Conversation with a Countryman

Antoni Slonimski

1922

An old Jew asked me near the Jaffa Gate:
“Is the Saxon Garden still there? The same as ever?
Is there a fountain? At the entrance from Czysta Street
In the old days confectioners had a shop there with water.”
Everything is the way it was: the fountain and kiosks.
And Prince Poniatowski is still standing there.”
“Poniatowski! The Polish army…
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Creator Bio

Antoni Slonimski

1895–1976

Raised Catholic in an assimilated Jewish family from Warsaw, Antoni Slonimski was a Polish poet, journalist, playwright, translator, and literary activist. The grandson of prominent religious thinker and writer rabbi Chaim Zelig Slonimski, he was a cofounder of the Skamander group of experimental poets and a frequent contributor to several periodicals, writing regular columns and reviews on theater, arts, and social satire. Slonimski spent World War II in exile in Paris and London, and served for several years in senior positions at UNESCO and the Polish Cultural Institute. Upon returning to Poland in the early 1950s, he was a leading member of the intelligentsia and head of the Union of Polish Writers, serving as a voice of criticism and liberalization. Although a victim of the wave of antisemitism that overtook Poland in 1968, Slonimski decided to stay in Poland. He was killed in an automobile accident in Warsaw.

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