2nd International Joseph Conrad Literature Festival

Literature Cruise

At the beginning of November, Kraków plays host to the 2nd International Joseph Conrad Literature Festival, which lasts several days and not only includes lectures, meetings and workshops, but also film screenings and shows, exhibitions and concerts. This year’s motto is: “Other Worlds, Other Languages”.  

Other Worlds

Son of a Polish writer, in his youth connected with Kraków, later a British mariner, finally – an eminent prose writer and columnist who expressed himself in the modern world’s most popular language. It is difficult to imagine anyone who has created a better link between foreign and Polish literature than the figure of Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski. 

The festival’s guests represent diverse cultures, nations, professions and generations. All of them are artists, but what links them above all are their exceptional personalities. Discussing literature will be prose writers, poets and reporters, literary critics and directors from Ukraine, Slovenia, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Turkey and the USA. Some of the festival’s guests took part in tumultuous events and genuine turning points in history. The oldest, such as the French director Claude Lanzmann or the Italian writer Dacia Maraini, experienced the nightmare that was the Second World War. The films of Lanzmann – a resistance fighter in his youth – concentrate on the Holocaust, like Shoah. Maraini, who ended up as a child in a Japanese concentration camp, has related her experiences in her books. Writers from socialist states continued to create under the rule of various dictatorships, grappling with the censor – for example, Herta Müller. They were also involved in the democratisation process – Leonard Neuger in Poland or Aleš Debeljak in Slovenia – and described the fall of communism, like Maciej Zaremba or Jean Hatzfeld. The last of these was also, as a war correspondent, a witness to the wars in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Marjane Satrapi, however, grew up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Her Persepolis comic, presenting 15 years of the country’s history brought her international fame, and after it was transferred to the big screen, an Oscar nomination.        

Literary Kinship

This year 40 years passed since the death of the esteemed German-language poet with Jewish roots, Paul Celan (1920-1970). The festival’s programme devotes a great deal of space to his oeuvre and his dialogue with the Austrian writer, Ingeborg Bachmann. At the beginning of November, the “a5” publishing house will be presenting the anxiously awaited Polish translation of their correspondence. The publishing house’s co-founder Ryszard Krynicki, as well as Krzysztof Czyżewski, Adam Lipszyc and Piotr Paziński will be taking part in a forum devoted to Celan’s Death Fugue. Krynicki also appears at a discussion entitled “Kinship Through Choice: Bachmann-Celan” together with Małgorzata Łukasiewicz, Andrzej Kopacki, Helmut Böttiger and Peter Hamm (6 November). The last mentioned is the creator of a film from 30 years ago I Who Cannot Live Among People. In Search of Ingeborg Bachmann, which is included in the programme as one of the festival screenings – alongside others relating to both artists. Michael Haneke’s Three Paths to the Lake was based on Bachmann’s texts, as was Werner Schroeter’s Malina. As many as three films tell Paul Celan’s life story, including a German and Romanian production from 1988, Frieder Schuller’s Im Süden meiner Seele, which will also be coming to Kraków.

Another German language writer is Herta Müller – last year’s Nobel Prize winner, like Celan, comes from Romania. The poet belonged before the war to the Jewish minority in Chernivtsi, while Herta Müller was born after the war in the community of Niţchidorf, which was mainly settled by Germans. In her books she describes in an expressive manner the realities of life in Ceauşescu’s nation. A chance to meet the author of The Land of Green Plums has been planned for 5 November. The fall of the Romanian regime was related by Jean Hatzfeld – a French reporter, author of three books devoted to civil war between the Tutsis and Hutus and winner of the Ryszard Kapuściński Prize in 2010. In Kraków on 2 November he is meeting with Swedish journalist Sven Lindqvist to talk about the “geography of violence”, and 4 November – with his readers in the Pod Jaszczurami Club. On the same day Lindqvist, whose book Exterminate All the Brutes alludes to Joseph Conrad, will be delivering a speech of his own. Marjane Satrapi will be taking part in the screening of Persepolis (2 November, Pod Baranami Cinema), and on the next day will be talking about her comic, Embroideries.

The public’s attention will certainly be attracted by the themed meetings: Mirosław Bałka and the writer László Krasznahorkai will explain what “Melancholy of Resistance” entails. The Hungarian will also be holding forth on “Europe’s Hub” in the company of Aleš Debeljak, the Ukrainian poet Yuri Andrukhovych and Krzysztof Varga. The last mentioned, like Łukasz Orbitowski, will be discussing the role of the book discussion clubs. Debating on this year’s festival’s slogan will be: Marek Kęskrawiec, Mateusz Marczewski and Olga Stanisławska. Joanna Bator, Inga Iwasiów and Bożena Umińska-Keff will be telling their “Family Histories”, while Dacia Maraini, Urvashi Butalia, Lisa Appignanesi, Ewa Kuryluk and Elif Şafak will be meeting over a “Women’s Atlas”. American writer Rabih Alameddine will be appearing as a “Master Storyteller” (4 November), and besides this, introducing us to the Tunisian melodies being performed at the Drukarnia club by Perpetual Motion and also contributing an introductory word or two in the Pod Baranami Cinema to Wojciech Has’ The Saragossa Manuscript. American literary scholar Walter Benn Michaels will be delivering a lecture and joining in the “Game of Classes. Politics, Society, Culture”. A “Lesson from the Masters” will be led by Krystian Lupa. The list of festival guests is completed by distinguished translators, critics and publishers. There will also be a screening of Claude Lanzmann’s latest film – The Karski Report – and a discussion with the director, who is known for his difficult character, will be led by Konstanty Gebert (7 November). 

Several events having been timed to coincide with the Book Fair (4-7 November; like last year both events are intentionally taking place around the same time), including a discussion between Jacek Dukaj, Inga Iwasiów and Jarosław Lipszyc on literature in the face of new media, deliberations on the relationship between East and West taken up by Matthias Göritz and Serhij Zhadan and also a presentation of a book by Piotr Głuchowski and Marcin Kowalski about a Holocaust victim, Ryszard Apte. Just like last year, the festival programme also includes “Reading Lessons” – a community campaign by the “Tygodnik Powszechny” weekly newspaper, encouraging writers and secondary school pupils to discuss literature. The teachers will be: Ewa Kuryluk, Piotr Paziński and Michał Paweł Markowski.

Correspondence Between the Arts

Accompanying the events entirely devoted to literature will be film screenings, exhibitions, concerts and show. A concert officially opening the festival will take place in the Fabryka club: with a band led by Mikołaj Trzaska and Andrzej Stasiuk himself playing the role of narrator. We can familiarise ourselves with the figure of Anselm Kiefer – a painter and writer of Jewish extraction – through his painting Das Haar and a film by Thomas Honickel in the Main Building of the National Museum. At the Wyspiański Pavilion, Jerzy Kutnik will be meeting Katarzyna Bazarnik and Zenon Fajfer who will be opening an exhibition of “Liberature” works (2-30 November). The latest Ha!art Corporation publication, part of the literary series they have edited, is set to have its premiere: the first translation in the world of Herta Müller’s collection of poetic collages The Guard Takes His Comb. The Goethe Institute will be presenting the photographs of Herlinde Koebl Settled into Writing – Writers at Work (2-19 November). An additional event at the festival will be a production by the Art of Dialogue Foundation based the text of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class, for which the author received this year’s Nike award.

“The world is neither alone nor does it speak one language” – claim the festival directors, Marek Paweł Markowski and Piotr Mucharski. “Various voices resound around us and it depends on us whether their foreignness will forever remain out of our range, or whether it will become a part of our own existence.” So let’s not waste the chance to enrich our experience and open ourselves out to otherness. Like Conrad let’s embark on a cruise to other worlds. (Michał Nałęcz-Nieniewski, miesięcznik "Karnet")

2nd International Joseph Conrad Literature Festival
2-7 November
Organisers: Krakow Festival Office, “Tygodnik Powszechny” Foundation
www.conradfestival.com