„This is New York Speaking!”. From Jan Lechoń’s and Kazimierz Wierzyński’s Radio Texts

Abstract

The text contains the first editions of the texts of two literary programs broadcast by the New York section of the Polish branch of Radio Free Europe, provided with a foreword and a commentary. The texts survived in the Polish emigration archives in the form of a manuscript or a typescript with the author's handwritten alterations. Both texts broaden the knowledge of work for the radio that Polish writers in exile did. The author of the first text, written in 1950 after the death of George Bernard Shaw, is Jan Lechoń; the program is a recollection of his meeting with the British dramatist in London in 1930. In the foreword the changes in Lechoń's attitude to Shaw's works are shown – from his early fascination to the period of skepticism that he experienced during his stay in emigration. The other one, written by Kazimierz Wierzyński, is a review of Andrzej Bobkowski's Szkice piórkiem (Sketches in pen and ink) published by the Instytut Literacki in Paris in 1957. It was the first of all reviews and discussions of the book that appeared in the émigré press; the two writers' similar vicissitudes at the beginning of the Second World War and a critical attitude towards the French society of that time that they shared is especially interesting in the review.