Translating Marek

Marek Zulawski: artist, journalist, my father

A dream about living under Nazi occupation

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Kazimiera Zulawska, Marek’s mother, was born on this day, 22 February, in 1883. In this excerpt from Study for a Self-Portrait, we get a glimpse of her stalwart attitude when she and Wawrzyniec (her youngest son) were hiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

It’s 1941.

The German bombers have flown away, the sirens have gone quiet – a strange silence has fallen. For the moment, London has put its head back on the pillow. Only the fire engines continue putting out flaming houses, while rescue teams search for anybody alive under the rubble. Otherwise, most of the city’s inhabitants sleep.… Keep reading

Wawrzyniec Zulawski: mountaineer, composer, author, brother

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Today, Valentine’s Day 2015, marks what would have been the 99th birthday of Wawrzyniec Zulawski (pronounced “Vav-zhin-yetz”, or simply translated as Laurence), affectionately known as Wawa by all those who knew him (the much easier “Va-va”). I thought it would be a good opportunity to post up this section of Marek’s memoirs in which he talks about his brother’s passion for mountaineering, an activity that consumed his life in more ways than one.

When not climbing, Wawrzyniec was a composer and author, inspired by the peaks he scaled, as well as the director of ZAIKS, Poland’s copyright overseers. During the Nazi occupation, Wawrzyniec and his mother Kazimiera sheltered hundreds of Jews, and together they were awarded the title of Righteous Among The Nations.

… Keep reading

“40 years wiser, 40 years stupider”: Marek on getting old, 1980

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 Today’s excerpt follows on from last week’s in which Marek nearly died on the Baltic Sea. Recalling that episode leads him to mull over just how much life he really does have left after all these years.

The second volume of Study for a Self-Portrait is dedicated to my mother, but it’s only in the more intimate sections where he addresses her as directly as this. They had gotten married earlier that year and were together until death did them part in 1985.

Back then, I was how old?

20.

In other words, half a century ago. More even.

Today, fear has come back to me again and I don’t know how to deal with it.… Keep reading

How to swear like a sailor, 1928

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Who doesn’t love swearing? Both English and Polish, plus many other languages, offer endlessly creative ways to say the most lurid and offensive things that actually just end up delighting and amusing due to their oddness. That being said, I felt obliged to censor the c-word in the story beneath, just in case you were reading this before the watershed…

Marek was a mere 20 years old in the story below. In Study for a Self-Portrait, he follows up the anecdote with some related thoughts from his 70-year-old perspective – I’ll put these up in the next blog.

The Temida II slowly turns round as if stuck in a glass bubble.… Keep reading

Romance at the outbreak of World War II: meeting Halina Korn

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Halina Korn (born Halina Korngold) was Marek’s second wife, and a respected painter and writer in her own right. They were married for decades until her death on 2 October 1978 – precisely 36 years ago today. Other parts of Study for a Self-Portrait delve into the darker parts of their relationship, particularly Halina’s depression, but I thought I’d introduce her with this lively country-hopping section that includes how she and Marek first met. I particularly like the part about their life in London during the Battle of Britain. – AZ

It was autumn 1938. Yes, a year before the war.… Keep reading

How Marek ended up living in London in 1936

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Life is chaos. It’s a cacophony upon which we try to impose a sense of order, often for the sake of our own sanity.

When I read the excerpt below, I was unsurprised to find my father had ended up a Londoner by accident, not design. It was through another series of accidents that he met my mother, that I was born in London and that now I’m writing these very words.

Some people struggle to accept that we primates stumble through existence. They insist that everything is controlled and planned out. One of the gloomier versions of this type of worldview is that everything is manipulated by some shadowy ill-meaning cabal, often labelled as the Illuminati or New World Order.

… Keep reading
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