OBORY MANOR

OBORY MANOR – THE WRITERS’ PARTY

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Harvest festival in Obory Manor, between 1930 and 1935; the best farm workers carry wreaths to the palace, singing. 


Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Winter

Poetry is a mirror. Illakowiczowna

Caresses the concreteness of each thing with white words,

In verbal labyrinths she stores lamps and lacquer dolls,

And this is a mystery – yet not the key one.

The mystery lies deep beneath on the lake’s calm bottom,

Though who can tell a black pond under winter’s shroud?

No one knows that a name on that stone is carved;

None can tear through the canvas of ice to the ground.

And so no one can tell the snow’s mystery

Or explain the enchantments of wild poetry

That gods once brought to us as gifts in their sleigh

To stay with us and delight us, till the end of days.

(Dedicated to Teresa Potulicka, sister of the last owner of Obory, Henryk, b. 1893 in Riga. A nurse in the Polish army during the 1920 war with Soviet Russia, then – volunteer in the International Red Cross. Died unmarried in Warsaw in 1982. The poem was published in “Skamander” in 1922 and in The Book of Day and Book of Night in 1929. Iwaszkiewicz later revealed that the lake from the poem was the pond in Obory park.)


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Obory Manor 1921. From the right: the famous poet Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna (1892-1983; mentioned in Iwaszkiewicz's poem above); Gabriel Narutowicz - future President of Poland (assassinated in the following year in Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw); Countess Izabella Potulicka; Count Henryk Potulicki, last owner of Obory; Duchess Zofia Czetwertyńska nee Przeździecka and Maria Przeżdziecka nee Czapska; sitting: Count Stefan Przeździecki (head of Poland's diplomatic protocol) and Kajetan Dzierżykraj-Morawski (1892-1973, Polish diplomat and politician, before the war - head of the Western Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and vice-minister of the Treasury; during the war - in the emigre government; then - Ambassador of Free Poles in London)

Topic editor, selected English texts: Kacper Kubicki, Year Five, Montessori Academy Konstancin, Primary School SMART

Further translations and proofreading: Tomasz Zymer, English teacher, Ys 0-6

Photos: Grzegorz Babicki, science teacher, Ys 3-9

Fragments of the film fantasy “Writers’ Party” - from a project prepared by Year Five students (now – Montessori Junior High CUBE, Year 8) in 2009

"Obory – a beautiful island of escapism, filled with the smiling skies, the splendour of trees and the breath of a warm wind”

Aleksander Wat (1900-67), a Polish-Jewish poet and writer, a communist sympathiser before the war, arrested by NKWD in Lvov, a Lubyanka prisoner and exile in Kazakhstan, from 1959 in emigration, committed suicide in France; one of the initiators of the Writers’ House in Obory Manor

"I was at the opening of the Writers’ House in Obory. A strange mix of people. Sandwiches, vodka, black coffee and cake. A merry atmosphere – as if there was something to be happy about.”

From the Diaries of Maria Dąbrowska (1889-1965), novelist, playwright and translator, one of Poland’s major 20^th-century writers, author of Nights and Days

"When Iwaszkiewicz began his opening address with these words: ‘My dear friends, let me tell you the story of the Writers’ House...,’ Słonimski interrupted him by remarking, ‘There is little to tell about. You just stole the house from the Potulickis, that’s all’.”

From the memoirs of Monika Żeromska (1916-2001), daughter of Stefan Żeromski (1864-1925), a famous Polish novelist; like her father in the last years of his life, she lived in Villa Świt in Konstancin, which is now her father’s memorial house

“It was 11^th October – the day they threw us out of our house. My mother was visited by the starost during the [1944 Warsaw] uprising, and he asked, ‘Where are your children?’ She said we were in Warsaw, and so they threw us out – not the communists, but the Germans, for taking part in the uprising. [...] The Germans moved us to a very nice villa in Konstancin, which used to belong to rich Jews, and all the Jews had been thrown away. So we crammed all that we could into that villa, and mother gave out many of our belongings. Some she tried to sell, but there were no buyers. [...] Then we moved to uncle’s house nearby. [...] One day in January or February [1945] an official came and announced that they were taking everything away from us, as part of the land reform. And in our house, there were Germans. When the communists came, they started a kindergarten in our house.”

From an interview with Teresa Łatyńska-Potulicka (b. 1925), heiress to Obory, who since the 1990s has unsuccessfully tried to regain the palace

“I came to Obory with Grochowiak in the van which regularly transported writers from the Union’s headquarters. I was under a great impression of Grochowiak, whom I have always sincerely admired. And I was determined to write day and night. Staszek [Grochowiak] dragged a heavy suitcase behind him. ‘So!’ I thought, ‘he’s brought so many books and manuscripts, he’s also prepared for hard work.’ Then Grochowiak opened the suitcase, and I saw all kinds of bottles of liquor, big, smaller and very small, pedantically arranged inside [...] With a smile, he suggested a drink. I had no courage to refuse a great poet. I thought: ‘All right, we’ll drink the contents of this suitcase: the quicker, the better, and then I’ll get down to work.’ I sobered up after about two weeks. Than Staszek informed me there was a liquor shop in Jeziorna, and asked me to help him carry the suitcase.”

Janusz Głowacki (b. 1938), prose writer, author of film scripts, including the most famous Polish postwar comedy Rejs (The Cruise, 1970), since the introduction of the martial law thirty years ago – in emigration in the USA

Stanisław Grochowiak (1934-76) – experimental poet and playwright, a cult figure in Polish literature; founder of the ‘turpist’ trend in Polish poetry

“The young were often unruly, but in Obory this was understood and their pranks were forgiven. Writers of my generation came to the palace to work on books, for two or three months, without being disturbed by anyone. In most cases, they managed to get ahead with these plans. When I walked down the corridor in the evening, there was the regular clicking of typewriters coming from many rooms. Admittedly, some were motivated by this sound, but as for others, it got them down.”

Julia Hartwig (b. 1921), Polish poet, essayist and well known translator e.g. of Apollinaire, Ginsberg, Cendrars, William Carlos Williams

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OH, HOW I’D LIKE TO BE A POET

For 600 years Obory was a large landed estate belonging to Polish noble and aristocratic families. After World War II, the estate was largely taken over by Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW) Experimental Farm, which even today, just as under communism, methodically pollutes the area with industrial waste and liquid manure (as you can read in reports of the Masovian Voivodeship Environmental Protection Inspector and in correspondence of the village community with the town mayor: http://www.parcelaonline.pl/index.php/2011/12/12/likwidacja-rury-kanalizacyjnej-w-skarpie-29-08-2011; http://www.parcelaonline.pl/index.php/2011/12/06/korespondencja-grudzien-2011-2/ ).

Still, a different fate was in store for the palace or manor house itself: on the initiative of several well known writers: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Ewa Szelburg-Zarembina, Aleksander Wat, and Leopold Lewin, the palace with the surrounding park was handed over by the communist authorities to Polish Writers’ Union as a “house of creative work”. On 19^th September 1948, two busloads of writers arrived on the driveway to inspect the renovated palace. For the next four decades, the palace hosted the cream of Polish literature: Dąbrowska, Gałczyński, Brzechwa, Fiedler, Samozwaniec, Hartwig, Słonimski, Broniewski, Newerly, Andrzejewski, Konwicki, Wańkowicz, Hen, Krasiński, Stryjkowski, Jastrun, the Brandys brothers, Przyboś, Głowacki, Braun, Międzyrzecki, Rudnicki, Breza, Białoszewski, Hłasko, Grochowiak, and many others, as well as legends of the silver screen: Wajda and Starski, Maklakiewicz and Himilsbach.

It was the policy of the communist government to keep artists and intellectuals under control by offering them privileges and safe income (in the form of commissions or posts on the editorial boards of magazines) in return for (limited) loyalty:

“Oh how I’d like to be a poet

Because a poet’s life is good;

A poet has a new warm sweater,

Suede shoes, a little doggie setter

And his place in the world.

[...] So I would like to be a poet

Maybe they’ll still make me a member

Send me to write in Zakopane

Won’t need to get up in the morning

In cold and dark December.

For now a poet’s life is great:

Won’t lose my eyesight in an office

And need not care for discipline:

Only my guitar and my girl

And golden stars to count...”

...wrote Andrzej Bursa (1932-57), one of the Polish poètes maudits, in his scathing satire on the life of the state-maintained literary elite.

Antoni Słonimski in Obory, 1955. Słonimski (1895 – 1976) was a Polish poet, journalist, playwright and prose writer, president of Polish Writers' Union of  in 1956–1959 during the "Polish October" political thaw, known for his devotion to social justice. Born to a Jewish father who converted to Christianity and a Catholic mother in Warsaw, baptized and raised as a Catholic. Słonimski studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1919 he co-founded the Skamander group of experimental poets with Julian Tuwim and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In 1924 he travelled to Palestine and Brasil and in 1932 to the Soviet Union. He spent the war years in exile in England and France, returning to Poland in 1951. He worked as contributor to popular periodicals: Nowa Kultura (1950–1962), Szpilki (1953–73) and Przegląd Kulturalny. He was an active anti-Stalinist and supporter of liberalization. He died on 4 July 1976 in a car accident in Jeziorna, on his way to Obory Manor.

There was a hierarchy of privileges and favours meted out by the state, from standard holidays in summer resorts to the most highly prized – such as a stay in Obory Palace. And even though conditions were rather basic (e.g. only one room – Andrzejewski’s No.5 – had its own bathroom), the aristocratic furnishings and paintings, the palace and the park with their six hundred years of history – created a very special context and atmosphere which no doubt must have influenced the character of many postwar literary works.

“Life in Obory,” claims the critic and literary historian Marek Zaleski from the Polish Academy of Sciences, “was a spectacle. Beyond the wall there was a state farm, filth, stench, poverty, horses behind barbed wire, and here – swans on the pond and Zofia Bystrzycka’s red Parisian court shoes. Everybody played some roles in front of the others. The principle of merit and distinction ruled supreme in the theatre of social life.” Zalewski concludes that Obory as a writers’ paradise produced a rather grotesque effect as the paradise turned into a velvet prison and a vanity fair. Outside, the propaganda preached the worker - peasant alliance, but in Obory the hierarchy was nearly feudal, especially in the canteen. For half a century, nobody dared to choose their own tables: rather, the artists were carefully seated in accordance with their relative importance. What was meant by this was not only the books they had written but also the social circles they belonged to. There was Słonimski’s table and Andrzejewski’s table, and the table “under the hetman” was less prestigious than that “under the clock”. True, some of the freshly appointed directors of the House occasionally made blunders, such as placing a woman writer at one table next to her ex-husband with his new wife, or – in the 1980s – a well known oppositionist next to a staunch government supporter; in such cases, there was grave silence in the hall or the writers would ostentatiously change their seats. All the young writers yearned for a favourable gesture from one of the “great masters”, but such favours were rare and much envied. When Melchior Wańkowicz once came to Obory in his Mercedes, drawing up with a squeal of brakes, got out and asked in a loud voice: “Is there a man here by the name of Józef Hen?” Brzechwa whispered into Hen’s ear: “Your colleagues will never forgive you.” And so the less widely recognised writer kowtowed to the one on whom state awards were showered, but got his own back on the house service. A third-rate writer once made a terrible scene because he was the last to have breakfast brought to his room - “though there are some in this wing who have not published as much as a single volume.”

TURKS, QUEENS AND DUTCH MASTERS

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Louise Marie de La Grange d'Arquien (28 June 1638 – 11 November 1728), wife of Jan Wielopolski, owner of Obory, and sister of Marie Casimire Louise de la Grange d'Arquien, Queen of Poland 

Obory, first mentioned in documents of 1433, belonged to the Oborski family, whose one eminent representative, Stanisław, was the starost of Piaseczno in the 16^th century. The Oborski family were permanently in conflict with their neighbours, the Leśniowskis, and records of their border disputes and other court actions can still be found in court and notarial registers. In 1643, the estate with its wooden house and the nearby manor farm of Chabdzinek was sold to the Koniecpolskis, and in 1650 – bought by Count Jan Wielopolski, a magnate and statesman, Voivode of Cracow, owner of Wieliczka salt mines, Pińczów entail and many other estates. His son, Jan Wielopolski Jr., married the Polish Queen’s sister, Marie Louise de la Grange d’Arquien, and became Royal Chancellor. As Obory was very close to King John III’s new residence in Wilanów, the queen and king maintained close contacts with the Wielopolskis. The king even sent Turkish prisoners-of-war brought from Vienna after his victory over the Ottoman Empire in 1683 to Obory, and tradition has it that they built the road now leading to the manor house. The house itself was designed by the famous Dutch architect Tylman van Gameren (1632-1706), who also designed the most famous palaces in Warsaw and country villas around the city (in a style halfway between a palace and a landowning family’s traditional country house – what came to be called a “Tylmanesque” villa).

In the 2^nd half of the 18^th century, Obory became famous for its high quality beer, produced in the manor’s own Neo-gothic brewery. It is said that it could rival the best English beers. These traditions are now continued by Browar Konstancin, brewing traditional non-pasteurised varieties. About the methods of production: http://www.browar-konstancin.pl/index.php/ida/25/

The old brewery in Obory

 In 1806, the estate was inherited by the Potulicki family, bearing the Grzymała coat of arms, who brought the estate to its heyday: 400 farm hands, two windmills, a brickyard, pure-bred cattle breeding farm, a sheepfold for 2000 sheep, peat exploitation, and many others.

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A traction engine used to propel farm machines by means of conveyor belts - now in front of Obory Palace. Mirosław Malcharek, graphic designer of "World Literature" and editor of "Modernity" in the 1960s told the story of how this extremely heavy engine was dragged by the writers themselves from the nearby old distillery in the late 1960s. The "strongmen" who moved the engine to the park were: Malcharek himself,  Roman Śliwonik and the author of the whole idea, Grochowiak. The former two were in fact athletic guys, but Grochowiak was - a weakling. Still, another version of the legend has it that Grochowiak pulled the engine to Obory all by himself.

 photo courtesy of TRAPER Students' Club: http://www.sktk.eua.pl/traper/strona_startowa/traper.htm and Mr Wojciech Guszkowski

It was here, in Obory, that Countess Maria Grzymała-Potulicka wrote her will of 1898, which lay the foundations for the summer resort and spa later known as Konstancin:

“ [...] to my sister, Countess Konstancja Zygmuntowa Skórzewska, I leave 10.000 rs [...] to Countess Maria Skórzewska, daughter of Witold and Maria de domo Radziwiłł Skórzewska - 4.000 rs [...] As the executors of this document, I name Duke Michał Ogiński and Count Witold Skórzewski. They are empowered and it is my will that the woods should be sold and used to pay out the legacies, with the assistance and advice of Count Mieczysław Potulicki[...]”

The story of the foundation of Konstancin can be found here: http://www.konstancin.com/historia/w_a/historia.htm

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A grain thresher in Obory estate, c. 1930-35

After the death of the last landlord, Henryk Potulicki, the estate was governed by his widow, Maria Potulicka née Stroynowska. Her three children all took part in Warsaw Uprising: Anna Dorota as a courier (drowned in 1948 at a sailing camp), Jan – as head of a unit fighting in the district of Powiśle (killed when a weapon burst in his hands, on the 24^th day of the uprising, 24^th August 1944), Teresa – as a medical orderly in Warsaw’s Old Town. For participation in the uprising, the Potulickis lost their estate, which was first occupied by the Germans, and, after the war, converted by the communists into a kindergarten for stud workers, later – into the Writers’ House. Countess Maria Potulicka died in 1965 in Warsaw. The last survivor of the family, Teresa, married Marek Łatyński, head of Radio Free Europe, Polish Section, lived for many years in Switzerland. In December 2003, the Supreme Administrative Court decided that the palace and park ought to be returned to her. Eight years later, however, the palace is still in the hands of the Foundation of the House of Literature and Houses of Creative Work ( http://www.fundacjadl.com/index.html ), which uses it mainly as a commercial source of income. For about 20 Euro a day, you can rent the room of one of the great literary masters and eat breakfast in his or her bed; for a little more – drink vodka, eat and dance at a New Year’s Ball in the palace:
http://www.palacobory.go3.pl/index.php?component=content&task=pokaz_artykul&id=58 . If you do stay in the palace, however, be careful not to stir up its ghosts, lest they should haunt you as they did the poets and writers who once populated the place.

Anna Dorota Potulicka, b. 29 Nov. 1926 in Obory; Home Army courier in the Warsaw Uprising  (pseud. "Ania"). Studied sociology after the war. Drowned on 4th Aug. 1948 at a sailing camp near Gdansk

MAIN SOURCES OF INFORMATION (only in Polish):

1)      Helena Kowalik, “Pisane w Oborach”, “Przegląd” 25/2002, http://www.przeglad-tygodnik.pl/pl/artykul/pisane-oborach

2)      Józef Hertel, “History of Konstancin”, http://www.konstancin.com/historia/w_a/obory.htm

3)      Bartosz Marzec, “Legenda Obór”, “Rzeczpospolita” 11.08.2003, http://niniwa2.cba.pl/warszawka-obory.html

4)      Leszek Żuliński, “Dwór w Oborach”, 27.12.2010, http://pisarze.pl/publicystyka/269-leszek-uliski-dwor-w-oborach.html

5)      Interview with Teresa Potulicka-Łatyńska, Archive of Oral History, 18.07.2006, http://ahm.1944.pl/Teresa_Latynska

6)      Forum of the Lovers of the History of Konstancin-Jeziorna Club: http://www.konstancin.com/forum/list.php?23

7)      Mariusz Jałoszewski, “Związek Literatów Polskich może stracić zabytkowy pałacyk w Oborach”, “Gazeta Wyborcza” 11.12.2003, http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/kraj/1,34309,1819960.html

8)      Family tree of Teresa Potulicka-Łatyńska, http://www.sejm-wielki.pl/b/dw.65145

FURTHER READING (only in Polish):

1)      Sławomir Leitgeber, Potuliccy – a monograph on the Potulicki family, London 1990

2)      Andrzej Zienc, Obory, a monograph (fragments reprinted in:  A. .Zienc "Dwór w Oborach", "Biuletyn Historii Sztuki" 1962r no. 2, pp. 188-199)
3)   Krystyna Kolińska, Parnas w Oborach, Prószyński i S-ka, Warsaw 2000
4)  Catalogue of Art Monuments in Poland Vol. 10 - Warsaw voivodeship, Book 14 - Piaseczno district Eds. Izabella Galicka, Elzbieta Żyłko (documented by Elżbieta Żyłko and Dariusz Kaczmarzyk). Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 1962

5)  Historical urban study of Konstancin-Jeziorna, ed. Ewa Pustoła-Kozłowska  for Konstancin-Jeziorna municipal authorities, 1996