Stefan Themerson
Encyclopedia
Stefan Themerson was a Polish
, later British
poet, novelist, film-maker, composer and philosopher.
on 25 January 1910 and died in London
on 6 September 1988.
His father, Mieczysław Themerson, was a physician, social reformer and aspiring writer (some of his work was published) of Jewish
descent. His mother, Ludwika Smulewicz. During the First World War Dr. Themerson served as a medical officer in the Tsar
's army and his family lived in Riga
, St. Petersburg and Wielkie Luki. In 1918 they returned to Płock, in an independent Poland, where Stefan attended the Jagiellonka Gymnasium. In this time he showed his first interest in photography and built a radio receiver.
In 1928 Themerson went to Warsaw
as a student, studying first physics
at the University of Warsaw and then, after a year, architecture
at the Warsaw Polytechnic, but actually spending most of his time working at photography
, collage
and film-making. His first published piece of writing was also in 1928. He never formally left his studies but gradually withdrew to follow his other interests. It was about then that Themerson met- or met again- Franciszka Weinles
, an art student, who he married in 1931.
s and the two of them made five short experimental films Apteka Pharmacy
(1930), Europa (1931–1932), Drobiazg Melodyjny [Musical Moment] (1933), Zwarcie [Short Circuit] (1935) and Przygoda Czlowieka Poczciwego [The Adventures of a Good Citizen] (1937). These were shown with other experimental films of the time. Most of them are lost now, but the script for Europa, based on a poem by Anatol Stern
was later published by the Themersons' Gaberbocchus Press, illustrated by surviving stills from the film and Apteka was remade from descriptions of it when it first appeared, stills and storyboards. In 1935, with other young film-makers, they founded a cooperative, S.A.F (Spoldzielnia Autorow Filmowych].
, then the centre of the world for avant-garde
art, and London, meeting Moholy-Nagy
and other experimental artists and exhibited films in Warsaw for the first time when they returned. They also published a review F[ilm] A[rtistique], Stefan as editor, Franciszka as artistic editor, which lasted two issues. In the winter of 1937 they both moved to Paris ("I just knew I had to be in Paris." Themerson said.) where they found a circle of artists and writers, many Polish, to live among. They thought of staying for good. Themerson wrote for Polish school textbooks and for Polish publications in Paris. With the coming of war, in 1939 Themerson volunteered for the Polish army forming in France after the German
and Soviet
invasions and division of Poland.
, where- through the Polish Red Cross- he got in touch again with Franciszka, who had worked for the Polish Government in Exile
as a cartographer and had escaped from Paris to Normandy
and then London. He spent time in refugee camps, worked as a farm labourer, and spent over a year in the Polish Red Cross-run Hôtel de la Poste in Voiron
. Here he began writing Professor Mmaa's Lecture in Polish and wrote the long poem Croquis dans les Ténèbres [Sketches in Darkness].
Towards the end of 1942 Themerson got across France and Spain
via Marseilles to Lisbon
where he was flown to Britain by the R.A.F.
, rejoining his wife and re-enlisting in the Polish army. He spent time with the army in Scotland, where he finished Professor Mmaa, and then was sent to join the film unit of the Polish Ministry of Information and Documentation in London. There he and Franciszka made two short films, Calling Mr Smith, an account of Nazi atrocities in Poland and The Eye and the Ear, inspired by four songs by Szymanowski
. In 1944 at the PEN club meeting to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of John Milton
's Areopagitica
, Themerson met Kurt Schwitters
, who was a close friend until his death. At about the same time he met others who remained close, including Jankel Adler
, Julian Trevelyan
and Anthony Froshaug
. Also in 1944 the Themersons moved to Maida Vale
, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
Stefan and Franciszka Themerson published books through their own Gaberbocchus Press from 1948 to 1979, many of them with Franciszka's illustrations, and sometimes working with the translator Barbara Wright
. Among those books were works by Guillaume Apollinaire
and Kurt Schwitters
, the first English translation of Alfred Jarry
's Ubu Roi
, Raymond Queneau
's Exercises in Style
and The Good Citizen's Alphabet by Bertrand Russell
. The latter wrote a warm preface to Professor Mmaa’s Lecture. In 1981 Stefan Themerson delivered the Huizinga Lecture
in Leiden, The Netherlands, under the title: A Chair of Decency.
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, later British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
poet, novelist, film-maker, composer and philosopher.
Early life
Stefan Themerson was born in Płock in what was then the Russian EmpireRussian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
on 25 January 1910 and died in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on 6 September 1988.
His father, Mieczysław Themerson, was a physician, social reformer and aspiring writer (some of his work was published) of Jewish
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
descent. His mother, Ludwika Smulewicz. During the First World War Dr. Themerson served as a medical officer in the Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
's army and his family lived in Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, St. Petersburg and Wielkie Luki. In 1918 they returned to Płock, in an independent Poland, where Stefan attended the Jagiellonka Gymnasium. In this time he showed his first interest in photography and built a radio receiver.
In 1928 Themerson went 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...
as a student, studying first physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
at the University of Warsaw and then, after a year, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
at the Warsaw Polytechnic, but actually spending most of his time working at photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
and film-making. His first published piece of writing was also in 1928. He never formally left his studies but gradually withdrew to follow his other interests. It was about then that Themerson met- or met again- Franciszka Weinles
Franciszka Themerson
Franciszka Themerson was a Polish, later British painter, illustrator, film-maker and stage designer.The daughter of the artist, Jakub Weinles, she was born in Warsaw in 1907. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw with great distinction, in 1931...
, an art student, who he married in 1931.
1931 to 1935
During these years the Themersons lived and worked in Warsaw. Stefan contributed articles to various periodicals and prose and verse to school textbooks and wrote at least ten books for children which Franciszka illustrated. Pan Tom Buduje Dom [Mr Rouse Builds His House] is still in print in Poland. Stefan also experimented with photogramPhotogram
A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photo-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. The result is a negative shadow image varying in tone, depending on the transparency of the objects used...
s and the two of them made five short experimental films Apteka Pharmacy
Pharmacy
Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs...
(1930), Europa (1931–1932), Drobiazg Melodyjny [Musical Moment] (1933), Zwarcie [Short Circuit] (1935) and Przygoda Czlowieka Poczciwego [The Adventures of a Good Citizen] (1937). These were shown with other experimental films of the time. Most of them are lost now, but the script for Europa, based on a poem by Anatol Stern
Anatol Stern
Anatol Stern was a Polish poet, writer and art critic. Born October 24, 1899 to an assimilated family of Jewish ancestry, Stern studied at the Polish Studies Faculty of the University of Wilno but did not graduate...
was later published by the Themersons' Gaberbocchus Press, illustrated by surviving stills from the film and Apteka was remade from descriptions of it when it first appeared, stills and storyboards. In 1935, with other young film-makers, they founded a cooperative, S.A.F (Spoldzielnia Autorow Filmowych].
1936 to 1939
In 1936 and 1937 the Themersons visited ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, then the centre of the world for avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
art, and London, meeting Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
and other experimental artists and exhibited films in Warsaw for the first time when they returned. They also published a review F[ilm] A[rtistique], Stefan as editor, Franciszka as artistic editor, which lasted two issues. In the winter of 1937 they both moved to Paris ("I just knew I had to be in Paris." Themerson said.) where they found a circle of artists and writers, many Polish, to live among. They thought of staying for good. Themerson wrote for Polish school textbooks and for Polish publications in Paris. With the coming of war, in 1939 Themerson volunteered for the Polish army forming in France after the German
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 Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
invasions and division of Poland.
Second World War and after
In 1940 Themerson was called up into a Polish infantry regiment, just in time for the débacle of the German invasion and the Allies' collapse. His memory was of marching day and night in summer heat to St-Nazaire. There, in June, the regiment was disbanded, the officers abandoning their men and the men dispersing where they could. Themerson himself travelled round France, visiting occupied Paris, ToulouseToulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, where- through the Polish Red Cross- he got in touch again with Franciszka, who had worked for the Polish Government in Exile
Polish government in Exile
The Polish government-in-exile, formally known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile , was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of September 1939, and the subsequent occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which...
as a cartographer and had escaped from Paris to Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
and then London. He spent time in refugee camps, worked as a farm labourer, and spent over a year in the Polish Red Cross-run Hôtel de la Poste in Voiron
Voiron
Voiron is a commune in the Isère department in south-eastern France.- History :Voiron long formed part of Savoy, but in 1355 was exchanged by the count with France for Faucigny and Gex.Historical population:* 1901: 12,625- Geography :Voiron stands at a height of 950 ft., on the Morge Voiron...
. Here he began writing Professor Mmaa's Lecture in Polish and wrote the long poem Croquis dans les Ténèbres [Sketches in Darkness].
Towards the end of 1942 Themerson got across France and Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
via Marseilles to Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
where he was flown to Britain by the R.A.F.
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
, rejoining his wife and re-enlisting in the Polish army. He spent time with the army in Scotland, where he finished Professor Mmaa, and then was sent to join the film unit of the Polish Ministry of Information and Documentation in London. There he and Franciszka made two short films, Calling Mr Smith, an account of Nazi atrocities in Poland and The Eye and the Ear, inspired by four songs by Szymanowski
Karol Szymanowski
Karol Maciej Szymanowski was a Polish composer and pianist.-Life:Szymanowski was born into a wealthy land-owning Polish gentry family in Tymoszówka, then in the Russian Empire, now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. He studied music privately with his father before going to Gustav Neuhaus'...
. In 1944 at the PEN club meeting to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Areopagitica
Areopagitica
Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England is a 1644 prose polemical tract by English author John Milton against censorship...
, Themerson met Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
, who was a close friend until his death. At about the same time he met others who remained close, including Jankel Adler
Jankel Adler
Jankel Adler was a Polish painter and printmaker.-Biography:He was born as the seventh of ten children in Tuszyn, a suburb of Łódź. In 1912 he began training as an engraver with his uncle in Belgrade. He moved in 1914 to Germany where he lived for a time with his sister in Barmen...
, Julian Trevelyan
Julian Trevelyan
Julian Otto Trevelyan, RA was a British artist and poet.Trevelyan was the only child of Robert Calverley Trevelyan and his wife Elizabeth van der Hoeven...
and Anthony Froshaug
Anthony Froshaug
Anthony Froshaug was an English typographer and teacher, born in London to a Norwegian father and English mother.Froshaug attended Charterhouse School and studied book production and wood engraving at the Central School of Arts & Crafts from 1937 to 1939.On leaving the Central in 1939 he began to...
. Also in 1944 the Themersons moved to Maida Vale
Maida Vale
Maida Vale is a residential district in West London between St John's Wood and Kilburn. It is part of the City of Westminster. The area is mostly residential, and mainly affluent, consisting of many large late Victorian and Edwardian blocks of mansion flats...
, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
Stefan and Franciszka Themerson published books through their own Gaberbocchus Press from 1948 to 1979, many of them with Franciszka's illustrations, and sometimes working with the translator Barbara Wright
Barbara Wright
Barbara Wright was an English translator of modern French literature.Wright, born in Worthing, studied music and art in Paris in the years before World War II...
. Among those books were works by Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
and Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
, the first English translation of Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
's Ubu Roi
Ubu Roi
Ubu Roi is a play by Alfred Jarry, premiered in 1896. It is a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd and Surrealism. It is the first of three stylised burlesques in which Jarry satirises power, greed, and their evil practices — in particular the propensity of the complacent bourgeois to abuse the...
, Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
's Exercises in Style
Exercises in Style
Exercises in Style , written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style. In each, the narrator gets on the "S" bus Exercises in Style , written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style....
and The Good Citizen's Alphabet by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
. The latter wrote a warm preface to Professor Mmaa’s Lecture. In 1981 Stefan Themerson delivered the Huizinga Lecture
Huizinga Lecture
The Huizinga Lecture is a prestigious annual lecture in the Netherlands about a subject in the domains of cultural history or philosophy. The lecture is in honour of Johan Huizinga, a distinguished Dutch historian who worked in the first half of the 20th century...
in Leiden, The Netherlands, under the title: A Chair of Decency.