Professor, after winning a Polish language competition you started studying Polish Philology but you’re a Romance philologist. What made you change your scope of interest?
The story of that Polish language competition and my studies is a little more complex because I was a winner, or a finalist of the competition in the third grade of secondary school. It was then that the headmaster of my school, Secondary School no. 9 in Gdańsk, had the insane idea that I should start my studies during my final year of school. Thanks to the good will of the authorities of the University of Gdańsk and of the then Faculty of Languages and History, I got the chance to study Polish Philology as an auditor, without the certificate of secondary education. It all worked out, so I was doing my school finals and finishing my first year of Polish Philology at the same time. In fact, such a maximalist attitude to filling my own time has stayed with me until this day. And this is where expanding my interests comes in because it was in fact not shifting but expanding my interests into issues connected with Romance Philology and French literature and culture because after I’d done two years at Polish Philology, Romance Philology was just opening up at our university. Prof. Mrozowicki was just opening the Department of Romance Philology back then. I thought that I had some time so it might be worth taking up a second course of study. And as a third-year Polish Philology student I was also a first-year student of Romance Philology. In fact there was great deal of coincidence in that. I’d learnt French at secondary school and a bit during my studies, at a university language course. Then I did a preparatory course before my studies but I mainly learnt it during the course at Romance Philology. I knew I wanted to be an academic, this had always fascinated me, and that was my goal. And in fact I couldn’t decide whether I should go for Polish or Romance Philology. What might have been decisive then was probably the fact that this was a new and fresh course of study and there were greater opportunities for staff. I might have also been tempted by the international perspective. So it was not a change in my interests but rather, as I said, an extension and I still want to feel that I’m both a Polish and Romance philologist. And anyway, I’m still linked to the Institute of Polish Philology where I conduct many classes in theatre studies. So that’s the way it is.
In 2010 you published Historie Oka (Stories of the Eye), recognised by Literatura na Świecie. Is this literature for ophthalmologists?
No, although my friends, the more spiteful ones, having seen the publication advertised by Stanisław Rosiek at the słowo/obraz terytoria site, would ring me up and tell me that medical students were apparently looking forward to the book. In fact, this is not a book for doctors or medical students but its subject is indeed the eye and what happened to it mainly among French writers and thinkers of the mid-20th century, what they said about seeing, looking and also many associated things such as ethics, philosophy, aesthetics, literature and writing. Historie Oka is my habilitation dissertation which may not be typical because it is in a sense a collection of essays devoted to several authors important to me and with a rich critical apparatus, thank goodness. Thanks to this, my habilitation was successful. All in all, it’s a kind of a long essay on the subject of seeing in French literature, I think quite representative of my approach to literature, to my reading of literature based on close relationship with a text, based on searching for important things, not only for historical and literary issues but also for us today, for thinking, always somehow connected to very specific thematic issues. With such themes as the eye, the body, eroticism. These are things which I have been dealing with for years.
Professor, I understood this title as very subversive, because for you mentioned eroticism in the third place but this is a book about eroticism from the first to the last page.
Maybe not from the first to the last but two-thirds of the book might really be about eroticism. The title is a slight paraphrase of, what is to my mind, one of the fundamental texts of the 20th century literature, “Story of the Eye” by Georges Bataille, a short story which provides a starting point to thinking about the world in the 20th century and today. An iconoclastic starting point, of course, because if you mention eroticism, this is not mild eroticism but as seen by Bataille, linked to death, linked to the limits of humanity or the theme of transgression and therefore, at times, touching on painful and difficult matters. It is not eroticism in the sense of sexuality or reproduction, and neither is it eroticism connected too closely with emotion, love and so on.
I regret that this is a radio interview. But we couldn’t have shown most of the illustrations that were there anyway, could we?
I’m afraid not, especially given the current moral climate in our country.
You’ve changed your interests. Powtórzenie i Różnica contains sketches on translation.
Powtórzenie i Różnica. Szkice z Krytyki Przekładu is the full title of my latest book published by the Gdańsk publishing house W Podwórku. This isn’t really a change in interests, either, but rather a way of documenting something which I have been dealing with for many years, that is translation because I used to write about translation even before I started writing about literature. The beginnings of my work with French literature were, paradoxically, translating books. In a way you might say that I was learning French through translating the essays of Georges Poulet under the supervision of Marek Bieńczyk. Powtórzenie i Różnica is therefore a collection of essays published mainly in Literatura na Świecie, a magazine with which I have been connected for many years and to which I owe a great deal.
Who will you be hosting during the upcoming meeting as part of the “TeKa refleksji” series?
You have just asked about a very interesting undertaking initiated and created by the lawyer Tomasz Kopoczyński, with whom I have been cooperating for five years now. We organise meetings, lately mainly at the Dworek Sierakowskich, with outstanding figures from Polish and also European humanities. Soon we might even be able to say global humanities. These are meetings to which we try to invite the most prominent but also the most interesting and at times undiscovered figures from the world of the humanities and in this way pass the time in a pleasant way. Most importantly, though, we try to learn as much as possible from those people whom we consider important. Our recent guests were the organisers and directors of the Conrad Festival in Cracow. Michał Paweł Markowski, for me one of the most outstanding and most important figures of Polish humanities, and Grzegorz Jankowicz, who was our guest for the second time. We have plans for late winter/early spring for a series of five meetings, organised by Prof. Marta Koval and Prof. Marek Wilczyński, devoted to contemporary Ukraine and Ukrainian history, with such guests as the outstanding French historian Daniel Beauvois and Ukrainian guests including Yaroslav Hrytsak or Taras Voznyak. For the rest of the year we are planning quite spectacular things but I’d rather not speak about it just yet.
“Columbus Duo” is an attempt at expressing …
“Columbus Duo” is an attempt at expressing, it would be simplest to say, yourself or one of your own personas, of your own selves. It’s a music group in which I create music together with my brother and which has evolved from our earlier music project “Thing”, from the sort of music where the aesthetics could be compared to the aesthetics of my book Historie Oka, violent, brutal and noisy music. “Columbus Duo” is a milder version of what we were doing before, more experimental, less structured and looser when it comes to compositions. It is a music that keeps searching, difficult music, probably like the things I write. So in a way, these things complement each other, overlap, and at the same time as part of my maximalist approach to life and time, this is a very important activity for me, for which I sadly haven’t had much time recently. But we are doing new things all the time, releasing things all the time. Recently we recorded music for the films of a Polish-Russian avant-garde early-20th century director Edward Starewicz. We have played live for his films and the recordings can be found on the Internet at columbusduo.bandcamp.com and soundcloud.com/columbusduo.
“The Grasshopper and the Ant ”, “Revenge of a Kinematograph Cameraman”, “The Mascot” – where does the choice come from?
These are the titles of Edward Starewicz’s films. He was an extremely interesting director, one of the creators of the puppet film. He made his films with the stop motion method and it looks quite drastic because in fact this film about the grasshopper and the ant and the “Revenge of a Kinematograph Cameraman” are films which star insects which had been previously killed by Starewicz and then pinned to the screen. Which was, of course, what interested, intrigued and inspired us.
If you want to make those closest to you happy, what do you cook for them?
This is a very difficult issue because at my home our culinary preferences are diverse, so sometimes we have to cook three different things to please every member of the family. My and my wife’s culinary preferences fortunately overlap so we mainly cook things for each other which are, again like the music, experimental. I don’t have any flag dish which I make. I try to either invent something or search for things I’ve never made before. So I rarely make something for the second or third time, apart from a few hits which are mostly to do with what my children like, which sometimes makes me sad because I have to cook things which are too banal for my liking and too simple, but I find something in them too. I can see my daughter, who is older, develop in a culinary way, getting to know new tastes and joining in our preferences and we still have to work on our son.
And the final question, Professor. When you put down your guitar and your ladle, and when you have no book on your desk, how do you like to spend your free time?
The book and the ladle are also ways of spending my free time. But a passion which you might say fills the rest of my time is sport. My favourite way of spending free time is playing tennis with Prof. Maciej Michalski, Vice-Director of the Institute of Polish Philology. Or alternatively watching tennis or team games, especially volleyball, on television.
So you watched last night’s match as well?
No, last night the time was terrible – 3:30 in the morning, Agnieszka Radwańska’s match. I didn’t have great hopes for the match anyway. But the result was great – the semi-finals of the Australian Open is something fantastic.
Thank you for the conversation, Professor.
Thank you very much.
Gdańsk, 28 January 2016
Interview by Dr Tadeusz Zaleski
Photography: Piotr Pędziszewski
