Wiesław Helak

(b. 1948) – prose writer, screenwriter, director.

He graduated from the Forestry Department at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences and the Direction Department at the Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź. Influenced by his education, he arranges images in his novels in a way reminiscent of film editing.

His oeuvre is inspired by the history of Poland’s Eastern Borderlands, the fates of Poles deported to Siberia and of Polish landed gentry elites; Helak attempts to recover and revive the ethos of that social class.

This happens in his novel “Nad Zbruczem” (On the Banks of Zbruch), which brought him renown. According to Krzysztof Masłoń, what Helak does is tell the story of a Poland which did not exist, or existed only in the memories and dreams of our ancestors, and which they defended from Russian and later Soviet violence, from the terror of Germanisation and denaturalization. The protagonist – artist Konstanty Franciszek, whose father fought in the January Uprising – escapes the parochial provinces to get a taste of life in fashionable Vienna. The author describes the vicissitudes of his life and how he renounces his national identity. Ultimately, however, the protagonist has a change of heart and takes up the fight with the Moskal. He finds himself at River Dniester, where he encounters the locals whose lives were ruptured by the Bolshevik revolution.

“Góra Tabor” (Mount Tabor) is a continuation of that novel; it transports the reader to interwar Poland and its tragic end. Like before, Helak mentions motifs related to Polish Borderlands, but this time he also writes about an event which divided Poles for generations: Józef Piłsudski’s May Coup. The protagonist and former legionary, Janio, takes the government’s side in 1926. He shoots and he kills. This choice affects the rest of his life.

We return to it in the author’s next book: “W stronę Seretu” (Towards Seret). Set in the times of Polish People’s Republic, it is a story about the country’s elites being destroyed by the communists. The author shows Stalinist Poland from the perspective of Janio, who is now an enemy to communism and to communists. Helak also describes the lives of Janio’s two brothers: a high-ranking party official and an artisan passionate about motoring. Music also plays an important part in the novel. For the protagonist, music is something more than just an escape from reality. The artistry of Bach and Chopin, for him, is a sort of thread connecting people to God.

“Scenariusze syberyjskie” (The Siberian Scenarios) came into being as Helak followed the tracks of Polish exiles. He describes stories of three Poles for whom tsarist exile opened new life chapters. Helak’s prose makes us realise how little we know about the fates of our compatriots in foreign lands, and the painstaking recreation of social and ethnographic realities allows us to close that gap.

Wiesław Helak is a director and screenwriter of feature films such as “Epizod” (The Episode), “Własna wina” (One’s Own Fault), “Coś się kończy” (Something Ends), “Opowieść Harleya” (Harley’s Story) and “Złodziej” (The Thief).

His novel On the Banks of Zbruch received the 2017 Józef Mackiewicz Literary Award and the 2018 Identitas Award for best prose.