| You think you’re going to experience something, and you may even actually experience it, but then suddenly you realize that you didn’t experience anything, and it doesn’t bother you at all. It doesn’t bother you that you can’t remember anything about what you didn’t experience and what you experienced. It doesn’t (...)
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| | Down Garwolińska to the end, then hang a right onto Makowska along the railroad tracks toward Olszynka. Sometimes all the way to the roundhouse. The street looked like a village road; on hot days it would be lined with guys sitting and drinking. Branches of fruit trees reached over the fences. (...)
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Anita Halina Janowska... my guardian demon
This exchange of letters is one of the most fascinating books I have read. Its subject is two people, a man and a woman, whose correspondence lasts for over a quarter century. Anita Halina Janowska (Halina Sander), who was born in 1933, a pianist, doctor of sociology, and writer, and Andrzej Czajkowski (André Tchaikowsky), born 1935, an eminent pianist and composer, meet each other, at ages seventeen and nineteen respectively, at the conservatory in Warsaw, and they at once feel a strong mutual attraction. Although they take their first steps on the same path together, Andrzej's international career lures him forever to a life abroad. Their love, friendship, and devotion to each other would be tended from then on in separation and at a distance, and undergo on either side the most varied transformations - from total emotional dependence through self-mythologization, to the disappointment of mutual expectations and their "final break," the finality of which - a minor detail compared to their life-long involvement -l asted only four years...
This authentic document, this history "written by life," has become - through Halina's edition and selection, with the consent of Andrzej - a work of literature. The expressiveness, uncompromising intelligence, capacity for critical self-reflection, and the intellectual horizons and undisputable literary talent of both authors allow us to read the book on two levels: as an intimate, human confession confided in us alone, and as a compelling psychological novel. I am sure that a history like this one - whose real-life protagonists have had the strength and courage to live by their own intuitions, to live through their own feelings (in sharp distinction from the ubiquitous drabness of more common outlooks on life), and further, to articulate those feelings intelligently and with humor (even if the final outcome should end tragically) - will appeal to a wide audience. The book's publication became an "event" thanks to the addition of a CD-rom of music and performances by Andrzej Czajkowski.
Roswitha Matwin Buschmann
Wislawa Szymborska, the 1996 recipient of the Nobel prize for literature, wrote to Anita Halina Janowska (Halina Sander) after the book was published: "You have made me enormously happy with this book. So little is known about Andrzej Czajkowski, that this correspondence provides an invaluable source of information on him, as a musician and as a person... Besides that, it is a genuine love story, about the difficult, complicated, but constantly revived relations between two remarkable people."
Andrzej Czajkowski is the protagonist of a long and moving story by Hanna Krall from her book "Proofs of Existence" (published in Germany by Verlag Neue Kritik, Frankfurt).
Polish edition by Wydawnictwo SIEDMIOROG
Anita Halina Janowska (Halina Sander) The Letters of Andrzej Czajkowski and Halina Sander ...moj diabeł stróż
"... my guardian demon"
Brussels, 12.10.56
Halinka, my darling, why haven't you written to me for so long? (...) I love you like I've never loved you before, I cry like a baby, I don't so much think about you as sense you. The only memories I'm not afraid of digging up are our mutual ones. The only hope which doesn't seem nonsensical is OURS. (...)
Halinka, I'm so sad here - how good that you're in this world.
Your Andrzej.
[Radiogram from Brussels] 21.10.56
We'll call our son Gaspard what do you think write soon kisses Andrzej
[Telegram from Warsaw] 21.10.56
I want him to be called Daniel kisses Halinka
Warsaw, 26.10.56
To the presumed father of our putative children!
Thanks for the touching radiogram, but where did you get GASPARD from? Are you aiming, creatively speaking, to complete with Ravel himself? I'd prefer Daniel because there's a prophet, and a writer, and a defender of the oppressed, and on top of that a Biblical figure, so the heritage is right!
It's hard to believe that Daniel will leap out of your head like Pallas Athene from that of Zeus, so you'll have to come back, darling. One swallow doesn't make a summer (...).
New York, 8.11.57
My poor little Funnyface,
I came back to New York the day before yesterday and found your three letters. (...). Halinka, it's quite simple: you can't leave Marek now. (...).
So, do marry Marek, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't come to Paris in the summer. On the contrary, it could be a dream honeymoon for you. (...). As Sacha Guitry puts it: "If you want to punish your wife's seducer, the greatest revenge would be to let him keep her." (...). I have an urge to hug you both and to give you my blessing - I am very moved: to think that I came within a whisker of ruining your life. (...). Your old Andrzej.
PS I was at Horovitz's. He's old, sick and sad. His wife's eyes follow him, and they're filled with love. They have not said a word to each other in four years.
I'd really like to die young. A.
Translated by Jacek Laskowski
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There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
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