Interview with Prof. Anna Frajlich, Senior Lecturer, Emerita of the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University

Polish Studies Newsletter: In an interview conducted by Piotr Śliwiński, you called people studying Polish studies “ambassadors of Polishness”; you also described Czesław Miłosz as the last Polish diplomat who understood the importance of American Polish studies for the country. 23 years have passed since that conversation – what has changed?

Anna Frajlich: Czesław Miłosz, when he was here in the late 1940s, tried to create a Polish studies department at Columbia, for which some people resent him. We must remember that before Miłosz proposed Manfred Kridel for the so-called Adam Mickiewicz Chair in Philology in 1948, there already was a Polish studies department here. And the fact that the communist government started to subsidize money (10 thousand dollars a year) for Kridel's "chair" turned out to be controversial. Thomas Anessi, my former student and currently a lecturer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, wrote about it in his article A Short History of Polish Studies at Columbia University. Such "chairs" are still funded by Poland, as was the case 10 years ago, when they were filled by Dr. Magdalena Mazurek, Associate Professor at the Faculty of History, this time thanks to funding from, among others, the Polish Academy of Sciences.

BP: It coincided with your retirement. And who took over your position?

AF: Chris Caes, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. However, it must be remembered that this is not a full-time professorship. Recently promoted to senior lecturer.

BP: This is probably a specifically American phenomenon – how does this division into lecturers and senior lecturers relate to the actual professorship?

AF: There is an anecdote related to this. When I became a senior lecturer, a party was organized at which my husband got irritated and sarcastically commented on the fact that it was not a professorship – after all, those who honored me and congratulated me were professors. They began to explain that at Columbia there are a lot of lecturers (part-time and full-time), but only few senior lecturers. They form a separate group and represent a different level – at any other university such a person would be a professor. In any case, I was happy because I had a lot of freedom to organize everything I wanted: international conferences, original programs, courses – everything was agreed to.

But you ask what else has changed in those 23 years.

BP: You said that the government does not see the importance of having Polish culture represented at the university.

AF: In fact, after the political transformation in Poland in 1989, the consulate began to take an interest in what was happening here. I am not talking about the fact that I was invited to author evenings at the consulate when I published a new book, which does not happen much anymore. They also tried to maintain some connection with what was happening here – they invited students to their place, they also came to some events at Columbia. Among the students of Columbia and Barnard College, I often had a lawyer or even two – it was the university or the law faculty that established this arrangement. So, all in all, I could not complain, I had the impression that these Polish studies were appreciated and supported in some way. Now, perhaps this happens to a lesser extent, but I also participate in it to a lesser extent since I have retired. I think it also depends on external conditions – let’s look at what was happening in the Czech Republic when Jaroslav Seifert won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984. Czech language and literature had excellent academic representation at Columbia – although it was a one-person department, everyone at Columbia knew the Nobel Prize winner’s name, and this translated into direct interest in Czech studies among students.

BP: Four years earlier, Miłosz received the Nobel Prize, in recent years Olga Tokarczuk, and during your time at Columbia – Wisława Szymborska. Was there a similar phenomenon in terms of interest in Polish studies in these cases?

AF: Yes, definitely. Tokarczuk was with us at Columbia, during my term and before and after the Nobel Prize, at meetings that I participated in. I talked to her, and in fact, I worked with her short stories during my classes. I think that the greatest increase in interest in Polish studies related to Miłosz.

BP: Nowadays, however, we usually speak of American Slavic studies, not Polish studies. Does this mean that Polish studies in themselves are – with a few exceptions, such as the Polish Studies Faculty (Loyola University) or the Department of Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies (University of Illinois), both in Chicago – a dying species?

AF: I wouldn't think of it in terms of dying out. It's just not known whether Polish studies would have a chance of surviving as a separate department, which is why they are usually practiced and taught within Slavic studies. There's even a problem with writing a doctorate in American Polish studies – I'll give you an example of Maria Dzieduszycka (a relative of Katarzyna Herbert), who manages the Zbigniew Herbert Foundation. She defended her doctorate at Columbia, The Romantic Other: Adam Mickiewicz in Russia, but formally it had to be done within Slavic studies – not Polish studies. To defend a doctorate, you had to take a certain number of Polish language courses, and if there was only one course per year, it was impossible. I think that if the program is good and interesting, students are interested and eager to learn. I had one who regularly came by train from Yale University, i.e. from New Haven, every week. It is rather on the Polish side that there is a bigger problem with such interest, a lack of awareness and understanding of the simple fact that people who graduate from the best universities here and make academic careers, later naturally become advocates of Poland in various matters. This is, going back to the beginning of our conversation, the issue of being an ambassador of Polishness.

Władysław Zając (Anna Frajlich's husband): They understand this mechanism in Ukraine, the Czech Republic, in many other European countries, but in Poland they somehow do not. There is an impressive Casa Italiana at Columbia, funded by Mussolini, which at some point was bought from Columbia by the Italians for several million dollars. They renovated it and sold it to Columbia for one dollar, as a symbol of their country, and to this day ceremonies, events, meetings, exhibitions are held there. I understand that Poland is not that rich and cannot afford such a move, but we mean here a general lack of understanding of the significance of such initiatives; "who needs literature?"

AF: I also defended my doctorate at New York University not in Polish studies, but in Slavic studies – and it was a doctorate in Russian studies (published as The Legacy of Ancient Rome in the Russian Silver Age).

BP: Today, we can look at this problem from a different angle. In 2000, when asked whether Polish studies is or must be a poor relative of Russian studies, you answered that it is a relative, but one that does not have to be a poor. I bring this up because the geopolitical moment we have been in since 2014, and especially 2022, is of different dimension. It seems to be a historical turning point for Europe and the world, in which we must recognize the cultural need and necessity to focus on such a development of Slavic studies that would be associated with its liberalization and the emancipation of non-Russian Slavic languages. Slavic studies have been, as we know, dominated by this language and culture for years, which creates a certain disproportion and an undesirable situation in which the entire spectrum of Slavic languages ​​remains on the margins, without a real chance to fight for their rightful place in the pantheon of literatures. This situation, described by Professor Ewa Thompson as the "invisibility and muteness of non-Russian Slavic studies", is an academic challenge.

AF: That's true, of course, although the matter is a bit more complex. We also must remember the pragmatic aspect: if someone goes to university, they usually wonder what they'll do afterwards. University gives you a profession – and there are far fewer job prospects for someone who studies Czech or Polish, instead of Russian. And I mean it in that order, because after this wave of popularity in the eighties, my colleague who deals with Czech studies in the Slavic department now has fewer students. Of course, as I've always emphasized, Polish studies are chosen by candidates not only because of emotional ties, but also because they treat them professionally – in the language or literary field. The truth is, however, that very few people can make a living from knowing Polish language or literature. Especially since at these good universities these studies cost a lot and you must put in a lot of work, so students do it as a side branch of their activities. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that crowds will be able to study Polish studies in the US and make a living from it – Russian studies are something completely different. There is a much greater demand for translators, for example, and employment opportunities are wider, and it seems that there is no way around it. It is true what Professor Thompson states – these Slavic studies, apart from Russian, are less developed. However, one could try to maintain it at a certain level – if one more position was established, it would certainly help to increase the popularity and interest of candidates. However, when the position at Columbia, which was taken by the aforementioned Dr. Magdalena Mazurek, was created, the Polish side decided that it would be the history department – ​​there was absolutely no mention of literature, because, again, who needs literature? So, if Polish people do not see such a need, it is hard to imagine that this state could improve. There is a lack of recognition of the economic potential and initiative to subsidize it so that more students could become familiar with Polish literature. Now, since the war started, I have definitely noticed a greater interest in the Ukrainian language.

BP: In the collection “Kampus. Pisarstwo literaturoznawców” edited by Jerzy Madejski from 2010, there is your text Na Columbia po polsku. We can read in it: “Over the course of twenty-seven years of work at the university, I still come across questions: Who learns Polish? Why do they learn Polish? To which I would like to perversely answer with a question: Why shouldn’t they learn? In this question, I see a certain disbelief resulting from the complex (...) – that Polish language and literature can become an inspiring component of general knowledge about language, culture, and the world.”

As people who devote their activities to Polish language and literature, we treat such an assumption as an obvious starting point. But how can we spread this conviction?

AF: Such questions about who studies Polish language and literature often stem from the belief that it is mainly representatives of the so-called Polonia who do so. I always use this term in relation to pre-war emigrants, because the later ones basically called themselves political emigrants. Of course, I had students from these circles, for whom I gained a lot of respect. There were even people from families that had been here for two or three generations. Wisława Szymborska's grandfather, Antoni, was a participant in the Greater Poland (1918-1919) and January (1863-1864) Uprisings, who had also came here. I read his diary with my students as part of my classes North America in the Mirror of Polish Literature – and even Szymborska herself experienced it: "My God, if my grandpa had known that American students would read it!" Meanwhile, among my students there were also people who had no family or geographical ties to Poland at all. It was often someone who needed the Polish language or an understanding of Polish literature for a paper they were writing, or simply wanted to broaden their interpretative context. It seems to me that the questions you quote appear and will continue to appear as an understandable manifestation of the curiosity of Americans about those who want to learn a rather niche language – and at the same time as a manifestation of the awareness of the cultural role of literature and language that Poles have perhaps not acquired enough. We can promote this as we have been doing so far, by teaching and lecturing, writing, organizing conferences and meetings.

BP: In conversations and interviews, you mention that “for unknown reasons” the academic year 1984/1985 was remembered in the annals of the rector’s office you ran as the largest group of students, which meant 10 people in each group. In later years, however, you sometimes spoke to one person, standing in a spacious lecture hall. Now that you are retired, how do you recall your last meetings with students?

AF: I recall many meetings and experiences with my students – after all, many memorable people and works have passed through my mind over the course of 34 years. For example, I had a student, a Germanist, who was writing a paper on the correspondence of nuns from two convents – Polish and German – and she took my course so that she could learn the Polish language, in which this correspondence was conducted in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. These are often very far-reaching needs behind the decision to study our language. Among my students were athletes who represented Columbia and chose my course. Interesting people also emerged at the annual Slavic conferences: students, writing their papers at the end of the year, presented interesting, different perspectives on things that we already knew. Their perception, different from ours, allowed us to look at literature in completely unexpected contexts. One of the students during the class suggested comparing Telimena with… a castle. The castle – beautiful and magnificent from a distance, yet a ruin up close. And Tadeusz, looking at Telimena when she sat down next to him, noticed her blush on the cheeks. I suppose that no one at a Polish university would have thought of such a comparison. Another student, who studied drama and is now a well-known professor, concluded that every scene in Pan Tadeusz was either overheard or spied on. Another student, an economist, while discussing Niemcewicz's works, had the idea to do the math and translate the expenses he meticulously wrote down in his diary into contemporary economic reality, to better reflect the realities mentioned in the work.

In addition to people from Columbia, there were also interesting figures from outside. Once I was contacted by a student from New York University, my alma mater, I-Chen Chen, a Korean who was writing a comparative doctorate on Chopin and Mickiewicz. It was published as a book Narrative in the Ballades of Fryderyk Chopin: Rhythm as a Reflection of Adam Mickiewicz's Poetic Ballads. She conducted a poetological analysis of the rhythm, notes, Chopin's works, and I helped her with Mickiewicz – we analyzed all these ballads together, devoting our attention to their structure. When I attended the defense of this thesis, I was surprised by the tradition of all participants signing the cork of the champagne brought.

BP: When will you visit Poland again?

AF: Now, in the fall I will have a tour around Poland, with author meetings about my work. I invite you to the meetings.

BP: We publish information about these evenings on the website of the Polish Studies Bulletin. Thank you very much for the conversation!