“A rat and a butterfly”. Letters by Barbara Czerwijowska to her sister Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna

Abstract

The article is a discussion of the issue of Barbara Czerwijowska’s letters to her sister Kazimiera Ilłakowiczówna from 1939–1973. The collection of letters is kept in the private archive of Zbigniew Wołk, and was previously given to Barbara’s daughter Janina Czerwijowska by Ilłakowiczówna. So far, the complicated history of the relationship between the two sisters has been known thanks to the edition of Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna’s letters to her sister from 1946–1959, compiled by Lucyna Marzec (Poznań 2014) and Barbara Czerwijowska’s Memoirs compiled by Magdalena Bizior-Dombrowska and Marcin Wołk (Toruń 2022).

The collection of Czerwijowska’s letters to Iłłakowiczówna, which is being prepared for publication, consists mainly of manuscripts: postcards or letters on single sheets of A4-size letter paper, folded in half (without envelopes). There are single letters and typewritten cards (in which case they contain the author’s handwritten corrections). All the cards and letters are dated, in addition, there are legible postmark dates on almost all cards. The chronological arrangement of the letters was, therefore, not a major problem. A great help in this regard (as well as in determining the events and people described) turned out to be the edition of Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna’s letters to her sister Barbara Czerwijowska, compiled by Lucyna Marzec. Thanks to that, it became possible to reconstruct a peculiar sisterly double voice.

The selection of letters presented in the article comes from 1957–1959 – a period when the sisters rarely visited each other anymore and wrote to each other regularly, usually every other day. Most often, these are postcards with brief information on current affairs of daily life (work, household duties, health, weather). However, there are also long letters full of confidences, memories, impressions of reading. Both passionately read books, know many foreign languages, are translators, both are also gifted in poetry, but only one of them chose the path of a poet. Perhaps that’s why there was a distinct note of jealousy and rivalry embedded in their shared history.