is an audiovisual performance combining words and music, commemorating the figure of the editor Jerzy Giedroyc and the constellation of people, events and themes centred around him,  which played a vital role during the Cold War in sustaining independent thought on Polish culture and politics. Jerzy Giedroyc  (1906–2000), founder of the Literary Institute and the Paris-based  periodical Kultura, left a distinct mark on Polish literary life of  the second half of the twentieth century, which was both created and interpreted in the context of the major political events  of the time. Together with his closest collaborators—Józef Czapski, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Zofia and Zygmunt Hertz— he established a centre for independent thought on Poland in  Maisons-Laffitte near Paris, which for many years was a true pilgrimage centre for both émigré writers and authors visiting from  Poland. In the People’s Republic of Poland, maintaining contact  with Giedroyc and publishing in Kultura carried the risk of heavy  consequences. This did not deter those who helped deliver Giedroyc’s publications to Poland, nor those who sent their texts to  him for publication, often under a pen name.

Giedroyc had a modern outlook on Poland; he did not focus  on restoring the prewar world order or cherishing memories of  the past. His vision of Poland within Europe was based on a federalist approach, hence his strong support for the independence  of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus, allied with Poland against  Russia’s imperial ambitions. The concept of the ULB, conceived  by Juliusz Mieroszewski—one of Kultura’s leading contributors— is gaining in significance today, confirming the far-sighted outlook of Giedroyc and his circle.

From the very beginning, Jerzy Giedroyc’s vision was based on  combining political thought with culture. He was fully aware  that freedom could only be regained with the support of culture, including, above all, independent literature. He knew that  it is culture that builds a nation’s identity, and that much can be  achieved through the written word. “I consider action through  the printed word to be the most effective form,” he declared.  Hence, right from the very start, his closest circle of collaborators included outstanding writers and thinkers such as Gustaw Herling-Grudziński and Józef Czapski, both of whom had  endured the harrowing experience of the Soviet labour camps  and the system of oppression.

The archipelago of figures created by Jerzy Giedroyc over several decades also included names of primary importance to Polish culture such as Czesław Miłosz, Witold Gombrowicz, Jerzy  Stempowski, Konstanty Jeleński, Stefan Kisielewski, and Wojciech  Karpiński. Their names and statements appear in The Giedroyc  Archipelago, often as a complement to the Editor’s own narrative. His words are taken from Autobiography for Four Hands,  coauthored with Krzysztof Pomian (Warsaw, 1999 and subsequent editions). A selection of excerpts from Jerzy Giedroyc’s memoirs forms the main narrative thread of the show, which  also features statements collected in two important volumes  devoted to Kultura, authored by Andrzej Stanisław Kowalczyk  (Giedroyc and “Kultura”, Wrocław, 1999) and Mirosław Chojecki  (Lafit. The people of “Kultura” on Themselves, Warsaw, 2016). It  also includes excerpts from texts published in the periodical and  passages from the Editor’s correspondence preserved in the collections of the Literary Institute in Maisons-Laffitte. My aim in  selecting the texts and crafting the play’s narrative was to sketch  the story of Jerzy Giedroyc and the people who gathered around  him, because they refused to allow their minds and creative  energies to be enslaved. Political and cultural matters take centre  stage in this story, though there is no shortage of moments of  respite: memories that reveal, sometimes with a touch of humour,  purely human instincts and relationships. Music and composers remained peripheral to Jerzy Giedroyc, though there was  a place for them in the archipelago he created. That is why we also  encounter Zygmunt Mycielski here, as the author of an important gesture of solidarity with Czech and Slovak musicians following the Warsaw Pact’s military invasion of Czechoslovakia,  and Roman Palester, whom Giedroyc asked to write on musical  topics, whilst openly admitting: “Unfortunately, I know nothing  about music”… In the poem dedicated to Giedroyc, quoted at  the end, Agnieszka Osiecka wrote: “The privilege of people such  as you is a place in history and eternal respect.” The Giedroyc  Archipelago, commissioned by the Literary Institute Association  and the Warsaw Autumn Festival to commemorate the Jerzy Giedroyc Year proclaimed by the Senate of the Republic of Poland,  was created as a literary and musical tribute to the memory and  achievements of a man who refused to accept the subjugation of  Polish culture. In an age of ever-increasing blurring of values,  the path he chose—linking political thought with a concern for  “the horizon of national culture” (A. S. Kowalczyk), reaffirms its  relevance and clearly points the way we should follow so as not to  squander his titanic work. It is like a compass, unfailingly pointing the way towards freedom and independence. 

Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska (2026)

This text is made available under a Creative Commons (CC BY) licence.

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Jerzy Giedroyc was a man of many facets, with a rich and varied life story. In 1917, as a pupil at a Polish secondary school in  Moscow, he witnessed the February Revolution. He travelled to  Petrograd to find his great-uncle; he did not find him and made  his way to Minsk through a Russia engulfed in unrest. According  to the biography published by the Literary Institute, it was at this  time that he began smoking cigarettes. The world of his interwar life had almost completely vanished: his parents were killed during the Warsaw Uprising, and many of his friends had either  been killed in action or had died. After World War II, Giedroyc  never started a family. He found refuge in Maisons-Laffitte and,  together with Zofia and Zygmunt Hertz, as well as Józef Czapski, created something resembling a home, although their life  together was not always peaceful. When arriving at Maisons-Laffitte Czesław Miłosz, until recently a diplomat, recorded objects  such as an oilcloth, a cold stove peeling plaster, and removal  boxes serving as furniture. He concluded that this did not look  like an influential institution or an elaborate centre of resistance,  but a home situated “at the very bottom of defeat.” The secret services of the People’s Republic of Poland, who subjected Giedroyc’s  circle to meticulous surveillance, might well have reached a similar conclusion. In the spring of 1975, they made a propaganda  film, Maisons-Laffitte, using a hidden camera. It also featured  a recording of an intercepted conversation between Giedroyc  and a visitor from Poland, whose identity was concealed. These  events offer a unique, almost voyeuristic perspective on the lives  and activities of a circle of people who sought to convince the Polish diaspora that it should forever renounce the cities forming  part of its ancestral mythology, such as Lviv and Vilnius; people  who, through intensive publishing and marketing work (particularly in the fields of literature and essay writing) worked to shape  a new, prodemocratic attitude amongst Poles with a view to a free  Poland; people who laid the foundations of our contemporary  foreign policy, particularly towards Ukraine, in a place that today  serves as an archive speaking through words, images, and sound. 

Waldemar Raźniak

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In my body of work, Archipelagos are forms created in collaboration with other artists. Their role goes far beyond the execution of the notated musical score, which in these pieces is only  fragmentary. These are encounters between people from various  fields—not just music—with whom we jointly shape the content,  expressive forms, timbre, techniques, and ways of communicating during the performance. The cast of Archipelagoshas varied:  from the six-strong Mud Cavaliers group (sometimes with guest  performers) to full orchestras. The following works were created:  The Lutosławski Archipelago, a reimagining of the composer’s  Livre pour orchestre (2013), and The Andriessen Archipelago, based  on his De Staat (2016). There was The Witkacy Archipelago, based  on motifs from The Shoemakers by the great visionary (2018).  In turn, The State of Affairs – Eight Years and More, an audiovisual assemblage accompanying Piotr Wójcik’s films and photographs (2025), was not an Archipelagoby title, but formed part  of a series of large-scale, hour-long, polemic performances by  the Mud Cavaliers “milieu,” combining script, recorded material  and improvisation. One could also include a dozen or so further “treatises” by this ensemble, created since its formation in 2003  and presented in many venues across Poland and Europe. Many  of these works were preoccupied with some significant issue concerning public life.  

When I was offered the chance to create another Archipelago—  centred this time on the figure of Jerzy Giedroyc—I knew that  taking on this challenge was important to me because of my  intellectual journey, which was largely shaped by the Paris-based  Kultura periodical. I am grateful to the Literary Institute Association in Paris for enabling me to engage with this legendary  institution and to visit Maisons-Laffitte to record the sounds that  capture the atmosphere of that place. Whilst working on The Giedroyc Archipelago, the director and playwright Waldemar Raźniak  asked me what I believed the piece was supposed to be about.  I replied that it was about the mechanics of history, overcoming entropy, building a coherent space, and the danger of chaos.  It is about the agency of Jerzy Giedroyc and the small circle of  figures from Maisons-Laffitte. We find ourselves at a time when  many matters around us, of the sort that seemed unshakeable, are  wavering in their stability. Democracy is giving way to populism,  information to manipulation, politics to business, ethics to sales,  and patriotism to a sense of “us versus them.” The war in Ukraine  is ongoing. Jerzy Giedroyc’s “Common Europe,” as a grand axiological and legal construct, demands that we make every effort  to ensure its survival.  

As a composer and a human, together with all the authors of this  work, I cannot fail to take this opportunity to highlight the continued relevance of Jerzy Giedroyc’s vision and our profound  commitment to the ideas and actions of the people of the Maisons-Laffitte community.

Jerzy Kornowicz