2nd Czesław Miłosz Festival

Miłosz – A Multiple Portrait
“Native Realm” represents the intermingling of cultures and traditions, a search for roots, the convergence of various languages and religions, the building of a sense of community and aspirations of freedom – ultimately an expression of the spiritual and artistic self-definition of an artist. This is how the 2nd Czesław Miłosz Festival will be, which from 9 to 15 May 2011 will gather together in Kraków poets and writers, critics and translators, and also all those who hold the word, especially the written word, close to their hearts, the art of poetry dissected.

“In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us”.
Czesław Miłosz, Ars Poetica?, Berkeley 1968

The heart of the festival will be the poetry evenings – encounters among poets from different countries and cultural environments. In The Book of Luminous Things (12 May), Arab literature (Adonis, real name Ali Ahmad Sa’id Isbir), American poetry (Edward Hirsch), Buddhist sensitivity (Jane Hirshfield) and the Polish “New Wave” (Ryszard Krynicki) will be laying their cards on the table. The City Without a Name evening (13 May), which focuses on the themes of exile and choice of language, throws a spotlight on the oeuvre of the Chinese poet Bei Dao, the Russian journalist, poet and translator Natalia Gorbanievska, the Opole-based French expert Tomasz Różycki and man of many talents, the Caribbean Derek Walcott (he not only writes poetry and plays for the stage, but… paints). United by their sensitivity to the rhythms of nature, Julia Hartwig and Lars Gustafsson, Wisława Szymborska and Ashok Vajpeyi will be meeting at The Unencompassed Earth (14 May). Finally, The Great Kingdom of Poetry awaits us (15 May), featuring: Andrei Khadanovich (Belarus), Oleg Tchukhontsev (Russia), Oleh Lyszeha (Ukraine), Tomas Venclova (Lithuania/USA) and Adam Zagajewski.

“We all lust for metaphysical knowledge, anxiously wait for that moment of recognition, the sudden flash of revelation which uncovers meaning, the irretrievably lost meaning of the world and our life on earth”.
Czesław Miłosz, O milczeniu, essay, “Ateneum” 1938

The festival debates will allude to the traditions of the Kraków Poetry Meetings. The following will be arriving for the sentimental Czesław Miłosz as His Friends Recall Him evening: Jane Hirshfield, Aleksander Fiut, Adam Michnik, Tomas Venclova, Helen Vendler and Adam Zagajewski (10 May). The second of the debates – Understanding Russia – will allude to a country familiar to Miłosz from his childhood, and later rediscovered – from a literary, philosophical and cultural angle – when he was in the prime of his life (11 May). The participants are Clare Cavanagh, Natalia Gorbanievska and Andrzej Nowak. The next meeting, hosted by Italian author and publisher Francesco M. Catalucci with Timothy Garton Ash, Bei Dao, Egidijus Aleksandravičius and Irena Grudzińska-Gross as guests, relates to Place of Birth (14 May), and more specifically native culture, contemporary homelands, patriotism… On the final day of the festival (15 May), the following will be conversing at On the Clamor of Many Religions: the Turkish sociologist Nilüfer Göle, the postmodernist liberal John Gray, Tomáš Halík, who was secretly ordained into the priesthood and the philosopher Krzysztof Michalski.

“Each of his new poems was for us a celebration, a surprise, a gift, the topic of long discussions with friends and an invitation to solitary meditation”.
Wisława Szymborska, “Tygodnik Powszechny”, special supplement to number 34/2004

Professor Aleksander Fiut writes on behalf of the Faculty of Polish Studies at Jagiellonian University, the organisers of the Miłosz and Miłosz conference: “We want to sketch out a multiple portrait of Miłosz: a likeness of the artist – the poet and essayist; a figure of the thinker – the philosopher and theologian; an image of the man – of course one inspiring admiration and respect, but also provoking rebellion and resistance. (…) We want therefore to contrast him with traditions both akin to and distant from his own thought, with languages both related to and alien to his diction”. The five days will oscillate around four themes. The With Miłosz Against the World will highlight sore spots in Miłosz’s dispute with the modern day: in (Taking up) Subjects to Let, experts on Miłosz’s output will be encouraged to respond to his defiance, with space allowed for ad personam argumentation and personal fascinations; in Miłosz Suspected – Reception and Poetics, language investigators will be exposed to the temptation implicit in the actual fabric of his thought; and finally – Miłosz and Disenchantment – a series of lectures recalling that religion and the debate on supreme and fundamental matters were central to his oeuvre. “Maybe after these 45 hours of discussions between 77 sages who will be starting off from Miłosz, we will be left with more of him, not only a monumental edition of his works, but also… his sense of unease?” – prompt the organisers.

“Who wishes to understand the poet / Must go to the poet’s land”.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, West-östlicher Divan, motto, 1819

The Wikipedia page on Czesław Miłosz is translated into… 58 languages! His output is familiar to readers in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Kurdistan, the Congo and Crimea… Translators from almost twenty countries will be taking part in the Miłosz 365 translation workshops (12-15 May). The closed study sessions will be led on the one hand by esteemed translators of the Polish Nobel Prize winner: Anders Bodegård (Sweden), Clare Cavanagh (USA), Laurence Dyèvre (France), Xavier Farré Vidal (Spain) and Nikita Kuznetsov (Russia); and on the other, by researchers and authorities on his oeuvre, including Krzysztof Biedrzycki, Agnieszka Kosińska, Krzysztof Zajas and Elżbieta Kiślak. It is thanks to them that Polish literature permeates other cultures and languages whose interpretations allow us to revise our own vision of Miłosz’s poetry and better understand his works.

The seminar concludes with a translators’ panel, Miłosz – World (13 May). Anders Bodegård (Sweden), Ashok Vajpeyi (India), Wu Lan (China), Clare Cavanagh (USA) and Andrei Khadanovich (Belarus) will be talking about who Miłosz is to readers in various places in the world, how his work functions in the literatures of various languages and how translators cope with the challenge of producing good – “valuable and uncommon” in the words of the poet – translations.

“My faithful mother tongue,
I have been serving you. (...)
You were my native land; I lacked any other.
I believed that you would also be a messenger
between me and some good people
even if they were few, twenty, ten
or not born as yet”.
Czesław Miłosz, My Faithful Mother Tongue, Berkeley 1968

However the Miłosz Festival is not – as some might suppose – just poetry or literature. Poetry in this case meets music and film – in the concert cycle and review of films about Czesław Miłosz. In Alchemia, Jacek Podsiadło will be accompanied by the Najduchy group (10 May) and we’ll be able to see them in the premier of Lament świętokrzyski, a programme specially prepared for the Kraków festival. A day later we can move on to the land of Ballads and Romances. The group composed of sisters Barbara and Zuzanna Wrońska draws from Miłosz’s rich literary legacy, regaling his texts – by means of experimental arrangements – with a new unusual aural dimension. Awaiting us, by way of contrast, at the St Catherine’s Church is an Irish evening (12 May). The poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, who creates verse in Irish, will be accompanied by Liam O’Flynn, an Irish pipe virtuoso. Also promising to be unusual is an evening at the Kraków Opera (13 May) during which the Sinfonietta Cracovia and the Polish Radio Choir and the Capella Cracoviensis choir accompanied by soloists (Asta Krikščiunaite – soprano, Ignas Misiura – bass-baritone) will be performing Centones meae urbi – an oratorio by Onute Narbutaite. This work was created as a tribute to a city of culture and art, the city of Miłosz’s youth – Wilno (today Vilnius) – and also the Polish-Lithuanian literary tradition. The concert will be crowned by the presentation of the Transatlantic award – for the most distinguished popularisers of Polish literature in other countries. The crowning moment of the musical part of the festival will be the concert by Deutsche Bank Invites Aga Zaryan at the Kraków Philharmonic Hall (15 May). The artist, who will be presenting material from her new album containing verses by “Miłosz’s female poets” (including Anna Świrszczyńska, Jane Hirshfield and Mary Oliver) is to be accompanied by a numerous circle of friends, including Grzegorz Turnau.

 “Where ever is the place for you in this age of confusion
wise, composed book, an alloy of elements
reconciled for eternity by an artist’s glance?”
Czesław Miłosz, About a Book, Wilno 1934

The Miłosz Festival wouldn’t be complete without the special leading role played by… books. They will be reigning supreme in the bookshops, but even more so in the Miłosz Pavilion, which will be standing on Szczepański Square from 9 to 15 May. It is there that the book premieres and meetings with authors will be taking place. It will be inaugurated by the release of a long awaited title, Andrzej Franaszek’s Miłosz. Biografia (Znak). Franaszek collected the material over more than ten years – in Poland, Lithuania, France and the United States. He got hold of everybody who could offer anything of fundamental importance about Miłosz, penetrated the archives at the Beinecke Library and Maisons-Laffitte and investigated the poet’s abundant correspondence. On 9 May will be able to discover the result of his quest. On 10 May, W.A.B. will be presenting the book: Putrament – Miłosz, while Czytelnik will be presenting Listy Miłosz – Giedroyc and IDiSnLP, Czesław Miłosz. Bibliografia druków zwartych.

The festival is the most important point in the Miłosz Year celebrations and includes a presentation of photographs by Judyta Papp entitled Czesław Miłosz – Portraits at the Wyspiański Pavilion on 9 May to 30 June 2011, while the Krakow Festival Office will be inaugurating a multi-media series which has been anticipated for many months, Miłosz Unbound.

It promises to be a genuine reading feast for the soul and intellect. (bf)

Art director: Jerzy Illg
Organisers: Krakow Festival Office, Book Institute
See full programme!
www.milosz365.pl

Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage