The artist Marek Zulawski, translation & Polish-British culture

Hi,

I'm travelling to a Spanish-speaking country in a few days, so I thought I'd check my father's autobiography for any traces of Spanish. It turns out my parents visited Spain in 1977. Below are my father's recollections.

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"Except for Mallorca, which is rather unremarkable"

Drawing from Spain by Marek Zulawski, 1958, UMK collection in Toruń

This year, in the summer of 1977, Marylka and I are going to Spain and Portugal. I haven’t been to Spain for quite some time — except for Mallorca, which is rather unremarkable. 

My memories of it arrange themselves in strange layers... Could it be a hierarchy of importance? 

The white wall of a church covered from top to bottom with rusty chains and instruments of torture. Black bulls grazing in a meadow covered with yellow flowers. People dressed in black — not smiling. Women measuring you from head to toe when you try to speak to them. Haughty arrogance and cruelty. Yes, cruelty. 

I see a terribly emaciated dog in my memories, a pointer with sagging teats, which I need to mention first. Drool drips from her jaws as she watches us eat a ham sandwich in the park. She follows every movement of our hands with hungry eyes, but despite her hunger, she doesn’t dare come near, she fears being kicked. And when I raise my hand to throw her a piece of bread, she jumps back, sure that it’s a rock aimed to strike her tired ribs. Woe to the inhabitants of this country should the soul of even a single dog or cat appear on Judgment Day...

El Escorial is a bit too stiff — full of identical white royal tombs. Toledo is menacing and cloudy above the red canyon of the Ebro River, which surrounds the entire city in a rocky loop. In the house of El Greco, a wonderful painting showing a plan of Toledo and a naked youth in its landscape. St. Luke vibrates out of the cathedral with cold colouring, painted imprecisely, looking cross-eyed into the far distance somewhere... And, of course, the celestial Annunciation in the Prado — this storm of wings and clouds, among which the Holy Spirit swoops diagonally like a hawk toward the head of the Virgin Mary — her basket exploding with white linens, the Archangel Gabriel descending on a cloud like a hovercraft — and higher up in this absurd composition, an angelic orchestra nestles in the clouds with a lute and bass viola. 

Oh yes, El Greco, fascinating in his distortions often caused by poor drawing, inconsistent in his use of warm and cold colours, and thus in operating the very alphabet of painting — El Greco, the only one of the Spanish masters of the Golden Age who transcends the obligatory conventions of his time and enters the realm of revelation.

In Spain, I've made more sketches for later use in paintings than anywhere else. The people there are full of character, human figures have definition. They are almost symbolic and, in their way, magnificent. Especially in Castile.

A man harnessed to a two-wheeled cart becomes a symbol of endurance, like Mutter Courage. A peasant following a donkey with a woman and child on its back, passing the window of our little hotel every evening on their way back from the fields — a re-enactment of the biblical Flight into Egypt.

And an old woman dressed in ceremonial black who looks like the embodiment of Spain itself.

Drawing of a Spanish woman by Marek Zulawski, 1958, UMK collection in Toruń

That's it for this week - I'm rushing off to make the next newsletter and schedule that too. I'll still be away in two weeks but don't want to break the chain of your fortnightly dose of translation and rambling 🤓

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Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / TranslatePolishMemoirs.com / Other stuff

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