Antoni Słonimski was a Polish poet, journalist, playwright and prose writer, president of the Union of Polish Writers in 1956–1959 during the Polish October, known for his devotion to social justice.
Background
Antoni Słonimski was the son of an assimilated Warsaw physician who converted to Christianity and the grandson of the Hebrew popular science writer and editor, Hayyim Selig Slonimski. He was born on November 15, 1895 in Warsaw, Congress Poland.
Education
Słonimski studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1919 he co-founded the Skamander group of experimental poets with Julian Tuwim and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In 1924 he travelled to Palestine and Brasil and in 1932 to the Soviet Union.
Career
Slonimsky was part of the Polish poetic revival that took place with the reemergence of a free and independent Poland of 1918. He was the founder of Skamander, a Warsaw literary magazine that aimed at adapting traditional to modern forms. After the World War II, Slonimsky returned to Poland from his exile in London and chose to coexist with the communist regime, while advocating full liberalization and opposing censorship. By 1956, Slonimsky was a significant figure in the struggle for freer conditions for Polish writers.
He was sent to London as head of the Polish Cultural Institute (1949-1951) and was also a delegate to the founding congress of the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was also president of both the Polish PEN Club and the very influential Polish Writers' Union, a position to which he was elected in 1958 over the Communist party candidate. This candidate later publically denounced a Slonimski poem about the space-age discoveries defiling the moon “with human pains and dreadful nightmares,” as being un-Marxist. In 1972 he again defeated the Communist party candidate and he was elected to head the Congress of Polish Writers.
He identified deeply with the Jewish people and spoke out against those calling for Israel’s destruction during the days preceding the 1967 Six-Day War and this issue became prevalent in his poetry of this period. After the Six-Day War, he criticized the expulsion of pro-Israel supporters from government posts, an action for which he himself came under scrutiny by the Communist party leader of the time.
He published poems, plays, and books, along with several highly regarded translations of Shakespeare into Polish.
Politics
Slonimsky was polically active not only in the pursuit of more liberal attitudes toward writers but also in his support of Israel. In 1964 he, along with other major intellectual figures of his time, signed what was to be called the Letter of Three, protesting censorship.