(1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – and is slowly being revived in Poland.

Józef Łobodowski published 19 volumes of poems and 7 volumes of prose. A translator of Spanish, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian poetry, Łobodowski was also a controversial and passionate publicist. As a young man, he was inclined towards communist views, but become a fervent anti-communist over the years. In his youth he led the avant-garde poets, winning the prestigious Young Writer’s Award of the Polish Academy of Literature. He led the life of a rebel and scandaliser. One of his volumes of poems was suppressed by censorship, and he was sent down from university in 1931. He fought in the Second World War, but did not return to Poland afterwards, settling instead in Madrid, where he collaborated with the radio station Radio Nacional de España. Łobodowski was an avid proponent of Polish-Ukrainian dialogue.

Łobodowski’s brilliant threevolume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and scattered across the stretches of the former Russian empire. The plot frequently involves a teenager who is working to support his entire family. He hawks homemade rotgut and cigarettes, robs and steals, and gets into fights with police officers and Chekists alike. His companions do not fear death, only the Dzietdom – the orphanage in which sadistic caretakers exact their charges’ obedience through ruthless psychological and physical terror.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Komysze, W stanicy, Droga powrotna, Wydawnictwo Test, Lublin 2018