Stefan Kisielewski on Music and Aesthetics

Stefan Kisielewski on Music and Aesthetics

Translated with an Introduction and notes by Marek Soszyński

Translation, Introduction and Endnotes © Copyright Marek Soszyński 1998 2022

All rights reserved.

Contents

Note to the 2022 Edition

Note to the Original 1998 Edition

Acknowledgements

Introduction — Stefan Kisielewski

1. Is Music Unhumanistic? (1948/1957)

2. A Dialogue About Music (1948)

3. Does Formalism Exist in Music? (1948)

4. On Private But Much-loved Depravity (1950)

5. The Matter of the Loudspeaker (c. 1950)

6. On Feeling (1952)

7. On the Debussian Revolution (c. 1952)

8. Jazz’s Prospects (1957)

9. About My Composing and Thinking (1964)

10. Is Music Unhumanistic? (1967)

11. Stanisław Moniuszko 1819-1872

12. Culture in the Marketplace (1991)

Note to the 2022 Edition

This book was originally completed in April 1998 when only a handful of copies were privately printed and distributed. Today, after nearly a quarter of a century untouched, I am issuing it in ebook form. It is more or less in its 1990s state though with several minor edits and a few updates, not to mention extensive re-formatting. However, the completely outdated bibliographies have been omitted, there being plenty of original references in the endnotes.

Even after all this time, I believe this book to be still the most substantial body of translations of Stefan Kisielewski’s writings into English — which I find an astonishing shame.

Marek Soszyński MPhil

Birmingham, England

December 2022

Note to the Original 1998 Edition

The present book contains the translator's personal selection of twelve of Stefan Kisielewski’s essays, feuilletons or other items broadly on the topics of music or musical aesthetics, translated into English for the first time. They cover the period 1948-1991 and are arranged in roughly chronological order; unfortunately the exact details of first publication of some of the pieces are unknown or given differently by various sources. Included are some of his most serious and influential pieces, but there are also those that are simply ‘typical Kisielewski’ — witty and contentious.

All endnotes are by the translator; they assume a meagre or eclectic knowledge of Polish history and culture on the part of the reader, but do not detail every last person or work. Where the title of a book or composition, etc., has been translated into English in the main body of the text, it is usually the subject of an endnote giving the originial Polish. All Polish text is in italics; translations into English, as in the case of titles, follow in brackets.

It is not the task of the present book to explain Polish history or culture and detail all the personalities involved; there are other works that attempt this.[*] Notwithstanding, it is hoped that the book wil be reasonably self-sufficient and enjoyable even to readers who have little previous knowledge of Polish matters.

[*] Works in English that make the attempt are: Davies, N. A History of Poland 2 vols (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1982); and Klimaszewski, B. (ed.) An Outline History of Polish Culture (Interpress, Warszawa 1984).

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my grateful thanks to the Leverhulme Trust for funding my work on Stefan Kisielewski; to professor Maria Gołaszewska (formerly Head of the Aesthetics Department at the Jagiellonian University) for her hospitality; to Krystyna Kisielewska-Sławińska and Jerzy Kisielewski (Stefan Kisielewski’s surviving children and coheirs) for premission to publish the present material; and to Dr Urszula Wieczorek and the novelist Warren Clarke for checking the text. I should also like to acknowledge the support of my father Jan Soszyński.

Naturally, all the few, several, or indeed very many, outright mistakes as well as subtle infelicities that must remain are entirely my own doing. But it is Dr Wieczorek that is to blame for introducing me to the possibility of translating in the first place; that is the heavy responsibility she has to bear.

Marek Soszyński BSc

Department of Aesthetics, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland

Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, UK

23 April 1998

Introduction — Stefan Kisielewski

Stefan Kisielewski (1911-1991), popularly known as ‘Kisiel’, was a prolific writer, political pundit and composer, and more or less the unofficial ‘Official Dissident’ in post-World War Two communist Poland.[1] Independent-minded, often deliberately contrary or provocative, staunchly and openly anti-Marxist, but a patriot of the sort who would never want to emigrate, Kisielewski had a varied and chequered career. The poet and Nobel Prize winner Czesław Miłosz wrote that he ‘was one of the most colorful personalities of the first two postwar decades’; whose ‘humorous pen and disarming buffoonery [...] masked a penetrating mind’.[2] The country’s last communist ruler, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, called him a ‘titan of industry’ and a ‘Renaissance intellect’;[3] detractors agreed, but claimed either that it was spread too thinly across his many interests or that it was wasted and dissipated in the argumentative discussions (fuelled by his insatiable newspaper reading) in which he loved to engage — with friend and foe alike. And there were innumerable friends and foes. Kisielewski seemed to know everyone — generals, writers, diplomats, clerics, musicians, politicians — and have contacts everywhere.

As a writer, Kisielewski made his reputation primarily by writing more than two thousand feuilletons or ‘columns’ under the pen name of ‘Kisiel’ for the influential Catholic-sponsored weekly Tygodnik Powszechny [‘General Weekly’ or ‘Everybody’s Weekly’] based in Cracow (Kraków). Naturally, these feuilletons were carefully, though not always effectively, censored by the communist authorities.[4] (The newspaper had a restricted print run itself and was compulsorily liquidated for a time in the mid-fifties.) They were eagerly read and widely talked about because by dint of clever penmanship, carefully negotiating the fine line between censorship and self-censorship, something always got through — unless they were banned altogether, as some were. In this regard he was inspired by the French journalist Henri Rochefort (1830-1913) who opposed the powers-that-be (namely, Napoleon III) by writing ironically and mockingly; somehow Kisielewski got away with this in the Peoples’ Republic of Poland longer than most and more than anyone — he was even said to have had the freest pen in the Eastern Bloc.

That is far from implying that he led a charmed life. When in 1968, at the time of the ‘Prague Spring’ in Czechoslovakia and violent student demonstrations in Poland, he spoke out against the censorship and repression of others’ works and talked of ‘dictatorship by blockheads’, he was not long afterwards expertly beaten up in the street and then effectively banned (not for the first time) from appearing — or even being mentioned — in the media. Indeed, the extent of his published output, trips abroad, membership of writers’ and musicians’ associations, and whether his home was bugged, etc., clearly reflected how repressive or liberal generally the Polish regime was being at any particular time.

Of his twelve or so novels most could be published only in Polish émigré circles abroad, though his very first book, the partly autobiographical Conspiracy,[5] written during the Second World War, offended not the Communists but his Catholic employers, who accordingly suspended him from their newspaper for three months. His other novels included thrillers, such as Adventure in Warsaw,[6] two comedies of manners (under the name of Teodor Klon) and, starting in 1967 with Seen from Above, an influential series of works (under the name of Tomasz Staliński) that were set against the background of the contemporary Polish political scene.[7]

He also wrote much else: for example, sombre short stories, and travel pieces somewhat in the style of George Mikes;[8] while From the Literary Junk Heap was a collection of his literary essays and reviews (some of which had originally appeared under yet another alias, Julia Hołyńska).[9] There were also innumerable music reviews and programme notes, etc., and three monographs concerning musicians: Richard Strauss, Grażyna Bacewicz, and Zbigniew Drzewiecki.[10]

At the same time there was his political career. Between 1957 and 1965, as part of the small, opposition Catholic Znak grouping, he served two terms as an outspoken member of the Polish parliament (Sejm).[11] Economics and business were his main interest there — he used to say that he held no political opinions, only economic ones. In 1979 his most famous tract, What is the Basis of Socialism?, which was deeply critical of communist economics, first began to appear in the Polish underground press.[12] In his further writings he coupled a dislike for socialism, even Western democratic socialism, with a recognition of the realities of Poland’s economy and its geopolitical situation, specifically the proximity of the Soviet Union.

He spent his later years travelling extensively all over the world, meeting expatriate communities in particular, and having discussions with members of Radio Free Europe, the Polish government-in-exile, etc. (He had actually first visited England in the autumn of 1957 and the USA in 1975.) He lived to see, though did not predict, the downfall of the communist empire and of the Marxist economy he derided and, what gave him some pleasure, the emergence of Poland’s first capitalists. (The communists had been in sole power in Poland from at least 1948 to 1989; Lech Wałęsa, of Solidarity (Solidarność) fame, was sworn in as President on 22 December 1990.) From the pages of the secular, neo-liberal weekly Wprost, Kisielewski was able to encourage the new democratic Poland to engage in what he had long supported — very laissez faire, free market policies.

However, Kisielewski had another career, also one he chose for himself, but which never quite blossomed. He was born in Warsaw (Warszawa), 7 March 1911, into a family with no musical traditions. His father, Zygmunt Kisielewski (1882-1942), was a writer and eminent radio broadcaster; his uncle, Jan August Kisielewski (1876-1918), a playwright. So it came as a slight surprise to all concerned that the young Stefan enrolled at Warsaw Conservatoire in 1927. There he studied music theory and composition (under Kazimierz Sikorski) and piano (under Jerzy Lefeld), and befriended the composers Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994) and Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991); he also attended lectures in Polish philology and philosophy, including those of Władysław Tatarkiewicz (1886-1980) and Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886-1981), at Warsaw University. After graduating, he went to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger, but had only one lesson with her before she left for America. Unable to study with Igor Stravinsky, either, he eventually returned to Poland in February 1939 to take up the post of music reviewer for Polish Radio.

He spent World War Two eking out a living, giving music lessons and playing pianos in cafes, etc., and taking part in various underground resistance activities. He was wounded during the Warsaw Uprising (August 1944) which was when he lost nearly all the scores of his compositions as well as his various writings, despite burying them for safekeeping.

After the war, he left utterly devastated Warsaw for the almost unscathed historic southern city of Cracow, where he was helped by Czesław Miłosz (whom he had known since 1937). In Cracow he found a refuge for his free