Professor Jerzy Limon: No one else knows so much about William Shakespeare
Where does your fascination with one of the most outstanding Englishmen come from?
Of course it’s hard to give a precise date, everything started during my studies in Poznań. My teacher and maestro was Professor Henryk Zbierski, an expert on Polish and English literature and on Shakespeare, as well as the author of a history of English literature and books on Shakespeare. When I attended his seminars, it was his knowledge, which impressed me, and his absolute dedication to science which caused me to go in that direction. Slowly I discovered both Shakespeare and his epoch, an interesting epoch and not only from the point of view of the Shakespearean comet. Many different celestial bodies were in motion in that Elizabethan universe and it was an extraordinary period in the history of theatre and of European drama. Suffice it to say that dozens of theatres were in operation in London at the time. That was of course over a span of 75 years. There were times when a city the size of Gdynia had six theatres. Shakespeare himself is not only theatre and the stage, he is an amazing virtuoso combining poetic talent with theatrical expertise. He was admittedly a second-rate actor, but all the same, he knew the theatre inside out. The combination of these two virtues meant that his dramas are largely written with the skill of a master, and the level of his poetry far exceeds the other dramatists of the age. In his sonnets, Shakespeare attains his peak - according to Stanisław Barańczak, he was the greatest poet of all time.
- After studying and working in Poznań, you moved to the Tri-City. Why?
I am from Sopot, so for me it was coming home. My studies in Poznań were a result of the ‘regionalisation’ which was in force at the time, meaning you could not study wherever you wanted. Each voivodeship came under a specific academic institution and that was where you had to study. I couldn’t study either in Cracow or in Warsaw, which I don’t regret because Poznań is a dynamic place, and secondly there was no English Department in Gdańsk. After my studies I was offered a job at the university, there I wrote my doctoral thesis and in 1980, during the shipyard strike, I decided to move back to Gdańsk. The reason was personal rather than political. The longing for the Tri-City and Sopot was all-pervasive. Gdańsk’s English Department had existed for a few years, led by Tomasz Krzeszowski, a remarkable linguist with wide literary interests and under whose aegis the department was developing quite rapidly. Then there was Martial Law, a time of stagnation and hopelessness when contact with foreign institutions was impossible. For students of English, this is a basic minimum. We cannot conduct serious research in this country, we must have access to good libraries in English-speaking countries. After a few years, I finally received a passport and a grant from the British Council. I left for London in the mid-1980s. I later got over these stages in my career. At the age of 43, I became a full professor, which is quite rare in the Humanities. Then came my second passion, maybe even madness, connected with the idea of building a Shakespearean Theatre in Gdańsk, which was partially linked to my academic research into the activities of English actors in 17th century Gdańsk. At the beginning of the 1990s, I and a small group of enthusiasts set up a foundation which aimed to construct a Shakespearean theatre and to revive visits by English actors to Gdańsk, which we managed in 1993. After 400 years, they started to come back again and since then we’ve had the Shakespeare Festival and frequent appearances by English actors. The theatre was also built, opening in September 2014.
There is a wide conviction that studying the Humanities is unnecessary and that it ‘produces the unemployed’. How do you counter this?
Humanistic subjects, the Humanities, are and will be important for everyone. You can’t forget them and give in to the idea that your course of studies should be directed by the needs of the labour market and by what is now in fashion. Humanistic studies allow you to see life from a completely different perspective. They allow you to develop a certain kind of sensitivity, which, despite appearances, is just as necessary in a modern world dominated by economic indicators. Through my work on the project to build the Shakespeare Theatre, I have met a lot of people, including business people, and believe me, many of them have studied Humanities. This reflection on life allows them to be better in what they do and to conform to the requirements of today’s world.
Interview: Krzysztof Klinkosz
Photography: Piotr Pędziszewski
