Wojciech Kudyba wins this year's Marek Nowakowski Literary Award
The 2021 Marek Nowakowski Literary Award has been won by Wojciech Kudyba, author of the collection of short stories I co dalej?
The jury, comprising Maciej Urbanowski (chair), Włodzimierz Bolecki, Wojciech Chmielewski, Janusz Drzewucki, Irena Makarewicz, Krzysztof Masłoń and Mateusz Matyszkowicz, praised Kudyba for his consistency and originality in portraying contemporary characters, generally ordinary people, whose voices resound loudly and movingly in the prize-winning volume. They also praised the way in which Kudyba's short stories are firmly rooted in everyday life, their empathy and compassion, their connection to Warsaw, the diversity of forms used in the stories in the collection and, last but not least, their connection to the best traditions of Polish literature, especially the works of Nowakowski himself.
Wojciech Feliks Kudyba is a writer, poet, critic and literary historian. He studied Polish Philology at the Catholic University of Lublin. His prose works include Nazywam się Majdan (2015), Imigranci wracają do domu (2018), Kamienica (2018), Pułascy (2020) and I co dalej? (2020). He is also the author of several volumes of poetry.
Kudyba's studies of contemporary literature and research articles have appeared in various academic journals, including Studia Norwidiana, Pamiętnik Literacki, Teksty Drugie, Ethos, Roczniki Humanistyczne KUL and Ruch Literacki.
In 2009–2012 Kudyba was Director of the Institute of Polish Philology of the Faculty of Humanities at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. Since 2018 he has been head of the Department of Twentieth-Century Literature at said Faculty. On June 21, 2018 he was made a Professor by the President of Poland Andrzej Duda. He is a lecturer at the Study of Literature and Art (School of Writers) at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, a jury member for various literary competitions (Orpheus Literary Prize 2014-16, Złoty Środek Poezji 2010-15), a contributor to the bi-monthly literary magazine Topos, a co-founder of the Topoi poetry group, a member of the Kraków branch of the Polish Writers' Association and, since April 2020, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and head of the Essay Section of the monthly literary journal Twórczość.
Wojciech Kudyba has won numerous competitions and awards: the R.M. Rilke Poetry Competition (second prize, 2003), the K.I. Gałczyński Poetry Competition in Pranie, Masuria (first prize, 2003), the J.S. Pasierb Foundation Prize (2005, 2007), the Józef Mackiewicz Award (2008) and the Professor Bolesław Kumor Award (2015). He was a finalist in the Orfeusz Poetry Prize in 2012. His texts have been translated into Czech, Slovak, German, English and French.
Laudatio for Wojciech Kudyba by Professor Maciej Urbanowski, Chair of the Jury
Wojciech Kudyba is a very good poet and essayist, and has been trying his hand as a prose writer for some time now. He is the author of the two contemporary novels Nazywam się Majdan (2015) and Imigranci wracają do domu (2018), the historical novel Pułascy. Aut vincere, aut mori (2020), and two volumes of short stories: Kamienicy, published three years ago and favourably reviewed by the jury of the Marek Nowakowski Literary Award, and I co dalej?, the work for which he wins the current award.
I co dalej? is a collection of five short stories that attempt to draw a collective portrait of today's Poles – ordinary, average people confronted with events and processes that we know from the front pages of newspapers or academic studies. For example, the Amber Gold affair, or processes such as liberalism, capitalism, desacralisation or consumerism, to give them their academic names. But Kudyba does not use these big words: there are no abstract ideas in his works. He takes as his subjects individuals who are sometimes victims of these ideas and processes, sometimes witnesses, and sometimes quite unaware of them. He makes the reader look at the world through their eyes, allows them to speak, and enables the reader to maybe understand them as a result. For example, the characters Łucja Malec in the story Jest, jak jest, Danuśka in Dom dla Tereski and Michał Sobiesław Śmierciak in the story that bears his name. Kudyba is a realist, but one who talks about reality through language. His characters are people who talk, in the form of monologues or dialogues, which is why it is so important not only what they say about their lives but also how they talk about them. And they speak using slogans from the media and advertising, in language that is often chaotic, clumsy, garbled or even "wounded".
What seems to me quite new in this prose, and rare in contemporary short-story writing, is the religious theme, particularly evident in Przypadek Apolonii and Niech im świeci. The former story, about a diabolical corporation and the conversion of the character mentioned in the title, is perhaps less successful, rather less subtle. The latter, on the other hand, is very good, consisting of the internal monologues of the attendees at a funeral, a moving description, not free from occasional irony, of contemporary religiousness or rather its demise.
The collection as a whole is a kind of bitter diagnosis of contemporary Poland, its title a question posed by its characters, but also one that the author seems to direct at the reader, as if travestying Tolstoy's famous "What is to be Done?".
On the cover Professor Dybciak praises Kudyba's collection of short stories, rightly placing it in the "great tradition of literature of compassion, bearing witness to the truth of its time" and mentioning – not without some hyperbole – the names of Prus, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Herling and others. Marek Nowakowski is not mentioned in this list, yet he would seem to be the natural patron saint watching over the prose, as has been pointed out by critics when discussing the collection.
Krzysztof Masłoń, for example, draws attention to the similarities between the story Niech im świeci and Nowakowski's Wesele raz jeszcze, placing Kudyba's entire volume "on the road which Nowakowski charted with his short stories, full of the difficult, painful truth about our reality and at the same time filled with compassion for the people we meet on that road". Waldemar Żyszkiewicz goes as far as to say that "since the times of Marek Nowakowski, few have dealt with [poor people] as humanely, with such sympathy" as Kudyba. Żyszkiewicz further notes that Nowakowski also himself appears in the collection: Andżelika, a graduate of Polish Studies who Michał Sobiesław Śmierciak meets in the story of the same name, who before leaving for England to work as a dishwasher is planning to finish her PhD on Nowakowski, calls him someone who "does not suck up to anyone, does not write about VIPs or corporate pimps but ordinary people, even down-and-outs."
For all these reasons we have chosen Wojciech Kudyba to receive this year's Marek Nowakowski Literary Award. While discussing Kamienicy and sharing my praise for that work, I was somewhat reserved, as seemed fitting for a debut work and a somewhat sideways step for a poet. I co dalej? makes me abandon that reserve. It displays consistency, maturity and originality.