The year 2021 was established by the Sejm and the Senate of the Republic of Poland as the Year of Cyprian Kamil Norwid on the occasion of the bicentenary of his birth. On this occasion, the Polish community abroad organizes various cultural events related to the figure and work of this outstanding Pole.
Source: National Digital Library Polona
It is a good time to present the figure of a brilliant poet, prose writer, playwright, sculptor, painter and cartoonist, who was rediscovered during the Young Poland period and became a symbol of an eternal wanderer-emigrant, who despite longing for Poland, has never returned to his homeland.
Cyprian Norwid, or actually Cyprian Ksawery Gerard Walenty Norwid, of the Topór (the Hatchet) coat-of-arms, was born on September 24, 1821 in Mazovia, in the Zdzieborski-Norwid manor in the town of Laskowo-Głuchy. The commonly used middle name, Kamil, was adopted by Norwid during his confirmation in 1845. This name referred to the Roman leader Marcus Furius Camillus.
The period around his birth was difficult for the Poles. The Polish lands were then under the rule of three foreign powers (Prussia, Austria and Russia), and the survival of the Polish nation was under severe threat.
Orphaned by his mother at the age of four, later brought up with his siblings mainly by his grandmother (because the father who re-married was very busy and was not very interested in children), Cyprian Kamil Norwid did not even graduate from the gymnasium (high school) at that time. He obtained further knowledge while traveling around Europe.
Endowed with outstanding literary and artistic talent, he made his debut as a poet in 1840, and in 1842, hoping for further success and continued education, he left Warsaw for Western Europe.
He visited Dresden, Marienbad, Nuremberg, Munich (in 1842-1843 he studied art there), and Venice (where he also studied). In the years 1843-1845 he stayed in Florence, where he studied sculpture in the studio of Luigi Pampaloni. He also visited Naples and Rome.
Not always understood and often underestimated during his lifetime, he had a difficult life, full of worries and shortcomings. A sad childhood, unfinished education, a disappointed great love for the beautiful married woman Maria Kalergis whom he met in 1844 in Italy, diseases, poverty and eternal wandering around the world, as well as an indifferent approach to his work by his contemporaries, these are the reasons why Cyprian K. Norwid is considered to be a tragic figure.
Maria Kalergis, a great unfulfilled love of Norwid's (Anna Chamiec, after the watercolor by Dellessert, Frederic Chopin Museum in Warsaw)
In Berlin, where in the years 1845-46 he undertook artistic, philosophical and literary studies, he ended up in a Prussian prison. It was a revenge of the partitioning powers for rejecting the proposal of the Russian intelligence services to report on Polish emigration circles. Although he stayed in prison for a relatively short time, only 6 weeks, while sleeping in a cold cell on damp straw, he contracted a serious ear infection, which later resulted in hearing loss.
After his release from prison, he left in 1846 as a political emigrant to Brussels, Paris, and Rome. During these journeys, he augmented his visual arts skills and established contacts with numerous members of the Polish diaspora. Norwid became friends with Krasiński, who had a significant impact on his fate (1849-1852), he also met many outstanding Polish emigrants: Słowacki, Chopin, Mickiewicz, Zaleski, and Lenartowicz.
In 1853, after having an argument with Krasiński, Norwid decided to leave for the United States.
After an exhausting 62-day journey on the ship "Margaret Evans", Norwid arrived in New York on February 12, 1853.
He stayed there for over a year. After an initial period of severe disease and poverty, he managed to get a good job in a graphic studio, where he worked as a cartoonist on the World Exhibition album.
Unfortunately, the lucky streak did not last long. Discouraged by the stay in the United States, Norwid recognized that this was not a perfect place for him and, in 1854, thanks to the financial help of Prince Lubomirski, he returned to Europe. First to London, and then to Paris.
This return brings him neither happiness nor success. Although Paris was then the world's capital of culture, art and science, and many of the most outstanding intellectuals of that era lived there, for Norwid it was a place of difficult existence in poverty and suffering.
Source: National Digital Library Polona
Perhaps it was because of this inner suffering and melancholy that the most outstanding literary and artistic achievements of Cyprian Kamil Norwid were born.
His oeuvre consists of various literary works. Today, more than 300 poems are known, more than half of which were never published during the author's lifetime.
Vademecum is a collection of poems composed at the turn of 1865/66, including such works as: Moja piosnka (My Song), Coś ty Atenom zrobił, Sokratesie… (What have you done to Athens, Socrates...), Bema pamięci żałobny rapsod (In Bem's Memory Mourning Rhapsody), W Weronie (In Verona), Fatum, Nerwy (The Nerves), Fortepian Chopina (Chopin's Grand Piano), Krzyż i Dzieci (The Cross and the Children), Do Bronisława Z (To Bronisław Z).
During the author's lifetime, the following poems were published: Promethidion and Quidam, and from among more than twenty dramas — the likes of Zwolon and Krakus.
Among the works classified as artistic prose, Black Flowers and White Flowers were published. These works met with an unfavorable reception from literary critics and a misunderstanding of the readers.
It was only at the beginning of the 20th century, mainly thanks to the poet and publisher Zenon Przesmycki (pseudonym "Miriam"), that the rich work of Cyprian Kamil Norwid was properly appreciated, and his numerous works that had so far only existed in manuscripts, were published. This work was continued after the Second World War by Juliusz Wiktor Gomulicki.
The singer and composer Czesław Niemen was also delighted with the unusual message of Norwid's poetry and composed his own music for poems such as: In Bem's Memory Mourning Rhapsody, My Fatherland, The Pilgrim, Italiam! Italiam!, Autumn, and Give me a Blue Ribbon. Thanks to this, the work of Cyprian Kamil Norwid became known, and even fashionable, among young people.
Norwid never returned to Poland. He died of tuberculosis on the night of May 22-23, 1883 in a poorhouse, named after Saint Casimir in Paris. He was buried in the nearby Ivry, but due to the failure to pay for the grave, after a few years, the coffin was moved to Montmorency Cemetery and placed in a mass grave.
Only at the beginning of the 21st century, on the initiative of Leszek Talko, president of the Historical and Literary Society in Paris, the urn with the soil from this grave, blessed by Pope John Paul II, was placed in the Wawel Crypt of Poets. The event took place on September 24, 2001, on the occasion of the 180th anniversary of Norwid's birth. In this way, this great poet and visionary symbolically returned to his homeland.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Norwid's birth. Therefore, on April 9-11, 2021, an international conference was held in London: Cyprian Kamil Norwid Yesterday and Today on the Bicentennial of the Birthday of the Poet-Emigrant, London 2021, which inaugurated the Norwid Year in Great Britain. The conference was held in a virtual form, which enabled it to be viewed all over the world.
The guest of honor at the conference was prof. Kazimierz Braun from the University of New York and from the Scientific Institute of Oskar Halecki in Canada, director of many television and theater performances related to the work of Cyprian Kamil Norwid. Professor Braun inaugurated the London conference with a lecture entitled Norwid Yesterday and Today.
Prof. Kazimierz Braun
Prof. Braun said, among others, that many of Norwid's works had never been published during his lifetime, and that the part of his work that reached the readers was met with incomprehension and cold reception. He was criticized and sometimes even ridiculed. The talent of this great poet and his message to mankind was woefully underappreciated in his time.
Nowadays, Norwid has gained a completely new group of readers and his work has turned out to be universal. 200 years have passed since his birth, and the message contained in his rich literature takes on a completely new meaning in the realities of the world that surrounds us. Norwid was definitely ahead of the era in which he lived, his poetry, thanks to translations into many languages, now reaches almost the entire world, becomes universal, carries a message addressed to the citizens of the whole world, to the whole of humanity.
It is worth recalling the work of Norwid. He has so much to say. His work contains a wealth of inspiration.
The conference was organized by the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Polish University Abroad in London, in cooperation with the Institute of Polish Literature of the University of Warsaw, the Association of Polish Writers Abroad, and the Polish School Society in London. The most outstanding Norwidian scientists from Poland, Europe and the United States participated in the inauguration of the "Norwid Project" in Great Britain, and the lectures and artistic shows accompanying the deliberations could be watched by viewers from all over the world.
