Witold Wirpsza – Poet, author, translator

Witold Wirpsza’s life was full of twists and turns. The man, who would later become an author and a translator, was born in Odessa on 4 December 1918. His mother was Greek, his father a Pole who came from a noble family which was part of the Odrowąż clan. Wirpsza spent his childhood in Gdańsk and Gdynia before moving to Warsaw, where he spent his formative years. From a young age, he loved music and even gave piano concerts. Wirpsza used this talent as an opportunity to study piano at the capital’s Musikhochschule whilst studying law at the legal faculty of Warsaw University. When the Second World War broke out, he was drafted into the Polish army, exchanged student life for that of a soldier, and, after the invasion of Poland in September 1939, was involved in the battles for Oksywie, a district of Gdynia.

But this episode as a soldier did not last long because Wirpsza was captured by the Germans on 19 September 1939 and taken to the Oflag, the officers’ prisoner of war camp, in Neubrandenburg. He was then moved to officers’ camp II D Groß Born (today Borne Sulinowo in West Pomeranian Voivoidship) where he spent most of his internment. Some of the letters he exchanged with his future wife Maria Kurecka (1920–1989) during this period have survived and, as a sensitive correspondence, they document a tender and intimate exchange in which there are hardly any traces of the dark times, but in which instead there are many intellectual discussions and, despite all the terrible circumstances, life-affirming comments.[1]

After the prisoner of war camp was liberated by the Red Army, Witold Wirpsza went to Berlin on the Soviets’ side and took part in the battles for the city. When he returned to Poland, he married Maria Kurecka in 1945. A year later, their son Aleksander was born.[2] After the war, Wirpsza openly supported socialist realism and emerged as an author of literary propagandistic hymns of praise to the communist system and the power of the people. From 1947 to 1956, the author lived in Szczecin, a town which had only just returned to Poland and which, at the instigation of Leonard Borkowicz, the Voivoide at the time, was calling out to creative artists to establish themselves within the framework of the “literary settlement” to strengthen Polish culture. The authors were won over by the promise of “beautiful, former German villas with gardens”, many of which had survived the war unscathed. In Szczecin, Witold Wirpsza worked in the department of culture at the Voivodeship authorities, at a regional station for Polish radio and at the local newspaper “Głos Szczeciński” (Szczecin’s voice), which helped him become a protagonist in the young Polish culture and art scene in the city. It was during this time that he wrote his poetry volumes “Sonata” (The sonata) and “Stocznia” (The shipyard), both from 1949, “Polemiki i pieśni” (Polemics and songs, 1951), “Dziennik Kożedo” (The Geojedo diary, 1952) and “Z mojego kraju” (From my country, 1956).

In 1956, Witold Wirpsza left Szczecin. His departure also signalled the end of the social-realist era of his work. From this point on, the author sided with the opposition against the communist regime, although he was still a member of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). He was a member of the editorial offices at the Warsaw weekly publications “Po prostu” (Just so) and “Nowa Kultura“ (New culture) and he worked in the German department of the state-owned publishing house Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (PIW). In 1967, Wirpsza was awarded a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) within the “Artists-in-Berlin programme” and travelled to West Berlin, although it initially seemed as if he intended to return to Poland. But everything changed for him when the March unrests in 1968 threw Poland into a political crisis. Wirpsza left the PVAP and started travelling again, this time on a scholarship to Vienna before moving on to Switzerland. In 1971, his historical-social essay “Polaku, kim jesteś” (Pole, who are you?) was published there, an essay which is to be understood as a reckoning with the nationalist Polish mentality. Wirpsza, as can be gleaned from Jacek Bocheński, “dedicated himself in various passages of his books to romantic fantasies, unreal forms of existence, messianism, death and martyr cult, and the mixing of patriotic and political terms with religious ones. The Polish literary language, as it originated most notably from the poets of the 19th century, fundamentally and permanently shaped the consciousness of the nation and still shapes it today, observes Wirpsza.”[3]