Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk
Encyclopedia
Count Geoffrey Wladislas Vaile Potocki de Montalk (1903–1997), poet, private printer, pamphleteer, pagan and pretender to the Polish throne, was born in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, the eldest son of Auckland architect Robert Wladislas de Montalk, grandson of Paris-born Professor Count Joseph Wladislas Edmond Potocki de Montalk, and great-grandson of Polish-born Count Jozef Franciszek Jan Potocki, the Insurgent, of Białystok.
In 1926, disillusioned by the cultural paucity and intellectual impoverishment of colonial New Zealand, Potocki de Montalk left his wife and small daughter to "follow the golden road to Samarkand"; to be a poet. He continued to live abroad, basing himself in England until 1949, and then in Draguignan
Draguignan
Draguignan is a commune in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in southeastern France.It is a sub-prefecture of the department and self-proclaimed "capital of Artillery" and "Porte du Verdon".The city is only from St...
in the south of France where he obtained land and a ramshackle stone cottage - the Villa Vigoni - deep in the Provençal countryside. He returned to New Zealand for the first time in 1983. Between 1984 and 1993, he followed the sun, spending summers in New Zealand and France. He died at Brignoles in France in 1997, and was buried at Draguignan.
Literary Career
Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk was one of the glittering generation of New Zealand poets which included his friends A. R. D. FairburnA. R. D. Fairburn
Arthur Rex Dugard "Rex" Fairburn was a New Zealand poet who was born and died in Auckland.He attended Auckland Grammar School, where he first met R. A. K. Mason, and worked at various jobs, including relief work on the roads. Later he tutored in English and lectured on the history and theory of...
and R. A. K. Mason
R. A. K. Mason
Ronald Allison Kells Mason was described by Allen Curnow as New Zealand's "first wholly original, unmistakably gifted poet". He was born in Auckland and educated at Auckland Grammar School, where he met A. R. D...
. However, his proposed career as a romantic and peace-loving poet took a strange and life-affecting turn in 1932 when – after a celebrated trial in London at which he was supported by Leonard
Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.-Early life:...
and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
and many of the leading writers of the day – he was sentenced to six months in Wormwood Scrubs
Wormwood Scrubs (HM Prison)
HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs is a Category B men's prison, located in the Wormwood Scrubs area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, in inner west London, England. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service....
for publishing a manuscript of erotic translations by Rabelais
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
and Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
, with three short bawdy verses of his own. The manuscript had not been published, but merely shown to a typesetter who reported Potocki to the police. The charge was "obscene libel", specifically in relation to the work 'Lament for Sir John Penis'. Potocki later said that when it was asked who had been libelled, the answer given by the prosecution was 'Sir John Penis'!
He emerged from prison bitter and determined to flout English convention. He adopted a medieval style of dress, wearing sandals and a crimson tunic, and a cloak made from a length of scarlet curtain he had begun wearing soon after arrival in London and had worn during his trial. His hair, which had been allowed to grow in prison, continued to grow until it was waist length. After his release he travelled to 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...
, where he was well received and reported on by the newspapers.
He returned to England in 1935, to cover the Silver Jubilee of George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
, who died shortly thereafter. When Edward VIII
Edward VIII of the United Kingdom
Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and Emperor of India, from 20 January to 11 December 1936.Before his accession to the throne, Edward was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay...
declared his intention to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson
Wallis, The Duchess of Windsor
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, previously Wallis Simpson, was an American socialite whose third husband, Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom and the Dominions, abdicated his throne to marry her.Wallis's father died shortly after her birth, and she and her...
, against the wishes of Prime Minister Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC was a British Conservative politician, who dominated the government in his country between the two world wars...
, and was forced to abdicate, Potocki de Montalk printed a manifesto supporting the King and chastising Baldwin, distributed copies in Downing Street
Downing Street
Downing Street in London, England has for over two hundred years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an...
and was arrested. Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
sent his wife to arrange bail and later funded the purchase of Potocki's first printing press. Potocki married for the second time in 1939.
Over the next four decades, Potocki published his own poetry and pamphlets and intermittently produced his right-wing literary publication, the Right Review (1936–73). In 1943, informed by Poles living in London about the massacre in the woods at Katyn
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
of 15,000 Polish servicemen by Britain's ally, the Soviet Union, Potocki published what he considered to be his most important piece of writing, his Katyn Manifesto. The British government had been keen to keep quiet the atrocity, which the Soviet Union blamed on Germany. Potocki was arrested by Special Branch
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...
and imprisoned. Later, he was sent to an agricultural camp in Northumberland. This manifesto was the only acknowledgement of the atrocity in English. The full truth of the Katyn massacre was not to emerge for another 50 years.
Legacy
In 2001, his cousin Stephanie de Montalk authored a biography of this enigmatic and colourful figure. His Right Review is currently archived in the Alexander Turnbull Library at the National Library of New ZealandNational Library of New Zealand
The National Library of New Zealand is New Zealand's legal deposit library charged with the obligation to "enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations"...
, which also holds all his 105 original works. (For reasons of convenience, these are not reproduced on this page, but are available at the National Library's National Bibliographic Database.)