Nauczyciele i Przyjaciele

Teachers and Friends

Professor Andrzej Mencwel, a historian of literature and Polish culture, critic, essayist, prose writer, co-founder of the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw, author of numerous books and winner of numerous awards, after several years returns to the memoir book, published in 2010, which he devoted to important people who formed him. Since the first edition of the book, as he himself says in the preface, “several new portraits, memoirs and, regretfully, farewells have been written. Such is the nature of not things, but people, and we cannot do anything except honour their memory.” The common denominator of this volume is the University of Warsaw – the main “place of action” of the described events, which most of the characters appearing in the book were associated with in one way or another. And as it is a truly excellent group, the volume can also be read as a kind of portrait of the intellectual environment of the Author, whose figure clearly emerges from the pages of his memoirs.
The author relates here his meetings with the creators of Polish contemporary culture, their lives and works. He counts as his Teachers and Friends: Jerzy Andrzejewski, Bronisław Baczko, Jerzy Giedroyc, Stanisław Grochowiak, Włodzimierz Herman, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Andrzej Kołakowski, Leszek Kołakowski, Halina Kurkowska, Jacek Kuroń, Zdzisław Libera, Jan Józef Lipski, Adam Michnik, Czesław Miłosz, Wojciech Młynarski, Wiesław Myśliwski, Michał Nawrocki, Igor Newerly, Marian Pilot, Krzysztof Pomian, Konstanty Puzyna, Adolf Rudnicki, Adam Sikora, Jerzy Stajuda, Jan Strzelecki, Stefan Swieżawski, Jerzy Szacki, Andrzej Walicki, Józef Wilkoń, Marta Wyka, Kazimierz Wyka and Stefan Żółkiewski. The book concludes with the laudation delivered during the ceremony of awarding the honorary doctorate of Warsaw University to Olga Tokarczuk.
This group portrait, colourful and varied because of its expressive characters, is a very different and personal way to tell about the people known to contemporary readers mainly from their works.

Keywords: memories, editorial, essay, biography, Polish cultural life.