The Polish Book Institute

A translation of Bronisław Wildstein's essay entitled Bunt i afirmacja. Esej o naszych czasach (”Rebellion and Affirmation. An Essay about Our Times”) was published in Romania. The publication of the book translated by Constantin Geambasu was supported by the Book Institute as part of the ©POLAND Translation Programme.

The book Revolta si acceptare. Eseu despre timpurile noastre, as reads the title of the Romanian translation, was published by the Cetatea de Scaun publishing house.

Rebellion and Affirmation. An Essay about Our Times was first published in 2020 by the State Publishing Institute PIW. It is an ambitious, erudite attempt to problematise the eponymous tension, which the author believes is central to the contemporary era. However, the essay does not just address contemporary culture, in which rebellion is a fetish. As we read on the publisher's website, this "elemental opposition (...) is metaphysical in nature. It amounts to either accepting or rejecting the world as it is fundamentally given to us with its basic conditions."

As Bronislaw Wildstein said in an interview with the Book Institute, 'affirmation is understanding the world as it is. It's understanding your place in this world. It is also discovering the beauty, the grandeur of this world and all the perspectives it offers, but also discovering its dramatism, its tragedy, and its dark side. As well as the inevitability of the evil that is within it."

Bronisław Wildstein (born 1952) is a Polish writer, publicist, journalist, and politician, author of, among other things, the novels Czas niedokonany (“An Imperfect Time”) and Ukryty (“Hidden”), as well as the journalistic volume Długi cień PRL-u, czyli dekomunizacja której nie było (“The Long Shadow of the People's Republic of Poland, or Decommunisation that Never Happened”).