O, jak daleko jest Polska.
Tak jak to miasto martwa,
gdzie powiesiliśmy wolność
na rozetach kamiennych arkad.1
Although Andrzej Wajda’s ties with Hungary were never as profound as those he cultivated with Yugoslavia, France or Japan, his archive nevertheless contains numerous references to Hungary and to Hungarian culture.
The breadth and diversity of the materials discussed below reflect the remarkable richness of the holdings preserved in the Andrzej Wajda Archive at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków. These comprise archival documents relating to unrealised film projects, documentation connected with the staging of The Wedding (Wesele) at Budapest’s National Theatre (Nemzeti Színház), photographic materials², as well as anecdotal notes recorded in the director’s personal notebooks. The present essay examines only a small selection of the threads linking Wajda with Hungary; it does not, for example, address his opinions on Hungarian cinema.
An intriguing point of departure is Wajda’s own surname, which may be associated with the settlement of the Vlachs, a pastoral people who migrated from the Balkans into the Polish lands. This hypothesis was advanced by Bogdana Pilichowska, an ethnologist closely associated for many years with the Andrzej Wajda Archive, who conducted genealogical research into the director’s family history:
*The surname Wajda is unquestionably connected with the Vlach migrations and colonisation […]. It emerged independently in various parts of the country along the routes of Vlach migration and settlement, which explains why numerous unrelated families bear the same surname.*³
Moreover, in his private correspondence concerning the genealogy of his ancestors and a possible family connection, Wajda himself referred to the Hungarian associations of his surname:
*In reply to your letter, I cannot claim any kinship, but I am sending you several materials that may prove of interest to your research. Particularly noteworthy is the Hungarian coat of arms granted to the Vajda family, which is a curiosity well worth recording.*⁴
Unrealised Projects and Hungarian Connections
The director’s notebooks from the 1970s contain several references to film projects that were never realised but were envisaged as Polish–Hungarian collaborations.
In March 1971, Wajda recorded a meeting with Stanisław Lem concerning a possible screen adaptation of the novella The Futurological Congress, published that same year.⁵ He noted:
Discussion with Stanisław Lem about the novella The Futurological Congress. *The film cannot be made in its present form, as it lacks elements of tangible reality. The text would have to be restructured into something resembling a screenplay. Looking for producers […] perhaps the Hungarians […]*⁶
Two years later, Wajda outlined his plans for a film devoted to General Józef Bem,⁷ whose historical legacy occupies a unique place in both Polish and Hungarian national memory:
*Bem – four weeks of shooting in the autumn, two weeks in winter. Two thousand soldiers, two hundred and fifty horses for two weeks. Entire crew, equipment, film stock, laboratory – Hungary.*⁸
By the end of the decade, Wajda was seriously considering an adaptation of Ryszard Kapuściński’s The Emperor.⁹ On 27 July 1978, he wrote:
Today I received Kapuściński’s The Emperor. *Reading it now – magnificent, a ready-made film (screenplay with Bolesław Michałek). It could be filmed in the palaces of Łódź! Which actors? Which language?*¹¹
Six months later, however, his thoughts had shifted towards Hungary:
A splendid idea: to produce The Emperor *in Budapest with Péter Bacsó’s production unit. I would take only the people I really need and assemble the rest of the crew from Hungarians. The interiors in Budapest are every bit as good as those in Łódź, perhaps even better. Organisation would also be superior, and the film would enjoy wider distribution, as Hungarian cinema has considerably better international access.*¹²
None of these projects—The Futurological Congress, Bem, or The Emperor—ultimately came to fruition. These entries exemplify Wajda’s characteristic notebook practice: a repository of ideas, observations and preliminary concepts that might, under favourable circumstances, develop into future productions. Two additional unrealised projects relating to the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire also left traces within his archive: Sarajevo 1914, devoted to the outbreak of the First World War,¹³ and an adaptation of Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March.
Wajda’s notebooks also contain a different category of entries: anecdotes, fragments of conversations and personal observations carefully recorded throughout his life. Particularly revealing are two notes that reflect his perception of socialist reality and its enduring consequences.
In the spring of 1984, Wajda recorded an anecdote recounted by his close friend Piotr Skrzynecki:¹⁴
*Piotr Skrzynecki recounts stories from Budapest. Poor Polish specialists working there on contract are afraid of everything: catching syphilis, becoming entangled in political trouble, but above all of their wives back in Poland. Twenty of them commit suicide every year. One of them, driven to despair after discovering his wife’s infidelity, climbed onto the roof of the Budapest Opera House intending to jump. Only when a priest climbed up after him and confronted him with a portrait of the Pope did he come down.*¹⁵
Following the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, Wajda returned to Hungary in another notebook entry, this time reflecting on the memory of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution:
*In 1956, the communists murdered in Budapest were buried face down, in accordance with the folk tradition reserved for those considered unworthy of salvation. At Kerepesi Cemetery they lay beneath the wall, hidden in the undergrowth, without graves, while elsewhere they created an elaborate theatre of death for themselves. From time to time, families quietly exhume one of them from that row and remove the remains so that they no longer bring embarrassment today.*¹⁶
The Budapest Production of The Wedding
Wajda’s collaboration with Hungary ultimately materialised only once, when he directed Stanisław Wyspiański’s The Wedding (Wesele) at Budapest’s National Theatre (Nemzeti Színház) in 1994. As with every stage and film production, Wajda meticulously assembled documentation relating to the work in progress. In the case of the Budapest Wedding, the surviving correspondence constitutes by far the most illuminating part of the archival record.
The documents reveal that the possibility of staging Wyspiański’s drama in Hungary had already been considered during the second half of the 1970s.¹⁷ Particularly revealing are the exchanges concerning the Hungarian translations of the play and Wajda’s own observations on its staging, which, in retrospect, offer a revealing insight into the political and cultural realities of the early 1990s.
In a letter dated 18 April 1990, Pál Pap of the then Magyar Filmintézet (today the Filmarchívum) assessed the existing Hungarian translations by György Spiró and Dávid Csaba:
Spiró is an accomplished dramatist with an impressive command of language and many genuinely inventive solutions. He possesses a clearly defined worldview and firm convictions on important matters; consequently, he inevitably reshapes every text in accordance with his own perspective. This would not be problematic if his intellectual world were close to that of Wyspiański, or if he were capable of adapting his style accordingly. Unfortunately, this is not the case. His literary language is far removed from the folk and regional qualities of Wyspiański’s original. He frequently substitutes urban slang or expressions merely perceived as rustic by city audiences for genuine folk idiom, often resorting to grammatically incorrect Hungarian. In several places he appears to have misunderstood the original text, while a tendency towards vulgarisation further distances the translation from Wyspiański’s style. […] Dávid Csaba’s translation is considerably more faithful and approaches the original with genuine respect. It successfully corrects many of the shortcomings of the earlier version and remains much closer to the spirit of Wyspiański. Should The Wedding be staged in Budapest, I believe his translation ought to serve as its foundation, perhaps further refined with the assistance of an outstanding dramaturge.
Wajda replied with characteristic candour:
The greatest difficulty I experience whenever I direct in a foreign language lies in my uncertainty about the text itself. […] We fully understand the concern that The Wedding should not be excessively updated. In Poland, Wyspiański’s drama is always contemporary—whether the intellectual Tadeusz Mazowiecki becomes Prime Minister or the worker-turned-politician Lech Wałęsa makes foolish remarks about intellectuals.¹⁸ That is why, after working in Hebrew and Japanese,¹⁹ I have my reservations about embarking upon Hungarian—it does not exactly fill me with confidence. Yet I would very much like to present The Wedding *in Budapest, because I believe it will resonate with its audience.*²⁰
These exchanges vividly demonstrate Wajda’s acute awareness that the success of The Wedding depended not merely upon accurate translation but upon preserving the intellectual, poetic and symbolic texture of Wyspiański’s language. For Wajda, linguistic fidelity was inseparable from theatrical interpretation.
Unfortunately, the Budapest production proved to be one of the director’s most difficult theatrical experiences. In a letter written three years later to the theatre’s director, László Ablonczy, Wajda rejected a new production prepared by Géza Bodolai, refusing to allow his own name to be associated with it:
The Wedding has always possessed a political dimension. What that dimension might become in Hungary—I simply do not know. Given the exceptionally difficult and complicated situation currently prevailing in Budapest, I would not wish to find myself on what, for me, would be the wrong side of the political divide.*²¹
His private notebooks from the rehearsal period reveal similar frustration. In March 1994 he wrote:
*National Theatre, Budapest. Socialism has become embedded in this theatre together with the dirt. It is impossible to eradicate. The worst aspect is the mixture of genuinely capable people with others who simply should not be doing this work. Nobody here has the habit of making notes. Nothing is remembered. Everything must be repeated endlessly, with no confidence that previous decisions will be retained. Everywhere there is ingrained dirt, although the building itself was probably constructed only in the 1970s.*²²
The entry made on the day of the première is no less uncompromising:
By tomorrow all this work will have been wasted, because nobody here is capable of protecting the production from the changes that will inevitably be imposed by inferior and drunken actors, a hopeless sound engineer and a random lighting technician. The theatre itself is interested only in reaching the première; once The Wedding *has been officially staged, it will no longer matter to them. It could have become a gift to the actors, yet they have no influence here and remain entirely marginalised. Nevertheless, the audience responded with tremendous enthusiasm, and after the performance the actors themselves showed extraordinary warmth towards me.*²³
Was Wajda unduly harsh in his assessment of his Hungarian collaborators? Or should Stanisław Wyspiański’s The Wedding (Wesele) be regarded as a drama that is, in fact, untranslatable into other languages? To place the opinions expressed by the director in his notebooks into proper perspective, it is worth quoting what he wrote three years earlier on the day of the première of The Wedding at Kraków’s Stary Theatre:
From the first clouds of smoke in the scene with the straw figures to the very end, everything was awkward and wrong. Above all, the sluggish scene changes and the painfully slow delivery of the dialogue. I thought it would never end, and after the curtain call I said, loudly and clearly, that I was not satisfied with them [i.e. the actors]. That is always the worst moment, because the actors leave the stage rather like gladiators. “Better or worse—what does it matter? We came out alive,” their foolishly smiling faces seem to say. […] Final conclusions, after midnight: theatre in Poland today has lost its purpose. The actors, preoccupied with their own affairs, were unable to learn the text of The Wedding *over the course of seven weeks, and there is simply no remedy for this. The theatre does not pay them, so they do not learn their lines. Besides, they are the best theatre in Poland [i.e. the Stary Theatre], so the production will be regarded as a success anyway. As a result, there is no pleasure in it at all, because poetry never reaches the stage; all one hears is mumbling and randomness.*²⁴
Whatever the reasons for the shortcomings of the Budapest production of The Wedding, it should be emphasised that the beginning of the 1990s was a period of disappointment for Wajda, not only in artistic terms. Conflicts within the former anti-communist opposition, severe cuts to public funding for culture, and the growing gap between his work and the expectations of audiences—particularly younger viewers²⁵—may all have contributed to his profound sense of disillusionment with the new political and cultural reality. His concern about „finding himself on the wrong side” of political disputes became evident once again in 2013, when, despite having previously agreed to accept it, Wajda ultimately declined the Grand Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit from President János Áder.²⁶
The present article cannot provide a comprehensive answer to its central question: how was Wajda’s work received and interpreted in Hungary over the course of several decades? Instead, it concludes with the words addressed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda, the widow of the director, following his death in October 2016:
*It was with profound sorrow and sadness that I received the news of the passing of Andrzej Wajda, the tireless chronicler of Polish history whose films enabled millions of people around the world to understand the course of Poland’s history. His death is a painful loss for us all, yet his legacy will remain alive in our memory. On behalf of the Hungarian people and in my own name, please accept my deepest condolences.*²⁷
Mateusz Matysiak
Notes
1 From István Kovács’s poem Legion, dedicated to Andrzej Wajda, translated into Polish by Bohdan Zadura (quoted in: Przepowiednia czasu twego. Antologia współczesnej poezji węgierskiej, selected and annotated by Konrad Sutarski, Kraków–Wrocław, 1985, p. 212). The copy preserved in the Andrzej Wajda Archive (hereafter: AAW) bears the author’s dedication. Kovács wrote the poem inspired by Wajda’s film Ashes (Popioły).
2 For example, a photographic album documenting the director’s visit to Hungary in December 1976 in connection with a screening of The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana).
3 Bogdana Pilichowska, Materials on the Etymology and Occurrence of the Surname Wajda, typescript preserved in AAW. It is also worth recalling Wajda’s diary entry of 24 March 1994: ‘Remarkable: 250,000 nomads set out from the Crimea towards present-day Hungary. Legend has it that not a single child was born during the journey, in order to spare newborns the hardship of travel. A fine beginning to the instinct for statehood that, according to scholars of the subject, characterises the Hungarians.’ Andrzej Wajda, Notes 1942–2016. Selection, vol. 3: 1989–1999, ed. Tadeusz Lubelski and Agnieszka Morstin (Kraków, 2024), p. 298. The original notebooks are preserved in AAW.
4 Andrzej Wajda to Iwona Zaciewska, 28 February 2001. All correspondence cited in this article is held in AAW. Information concerning the ennoblement of members of the Vajda family over several centuries was provided to Wajda by the set designer Tadeusz Wybult, who shared the results of his archival research conducted in Hungary.
5 Three years earlier, Wajda had adapted Lem’s short story Do You Exist, Mr Johns? under the title Przekładaniec (Roly Poly).
6 Notebook entry of 23 March 1971. Andrzej Wajda, Notes 1942–2016. Selection, vol. 1: 1942–1978, ed. Tadeusz Lubelski and Agnieszka Morstin (Kraków, 2024), p. 304.
7 Józef Bem (1794–1850) – military commander and participant in the Revolutions of 1848, regarded as a national hero in Poland, Hungary and Turkey.
8 Notebook entry of 5 April 1973. Wajda, Notes, vol. 1, p. 358.
9 Ryszard Kapuściński (1932–2007) – writer, journalist and traveller.
10 Bolesław Michałek (1925–1997) – screenwriter and literary director of the X Film Unit, headed by Andrzej Wajda.
11 Wajda, Notes, vol. 1, p. 521.
12 Notebook entry of 4 December 1978. Ibid., pp. 535–536.
13 Wajda intended to make the film in Yugoslavia.
14 Piotr Skrzynecki (1930–1997) – founder and artistic director of the Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret and a close friend of Andrzej Wajda.
15 Notebook entry of 20 April 1984. Andrzej Wajda, Notes 1942–2016. Selection, vol. 2: 1979–1988, ed. Tadeusz Lubelski and Agnieszka Morstin (Kraków, 2024), p. 296.
16 Notebook entry of 29 March 1994. Wajda, Notes, vol. 3, p. 299.
17 Letter from Dávid Csaba to Andrzej Wajda, 30 January 1978.
18 A reference to the so-called war at the top (wojna na górze), the political conflict between former members of Poland’s anti-communist opposition during the period of democratic transition. Wajda sympathised with the intellectual faction represented by Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, in opposition to Lech Wałęsa, who at the time had come to embody a populist style of political leadership.
19 In 1988 Wajda directed Szymon An-ski’s The Dybbuk at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv, and a year later Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (under the title Nastasya) at the Benisan Theatre in Tokyo.
20 Letter from Andrzej Wajda to Pál Pap, 21 April 1990. Ultimately, the production used György Spiró’s translation of the play.
21 Letter from Andrzej Wajda to László Ablonczy, 6 April 1993.
22 Notebook entry of 28 March 1994. Wajda, Notes, vol. 3, pp. 298–299.
23 Notebook entry of 31 March 1994. Ibid., p. 299.
24 Notebook entry of 3 June 1991. Ibid., p. 139.
25 A symbolic example of this divergence was 1992. That year Wajda directed Pierścionek z orłem w koronie (The Crowned Eagle Ring), a film about the Warsaw insurgents, which attracted relatively little attention. By contrast, Władysław Pasikowski’s Psy (Dogs), a crime drama dealing with Poland’s political transformation from the perspective of former officers of the communist Security Service, became a major commercial success.
26 Letter from Ambassador Ivan Gyurcsik to Andrzej Wajda, 18 October 2012, and Wajda’s reply of 22 October 2012. Strictly speaking, this was not an outright refusal but rather a diplomatic evasion. On 19 March 2013 Wajda noted in his diary: ‘I have decided to go to Gdańsk for filming [Wałęsa. Man of Hope] during those days [i.e. President Áder’s visit to Poland] so that I can avoid the situation. It has become rather awkward, but the snow is still lying and the additional shots are supposed to look like August!’ This notebook entry was not included in the published edition.
27 Letter of condolence from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Krystyna Zachwatowicz, 11 October 2016 (with accompanying Polish translation).
