Andrzej Stasiuk
Encyclopedia
Polish literature
Polish literature is the literary tradition of Poland. Most Polish literature has been written in the Polish language, though other languages, used in Poland over the centuries, have also contributed to Polish literary traditions, including Yiddish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, German and...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
s and literary critics. He is best known for his travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
and essays that describe the reality of Eastern Europe and its relationship with the West.
After being dismissed from secondary school, Stasiuk drifted aimlessly, became active in the Polish pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
movement and spent one and a half years in prison for deserting the army - as legend has it, in a tank.
His experiences in prison provided him with the material for the stories in his literary debut in 1992. Entitled Mury Hebronu ("The Walls of Hebron"), it instantly established him as a premier literary talent. After a collection of "Love and non-love poems" (Wiersze miłosne i nie, 1994), Stasiuk's bestselling first full-length novel Biały kruk (English translation as White Raven in 2000) appeared in 1995 and consolidated his position among the most successful authors in post-communist Poland.
Long before his literary breakthrough, in 1986, Stasiuk had left his native Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
and withdrew to the seclusion of the small hamlet of Czarne in the Beskids
Beskids
The Beskids , ) is a traditional name for a series of Eastern European mountain ranges.- Definition :The Beskids are approximately 600 km in length and 50–70 km in width...
, a secluded part of the Carpathian mountain range
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
in the south of Poland. Outside writing, he spends his time breeding sheep and llama
Llama
The llama is a South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since pre-Hispanic times....
s. Together with his wife, he also runs his own tiny but, by now, prestigious publishing business Wydawnictwo Czarne, named after its seat. Apart from his own books, Czarne also publishes other East European authors. Czarne also re-published works by the émigré Polish author Zygmunt Haupt
Zygmunt Haupt
Zygmunt Haupt was a Polish writer and painter.His father Ludwik was a school inspector, mother was a teacher. Initially he attended a school in Tarnopol. In 1925 he graduated from Kopernik gymnasium in Lwów and later studied engineering and architecture at the Lwów Politechnic...
, thus initiating Haupt's rediscovery in Poland.
While "White Raven" had a straight adventure plot, Stasiuk's subsequent writing has become increasingly impressionistic and concentrated on atmospheric descriptions of his adopted mental home, the provincial south-east of Poland and Europe, and the lives of its inhabitants. Galician Tales, one of three works available in English (the others being White Raven and Nine) conveys a good impression of the specific style developed by Stasiuk. A similar text is "Dukla" (1997), named after a small town near his home. "Dukla" achieved Stasiuk's breakthrough in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and helped built him the most appreciative reader-base outside Poland, although a number of Stasiuk's books have been translated into several other languages including English.
In an interview, Stasiuk confessed his preoccupation with this area and a lack of interest in western Europe: "I haven’t been to France or Spain and I’ve never thought about going there. I am simply interested in our part of the world, this central and eastern reality. My God, what would I be doing in France..."
Stasiuk himself cites Marek Hłasko as a major influence; critics have compared his style of stream of consciousness travel literature to that of Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
. Stasiuk admitted that he "always wanted to write a Slavonic ‘On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...
’ and place it in a quite geographically limited and historically complicated space"http://www.polishwriting.net/index.php?id=103. Stasiuk's travelogue Jadąc do Babadag ("Travelling to Babadag"), describes a journey from the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
down to Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
, and arguably comes close to this ideal. In Stasiuk's own words, "[t]here is no individual, human story in this book [...]. I wanted rather to write about geography, landscape, about the influence of material reality on the mind". Jadąc do Babadag received the NIKE
Nike Award
The NIKE Literary Award is one of the most prestigious awards for Polish literature. Established in 1997 and funded by Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's second largest daily paper, and the consulting company NICOM, it is conferred annually in October for the best book of a single living author writing in...
for the best Polish book of 2000.
A certain exception to the stylistic preferences in Stasiuk's more recent work is the 1998 novel Dziewięć ("Nine"), which is set in Warsaw and records the changes affecting urban Polish society after the collapse of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
Apart from (semi-) fictional writing, Stasiuk also tried his hand at literary criticism (in Tekturowy samolot/"Cardboard Aeroplane", 2000) and quasi-political essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
ism on the notion of Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
(together with the Ukrainian writer
Ukrainian literature
Ukrainian literature is literature written in the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian literature had a difficult development because, due to constant foreign domination over Ukrainian territories, there was often a significant difference between the spoken and written language...
Yuri Andrukhovych
Yuri Andrukhovych
Yuri Andrukhovych is a Ukrainian prose writer, poet, essayist, and translator. With Oleksandr Irvanets and Viktor Neborak, he co-founded the Bu-Ba-Bu poetic group in 1985 .-Personal life:Yuri Andrukhovych is the father of Sofia...
) in Moja Europa. Dwa eseje o Europie zwanej środkową ("My Europe: Two essays on the Europe called 'Central'"). Stasiuk frequently contributes articles to Polish and German papers.
Stasiuk's least typical work is Noc ("Night"), subtitled "A Slavo-Germanic medical tragifarce", a stageplay commissioned by the Schauspielhaus
Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
The Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus is a theatre building in Düsseldorf, with four auditoria.- External links :*...
of Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, for a theatre festival to celebrate the enlargement of the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
in 2004. In the guise of a grotesque crime story, Stasiuk presents two imaginary nations, symbolising Eastern and Western Europe and easily recognisable as Poles and Germans, who are entangled in an adversarial but at the same time strangely symbiotic relationship.
In 2007, Stasiuk continued to deal with the Polish-German topic in a travelogue titled Dojczland, in which he described his impressions of Germany from his reading tours there.
In an interview in 2007, Stasiuk commented on his fascination with the topic as follows: "I fear both the Germans and the Russians, I despise them both equally, and I admire them both. Maybe it's the Poles' fate to be constantly meditating on their own fate in Europe and in the world. Being a Pole means to live in perfect isolation. Being a Pole means to be the last human being east of the Rhine. Because for a Pole, the Germans are something like well-constructed machines, robots; while the Russians are already a bit like animals."
Books
- 1992: Mury Hebronu, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Głodnych Duchów. ("The Walls of Hebron")
- 1994: Wiersze miłosne i nie, Poznań: Biblioteka Czasu Kultury. ("Love and non-love poems")
- 1995: Biały kruk, Poznań: Biblioteka Czasu Kultury (Translated as White Raven, London: Serpent's Tail, 2000. ISBN 1-85242-667-5).
- 1995: Opowieści galicyjskie, Kraków: Znak. (Translated as Tales of Galicia, Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 2003. ISBN 80-86264-05-X)
- 1996: Przez rzekę, Gładyszów: Czarne. ("Across the river"), ISBN 83-87391-39-5
- 1997: Dukla, Gładyszów: Czarne. ("Dukla")
- 1998: Dwie sztuki (telewizyjne) o śmierci, Gładyszów: Czarne. ("Two (television) dramas on death")
- 1998: Jak zostałem pisarzem. Próba biografii intelektualnej, Gładyszów: Czarne. ("How I became a writer: Attempt at an intellectual biography")
- 1999: Dziewięć, Gładyszów: Czarne. ISBN 83-87391-17-4 (Nine, San Diego: Harcourt Trade PublishersHarcourt Trade PublishersHarcourt was a United States publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The company was based in San Diego, California, with an Editorial / Sales / Marketing / Rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida.In 2007, the U.S...
, 2007. ISBN 978-0151010646) - 2000 (with Yuri AndrukhovychYuri AndrukhovychYuri Andrukhovych is a Ukrainian prose writer, poet, essayist, and translator. With Oleksandr Irvanets and Viktor Neborak, he co-founded the Bu-Ba-Bu poetic group in 1985 .-Personal life:Yuri Andrukhovych is the father of Sofia...
): Moje Europa. Dwa eseje o Europie zwanej środkową, Gładyszów: Czarne. ("My Europe: Two essays on the Europe called 'Central'"), ISBN 83-87391-44-1 - 2000: Tekturowy samolot, Gładyszów: Czarne ("Cardboard Aeroplane")
- 2000 (with Olga TokarczukOlga TokarczukOlga Tokarczuk is one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful Polish writers of her generation, particularly noted for the hallmark mythical tone of her writing. She trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw. She has published a collection of poems, three novels,...
and Jerzy PilchJerzy PilchJerzy Pilch is one of the most important contemporary Polish writers and journalists. Critics have compared Pilch's style to Witold Gombrowicz, Milan Kundera, or Bohumil Hrabal....
): Opowieści wigilijne, Wałbrzych: Ruta. ("Christmas Tales") - 2001: Zima, Gładyszów: Czarne ("Winter"), ISBN 83-87391-43-3
- 2004: Jadąc do Babadag, Gładyszów: Czarne ("Travelling to Babadag"), ISBN 83-89755-01-7
- 2005: Noc. Słowiańsko-germańska tragifarsa medyczna, Gładyszów: Czarne ("Night: A Slavo-Germanic medical tragifarce"), ISBN 83-89755-21-1
- 2006: Fado, Gładyszów: Czarne. ISBN 83-89755-75-0 (Fado, Champaign: Dalkey Archive PressDalkey Archive PressDalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism in Illinois in the United States, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser known, often avant-garde works...
, 2009. - 2007: Dojczland, Gładyszów: Czarne. ISBN 978-83-7536-005-9
- 2009: Taksim, Gładyszów: Czarne. ISBN 978-83-7536-116-2
External links
- Unnofficial page (Polish)
- Biography and interview at polishwriting.net
- Excerpt from White Raven at polishwriting.net
- Profile at culture.pl
- Not a living soul around Andrzej Stasiuk writes on the landscapes of World War One in Eastern Europe at signandsight.com