Author of rustic or existential literature? Wiesław Myśliwski cannot to be piegeonholed, his prose combines the raw language of a countryside reality with deep, universal reflection.

Another instalment in the regular cycle showing the influence of literature on the imagination of filmmakers. In previous years, the Two Riversides audience saw movie adaptations of Bohumil Hrabal’s works by Jiří Menzel, as well as a review of Italian films based on the prose by Sicilian Leonardo Sciscia. This year, the hero is a Polish writer.

He was born in 1932 in Dwikozy near Sandomierz. He graduated from Polish studies at the Catholic University in Lublin. He wrote his debut novel “The naked garden” in 1967. Readers were surprised by Myśliwski’s mature writing and the portrait of a father presented by a son, unique in literature and full of love. The Palace” (1970) is Myśliwski’s most linguistically extravagant book. A film adaptation was made 10 years later by Tadeusz Junak. The protagonist is the villager Jakub, who finds himself inside a lord’s empty palace during the war. He lets his imagination run wild and tries out being different people; he becomes a count from a portrait. As the writer underlines, the poetic “Palace,” rich in symbols, arises “from rampant folk imagination, because its boundaries are completely unbridled. The entire realm of folk superstition, deemed sheer ignorance by rationalists, is often nothing less than a realm of incredible poetry, the frenzy of human imagination. Thus I believe that this culture holds great inspiration.”

Myśliwski’s opus magnum (adapted to film by Ryszard Ber in 1995), ”One stone upon another,” (1984) is told differently. The language here is simpler and raw, more realistic, although strongly metaphorical as well. The narrator and protagonist, the peasant Szymon Pietruszka, was once a carouser and merry spendthrift; now he wishes to build a family grave. The chatty, anegdote-rich monologue of Szymek gives a detailed account of the fall of a village that is losing the clash with modernity. The road that connects both sides of the village and constitues the centre of the world to its inhabitants is now filled with cars speeding upon the asphalt.

“Horizon” (1996) and “Treatise on peeling beans” (2006) won the writer two Nike Awards. The first novel includes the most autobiographical elements. Piotr, the narrator, begins with the description of an old photograph, which becomes  an impulse to bring back memories of childhood and youth. The work’s main topic is the working of memory, difficult to grasp and inherently fragmentary. “Treatise on peeling beans”, on the other hand, includes perhaps the fullest presentation of Myśliwski’s life philosophy. The title is a reference to a traditional countryside activity, during which one talked about both trivial and important subjects.

Wiesław Myśliwski is also wrote the plays “The Thief” (1973), “The Steward” (1978), “The Tree” (1988), and “Requiem for the hostess”. “The Steward” takes place during the chaos of the final days of the second world war, and depicts social changes connected with the agricultural reform. Wojciech Marczewski adapted the play to film in 1979.