SHAKSPER 2001: Re: Jan Kott

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 12/31/01 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2920  Monday, 31 December 2001

[1]     From:   Krystyna Kujawinska <miranda@krysia.uni.lodz.pl>
        Date:   Sunday, 12/30/01 1:30 PM
        Subj:   Jan Kott, Shakespeare, Tangerines and a Bouquet of Pansies

[2]     From:   John Velz <jvelz@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>
        Date:   Saturday, 29 Dec 2001 01:14:43 -0600
        Subj:   Jan Kott


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Krystyna Kujawinska <miranda@krysia.uni.lodz.pl>
Date:           Sunday, 12/30/01 1:30 PM
Subject:        Jan Kott, Shakespeare, Tangerines and a Bouquet of Pansies

Dear Colleagues,

I am sure that there will be many official obituaries of Jan Kott
presenting him as a scholar and academic teacher. My comment is more
personal, since I have known him, first of all, as a friend. Our contact
was mainly by correspondence, though I also had the pleasure to meet him
more than once in person.

As a Ph. D. student writing my dissertation on the theatrical history of
Shakespeare’s history plays, I was urged by Dr. Robert Smallwood, my
supervisor in the Shakespeare Institute, The University of Birmingham,
where I was on a British Council grant, to write Professor Kott a
letter. I was very hesitant about it, since I thought that he would
never bother to answer the academic queries of an obscure student. I was
very much mistaken, since he did reply, and was very helpful in his
comments and his interest.

We continued our correspondence on a regular basis. For years I
regularly received his letters (one letter per month). Those letters
were written on the backs of photocopies of various, sometimes extremely
unusual, Medieval and Renaissance woodcuts and paintings. He must have
taken lots of trouble to find these woodcuts and pictures, since they
always formed a kind of iconographical comment on the content of his
letters.

In 1982, the second year of the imposition of martial law in Poland,
when everything was rationed, and one had to stand in lines even for
bread (forget butter!), I received 6 pounds of tangerines from Professor
Kott. They arrived just before Christmas, and I will never forget their
smell, and my “honey in the heart” feelings for this famous Professor,
who thought about his correspondent friend. These tangerines came to me
for years, always a few days before Christmas.

He also sent me copies of his books, printouts of essays, and articles.
His “Stony Brook” (1986) publication was held back from circulation in
Poland by the Communist censorship, and it took me 8 months to get it
after several applications and letters. (I have this book with the whole
file attached of that corespondence with the the Polish Communist
Censorship Office).

When I told him about my plan to write a monograph on the Shakespeare
Roman plays and narrative, he advised me to apply for a grant from the
Kosciuszko Foundation. (It was the only institution which selected its
grantees without the mediating power of the Polish Communist
government). Professor Kott also advised me to write a letter to
Profesor John Velz, at the University of Texas at Austin, and ask him to
consider my project and the possibility to accept me as a visiting
scholar working under his supervision, once I received the Kosciuszko
Foundation grant. Later I learnt from Prof. Velz, that he and Professor
Kott had never actually been in any contact, but it looks as if Prof.
Kott knew him from his works. In his letter to me he stated that “Prof.
Velz is one of the best specialists in the world in Shakespeare’s Roman
plays.”

I realize that I received the Kosciuszko grant because Jan Kott wrote me
a very strong recommendation. We met in New York at the Foundation, and
he spent two afternoons with me: showing me New York by taxi: he had
problems with walking. We also went together to some art galleries, one
learned society meeting where he delivered a speech, and for a short
stroll in Central Park. And we talked about Polish theatre, Shakespeare
scholarship and his life in the USA.

During my stay in Austin, Professor Kott often phoned me. He also sent
me from time to time money, “for little extra in life” as he said.  I
did some research for him: he was at that time in Santa Monica,
California. The research was usually on “controversial” subjects.
Frankly I blushed when I was explaining to the people in the Reference
Library what I was looking for. (That research did make me known among
the librarians who started recognizing me in the street, and saying
hello.) Later I learnt that he used my research in his collection of
essays “The Gender of Rosalind”.

I saw him for the last time in the early nineties, when he was in
Poland. He wanted to come to Lodz: he had received his PhD degree from
the University of Lodz in French literature. As much as I tried to make
the authorities of my University recognize his academic achievements and
work, I failed. The new system was too new, and many people were still
thinking in the old way. I was told by some “very important ones” that
Prof. Kott was too controversial, that he was a political renegade, that
he was a Communist, and he was a Jew. (When last year the University
finally issued him an official invitation, he was too ill to come).  We
met in Warsaw, where he gave a lecture in the Polish PEN-Club, and after
the lecture we sat in one of the open air cafes at the Old Market and
talked. When we were parting at the station, where he took me in the
evening by taxi, I received from him a bouquet of pansies. He was sure
that it was to be his last visit to Poland. He was missing Poland, but
he loved and was very grateful to the USA, his second motherland. Though
he will probably never be recognized as a Shakespeare scholar by some
Polish academics, the theatre people love him. After all, he was one of
the creators of the famous Polish “theatre of political allusions and
metaphors”. His essays, articles, and comments on Shakespeare, theatre,
literature and cinema appeared every year in Polish journals and
newspapers. Recently all his works have been republished. The Polish
theaters use fragments from his essays in their theatrical programmes,
and his authority is probably more recognized now than ever in the past.
I am sure that now many works devoted to him with be published, and
there will be many conferences organized under his name: As the Polish
saying has it, “It isn’t easy to live after death. It takes a lifetime”

When I learnt about his death, I took his books, essays, letters, the
dead bouquet of pansies, and I cried. I never actually knew him very
well, but he did change my life--he gave me the opportunity to study
Shakespeare in the USA, and he occupied a very special place in my life.

Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           John Velz <jvelz@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>
Date:           Saturday, 29 Dec 2001 01:14:43 -0600
Subject:        Jan Kott

In re Skip Nicholson’s helpful web ref to the obit of Kott, I read the
relevant passage in the *L.A. Times* and found information in it that I
was unfamiliar with.  I highly recommend it to the list.  It cites
vaguely “a Polish newspaper” as I remember it but gives no date of birth
or death.  Knowing the precise date of death would be of help to me on
behalf of a friend abroad.

Can anyone supply this info.??

Thanks,
John

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