Hi there,

Yes, it's your fortnightly dose of Polish-British stuff with a Zulawski angle.

The Festival of Britain continued...

If you enjoyed the recent blog post about the London Transport Museum find and the Festival of Britain, you may be interested to see that the story was picked up by the London-based Polish weekly Tydzień Polski. They even ask readers to get in touch if they have any memories or photos or anything else related to the Festival of Britain. Polish readers can see the article below:

The article mentions other Poles involved in the Festival of Britain, mostly engineers and architects who worked on the buildings erected for the South Bank exhibition. It mentions only a couple other artists: Royal favourite Feliks Topolski, who also had a mural (now held at the National Archives in Kew), and Jerzy (George) Him & Jan Lewitt who designed a big surreal clock for Guinness that went on display in the Battersea Park section before being recreated by the drinks company in other places for many years to come.

You can see a photo of Lewitt and Him with their clock here.

Driving around France

Last week, my cousin Kamil, his wife Jenn and their daughter set off on a three-month road trip around Europe. Having put their home on Airbnb to fund their shenanigans, this is the first of three planned trips around the globe, all in aid of making the most of their time with little Chloe before she starts attending school.

It's a lovely idea that obviously fills everybody who hears it wild with jealousy. I wish my unemployed brethren the time of their lives! You can follow their trip on Instagram here.

As they drive through France during the hot months of June, I was reminded of a parallel journey taken by my father Marek in June 74 years ago.

Here are his recollections, translated from his autobiography Study for a Self-Portrait, along with a drawing from the road:

June 1949. By car with Halinka and Colin across the whole of France from north to south.

Colin is Colahan, my good friend and a very skilful painter. An Irishman who has lived most of his life in Paris, he's an expert in music and literature, filled with an unbridled sense of humour and intelligence - a pocket version of Bernard Shaw.

So there's Calais, Abbeville, Paris, Fontainebleau, Sens, Auxerre, Avallon, Maçon, Lyon, Vienne, Montélimar, Orange, Avignon dominated by the huge sunlit walls of the papal palace, Saint Rémy with its black entanglements of cypresses leaning from the mistral winds, parched earth, and people in van-Gogh blue denim, and finally Les Baux, a ghostly eagle's nest - extinct.

In the Middle Ages, it was the populous Provençal capital, the seat of a powerful feudal family founded in the 11th century by Hugo des Baux, who was descended from no less than Balthazar, one of the Three Kings. In the 13th century, his descendants' domains included 72 feudal castles and a large chunk of the country. From its city walls built on top of a high mountain, you can see the whole world for scores of kilometres all around. No one could approach the city unnoticed. This seat of the Huguenots was in open war with the popes of Avignon, and survived many sieges. As it became increasingly safer, people gradually descended into the valleys and settled near the water. Because there was never any water up there. Everyone had to carry water up from a pit by donkey or on their own back. But the final blow to the city came from Cardinal Richelieu for its siding with Gaston of Orléans, brother and bitter enemy of Louis XIII. Richelieu positioned his artillery on the other peak of the mountain and on July 13th 1613, felled the city completely and utterly.

Nobody lives there today. A dry wind blows through its empty streets. From a distance, it is impossible to distinguish the houses from the rocks. Both are overgrown with sharp juniper, while tall grass nestles in the cracks of the demolished walls. In this wonderful dry climate, however, some houses are still standing, seemingly untouched.

You could live in many of them. Your footsteps thump across the crooked cobblestones and startle the lizards lounging in the sun. The splendid stairs lead nowhere. Renaissance windows and their richly carved frames are left glassless. On one you can read the inscription "Post tenebras lux, 1571", engraved with exquisite Roman lettering.

The ancient silence of the vineyards - red earth dotted with clumps of grey green. Against a pale sky there stands Mont St. Victor. A blue space looking like a huge bowl filled to the brim with Cézanne...

Then exquisite Romanesque Arles, Aix-en-Provence steaming with the smell of fruit, and then the vast jaw-dropping Marseille and fishing-ship-filled Cassis, where Colin's wife Ursula and their daughter are waiting.

And everywhere along the way, churches and monasteries covered with medieval frescoes. Byzantine paintings impress me the most. Byzantine is the only style one can paint God in...

I feel like my father was a less fun travel companion than little Chloe, but maybe he made meditations on history and the passing of empires delightful in person.

Also, Wikipedia says that today there are around 300 people living in Les Baux, so it's not a ghost town anymore. Perhaps some are there to service tourists - with today's cheap flights, I'm sure the town gets a few more visitors now than just after World War II.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading. If you liked it, and think someone you know might like it too, just forward them this email and they can sign up using the Subscribe button at the bottom. Merci!

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Other stuff

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