The Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature, Warsaw

Purpose of the Secondment

A core feature of the Polonez Bis fellowship is a two-week secondment, where the Fellow can experience the work of a non-university-based institution, and through it to learn more about Poland’s cultural heritage, and to forge important intersectorial links. The purpose of the secondment is not necessarily to engage in activities directly related to the project itself, but instead to develop an understanding of new cultural environments and working practices in adjacent sectors and to share in knowledge exchange.

We chose the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature (Muzeum Literatury) in Warsaw for its investment in both literature and visual culture, for its period-relevant links, and for the opportunity we knew it would provide of experiencing the rich breadth of Poland’s literary and artistic heritage. My secondment provided a fantastic way to fulfil all these objectives, and more, largely thanks to the warm welcome the Museum offered me, and for its open-minded flexibility in offering a range of activities that have shaped a unique experience.

Museum of Literature

Through initial contact with Izabela Zychowicz (Head of the Art Department) and with the approval of Museum Director Profesor Jarosław Klejnocki, my secondment was made particularly special by the enormously warm welcome extended to me by the Museum’s staff, especially Dr Anna Lipa, and by Małgorzata Wichowska, and Jarosław Mikołajewski.

About the Museum of Literature

The Museum of Literature is home to an outstanding collection of books, manuscripts, artefacts, artworks, and newspapers, mostly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and mostly specialising in Polish literature. A significant focus of the collections is poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), his circle, and his period, and it includes unique manuscripts of the poet’s works and correspondence, early editions, and realia belonging to or related to him. (Incidentally, he worked for a time at the Arsenal in Paris – one of the libraries I enjoyed using during my research trip to the city.) The Museum’s permanent exhibition showcases aspects of Mickiewicz’s life, times, and works.

Adam Mickiewicz statue, Warsaw

The Library also houses a significant collection of the literature of Young Poland, of the interwar period, and of contemporary writers, while the Manuscripts Department manages a large repository of materials relating to Polish writers from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, with several items representing other languages and literatures, not least to demonstrate the interactions between Polish and international literary cultures.

The Museum regularly presents temporary exhibitions, with a literary emphasis, but also with a strong focus on the visual culture both related to literature and independent in its own right. The interactions between word and image, the expansion of the creative imagination from within but also beyond the written, and the multimedia expansion of that imagination all feature in the Museum’s rolling programme of exhibitions of texts, images, objects, and sculptures. The Museum’s rigorous educational programme ensures ongoing engagement of visitors of all interest-levels and backgrounds, with a particularly fruitful dimension being its introduction of students, from school-level onwards, to the collections and the work of the Museum.

Market Square, Warsaw, with the Museum of Literature to the left

Secondment Activities: At the Museum of Literature

My activities at the Museum throughout the secondment took two main forms: within the museum, using its facilities and collections, and outside of the museum, with related institutions. The programme of activities was orchestrated by Dr Anna Lipa, Curator and Deputy Head of the painting and drawing collections at the Art Department, and an expert on Polish sculptor August Zamoyski (1893–1970). She curated a major exhibition of Zamoyski’s work hosted by the Museum of Literature in 2019 (virtually, due to the pandemic: zamoyski-eng.muzeumliteratury.pl/), and authored the exhibition catalogue (sklep.muzeumliteratury.pl). She is currently preparing to curate the first exhibition in Europe of Alexandra Grant’s work, particularly foregrounding Grant’s engagement with Polish writers, to be held at the Museum of Literature in Autumn 2024. Anna was a wonderful host in helping me to engage in and learn about the Museum’s work, and in ensuring that I made the most of my secondment as a fantastic learning experience, graced with enormous kindness and friendliness. 

I had the opportunity to consult a wide range of items from the Museum’s collections, including books, manuscripts, and realia. I was grateful to the Library Curator, Grażyna Ryfka, for kindly sharing some fine books with me, and especially to

Deputy Manager of the Manuscripts Department, Małgorzata Wichowska, who generously offered her time and longstanding expertise in helping me to navigate the vast archive of materials. She selected a range of items of interest to me – both for their connections with English literature and as revelatory of Poland’s literary heritage as represented by the Museum’s collections. These included the manuscript of the first Polish translation (in prose) of Mazeppa, Byron’s enormously popular and influential poem. An expert in this area, Małgorzata shared her knowledge of Byron’s connections with Mickiewicz; she presented a paper on the topic at the ‘Dreaming Romantic Europe’ event at Ravenna in 2019. Beyond mere influence, the poets shared what might be termed a poetic sympathy of spirit, characteristic of the Romantic period, and manifested in shared thematic and stylistic interests, and even in parallel life trajectories. Discovering literary links such as these is central to my work in general, and provided a particularly interesting angle on the literary materials I consulted.

Adam Mickiewicz portrait and bust, National Museum, Warsaw

Lord Byron

It’s also worth noting that both Byron and Mickiewicz manifested enthusiasm for Laurence Sterne’s work: both mention him in their writings, and the Sternean inspiration can be seen in works ranging from Byron’s Don Juan to Mickiewicz’s national epic, Pan Tadeusz (1834). The Museum also holds collections pertaining to the writing and artwork of Bruno Schulz (1894–1942); the parallels between Schulz’s work (the short story collection Street of Crocodiles, for instance) and Sterne’s has received critical attention. It was very gratifying to see these networks of literary activity intermeshed across national and period boundaries.

I further expanded on these discoveries by consulting other significant items held in the Museum’s manuscript collections, including a unique early edition of Mickiewicz’s Grażyna, introduced to me by Professor Andrzej Stanisław Kowalczyk, Head of the Manuscript Department. Małgorzata Wichowska also selected for my viewing a range of manuscript poems by early twentieth-century poet Maria Pawlikowska, collected on fragments of paper as varied as envelopes and notepaper; translations of Percy Shelley’s poems by Stanisław Baliński; and manuscripts and typescripts of the foremost English-Polish translator, Florian Sobieniowksi. These included a unique correspondence with George Bernard Shaw, whose work he translated for the Polish stage, and which is revelatory of literary activity across national borders during wartime, and Sobieniowski’s translation into English of Wesele, or The Wedding (1901), one of Poland’s most significant plays, by Stanisław Wyspiański. Further expanding my glimpse of Polish drama – in English translation ­– I consulted the typescript of Freud’s Theory of Dreams (1937), by Antoni Cwodjziński, and Leon Kruczkowski’s The First Day of Freedom (1959).

As a literary scholar with a keen interest in reading book and manuscript materials, and in developing my knowledge of Poland’s literary culture – including its connections with English literature – this all contributed to a fantastic experience of classic library-based work. I was also really pleased, though, to experience some of the more dynamic ways in which the Museum enables visitors to come into contact with and to learn about its rich and diverse collections.

Two new exhibitions were launched during the period of my secondment, including Dash. Word as a matter of art – an exhibition which explores the connections between word and image through multimedia examples of contemporary writing and art, featuring a diverse range of artists.

Dash. Word as a matter of art

I particularly enjoyed seeing some items held in the Museum’s collections come to life in an event focussing on significant nineteenth-century poet Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1910). The Museum holds examples of Orzeszkowa’s unique, outstandingly beautiful herbariums, or flower books, in which arrangements of dried and pressed flowers, shrubs, and plants are set against backgrounds of brightly coloured silks. One of these volumes was presented for public viewing to complement a live event featuring a reading of Orzeszkowa’s Nad Niemen (1887–88) by a group of drama students, introduced with a short talk by Professor Kowalczyk and assistant professor at the Art Department, Dr Anna Lebensztejn.

Eliza Orzeszkowa flower book

The event was hosted by the Head of the Scientific and Educational Department, Jarosław Mikołajewski – also an acclaimed poet, essayist, journalist (for the Gazeta Wyborcza), radio host (on Radio Nowy Świat), children’s author, and translator, especially of Italian. His translation of the Divine Comedy into Polish (Boska Komedia) was awarded the prestigious Società Dante Alighieri Gold Medal in the first category in 2022 (wydawnictwoliterackie.pl). I was enormously grateful for the time he gave me and the expertise he shared in our conversations, and in the many stimulating things we did together – from learning about Mickiewicz at the Museum’s permanent exhibition, to visiting the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum, to exploring the sparse remnants of the Warsaw Ghetto. A fruitfully rich intellectual and cultural exchange, enlivened by good-humoured conviviality with a humanly engaged and truly kind person.

Secondment Activities: Beyond the Museum of Literature

Thanks to her extensive network of contacts across Warsaw’s museum and heritage sector, Anna Lipa kindly arranged a series of visits to several major institutions to help broaden my knowledge of the city’s cultural life.

Bernardo Bellotto, View of Warsaw from the Royal Palace (1773), National Museum, Warsaw

The National Museum holds a significant collection of Polish but also international artworks, from the neolithic era to the present day. I enjoyed a fantastic tour of its collections with curator Iza Wiercińska, who is a fount of knowledge about the Museum’s holdings and its history. I was especially delighted to discover artists and works entirely new to me, and to fit them into my mental jigsaw of European art, its movements, and its aesthetic developments.

Royal Łazienki Museum

Another highlight of these excursions was a visit to the Royal Łazienki Museum – a vast complex of royal palaces, expansive gardens, and artworks. The main palace was developed by King Stanisław August Poniatowksi, a major patron of the arts and a collector during the eighteenth century, and the last ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The design and decoration of these palatial museums was particularly appealing to my eighteenth-century aesthetic – not least the theatre – but I was also really fascinated to discover the current temporary exhibition of sculptor Maria Papa Rostkowska (1923–2008).

I have a strong interest in how the sculptural intersects with the conceptual – especially its conversation with the verbal, but also with the past. At the Łazienki’s Orangery, Rostkowska’s works are juxtaposed with the mostly plaster cast reproductions of well-known ancient statuary and with items from the collection of Polish sculpture. The discordances and complementarities alike are startling in the ongoing dialogue between artforms, media, and techniques, and between styles, periods, and historic moments, which the multidimensional museum space manipulates depending on factors ranging from the time of day and the disposition of the light, to the visitor’s randomised route round the exhibits. There is, incidentally, a compelling link between these ancient-modern links and the current temporary exhibition at the Royal Castle in Warsaw’s Old Town, The Awakened: The Ruins of Antiquity and the Birth of the Italian Renaissance, which I enjoyed visiting in my spare time.

My visit to the Museum complex was vastly enriched by my knowledgeable and sociable guide, Co-Director Małgorzata Grąbczewska. One again I was the greedy beneficiary of the kindness and expertise so generously lavished upon me.

Outcomes

I am sure that, of the many things I have learned through my secondment, they will evolve into ideas for future publications, projects, and more. But, as the main purpose was to develop links and ties beyond the parameters of my specific project, I can happily say that my experiences far exceeded any expectations.

Laurence Sterne’s narrator in A Sentimental Journey, Yorick, claims that

from the want of languages, connections, and dependencies, and from the difference in education, customs, and habits, we lie under so many impediments in communicating our sensations out of our own sphere, as often amount to a total impossibility.

But he also holds high hopes for the possibilities, and the benefits, of ‘sentimental commerce’ – and for the ‘knowledge and improvements’ gained from travelling beyond our own spheres.

I’m enormously grateful for everyone at the Museum of Literature, and beyond, who made this such an enriching experience.

View of the Vistula, from the Museum of Literature