Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz was a Polish poet who died in 2022 in Milanówek near Warsaw. His work is widely regarded as some of the best Polish poetry in recent years, characterised by subtle metaphysical and everyday observations. His volume "Zachód Słońca w Milanówku" ["Sunset in Milanówek"] was awarded the prestigious NIKE award in 2003 as the best Polish book of that year.
However, like the great English-language poets Yeats and Eliot and many others, Rymkiewicz's historical and political musings were in a lowlier, melodramatic, idiom. Eliot had said that conservatism lacks an intellectual tradition, and Rymkiewicz at least attempted to provide one in his later years.
Jan Maciejewski, writing in Teologia Polityczna counts Rymkiewicz as part of the "modern mystification of blood". For instance, Rymkiewicz wrote a notorious line about the "blood on Tusk's white sleeves".
The current minister of education Barbara Nowacka has defended her decision to remove Rymkiewicz from reading lists. Initially she presented a politically neutral explanation: the reading lists are "too long to read"; she was simply signing under the "recommendations of experts".
However, wandering from politics into literary criticism, Nowacka added the telling phrase the "lacklustre Rymkiewicz" and described him as "part of the Smoleńsk sect" - the quasi-religious interpretation of the 2010 Smolensk air disaster.
Nowacka's decision, if it is indeed an attempt to politicise children's reading, has backfired. She seems to have achieved an almost unique unification of left and right in Polish press as commentators of all political persuasions condemn what they perceive as the political treatment of art:
- The left-wing high-brow Krytyka Polityczna leads with "Leave Rymkiewicz alone - especially the "Smoleńsk" [read: extreme] Rymkiewicz". The article argues that Rymkiewicz was often most interesting when his judgments were not balanced.
- The liberal-left Wyborcza (under whose auspices the NIKE literary awards are conferred, Rymkiewicz being the 2003 winner) agrees with other writers who have come out in Rymkiewicz's defence regardless of political persuasion. Wyborcza cites Rymkiewicz's words from his acceptance speech (echoing sentiments known to English speakers under the phrase "art for art's sake"):
Literature does not serve anyone or anything. It should and can serve neither the state, nor society, nor politicians, nor newspapers, nor any power. Literature is unconcerned with what society or the state or television or politicians and parties think of it
- The broadly left weekly Polityka (roughly Poland's "New Statesman") leads with "Minister Nowacka gets down to the literary canon. Don't touch Rymkiewicz!"
- Less surprisingly, right leaning outlets such as Do Rzeczy have published several articles protesting the changes to reading lists, and not only regarding Rymkiewicz. Do Rzeczy does, however, mention an aspect of the story encouraging more empathy for Nowacka. The minister's mother, Izabela Jaruga Nowacka - a left-wing politician - also died in the Smolensk disaster. Barbara Nowacka's objections to the "poet of Smolensk" is part of the often-expressed idea that Law and Justice in Poland "stole" the tragedy for its own political purposes.
Several commentators have compared Nowacka to previous education ministers like Law and Justice's Czarnek or (then) LPR's Roman Giertych who have tried to mould Poland's youth politically through reading lists and their censorship.
The poet's son, Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz, in an interview for Radio Wnet, objected to Nowacka's rudeness in her references to his father, but also went further comparing her actions to those of communist leader Gomułka. (Political exaggeration similar to his father's - Gomułka was responsible not merely for censorship but, among other things, for the expulsion of many Jewish professors from their jobs and indeed from the country.)
Sources: Rzeczpospolita, Wyborcza.pl, krytykapolityczna.pl, dorzeczy.pl, Radio Wnet
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