Antoni Libera

(b. 1949) – a writer, translator and expert on the work of Samuel Beckett, whose plays he has staged in Poland and abroad.

Antoni Libera made his debut in 1969 with an article on Jerzy Andrzejewski’s novel ‘Miazga’ (Pulp). After that, he began translating. In 1972, he published fragments of Samuel Beckett’s prose in Twórczość. Over time, he came to translate all of Beckett’s dramas, and also some of his prose and essays. In 1984, he became a member of the Polish Translators’ Association and the American Samuel Beckett Society. He has been a member of the Polish Writers’ Association since 1989.

Libera is also the author of Madame, published in 1998. His novel debut was considered a great literary event, the book became an overnight bestseller, catching the attention of foreign publishers as well. Antoni Libera’s novel, which was polished over many years, is intricately crafted, full of literary allusions, paraphrases, sophisticated concepts and subtleties. The action is set in the grim reality of communist Poland in the late 1960s. The narrator speaks of his years of study and his fascination for an older, beautiful and mysterious woman who taught him French (the Madame of the title). The romance plot, though it saturates the work, unfolds with restraint. It is hard to decide if the teenage protagonist is in love with his teacher or just admires her as a creature from a ‘better world’, smelling of French perfumes, distinguished, wonderfully educated, utterly charming. Madame is also, at least in part, a political novel, settling the score with the communist past.

Libera has also published the quasi-autobiographical ‘Błogosławieństwo Becketta i inne wyznania literackie’ (Beckett’s Blessing and Other Literary Confessions) and ‘Godot i jego cień’ (Godot and His Shadow). The former is a collection of texts that pay testimony to the author’s literary passions and interests. He analyses mass culture phenomena and speaks up on contemporary history; his tales are always colourful and compelling. Godot and His Shadow is, in turn, an intellectual autobiography, and also the story of an enchantment, the tale of a ‘voluntary duty’ toward a writer whose work Libera has spent years exploring – Samuel Beckett.

As a translator, Libera has also rendered works by Oscar Wilde, William Shakespeare and Jean Baptiste Racine. He has also translated the tragedies of Sophocles. He has been tied to the theatre for years, as the author of adaptations, a director, and a translator of opera libretti.

His own texts have been adapted for the stage and the radio on many occasions.

Antoni Libera has received the Order of the White Eagle (2022), and has been given the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. In 2010, he was given the Silver, and in 2018 the Gold Gloria Artis Medal for Service to Culture. He has also been honoured with the French L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2015).

Madame was nominated for the Nike Literary Award in 1999; Godot and His Shadow was a finalist for the Angelus Central European Literary Award (2010) and Switzerland’s Jan Michalski Literary Award.