Professor Janina Niemirska-Pliszczyńska – Distinguished Didactician and Scholar of Greek and Roman Antiquity

Abstract

The author of this article examines two main areas of life of professor Janina Niemirska-Pliszczyńska; both – her educational and scholar activities in order to prove her great contribution to literature and culture not only in our country but also abroad. As a teacher of Latin first in Unia Lubelska Grammar-School and after World War II also in Stanisław Staszic Grammar-School in Lublin, prof. Niemirska-Pliszczyńska demonstrated much pedagogical talent, distinguished knowledge and love for the Greek and Roman Antiquity. As the academic in the Classical Philology Department at the Catholic University of Lublin (from 1952) Prof. Pliszczyńska gave lectures on Greek and Roman literature and conducted Greek seminar, proseminar and from 1967 also a doctoral seminar. She was the supervisor of about forty MA dissertations and six doctoral theses as well. To help teachers of classical languages in their didactic work and to make learning Greek and Latin easier for students, Prof. Pliszczyńska wrote and published Greek and Latin textbooks and articles on teaching of Latin in the journal Paideia that she edited herself. In spite of many years’ work at secondary schools and her demanding educational activities at the University, she raised excellent literary output including two monographs: De elocutione Pliniana (Lublin 1955) – all written in Latin and: Wokół Dolonei (Around Doloneia, Lublin 1966) on the authenticity of the tenth song in Homer’s Iliad. It also included several articles on Homer’s epics, Pausanias’ periegesis, Plato’s dialogues, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, St. Paul’s letters and language of Clement of Alexandria. And finally it included Prof. Pliszczyńska’s perfect translations of Greek and Roman literature: Żywoty cezarów (The Twelve Caesars, The Lives of the (Twelve) Caesars, Lives of the Caesars – LOEB 1997) by Suetonius, Wędrówki po Helladzie (Description of Greece) by Pausanias and Dywany, Stromateis (Stromata) by Clement of Alexandria. For her outstanding achievements Prof. Pliszczyńska was awarded Silver Cross of Merit (1944) and Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1973).