The artist Marek Zulawski, translation & Polish-British culture

Hi,

This week, a short excerpt from my father's autobiography about his feelings upon marrying my mother. 

Marek was a strange mix of religious and sinner - often very Catholic and other times completely areligious, sometimes pontificating on morality, other times acting like a total scoundrel. 

So yes, he was human, essentially. 

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A fear of crucifixes

Paintings of Christ by Marek Zulawski during the 2023 retrospective show in Toruń, photo by Iwona Muszytowska-Rzeszotek via radiopik.pl

So, once again, I'm a married man. This time, even in the eyes of the church.

I have to admit, I did everything I could to avoid the obligatory confession that comes with a Catholic wedding. I was authentically afraid. Thankfully, my embarrassment was respected because when I told a Polish priest who I didn’t know in Devon that this would be a pre-wedding confession, he treated me very gently and didn’t ask any questions that might require complicated explanations. 

You, Maria, were also deeply moved. I could see it. Later, you even hung a silver crucifix over our bed, one you'd found in one of my drawers, full of an improbable mix of exhibition catalogues, letters and outdated documents. But after a couple of days, the crucifix disappeared from the wall, and I don’t know where you hid it. 

Clearly, you noticed how my body contorted upon seeing it, like the Devil's does from holy water.  

Where I got that crucifix, I can’t remember. I received it as a present years ago, but I no longer know from whom. What I do know is that I immediately hid it deep somewhere, deep enough so I couldn’t find it.

That symbol of terrible suffering speaks to me just a little too strongly. Put simply, it paralyses me. How could I experience joy — well, physical pleasure — beneath that image of torture?  

The painter Józek Herman, the son of a Jewish Hasid and a very old friend of mine, confessed to me how as a young boy he dared to enter a Christian church for the first time in his life. Inside, he trembled at the sight of a huge sculpture depicting a dying man nailed to a cross. 

“It was a shocking experience,” he said. “That symbol still won’t leave me in peace. Like Brecht’s Mother Courage. These two symbols of tormented humanity... Christ on the cross, and a mother pushing a cart of meagre bundles, a refugee fleeing from a devastated land to every geographical latitude — it's always the same, fleeing from disgrace, fire, war and death…”  

Fleeing — precisely.  

The similarity between these two symbols is only superficial. Herman was deeply mistaken. Christ did not flee. On the contrary — he consciously chose suffering to fulfil the prophecies and by dying on the cross, atone for original sin. His suffering was voluntary and thus not tragic in the Greek sense of the word. It was not a struggle with fate. It was the fulfilment of a mission.  

On the other hand, the suffering of Mother Courage is a suffering imposed by fate, one she bravely fights against. Do you see, Maria, this enormous difference? The ability to discern fundamental differences, which the Hindus call the virtue of discrimination, is one of the most important traits of an enlightened mind.  

But we’re not talking about Buddhist virtues — we’re talking about our wedding. Your long dress almost swept the floor, but it was cheekily high-slit on one side. With every step, you made it clear that you possessed not just a soul, but also a body.  

We walked away from the altar, down the central nave, close together. In the photographs, it’s clear as day that we were both tall and elegant. I could feel everybody's eyes on us. I held you tightly by the arm.

I played my role well…

Cover of the play Mother Courage, 1964 Oxford University Press edition

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Criminals love the art market

If you've watched the barmy Christopher Nolan thriller Tenet, you may remember a lot of key scenes take place in an art warehouse kept outside of international tax laws. These are real places. But this is not the only thing about the art market that is dodgy as hell.

In the Whale Hunting podcast's fascinating 30-minute discussion with Tess Davis, executive director at the Antiquities Coalition, you can hear why the art market is basically full of money laundering for pariah states, terrorist organisations and criminals, and it's common knowledge for all the institutions involved. 

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That's all for this week. Many thanks for reading. If you want to support the newsletter, please forward it to a friend or donate here.

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / TranslatePolishMemoirs.com / Other stuff

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