Witold Marian Gombrowicz was a Polish writer and playwright. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke, which presented many of his usual themes: problems of immaturity and youth, creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature. His diaries were published in 1969 and are, according to the Paris Review, "widely considered his masterpiece", while Cosmos is considered, according to The New Yorker, "his most accomplished novel". He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, from 1966 to 1969.
Polish literature is the literary tradition of Poland. Most Polish literature has been written in the Polish language, though other languages used in Poland over the centuries have also contributed to Polish literary traditions, including Latin, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Russian, German and Esperanto. According to Czesław Miłosz, for centuries Polish literature focused more on drama and poetic self-expression than on fiction. The reasons were manifold but mostly rested on the historical circumstances of the nation. Polish writers typically have had a more profound range of choices to motivate them to write, including past cataclysms of extraordinary violence that swept Poland, but also, Poland's collective incongruities demanding an adequate reaction from the writing communities of any given period.
Rasos Cemetery is the oldest and most famous cemetery in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania. It is named after the Rasos district where it is located. It is separated into two parts, the old and the new cemeteries, by a narrow Sukilėliai Street. The total area is 10.8 ha. Since 1990 new burials are allowed only to family graves.
Young Poland was a modernist period in Polish visual arts, literature and music, covering roughly the years between 1890 and 1918. It was a result of strong aesthetic opposition to the earlier ideas of Positivism. Young Poland promoted trends of decadence, neo-romanticism, symbolism, impressionism and art nouveau.
The culture of Poland is the product of its geography and distinct historical evolution, which is closely connected to an intricate thousand-year history. Polish culture forms an important part of western civilization and the western world, with significant contributions to art, music, philosophy, mathematics, science, politics and literature.
Ossoliński National Institute, or the Ossolineum is a Polish cultural foundation, publishing house, archival institute and a research centre of national significance founded in 1817 in Lwów. Located in the city of Wrocław since 1947, it is the second largest institution of its kind in Poland after the ancient Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. Its publishing arm is the oldest continuous imprint in Polish since the early 19th century. It bears the name of its founder, Polish nobleman, Count Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński (1748-1826).
Jerzy Władysław Giedroyc was a Polish writer and political activist and for many years editor of the highly influential Paris-based periodical, Kultura.
Giedroyć is a Polish surname, originating from the Giedroyć princely family of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Bill Johnston is a prolific Polish language literary translator and Professor of comparative literature at Indiana University. His work has helped to expose English-speaking readers to classic and contemporary Polish poetry and fiction. In 2008 he received the Found in Translation Award for his translation of new poems by Tadeusz Różewicz; this book was also a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Poetry Award.
Wydawnictwo Literackie is a Kraków-based Polish publishing house, which has been referred to as one of Poland's "most respected".
Bogdan Czaykowski was a Polish Canadian poet, essayist, literary translator and literary critic, professor emeritus and former Dean at the University of British Columbia.
Konstanty Aleksander Jeleński was a Polish essayist.
Jesuit College in Khyriv, formerly Jesuit College in Chyrów, was a purpose-built Polish secondary boys college, owned by the Society of Jesus, in the occupied Austro-Hungarian partition of Poland in the late 19th century. The vast estate, comprising the college, has the rare distinction of having existed in at least five separate national Jurisdictions in the last century and a half. From 1918 the college was in independent Poland until 1939 when it ceased to exist as an institution, although not as an asset, due to foreign invasions, first by the Red Army till 1941, then by the German Wehrmacht until 1943, before being re-taken by the Soviet Union. Since 1944 the site and its entire estate was in the USSR and since 1991 has been in present-day Ukraine.
Juliusz Mieroszewski was a Polish journalist, publicist and political commentator. He wrote under the pseudonyms "J. Calveley" and "Londyńczyk" (Londoner).
The Giedroyc doctrine or Giedroyc–Mieroszewski doctrine was a political doctrine that urged reconciliation among Central and Eastern European countries. It was developed by postwar Polish émigrés, and was named for Jerzy Giedroyc, a Polish émigré publicist, with significant contributions by Juliusz Mieroszewski for whom it is also sometimes named.
Krzysztof Czyżewski is a Polish author, one of the initiators of the Borderland Foundation in Sejny, Poland.
Wojciech Karpiński was a Polish writer, historian of ideas and literary critic.
Witold Stanisław Kazimierz Bełza was a Polish librarian, writer, publicist and cultural activist. He was the director of the Provincial and Municipal Public Library of Bydgoszcz from 1920 to 1939 and from 1945 to 1952.
