14 July 2010 Second addition at the International Joseph Conrad Literature Festival
An addition dedicated to the II International Joseph Conrad Festival, which will take place from 2 to 7 November 2010 in Krakow, in the recent issue of “Tygodnik Powszechny”. Guests invited to this year’s edition of the Festival write in the addition.
Grzegorz Jankowicz brings closer the profile of the Laureate of the Nobel Prize invited to Krakow, Herta Müller: “From the first verses and stories that were created in Romania, Herta Müller obsessively, with surgical precision describes the process of the slow and irreversible degradation of man, which is accomplished by totalitarian enslavement. (…) According to Müller totalitarianism does not have any secrets. It’s not about the fact that it is trivial (like in Arendt's opinion Nazi crimes were a manifestation of triviality of evil, which any one of us - in particular circumstances – can commit), but the fact that it does not have any justification or metaphysical foundation.”
In the addition also an essay on Nietzsche written especially for “Tygodnik Powszechny” by one of the most outstanding Hungarian writers, László Krasznahorkai, who will be a guest of the fifth day of the Festival. His translator, Elżbieta Sobolewska, brings closer the profile of the writer:
“Krasznahorkai constantly repeats that he is most interested in the human being away from civilisation and deprived of material goods. For the best literature tells about the “naked” man. (...) Krasznahorkai’s heroes are marginalised people, poor, actually beggars, rejected, lost in their irrelevance to the consumption machine destroying the world.”
Olga Stanisławska, who will be a guest of the second day of the Conrad Festival writes about the contemporary commentary: “A reporter should be able to admit that the world surpasses them, says Jean Hatzfeld. His right is not to understand. A commentary occurs without theses and does not have to end with a conclusion. Conscious contradictions are not a flaw in them. Viewpoints can be interweaved, contrast various discourses. This potential causes that the commentary is indeed created to follow the dynamics of reality – diverse, variable, speaking in many voices. To follow everything that slips through general statements. To follow events that nobody understands yet, after individual experience. To follow exception.”
Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało speaks with Ewa Kuryluk, a historian, painter and writer, who will be a guest of the second day of the Festival and take part in the panel “Atlas of Women”, about autobiographies: “Every individual plays some role. The more frustrated people and obscurants, fanatics and batsmen, the worse it is in society. The more people knowing their value, brave, composed and enlightened, the nicer it is to live on earth. It’s no secret that there is always and everywhere a lack of the just, in this – or maybe particularly? – among artists. It happens that they are treated more gently, justifying the bad behaviour of a genius, sometimes even justly. But genius-thugs, genius-boors and genius-asses and genius-opportunists don’t enrapture me. I am, however, impressed when an artist treats his or her behaviour equally seriously to his/her art. Of course this does not entertain the world, but it makes it a little more bearable, right?”
Leopold Neuger writes about Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s art “Nasza klasa” [“Our Class”], which can be seen during the Conrad Festival: “Słobodzianek shows an impressive weave of: fates, circumstances, events. There is no way out of this entanglement, it cannot be simply untangled, or cut. They cannot do it and neither can we.”
The newest issue of “Tygodnik Powszechny” with the addition “Conrad 02” for sale starting Wednesday, 14 July!
