopin Birthday Concert 1 - London, Royal Festival Hall - Southbank Centre, February 22, 2010. The 8th Kinoteka Polish Film Festiwal in London opens on March 4 and will last untill April 12, 2010.
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