FoKa / Forum
Arkady Fiedler – Polish globetrotter with literary talent
He had an enormous appetite for life. During his many expeditions, he sought out the sunny side of life, which he described with the fervour of a reporter in more than thirty books. 130 years ago, on 28 November, Arkady Fiedler, best known as the author of ‘Squadron 303’, was born in Poznan.
Hawker Hurricane Mk I – the only aircraft (replica) in Poland, on which Polish airmen from 303 Squadron took part in the Battle of Britain. Photo:pl.wikipedia.org
In his long career – he made his debut in 1917 and continued to publish until his death in 1985 – he had two periods of popularity and one of silence. His books were bestsellers first in the mid-1930s, then in the 1950s and 1960s. On the other hand, he put down his pen for a while just after the Second World War, when the Communist authorities considered him an incorrigible cosmopolitan and did not allow him to travel, which was fodder for his work.
He could not stay in this stagnation for long and joined the new reality. Then opportunities opened up. He went to parts of Indochina that were in the Soviet sphere of influence, to Ghana, and the USSR. But the compromises he had to make never overshadowed what was always most valuable in his books: colourful facts about other cultures, their customs and rituals, distant lands, extraordinary fauna and flora, wonderful landscapes and natural phenomena. He wrote in a lively style, stimulating the imagination and arousing curiosity about the world.
Photo: alchetron.com
The total number of Arkady Fiedler’s books in print is over ten million. They have been translated into over twenty languages. One of them is different from the others. It is ‘Squadron 303’ – the story of the heroic pilots during the Battle of Britain in 1940 from this special fighter subdivision of the Polish Air Force in the United Kingdom. The author said of this title that it was ‘a fuller account from the battlefield, written in the heat and warmth of a patriot’s heart, an account and not a work of so-called fiction’.
The book lifted the spirits of Poles during the war. First published in Polish in Britain in 1942, then in English, it was smuggled into occupied Poland, where it was published four times in the underground in Warsaw and once in Kielce. It was banned between 1948 and 1956. To date, ‘Squadron 303’ has been reprinted thirty times in Poland alone and has inspired films and plays.
Lieutenant Arkady Fiedler met the pilots of the famous formation in person. He came to Britain via France. The war broke out when the author was in Tahiti, the largest of the French Polynesian islands in the Pacific, which was his next stop on the map of adventures. He prepared very carefully for each one. Earlier, in 1927, he had travelled to Norway, in 1927-1928 he was in Brazil, in 1933 – in Amazonia, two years later he was in Canada, to which he returned several times, and in 1937 he visited Madagascar as a member of an expedition to see whether this largest African island could become a Polish colony (Fiedler was opposed to the idea, eventually seeing a chance for a small number of Polish families to settle there). From each trip, he brought back memories, notes, material culture objects and photographs, which led to the creation of further titles, including absolute hits, ‘The River of Singing Fish’ (after a stay in the Amazon) and ‘Canada Smelling of Resin’. Young people, especially those born in the first years after Poland regained its independence, read them and found motivation to develop their mental and physical strength as well as their love of reading.
Fiedler gave the young Poles what he had received from his father: an openness to dreams and an ability to look at nature and understand its relationship to man. In his autobiography ‘My Father and the Oaks’, Arkady wrote of his father, ‘He taught me to love things that people pass by indifferently. So he picked out details in landscapes and tried to read the nuances in the behaviour of foreign tribes. He also took over his father’s printing business. After studying philosophy and natural sciences at the universities of Krakow and Poznan, he graduated from the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig and became a master of chemigraphy, a technique that allowed him to etch matrices for use in printing.
Photo: alchetron.com
Arkady passed on his love of the world and adventure to his sons, Arkady Radoslaw and Marek, who in turn passed it on to their sons. The Museum – Arkady Fiedler’s Literary Workshop, founded in 1974, and the Garden of Cultures and Tolerance in Puszczykowo, near Poznan, remain in the family’s care.
The museum houses memorabilia from Arkady’s expeditions, including faunal specimens, sculptures, masks and trophies, as well as the writer’s book collection. Outdoor exhibits include a statue over six metres tall from Easter Island and an Indian totem pole. In its first forty years, the museum received more than a million visitors. A foundation named after the writer is active. He is the patron of roads and schools and a prize awarded to the authors of the best travel books.
Arkady Fiedler is somewhat forgotten today, as the world has become more accessible to everyone. It is easier to travel, and for some it is enough to travel in their imagination, thanks to films of popular personalities posted on the Internet. And yet it is worth returning to Fiedler, to his committed reporting, the clarity of his message and his beautiful style. ‘A magical fan, constantly in motion, constantly shaking, it closes, then opens wide; radiant discs move across the sky, shoot flashes of lightning to the zenith, then suddenly fall, then unfold again in splendour, splendour and madness – and so from arc to arc a mysterious, immeasurable, powerful spectacle rolls on. A great hymn of dancing light,’ Fiedler wrote of the aurora borealis in his book Canada Smelling of Resin.
KAROLINA PREWĘCKA
journalist, publicist and writer, author of books – interviews and biographies, m.in. Bohdan Łazuka and Stanisława Celińska
SOURCE: DlaPolonii.pl
