LITERARY MEETINGS WITH WRITER JANINA KATZ
Janina Katz is well known to the readers of the Polish emigrant magazine Kultura, issued in Paris, where she was publishing after she emigrated from Poland in 1969 after having been expelled from Polish literature by censorship.
She is probably also known to the readers of local Polish culture magazine Znak, but her articles and reviews were also published in Puls and - before she emigrated - in Zycie Literackie, Miesiecznik Literacki, Tworczosc and Wspolczesnosc. After having settled in Denmark in 1969, Janina Katz, a Polish philology graduate, pupil of Pigon, Wyka and Klemensiewicz, lover of Polish poetry and a poetry critic, became a ... Danish writer. It actually started with her wish to translate the best of Polish literature to the Danish language. Starting in 1980 she translated into Danish and published consecutive volumes of poetry by Szymborska, Rozewicz, Milosz, Lipska as well as prose by Mrozek, Konwicki and Brandys. In 1990 the first volume of poetry by Janina Katz, and then another and yet another one, as well as her prose appeared on the Danish market. In 10 years the writer published 8 volumes of poetry, 2 short-story collections, a childrens' book as well as 2 autobiographical novels - very interesting for both Danish and Polish readers due to experiences of a particular generation and a particular time, but also because of the universal and existential experiences of a person involved in relationships with other people. Within the last 3 years Polish literary magazines published several poems, short stories and fragments of the novel Putska (translated by Boguslawa Sochanska). Putska tells about a young girl's maturation in the Krakow of 50-ties and 60-ties, full of hope and love, but also about the growing bitterness that ended with her departure from Poland after the anti-Semitic excesses at the end of 60-ties. In all likelihood the book will soon show up in Polish translation, however the author is not willing to translate her own books - as she says, she does not want to write them again. So, paradoxically, this translator of Polish literature into Danish, a highly appreciated Danish writer, for whom Polish is the native tongue, is translated into Polish - in this complicated case a foreign language - by a countrywoman. That is how Janina Katz's unusual literary fate is becoming complemented.
Apart from the meeting with the writer in the Literary Salon in the National Library in 1999, Janina Katz could meet Polish readers at the meetings in Klub 13 Muz in Szczecin (within the project Poles in the Danish Culture), The Culture Centre ZAMEK in Poznan and in The Jewish Culture Centre in Krakow (2000).