Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 4 October 2024
A Word From the President
One of the most meaningful accomplishments of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA) is its steady digitization of the archive. Anyone who has wandered through PIASA’s building knows the feeling: room after room, shelves stacked high with books and boxes, fragile papers resting in folders, volumes waiting to be handled with care. It is humbling, almost overwhelming, to realize just how much history is stored there. And it is equally humbling to know how long it takes years, even decades for archivists and librarians to transform these shelves into something accessible to the wider world.
Digitization is slow work. A single folder of letters might take hours to prepare, scan, and catalog. But once it is done, that folder no longer belongs only to the silence of an archive room. It can be read in Warsaw, Buenos Aires, or Tokyo; it can become part of someone’s research, or part of a family’s rediscovery of its past. That is the promise and power of PIASA’s project.
One of the recent treasures to step into this digital light is the collection of Józef and Halina Wittlin. Józef Wittlin (1896-1976) lived through a century that refused to let him stand still. Born in Dmytrów, in East Galicia, he studied in Vienna, served as a soldier in the First World War, and returned to Lwów to immerse himself in literature and philosophy. There he became associated with the Skamander poets and quickly made his mark. In 1935, he won the Polish PEN Club award for his translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Then history uprooted him again. The Second World War forced Wittlin and his wife Halina to flee Poland. Their journey stretched across France, Spain, and Portugal before they finally arrived in New York.
There, Wittlin’s life found new anchors. He worked alongside Jan Lechoń and Kazimierz Wierzyński on Tygodnik Polski. His novel Sól ziemi (Salt of the Earth), translated into English, was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1939. In Culture.pl, we can read: “This extremely beautiful story, often favorably compared with the best of English or American fiction, is about the twilight of the period, the end of the epoch, warning of the death and extermination of culture. The setting is an isolated area in the Carpathian Mountains (Eastern Galicia) where news of the war portends the disruption of human fortunes throughout the world, including the rustic life of the villagers. The main character of Salt of the Earth was a simple Hutsul of Eastern Galicia, drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army at the beginning of World War I.”
In exile, Wittlin became not only a writer but also a guardian of Polish culture abroad collaborating with Radio Free Europe and helping to establish the PEN Club’s Writers in Exile. He remained in New York until his death in 1976, though his voice reached far beyond that city.
The Wittlin Papers, entrusted to PIASA by Halina Wittlin, tell this story in fragments: letters written and received, manuscripts of poems (Na Dzień Żydostwa Polskiego and Stabat Mater), biographical notes, and correspondence related to the treatment of poet Halina Poświatowska.
Perhaps most moving is the digitized interview with Halina Wittlin by Jerzy Tepa, in which she recalls their travels and life in the United States. She speaks candidly
of hardship the poverty, the uncertainty, the difficulty of being a Polish writer in America. She remembers how the Polish émigré community extended kindness, and how her husband’s very first speech in New York, titled “Płaszcz” (The Coat), revolved around the coat he wore on his long journey from Lisbon to America a coat he had thanks to the generosity of the American Polonia, whose support sustained him.
The interview is available on the PIASA Archives YouTube channel. The collection is available on the pages of PIASA Archives.
After hearing Halina Wittlin’s voice, I find myself reaching for Beata Dorosz’s book Nowojorski pasjans, a work that helped me fully appreciate the first decades of the Polish Institute of Science, which later evolved into PIASA. Dorosz reminds us how vital these émigré writers were – not only for Polish culture, but also for the communities that surrounded them:
“Their very presence was consoling for part of the émigré world, because they became not only animators of patriotic emotions but also voices for ordinary human feelings, performing poetic rites in exile much like Polish dziady.”
One scene she recalls is especially powerful: on October 29, 1941, a literary evening took place at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan, featuring Jan Lechoń, Julian Tuwim, and Wittlin. The response of the audience was captured in words that still resonate:
“Dear poets! If you ever doubt, if you ever face bitter disappointments and lose faith in the value of what you create, look into the eyes of your listeners, listen to their conversations, and you will know that your mission ennobles others with the strength of beauty and the charm of the heart. It fulfills itself every day. People leave your gatherings closer to angels, more noble, more beautiful than when they arrived.”
In a world where the humanities are increasingly questioned, underfunded, or dismissed as impractical, these words remind us of what literature and poetry still make possible: they change people, restore a sense of shared humanity, and build communities across borders and generations. The digitization of the Wittlin Papers is more than preservation – it is an act of resistance against cultural amnesia, ensuring that voices once threatened by war and exile continue to speak into our own uncertain century.
