Lets, Stanislav Jerzy

Childhood

Stanislav Jerzy Lets was born on March 6, 1909 in Lviv (then Lemberg), a large cultural center of Galicia , which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . The father of the future writer is an Austrian nobleman of Jewish origin, Baron Benon de Touche-Letz. Stanislav used the modified ( Lec instead of Letz ) second part of his father’s double surname - Lets (which in Yiddish means “ clown ”, or “mockingbird”) - as a literary pseudonym . Parents of the future poet converted to Protestantism. The father of the writer died when Stanislav was still a child. His upbringing was taken up by his mother, nee Adele Safrin, a representative of the Polish-Jewish intelligentsia, who highly valued education and culture . The Polish, German (Austrian) and Jewish components of his spiritual personality at different stages of the writer's life were either harmonized by bright artistic talent , or entered into a dramatic, sometimes painful contradiction. He received primary education in the Austrian capital, since the approach of the front (the First World War was on ) forced the family to move to Vienna , and then completed it in the Lviv evangelical school.

Youth

Having received a certificate of maturity in 1927 , the young man further studies law and polonistics at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv .

At this student time, he begins literary activity, meeting with colleagues who are keenly interested in creativity. In the spring of 1929 , young poets staged their first author’s evening, at which Lets’s poems were also read, and at the end of that year, his debut poem, “The Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny ” ( Illustrated Daily Courier ), was published in the literary supplement Spring". “It said, of course, about spring,” Lets explained years later, “but it was not a traditional spring, in the mood these verses looked ... pessimistic. Why did I choose “IKC”? This publication was written out and read in our house, and I wanted to be known as a poet, first of all, in my family. ”

In 1931 , a group of young poets, who met at Lets’s apartment, began to publish the Tryby magazine, in the first issue of which he published poems “Out of the Window” and “Poster” (in the last two final stanzas were thrown out by censorship). The circulation of the second issue of the publication was almost completely destroyed by the police. In 1933 , the first poetic volume by Lets “Barwy” ( Colors ) was published in Lviv.

Poems and poems of acute sociopolitical sound prevailed in it: the First World War, which remained a nightmare memory of his childhood, forever made the poet a passionate anti-militarist. The debut collection contains the poem "Wine", full of gloomy and bitter irony. The human blood shed on many fronts of Europe in the name of false dogmas and nationalist crusades, the blood of different generations and peoples is likened to them with valuable wines of the fruitful years, which must be carefully stored to prevent new bloody harvests from the vicinity of Piave, Tannenberg, Gorlits.

In “Flowers”, the first humorous and satirical facets of Lets were also announced. This facet of the artistic talent of the young poet was shrewdly noticed and appreciated by Julian Tuvim , the greatest master of the Polish rhymed word of the time, who included three poems of the recent debutant in his famous anthology “ Four Centuries of Polish Frashka ” (1937).

Pre-Warsaw

Having moved to Warsaw , Lets regularly publishes in the Warsaw Barber , becomes a permanent author of Špilek , and his works are published on his pages by many literary magazines led by Skamander . In 1936 , he organized the literary cabaret Teatr Krętaczy ( Mockingbird Theater ).

During this period, he began to collaborate with the Warsaw newspaper Dziennik Popularny ( Popular Diary ), a political publication that propagated the idea of ​​creating an anti-fascist popular front, which published its daily judicial chronicle, which caused particular irritation to the "law enforcers." After the authorities suspended the publication of the newspaper, in order to avoid the threat of his arrest, Lets went to Romania. After some time, he returned to his homeland, peasantry in a village on Podillia, serves in the law office in Chortkiv, then, returning to Warsaw, continues his literary and journalistic activities.

Before the war itself, he was completing preparations for printing an extensive volume of frashek and Podolsk lyrics called “ Ziemia pachnie ” ( Smells like earth ), but the book did not have time to go out.

World War II

The beginning of the war caught Lez in his hometown. He spoke about this terrible (and heroic) stage of his life later in several mean lines of his autobiography: “I lived during the occupation in all the forms that the time allowed. 1939-1941 I spent in Lviv , 1941-1943. - in a concentration camp near Ternopol. In 1943 , in July, from the place of the shooting ahead of me, I fled to Warsaw, where I worked as a conspiracy editor of the military newspapers Guard Ludova and Army Ludova on the left and right banks of the Vistula. Then he went to the partisans who fought in the Lublin Voivodeship, after which he fought in the ranks of the regular army. ”

A legend is popular in Russian and English Internet sources, according to which, when trying to escape from the concentration camp, Lets was captured and sentenced to death. According to legend, the SS man forced the doomed to death to dig his own grave, but he died from his blow with a shovel in the neck. The indicated version of events is not mentioned in Polish and German sources. About the life of Lets in a concentration camp was told by his friend Jan Shpivak. According to his version, the story of the dug grave had a different content: “After Hitler’s aggression on the USSR, Lets was subjected to brown terror. The Nazis, unlike the Communists, did not need his services and imprisoned the writer in a concentration camp in Ternopol. Lets twice avoided death, and each time she was dressed in a black SS uniform. Once drunk, the SS men drove a whole group of prisoners to the cemetery and ordered them to stand in ridiculous poses. A friend of Lets asked the SS man in German in which poses to stand. The SS man was furious. You, damned Jew, will tell me now, in what poses to stand? Out! And kicking with his boot, he kicked them out of the graveyard. Another time, Lets stood naked in front of the grave dug by him and was waiting for execution, he rushed to run towards the camp, they started shooting at him, but didn’t hit him. ” ^[2]

In 1944, Lets escaped from a concentration camp, reached Warsaw and established contact with the resistance forces and began working in the underground press. In Prushkov, he edited the newspaper Żołnierz w boju ( Soldier in battle ), and on the right bank of the Vistula , he edited Swobodny narod ( Free People ), where he also published his poems. In 1944 , while fighting in the ranks of the first battalion of the Army Ludova, he hid in the Parczew forests and participated in the . After the liberation, Lublin joined the 1st Army of the Polish Army with the rank of major. For participation in the war he received the Cavalier Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Revived Poland).

Post-war years

In 1945 , having settled in Lodz , Lets, along with his friends - the poet Leon Pasternak and the cartoonist Jerzy Zaruba - revives the publication of the most popular comedy magazine " Studs ". The following year, his poem collection “ Notatnik polowy ” ( Field Notebook ) was published, including verses from the war years and stanzas dedicated to the battles of partisan times and the fallen comrades of the soldier poet. At the same time, a volume of his satirical poems and fraks created before the war was published - “ Spacer cynika ” ( Cynic Walk ).

Work in a diplomatic mission

Like his senior colleagues in literature before the war ( Jan Lechon , Yaroslav Ivashkevich ) and peer writers in the first years after their release ( Cheslav Milos , Tadeusz Breza , Jerzy Putrament ) who were involved in diplomatic work, Lets was sent to Vienna in 1946 . as cultural attaché of the political mission of the Polish Republic. Soon ( 1948 ), a volume of his satirical poetry, created after the war, was published in his homeland - Życie jest fraszką ( Life is a frashka ), and then ( 1950 ) a collection of “ New poems ” written in the Austrian capital - the city his childhood; from here in these poems there are so many reminiscences associated with a new, fresh perception of the monuments of art and architecture of this great center of European culture.

Moving to Israel and Returning to Poland

Observing from Austria the processes taking place in Poland at that time, the establishment of the regime of party dictatorship, the suppression of creative freedom and the will of the intelligentsia, Lets made a difficult decision for himself in 1950 and left for Israel. For two years spent here, he wrote the “ Jerusalem Manuscript ” ( Rękopis jerozolimski ), which is dominated by the motive of his acute homesickness. The content of these verses, compiled during wanderings in the Middle East, was the search for their own place among the creators inspired by the Biblical theme, and the obsessive memory of those killed under another, northern sky. Existence of the Polish language and culture, far from family and friends, the familiar landscape of Mazovia becomes painfully painful:

There, to the far north, where I once lay in a cradle,

I’m striving to go there now, so that they can also have funerals.

Having written these lines, Lets returned to Poland in 1952. For several years (until 1956) there was a tacit ban on the publication of his own works (as it was, say, with M. M. Zoshchenko and A. A. Akhmatova in the USSR ). The only paid form of literary work becomes translation work for him, and he devotes himself entirely to it, turning to the poetry of I.V. Goethe , G. Heine , B. Brecht , K. Tukholsky , contemporary German, Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian authors.

Polish Thaw

In the second half of the fifties, the ban is lifted. The Jerusalem Manuscript (1956) was published. “These verses,” wrote Lets, “completed in mid-1952, for various reasons, lay in the drawer of the desk until 1956. I know that this is the most lyrical of my books. Each published volume is, at least for me, after some time, as if by the composition of another person who - I am not ashamed to admit it - you read sometimes even with interest. Then some new details will be revealed to you both in the verses and between the lines. ”

Some publicists argue that the writing of Myśli nieuczesane ( Untouched Thoughts ) contributed to the atmosphere of the Polish “spring” of 1957.

In 1958, the author’s anthology, “Out of a Thousand and One Frashka ”, was published, containing two or four-line epigram poems, which Lets composed a great many.

The last poetic volumes of Lets are “Kpię i pytam about drogę?” (“ Mocking and asking for directions ” - 1959), “Do Abla i Kaina” (“ Abel and Cain ” - 1961), “List gończy” (“ Announcement of wanted "- 1963)," Poema gotowe do skoku "(" Poems, ready to jump "- 1964) - marked, according to the author himself, observed in himself" a tendency to increasingly condensate art form. " This applies to the Xenia cycle, published on the pages of the literary press, consisting of short lyrical and philosophical poems, and to the series of prose miniatures “ Little Myths ”, the form of which Lets defined as “a new version of untidy thoughts with his own joke plot”.

In 1964, the second edition of Untouchable Thoughts appeared, and two years later the poet still managed to prepare the volume The New Untangled Thoughts , which contained a huge variety of topics, among which his historiosophical aphorisms were especially popular.

After a long incurable illness, Stanislav Jerzy Lets died on May 7, 1966 in Warsaw. He was buried at the Military Ponzki cemetery.

He was married twice: from Elzhbeta Rusevich had a son, Jan and a daughter, Malgozhatu, and from Kristina of Shventonsky, a son, Tomas.

• Barwy ( Colors ) (1933)
• Ziemia pachnie ( Smells the Earth ) (1939)
• Notatnik polowy ( Field Notebook ) (1946)
• Życie jest fraszką ( Life is a trifle ) (1948)
• New Poems (1950)
• Rękopis jerozolimski ( Jerusalem Manuscript ) (1956)
• Myśli nieuczesane (Untouched Thoughts ) (1957)
• Kpię i pytam about drogę? (I mock and ask about the road ) (1959)
• Do Abla i Kaina ( Abel and Cain ) (1961)
• List gończy ( Wanted ) (1963)
• Poema gotowe do skoku ( Poems, Ready to Jump ) (1964)

• Lets, Stanislav Jerzy in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• Malkov M. Humanist without fear and reproach - a biography of S. E. Lets.
• Untidy thoughts / Translation from Polish, afterword by M. P. Malkov . - SPb .: Academic project, 1999. - 173 p.
• Stanislav Jerzy Lets . Untouched thoughts. Frashki. Little myths. / Caricatures of Shimon Kobylinsky; translation from Polish, composition, vst. article and approx. Maxim Malkov; electronic edition, rev. and add. - SPb., 2015 .-- 525 p.
• Samuel C. Lets Stanislav Jerzy. The ideal of painting / Translations and variations of Samuel Cherfas ( Neopr .) . samlib.ru (08.20.2007). - Hundreds of frashek-zadarashek was dashed by the vicious Staszek, wit and sage, Polish hedgehog - Jerzy Lets. Date of treatment August 21, 2007. Archived August 24, 2011.