{"id":7492,"date":"2025-12-22T14:54:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T13:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/telaviv\/?p=7492"},"modified":"2025-12-22T15:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T14:00:17","slug":"antoni-slonimski-in-iton77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/telaviv\/en\/2025\/12\/22\/antoni-slonimski-in-iton77\/","title":{"rendered":"Antoni S\u0142onimski in Iton77"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the caf\u00e9s of Warsaw in the 1920s, an exceptional genre flourished: szmonces<\/em> \u2014 a cabaret form in which comic dialogues, monologues, and songs portrayed urban life, the bourgeoisie, and the new era. The protagonists \u2014 most often Jews \u2014 used humor and satire to question the norms of the emerging Polish society.<\/p>\n

Szmonces<\/em> performances often employed exaggerated Jewish stereotypes \u2014 accent, speech patterns, Yiddish-Polish language \u2014 but it was precisely this exaggeration that opened a free space for a conversation about identity. The cabaret was a place where it was permissible to \u201claugh at the king,\u201d to break hierarchies, and to say on stage what could not be said outside it. It allowed Jewish-Polish figures to exist in all their complex duality \u2014 not merely as caricatures, but as a critical mirror of the period.<\/p>\n

One of the creators who brought this language to new heights was Antoni S\u0142onimski (1895\u20131976)<\/strong>. A poet, satirist, columnist, and intellectual, S\u0142onimski was born in Warsaw to Jewish parents who had converted to Christianity. He published his first poem at the age of 18. Although born a Christian, he was proud of his Jewish origins and maintained them as part of his identity. For many Jews, he was a Christian; for Polish nationalists, a Jew. S\u0142onimski refused to choose between them. \u201cToo poor choice, gentlemen<\/em>,\u201d he once said.<\/p>\n

In addition to poetry, he wrote prose, plays, essays, and opinion columns. He was one of the founders of the Skamander poets\u2019 group, one of the cornerstones of Polish poetry between the two world wars, which shifted poetry away from national pathos toward everyday life and the city.<\/p>\n

Yet despite all this, his main livelihood came from elsewhere – feuilletons. Between 1926 and 1928, he published the weekly column \u201cWeekly Chronicle\u201d in Wiadomo\u015bci Literackie<\/em>. There, S\u0142onimski\u2019s sharp wit fully emerged \u2014 a combination of irony, humor, politics, cultural criticism, and an intelligence that spared no one.<\/p>\n

The Second World War interrupted his life. He fled Poland, lived in exile in Paris and London, and only in the early 1950s returned to Poland, into a harsh communist reality. In the 1960s, he became one of the intellectual symbols of opposition to the regime, particularly on issues of freedom of expression, authors\u2019 rights, and artistic freedom.<\/p>\n

The figure of Antoni S\u0142onimski \u2014 one of the most prominent voices of Jewish-Polish writing in the 20th century \u2014 has been almost unknown to Hebrew-language readers until now. On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of his birth, the Polish Parliament declared 2025 the \u201cYear of S\u0142onimski,\u201d and within this framework the November\u2013December issue of the monthly journal for literature and culture Iton77<\/em><\/strong> is being published, dedicated to his life and work.<\/p>\n

The issue includes a selection of texts that portray S\u0142onimski not as a distant classic, but as a living, sharp, and relevant writer:<\/p>\n