Józef Wittlin

show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Polish. (April 2012) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Polish article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,174 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Polish Wikipedia article at [[:pl:Józef Wittlin]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|pl|Józef Wittlin}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Józef Wittlin
Born	(1896-08-17)August 17, 1896[1] Dmytrów near Radekhiv, Podolia, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
Died	February 28, 1976(1976-02-28) (aged 79) New York City, New York, United States
Nationality	Polish American (since 1949)[1]
Occupation	Author, Poet, Translator
Years active	1920–1963[1]
Known for	his expressionist and realist poetry
Notable work	Salt of the Earth (Sól ziemi, 1935)[2]

Józef Wittlin (1896–1976) was a Polish novelist, poet and translator.

Life[]

After graduating from a classical gimnazjum in Lwów, Wittlin joined the volunteer military formation of the Polish Legion in August 1914. His unit was however soon disbanded due to the refusal of the Poles to take the oath for the Austrian government. Subsequently he went to Vienna, where he passed the Matura and began studying philosophy. With his friend Joseph Roth he again joined the Austrian army in 1916, and after some military training was drafted into the infantry. Shortly before being sent to the Italian front he fell ill with scarlet fever and was thus prevented from direct participation in the fighting. His military service took place far away from the front and included among other things working as a translator in prisoner-of-war camps with Italian soldiers.

In 1922 he moved to Łódź and 1927 to Warsaw. In 1924 he married Halina Handelsmann. At this time he undertook extensive travels through Europe which significantly influenced his work. At the outbreak of World War II he was living in Paris, from where he was evacuated in May 1940 to Biarritz. With the help of Hermann Kesten, he and his family succeeded in escaping in January 1941 from Nice through Spain and Portugal to New York, where he remained after the war.

Works[]

• Anthems (Hymny), Poems (1920)
• War, peace and the soul of a poet (Wojna, pokój i dusza poety), essays (1925)
• From the memoirs of a former pacifist (Ze wspomnień byłego pacyfisty) (1929)
• Stages (Etapy), travel notes (1933)
• Salt of the Earth^[3] (Sól ziemi), the first novel of an envisioned, unfinished trilogy Tale of a Patient Infantryman^[4] (1935)
• My Lwów (Mój Lwów), memories (1946); English translation (by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) published together with Philippe Sands' My Lviv as City of Lions (London: Pushkin Press, 2016; ISBN 978-1-782271-17-8)
• Orpheus in the underworld of the twentieth century (Orfeusz w piekle XX wieku), essays (1963)
• Poems (Poezje) (1978, posthumously)

References[]

Further reading[]

• Czesław Miłosz (1983) The History of Polish Literature. University of California Press ISBN 978-0520044777
•  [pl] (2001) Between Lvov, New York, and Ulysses' Ithaca: Józef Wittlin – poet, essayist, novelist. Nicholas Copernicus University
• Zoya Yurieff (1997) Józef Wittlin.  [pl], Constans ISBN 978-8386646517