Józef Czapski

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Józef Czapski
Czapski in uniform, January 1943
Born(1896-04-03)3 April 1896
Prague, Austria-Hungary
Died12 January 1993(1993-01-12) (aged 96)
Maisons-Laffitte, France
NationalityPolish
Occupation(s)artist, writer, critic
Known forco-creating Kultura monthly, survivorship and eyewitness testament of the Katyn massacre
Notable workThe Inhuman Land,
Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp

Józef Czapski (3 April 1896 – 12 January 1993) was a Polish artist, author, and critic, as well as an officer of the

Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, he was an official envoy of the Polish government searching for the missing Polish officers in Russia. After World War II, he remained in exile in the Paris suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, where he was among the founders of Kultura
monthly, one of the most influential Polish cultural journals of the 20th century.

Life

Early life

Leliwa

Józef Marian Franciszek

Polish Army
.

Polish-Soviet War

An ardent

Polish-Soviet War.[2] For his merits he was awarded the Virtuti Militari
, the highest Polish military decoration.

Paris Committee and Second World War

In 1921, Czapski entered the

Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, which he read in French and wrote about in Polish.[4] He returned to Poland in 1932, re-enlisting in 1939. He was subsequently captured by the Soviets and was successively interned in prison and labor camps in the USSR: Starobilsk, in eastern Ukraine, Pawliszczew Bor, in Smolensk Oblast, and Gryazovets, even further north, near the city of Vologda; here his love for Proust was crucial to his survival. In a barrack he lectured the internees with quotations from memory and this gave him the strength to overcome the extreme existential discomfort.[4] He was one of 395 who avoided the fate of more than 20,000 murdered at Katyn
and similar massacres.

After the 1941

Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, Czapski joined the Polish II Corps under the command of General Anders. Between 1941 and 1942, Czapski was tasked with investigating the disappearance of Poles who had been in the captivity of the NKVD and subsequently massacred. He never received any satisfactory answers as to the fate of these men, but wrote about his experiences in two books, Reminiscences of Starobyelsk (1944)[5] and The Inhuman Land (1949).[6] During that period Czapski also met Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Anna Akhmatova
who is said to have dedicated one of her poems to him.

Anders subsequently removed his army through the Persian Corridor, and in Baghdad Czapski began writing for the Polish army newspapers Orzeł Biały ('White Eagle') and Kurier Polski ('Polish Courier').

Emigration

Czapski shortly before his death, pictured on the cover of Tumult i olśnienia (Uproar and Enlightenments, originally published in French as Lumières de Joseph Czapski)[7]

Czapski ended the war in Rome, and moved to France in 1946. Together with

Instytut Literacki (Literary Institute) at Maisons-Laffitte, where he lived until his death, and contributed to the Polish émigré literary journal 'Kultura'. He published also in the French press, including „Le Figaro Littéraire”, „Preuves”, „Gavroche”, „Nova et Vettera”, „Carrefour”. He co-organized Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin
(1950).

At first his major work was not deemed worthy of publication by many French publishers, despite the support of André Malraux and Raymond Aron. It was finally published in 1949 under the title The Inhuman Land, thanks to Daniel Halévy, at the very anti-communist Éditions Self.

His paintings were exhibited in

National Museum in Poznań and Kraków Society of Friends of Fine Arts, but the next one was held only in 1986 in Warsaw
.

He signed a letter of Polish émigré writers who supported the Letter of 59.[8] Polish People's Republic censored information about Czapski and had his name on a list of the people completely banned from publication. His literary and artistic works were popularized in Poland only after 1989.

Czapski died 12 January 1993, and three days later was buried on a cemetery in Le Mesnil-le-Roi, by the side of his sister Maria, who died in 1981.

Czapski was awarded the Silver Cross of the

Order of Virtuti Militari (1918–1920) and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta
(1990).

Private life

Czapski was deeply Catholic, and his faith influenced his works and personal philosophy, but also his struggles with sexuality.[9] In the years 1924-1926 he entered a relationship with a poet Sergey Nabokov, younger brother of Vladimir Nabokov; it was ended by Czapski's departure to London, in order to cure his typhoid fever.[9] Returning to Poland, Czapski met the writer Ludwik Hering. The pair lived together for a few years in Józefów, and despite the fact that they were separated by World War 2 and subsequent emigration of Czapski, they maintained the love for years by exchanging letters.[9]

English translation

The Inhuman Land is the first work of Czapski's translated into English and was published in London in 1951. Because it is a first-hand account of contemporaneous negotiations with the Soviets over the missing Polish officers it became an important document until Russian guilt for the massacres was acknowledged. In the post-war period Czapski was also among the eyewitnesses of the situation of Polish prisoners in Soviet captivity and testified on the matter before the United States Congress.[10]

His Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp was translated into English in 2018.[4]

The Jozef Czapski Pavilion

In 2016, The National Museum of Krakow inaugurated the Jozef Czapski Pavilion on the grounds of the Emeryk Hutten-Czapski Museum. The pavilion is dedicated to the grandson of the most important numismatic collector in Poland, and the permanent exhibition is about his life and work. The exhibition displays some of his diaries and paintings, as well as various multimedia presentations on his work and life. One of the exhibitions is an exact recreation of the room he lived in at the Kultura house in Maisons-Laffitte in France. The pavilion was designed by Krystyna Zachwatowicz and her husband, the film director, Andrzej Wajda.[11]

The Palace in Kurozwęki, Poland

We also invite you to visit the Museum that has recently opened its door and displays Popiel family Mementoes as well as a collection of a late Polish artist named Joseph Czapski (Józef Czapski).


Notes and references

  1. ^ "Wielka Genealogia Minakowskiego - M.J. Minakowski". Sejm-Wielki.pl. Retrieved 2023-11-18.
  2. ^ a b c Joanna Pollakówna (2003). "Józef Czapski: życie heroicznie dopełnione". Zwoje (in Polish). 3 (36): 11. Archived from the original on 2012-03-06.
  3. ^ a b c (in Polish and English) Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak (2001). "Józef Czapski". culture.pl. Archived from the original on 2013-10-21. Retrieved 2013-02-18.
  4. ^
    OCLC 1023103240.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  5. ISBN 2-88250-001-7
    .
  6. ISBN 0-85065-164-6
    .
  7. ISBN 978-2-88250-138-7
    .
  8. ^ Kultura 1976/03/342 Paryż 1976, s. 34.
  9. ^
    OCLC 1100236522
    .
  10. United States Government Printing Office. pp. 1230 (2362). {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  11. ^ The National Museum of Krakow. "The Jozef Czapski Pavilion". The National Museum of Krakow. Retrieved 19 June 2017.

External links

  • Biography:

Józef Czapski [1] Other : [2]

  • Pictures:

Official page [3] The Palace in Kurozwęki [4] Other [5]

Further reading

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