Michał Głowiński

(1934-2023) – theorist and historian of literature, literary critic, writer.

Głowiński had Jewish origins; at the start of World War II he and his family were taken to the ghetto in Pruszków, and after it was liquidated – to the Warsaw ghetto. He and his mother escaped it in 1943, thanks to Irena Sendlerowa’s team. After subsequent stays in orphanages and monasteries in Radziwiłłów, Otwock, Czersk and Warsaw he found himself at the care home of the Sister Servants of Immaculate Conception in Turkowice near Hrubieszów; he recalls that time in his book “Czarne sezony” (The Black Seasons). After the war, he returned to Pruszków, where he finished school. In 1951 he began a course in Polish studies at the University of Warsaw, and after graduating he started academic work there. In 1958 he became a junior lecturer at the Institute of Literary Studies (IBL) of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

In 1961, he received his doctorate in liberal arts (“Poetyka Tuwima a polska tradycja literacka” – Tuwim’s Poetics and the Polish Literary Tradition), in 1967 he habilitated with the thesis “Cykl studiów z historii i teorii polskiej powieści” (A Cycle of Studies in the History and Theory of the Polish Novel), in 1969 he became an associate professor, in 1976 – a professor, and in 1986 – a full professor. He was a member of the Polish Writers’ Union (1963-1983), a member of the editorial committee of “Pamiętnik Literacki”, director of the Department of Historical Poetics at the IBL (1971-1991), the head of the editorial committee of the “Rozprawy Literackie” book series published by the Committee on Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, a member of the editorial board of IBL’s publication “Literary Studies in Poland”, a member of the Committee on Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (since 1978), a co-founder and member of the Society for Academic Courses (1978-1981), a member of the Polish Writers’ Association. From 1973 to 1974 he lectured at the University of Amsterdam. On 20^th August 1980 he signed a letter from intellectuals (the so-called “Apel 64” – the 64 Appeal) to the Polish People’s Republic authorities to start talks with the striking workers of the Gdańsk shipyard. He was also active in the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity” at the IBL. In the years 1981-2006 he was part of the academic board of the IBL, including as its head. In 2004 he organised the Research Group “Literature and Contexts” at IBL, which he ran until 2007.

His main field of research was theory of literature and history of 20^th century literature. He has written many academic works which inspired whole generations of Polish studies specialists. His academic interests were very extensive – they included history and theory of narrative forms (“Powieść młodopolska” – The Novel of Young Poland), lyrical language (“Zaświat przedstawiony. Szkice o poezji Bolesława Leśmiana” – The Represented Underworld. Sketches on the poetry of Bolesław Leśmian) or literary communication (“Style odbioru” – Styles of Reception). His analyses of the linguistic mechanisms in communist-era propaganda (for example “Nowomowa po polsku” – Newspeak in Polish) are an important part of his oeuvre. He also edited many works of Polish literature, over a dozen anthologies and thesis collections (often together with Janusz Sławiński), and was the co-author and editor of dictionaries and lexicons, including “Słownik terminów literackich” (The Dictionary of Literary Terms). He published his studies, articles and reviews in periodicals such as “Życie Literackie”, “Twórczość”, “Literatura”, “Teksty”, “Almanach Humanistyczny”, “Teksty Drugie” (with which he collaborated on a permanent basis), “Dekada Literacka”, “Akcent”, “Wielogłos”, “Tekstualia”, and many others, as well as in newspapers like “Tygodnik Powszechny” or “Gazeta Wyborcza”.

From the end of the 1990s he started to focus mostly on writing memoir-adjacent prose concerning the history of Polish Jews (The Black Seasons, “Magdalenka z razowego chleba” – Brown Bread Madeleine, “Historia jednej topoli” – The Story of One Poplar Tree, “Kładka nad czasem. Obrazy z Miasteczka” – A Footbridge over Time. Images from the Town). His prose is largely autobiographical, but also reveals a pattern of fate shared by a whole generation. It is a poignant testimony of a time when “history let off the chain” raged: the occupation years which he miraculously survived as a child, and then the totalitarianism of the Stalinist era of his adolescence. But anyone claiming that this prose contains only history and politics would be wrong. Głowiński is preoccupied mostly with experiences which are private, even intimate; he recalls the years of childhood and youth, depicts people and places that are close to him, makes footnotes to the family saga which had no chance of coming into being. The reason for this approach is – as the writer notes in The Story of One Poplar Tree – that “One cannot write a family saga which would be a story about a certain world’s disappearance, about its physical end”. At the same time, he tries to preserve the Town – a place at the centre of his private universe – in a story, while also contemplating the mechanisms of memory and methods of its literary representation.

Many of his books and treatises have been translated, both in standalone volumes and in scientific journals and collections. He also published scholarly articles in foreign languages.

He received honorary doctorates from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (2000), the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2001), the University of Opole (2003), and the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz (2018). In 1986 he received the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Prize in New York. He was also awarded the Kazimierz Wyka Award for his critical writings (2002), the Herder Prize for lifetime academic achievement (2004), the J. Parandowski Polish PEN Club literary prize (2008), the J. Tuwim Łódź Literary Prize (2016). He also received the Meritorious Activist of Culture badge, the gold Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture (2007) and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2013).