Literature: A Primary Element of Polish Culture
By John Cebrowski, PHC Board Member
Poland acquired a literary language in Latin when it became a Christian land in the 10th century. Mieszko I, prince of Poland, accepted Christianity in 966.
The earliest pieces of literature in the Polish language emerged later. Of these early works – which developed a literary tradition outside the works written in Latin – the most significant is Bogurodzica, composed between the 10th and 13th centuries, which is a hymn invoking the Mother of God. As the first poem composed in Polish, Bogurodzica has a firm place in Polish cultural history. The hymn is an instance of the most archaic form of the Polish language and is an example of medieval religious 'high art' music.
Polish national literature holds an exceptional position in Poland. Over the centuries it has mirrored the turbulent events of Polish history and many times has sustained the nation’s cultural and political identity.
The periods of Polish literature start with the Middle Ages and its focus on religious writings, but with early secular literature emerging. The Renaissance period, reaching Poland comparatively late, ushered in the golden age of Polish literature. It was led by Jan Kochanowski and his followers which highlighted early achievements in prose writing. Following were the Baroque period, where poetry and other literary forms emerged; the Enlightenment which saw the rise of Polish drama; 19th century Romanticism led by Henryk Sienkiewicz, and then the early 20th century Young Poland movement.
Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569), a poet and prose writer, is recognized as the father of Polish literature, notable for combining medieval religious interests with Renaissance humanism. Self-educated, he was the first idiomatically Polish talent and was widely read. His most famous work was A Brief Discourse among Three Persons: a Lord, a Commune Chief, and a Priest, in 1543.
Adam Mickiewicz was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, and political activist. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is one of Poland's "Three Bards," which include Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849) and Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859). We recognize all three in the Polish Heritage Center. Mickiewicz is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. His masterpiece, the great epic Pan Tadeusz, 1834, describes the life of the Polish gentry in the early 19th century through a fictional account of the feud between two families of Polish nobles.
Six Poles have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) was the most outstanding and prolific Polish writer, and master storyteller, of the second half of the nineteenth century best remembered in Poland for his exceptionally descriptive "Trilogy" of historical novels – With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Sir Michael (Fire in the Steppe), set in the 17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, written to “uplift the hearts” of his countrymen during the harsh Partitions.
His fame grew for his internationally known best-seller Quo Vadis, a novel about Christian persecutions at the time of Nero. Sienkiewicz won the Nobel Prize in 1905 “because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer”.
Władysław Reymont (1867-1925) received the Nobel prize in 1924 “for his great national epic, The Peasants”, one of Poland’s most engrossing twentieth-century masterpieces.
Reymont’s other best-known novel, The Promised Land, portrays a social panorama set in the city of Łódż, Poland during the Industrial Revolution. The novel is a dark vision of man, where ethics, noble ideas, and spiritual feelings turn against those who believe in them. His last work, Revolt (1924), describes a revolt by animals that take over their farm to introduce equality, but this quickly degenerates into abuse and terror. The novel was banned in communist Poland between 1945 and 1989.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw, and was awarded the Noble Prize in 1978 “for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life”. Singer’s writings evoke the vanished world of Polish Jewry as it existed before the Holocaust. His most ambitious novels, The Family Moskat, and the continuous narrative spun out in The Manor and The Estate, have large casts of characters and extend over several generations. These books chronicle the changes in, and eventual breakup of, large Jewish families during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Czesław Miłosz, (1911-2004), was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He wrote primarily in Polish and was regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century. Miłosz, "who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts" was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize. Though Miłosz was primarily a poet, his best-known work became his collection of essays Zniewolony umysł (1953; The Captive Mind), in which he condemned the accommodation of many Polish intellectuals to communism. This theme is also present in his novel Zdobycie władzy (1955; The Seizure of Power). His poetic works are noted for their classical style and their preoccupation with philosophical and political issues. One of his most famous quotations resonates loudly regarding our Polish Heritage Center: “The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012) was a Polish poet, essayist, and translator. Well-known in her native Poland, Szymborska received international recognition when she won the Nobel Prize in 1996. In awarding the prize, the Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” Her poetry is noted for its insightfulness, wit, irony, and deceptive simplicity. She authored more than fifteen books of poetry. Collections of her poems that have been translated into English include People on a Bridge (1990), View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995), and Miracle Fair (2001). The PHC highly recommends acquiring Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997 to those reading this article.
Olga Tokarczuk (born in 1962) is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2018 as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". She is noted for the mythical tone of her writing, which may result from the fact that she is a clinical psychologist. Her works have been translated into almost 40 languages, making her one of the most translated contemporary Polish writers. The Books of Jacob, regarded as her magnum opus, was released in America in February 2022.
Other noteworthy Polish writers include Stanisław Lem, known widely for his science fiction; Maria Dąbrowska, author of the widely popular Polish historical novel Noce i dnie (Nights and Days) which was made into a film by the same title in 1975; Bolesław Leśmian whose poetry was noted for its inventive vocabulary and sensuous imagery; Tadeusz Różewicz who wrote poetry, short stories, and plays; Marek Krajewski, a modern Polish crime writer famous for his novels; Witold Gombrowicz, a writer, and playwright who received a Nobel Prize nomination in 1966; Zofia Nałkowska was one of the top feminist writers in the early 1900s, her novels and essays having intense psychological depth; and Aleksander Głowacki, better known by his pen name Bolesław Prus, a novelist and leading figure in the history of Polish literature and philosophy.
The PHC Library is an available resource for many works of these writers, and we will always endeavor to expand our collection of the works of famous Polish authors. We encourage all readers to avail themselves of this rich resource.
