MACKIEWICZ - CONTRA Paris 1957

MACKIEWICZ Joseph

CONTRA

Paris, 1957 Literary Institute, pp. 272, format 14x22 cm

First edition!

"Contra is a work, after reading which a foreign reader would not guess that the author is a Pole."

Michal K. Pawlikowski, News, London, October 6, 1957

"After which Mr. Pawlikowski judges that I am a ? "very Polish?" writer, and Mackiewicz .... ?all-Polish? ... Mackiewicz is ? obviously ? indigenously, to the marrow of his bones, a Polish-Borderland artist.... but this ? of course ? does not in any way interfere with his ?all-Polishness ?.... because art is (as is long and well known) the elevation of private, individual, local, even parochial concreteness to the heights of all.... to the cosmic dimension..."

Witold Gombrowicz, Diary 1957-1961

"I read Contra three years ago. Admittedly late, but despite my upbringing in the cult of the Napoleonic epic (?About that year?, the lancers beating at Somosierra, etc.) I came to the conclusion that the Polish legions under Napoleon, especially San Domingo, Spain, were the Polish version of the Vlasov soldiers with their tragic end. They had to die, returning in 1815 under the orders of a new commander-in-chief in the person of the Tsar ? uncertainty, fear, numerous incidents of suicide.

And my, as it seemed to me, revealing conclusion of who was worse, that the Germans threatened physical annihilation, and the Soviets something worse, as a mental crushing. All this I found in your books, given in a beautiful, shocking form."

A reader from Poland

HARDCOVER HALF LEATHER CONTEMPORARY. SPINE WITH RAISED SCROLLS AND GILT. MARBLED PAPERBOARD. PAGE EDGES GILT. PRESERVED PUBLISHER'S COVER

BDB condition-/ a NICE piece