The guest of the second event in the “Siberian Spirit” series will be Professor Włodzimierz Bolecki, an outstanding scholar of the works of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński.

Together with our guest, we will attempt to explore the nature of the “otherness” of Sybir and its defining features, among which – from the perspective of a Polish deportee to Siberia – particular attention is paid to the fluid boundaries between camp reality and Siberian “normality.” The point of reference for the discussion will be Herling-Grudziński’s work, especially A World Apart.

About this extraordinary testimony of a Gulag prisoner – and at the same time a remarkable literary work – Professor Bolecki wrote: “These are stories of unimaginable brutality and degradation, but also of a heroic search for hope and freedom, love and friendship – feelings the camp sought to destroy entirely.”

Date: 13 May 2022, 5:00 p.m. – Live broadcast on the Sybir Memorial Museum’s Facebook page.

Włodzimierz Bolecki is a literary historian and literary theorist, Professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Vice-President of the Foundation for Polish Science. He has devoted numerous books to the life and works of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński. He also conducted extensive and compelling conversations with the author of A World Apart, later published as Conversations in Dragonea (1997) and Conversations in Naples (2000).

Another writer of particular importance to Professor Bolecki is Józef Mackiewicz, to whom he devoted several scholarly works, most notably the monograph The Birdman of Vilnius (1991; expanded second edition 2007). His academic output also includes publications on the works of Bruno Schulz, Czesław Miłosz and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.