From Latin to Polish
When Mieszko I decided to be baptized in 966, he was not only offering a religion to the country he was governing, but also a language, Latin, which was rapidly establishing itself in written form in a region of the world where an ancestral oral tradition had prevailed until then. Monks, often from France, brought with them religious books, but also introduced authors from Antiquity, and founded schools to combat extreme illiteracy. From the 11th century onwards, religious and historical literature flourished, written by foreigners such as Gallus Anonymus (1066-1145) - a Benedictine monk who wrote the first history of the country, Cronica et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum, at the very beginning of the 12th century - as well as by natives such as Wicenty Kadlubek, who also took an interest in Polish history at around the same time, in his Chronica Polonorum, also known as Master Vincent's Chronicle. A prayer dedicated to the Virgin Mary is considered the first Polish literary text, although the exact date of its composition is unknown: Bogurodzica, whose importance is all the greater as it was later used as the national anthem. Then came the time of sermons - the Sermon de tempore et de sanctis by Peregrine of Opole in the 13th century or the Sermon of Holy Cross in the 14th century, for example - which are the oldest Polish prose texts. Then, with the creation of the Krakow Academy in 1364, treatises tinged with philosophy and humanism gradually took over. The fertile 15th century saw Stanisław de Skarbimierz question the laws of war in De bellis lustis, and Paweł Włodkowic condemn violent proselytism in a political treatise, Tractarus de potestate papae et imperatoris respectu infidelium. This century also saw the earliest Polish translation of the Bible, in a version known as Queen Sophie's, and the monumental Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae by Jan Długosz (1415-1480), which, in twelve volumes, recount the past and contemporary history of his native country.
The end of the 15th century marked the beginning of the Polish Renaissance, a golden age that came to fruition with the advent of printing. The forerunner of this "democratic art" was Kasper Straube: in Krakow, he printed an Almanach craciviense ad annum 1474, and soon had emulators such as Jan Haller, who printed works by Erasmus and Copernicus, while Schweipolt Fiol was the first to publish in the Cyrillic alphabet. Poland's link with Lithuania - confirmed by the Treaty of Lublin (1569), which established the Republic of the Two Nations - gave it a powerful position and enabled it to benefit from European and Mediterranean intellectual influences, a trend exacerbated by its youth, who willingly left to study humanities in Italy, or by foreign artists in exile, who found refuge on its soil. Thought, literature and language all benefited from this effervescence, with a number of tutelary figures making a lasting mark, including Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572), Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569), Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584) and Piotr Skarga (1536-1612).
Thus, Modrzewski not only took an interest in the religious issues that troubled his country and foreshadowed the Warsaw Confederation Act, which was signed in 1573 and guaranteed freedom of worship for all denominations, he also opted for a political approach. His best-known treatise is De republica emendanda - On the reform of the republic (1551) - but he also published a treatise calling for the equality of all citizens before the law. Although his works were controversial to the point of being blacklisted, they had a major impact on the way people thought. In the following generation, Piotr Skarga took up the torch in a way: this Jesuit priest, who went on to become the first rector of the Vilnius Academy and then King Sigismund III Vasa's preacher, set about securing an inter-religious agreement between Orthodox and Catholics. His sermons, which also advocate equal treatment of the different social classes, possess undeniable literary qualities shared with the works of Mikołaj Rej and Jan Kochanowski. Both, who disputed the title of founding father of Polish poetry, worked to perfect the language, the former by translating psalms into Polish, a language he would continue to use - despite being an excellent Latinist - in a diversified output, navigating between satirical texts(Court débat entre un seigneur, a mayor and a priest), moralist texts(Le Marchand, figure du Jugement dernier) or intimist texts(Portrait véridique de la vie d'un homme vertueux), while the second used Latin, but set standards, such as rigorous metrics in his poetry (including Thrènes, inspired by the death of his daughter).
Decline and romanticism
Unfortunately, the 17th and 18th centuries saw the Republic of Two Nations gradually decline as a result of successive attacks, and by 1772, Poland was the plaything of foreign powers. Nevertheless, these two centuries saw the emergence of a number of literary trends, most notably the Baroque, for which Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński had laid the foundations in the 16th century by introducing the sonnet, the art of metaphor and certain fundamental themes, such as eroticism or the fear of dying, perhaps a sign since he lost his life early. He was followed by Wacław Potocki (1621-1696), Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621-1693) and Jan Pasek (1636-1701), who were also part of the Baroque movement, but added a typically Polish accent: Sarmatism, the belief that the lesser nobility(szlachta) descended from the nomadic Sarmatians and inherited their courage and taste for freedom. Potocki wrote a great epic of twelve songs, La Guerre de Chocim (The War of Chocim), Morsztyn a collection of two hundred poems, Luth, and Pasek Memoirs, which were not published until 1836, but remain important for their strong historical interest.
In the 18th century, the Polish Enlightenment rhymed with the democratization of culture, confirmed in 1765 by the opening of the first National Theater, directed by Wojciech Bogusławski. The stage became an ideal setting for both popular education and social criticism, and the plays of Franciszek Bohomolec (1720-1784) are a perfect illustration of these ideals. As for novels, Ignacy Krasicki wrote in Polish The Adventures of Nicholas Doswiadczyński (1776), a portrait of a young man and, through him, of his era, whose sentimental dramas led him to rationalism. Already, however, Poland was in the throes of conflict, forcing Jan Potocki (1761-1815) to leave his homeland. In addition to his travelogues, this writer is also the author of a belatedly recognized masterpiece, Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse, available in French from Livre de Poche.
The 19th century was romantic in its most political sense, with writers acting as spokesmen, even prophets, for a country struggling to regain its independence. If Tomasz Zan (1796-1855) and Maurycy Mochnacki (1803-1834) bear witness to the pain of exile, in Le Journal de l'exil for one, and Le Soulèvement de l'émigration polonaise for the other, three poets are considered the most worthy representatives of this literary movement. The first, and perhaps the greatest, is Adam Mickiewicz, born in 1798 into a Polish family, but in a city then under Russian rule. He began publishing at the age of 20, exploring every style until he found his own in The Ode to Youth, which, judged too patriotic and revolutionary, was not published until a few years later. Some of his work is now available in French, including Les Aïeux (éditions Noir sur Blanc), Sonnets de Crimée (L'Âge d'homme) and the lectures he gave at the Collège de France during his exile in Paris(Les Slaves, Klincksieck éditeur). While Mickiewicz is "the Pilgrim of Freedom", Juliusz Słowacki (1809-1849) is "the Mystic": the former devotes himself to concrete evocations, while the latter prefers symbolic images. We should also mention Zygmunt Krasiński (1812-1859), who in his early works aspired to revenge, using gothic motifs, even though he never knew his free country, and Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883), whose half-philosophical, half-mystical inspiration would not be praised until after his death.
A terrible but fertile 20th century
Patriotic romanticism was met with repression, and writers had no choice but to go into exile or renounce the call to arms in favor of "social resistance". This was embodied in a militant humanism that advocated work, education and equality in the face of societal problems. In 1871, Aleksander Świętochowski signed the manifesto(Nous et vous) of this movement known as positivism, which earned Poland its first Nobel Prize in 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz, author of Quo vadis? (Éditions Libretto). Although this trend was to dominate Poland for only twenty years, it served as a synthesis between romantic patriotism and rational realism, and above all as the basis for a literature that would henceforth accelerate in step with the events of a complex twentieth century, during which the horror of war and the sublimity of writing coexisted. Like milestones, one Nobel Prize for Literature follows another. Władysław Reymont (1867-1925) received it in 1924, notably for The Peasants and The Promised Land (éditions Zoé). He is associated with the Young Poland movement, which opposed the "utilitarianism" of positivism and aspired to modernism, which itself gave way to futurism (Aleksander Wat, Bruno Jasieński) and the avant-garde (Skamander group) in the interwar years.
The Second World War sounded the death knell of this ebullience and dragged on interminably in a Poland now under the yoke of a Communist government. Writers become witnesses... and victims. Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) and Czesław Miłosz were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978 and 1980 respectively. The former, a Polish Jew, fought to preserve his language, Yiddish, by writing numerous stories and novels(Le Charlatan, Le Golem, La Famille Moskat, Shosha, etc.) to be discovered in French. The latter, mainly translated by Fayard(L'Abécédaire, Chroniques, L'Immoralité de l'art, etc.), has persistently questioned political oppression. Literature never ceased to question the world until 1989, when the time for independence finally arrived.
Still extremely prolific, literature remains realistic and tackles social issues, but now also allows itself to flirt with the imaginary, whether with noir or science-fiction novels. Two women - Wisława Szymborska(De la mort sans exagérer, Gallimard) and Olga Tokarczuk(Sur les ossements des morts, Libretto; Les Livres de Jakob, Le Livre de Poche) - are the best representatives of these two trends: in 1996 and 2018, the Swedish Academy alternately praised the "ironic precision" of one and the "narrative imagination" of the other. In the thriller department, we should also mention Zygmunt Miłoszewski published by Fleuve(Inestimable, Te souviendras-tu de demain? inavouable) or Wojciech Chmielarz, whose novels have been translated by the fine Agullo publishing house(Pyromane, La Ferme aux poupées, La Cité des rêves, Les Ombres), while in the graphic novels section, L'Histoire de la bande dessinée polonaise (PLG publishing house, 2019) gives an idea of the abundance of quality authors. Finally, it would be impossible to conclude this panorama without paying tribute to the outstanding work of Noir sur Blanc Editions, who are just as committed to giving a voice in French to contemporary writers (Szczepan Twardoch, Dorota Masłowska, Hanna Krall, Martyna Bunda, etc.) as they are to safeguarding the works in the collection La Bibliothèque de Dimitri.
