Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 09:34:11 +0200
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: jkrenz@pg.gda.pl

Dear Madame,
Through the good offices of Antek Pawlak (an old friend), I was able to acquaint myself with your collection of poems, "Z nieznajoma w podrozy". This poetry came to please me and I was additionally intrigued by news of  "La Tour", the collection published in Italy. I have, for some time now, been dealing with  ecphrastics, predominantly romantic material, but I'm also interested in the way associations with paintings manifest themselves in contemporary poetry. [...]
Would you kindly send me your collection of poetry or tell me how I can otherwise come into its possession.
With kind regards,
Jan Zielinski
 

Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 10:22:14 +0200
From: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Sir,
How nice to meet you this way. Thank you for your interest in my poetry. I will, of course, send you "La Tour" by the post. But before I do, I would like to offer you a short explanation. My childhood friend, a photographer living in Paris, rang me to ask if I wouldn't write a poem, maybe a few poems, to accompany his album of photography. They were to be about the tower. The Eiffel Tower. And what do I say to that.
First, I said yes; next I panicked. I have never been commissioned to write. Especially poems for specific pictures. Poems have always come to me on their own, I don't know where from, and even if they were about pictures - like Andrew Wyeth's "Christine", the landscape in the Ufizzi Museum in Florence, or a certain winter garden by Mehoffer - they came by an impulse of the memory, not by matching words to what the eye was beholding. Meanwhile, the parcel with pictures of  "our” tower was already on its way thanks to the close co-operation of the French and Polish posts. Just a few more days and a whole bunch of little steel towers would spill from the envelope and stuff me with detail.
Time was pressing, I could almost see the postman with the dreaded envelope in hand. I remember it was a Sunday. Already half asleep, I had an idea: I could first play a little game of invoking the tower's spirit, to see it telepathically so to speak, and then confront my memory and imagination with the picture. By morning I had written all the poems which then found themselves in our album. And when the envelope of photographs finally arrived, I couldn't believe my own eyes: even the spider that was about to fall into a winter sleep, even it was there...
[...]
Sincerely,
Katarzyna Krenz
 

Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 11:01:31 +0200
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl

Dear Kasia,
It turns out that my intuition has not failed me. Reading such poems like "Dream of Florence” or "Christine's Portrait", I sensed you must have a deeper relation with painting than most contemporary poets. [...] I am working on a thesis on the relation of four poets with art. However, the boundary between painting and literature has puzzled me for years. The effects of my curiosity can be found in a book entitled "Project - Sketch - Bozzetto” edited by M. Poprzecka, in the catalogue of the Mela Mutter exhibit at the National Museum in Warsaw, or in the catalogue of the Hilary Krzysztofiak exhibit at Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw. Recently, just before Frankfurt, I presented a paper on the ecphrastic poems of Alexander Wat during a conference (in Darmstadt) dedicated to his life and work.

Sincerely,
Janek Zielinski
 

Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 12:03:05 +0200
From: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
Thank you for your letter.
[...]
Pictures and words... Maybe it's because in this our real "theory of chaos" - meaning life - there are no pure states of existence; only pictures, only music, only words, that is why to see them, to express them, we use a number of senses simultaneously?
[...]
I have written a series of poems recently, in which I "work the paint" for pictures - that's what I called it just for myself, for when writing I try to choose the right "colours” of words for subsequent poem-picture-space-interior-scenes. But this isn't the literal describing of pictures - there is only one poem of that sort (concerning a certain still life) - this time I truly wanted to paint with words. I can send you these poems but "in a moment” because I want to look at them some more and right now I'm in the midst of translating something very urgent and not feeling particularly poetic.

Hope to hear from you,
kasia krenz
 

Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 21:41:23 +0200
From: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
I'm sending you a little "still life” with the best of autumnal wishes.
Has the envelope arrived?
kk

Katarzyna Krenz, Stepping out of the shadow

still life
for my sister Ewa

the lemon of time
with its yellow spiral
wraps
a pomegranate
and a ripe fig
sliced in two

beside them
from the darkness
bursting with juices
tight bunches
of greenish days
purple nights

on the plate's edge lay
the pits of words
rid of their pulp
left at the mercy
of an uncertain return
to the earth
 

Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 22:20:02 +0200
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl

Dear Kasia,
Yes, the envelope did arrive, many thanks. I didn't write back immediately because I've only returned from Poland yesterday to find a large pile of correspondence.
Does the still life have any particular iconographic "foundation"?

Best wishes,
Janek Zielinski
 

Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2000 16:44:23 +0200
From: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
Sorry I haven't written back sooner but I was a bit under the weather and my response required certain steps to be taken. The memory, you see, is a peculiar machine.
You asked me a simple question: what was the still life? Title? Painter?
Where did I see it?
Well, what I had to say to that was - as always when someone asks me about the source of my poetry - I don't know, don't know. Not a clue!
A few days passed in sickness and in thought.
And yet sometimes certain doors can be opened.
Quite unexpectedly, I remembered two square German books with pictures pasted onto the pages. The pictures were of poor quality, and rather small, yes, but in colour. And the same scene: throat bundled, the smell of camphor, a bed in a child's room full of toys and paper cut-outs (I made puppets and decorations for a toy-theatre from colourful sweets wrappers), and those two square paperbacks with the hard black spines, which Mother would make me "read” so that I would stop whining. I was five, maybe six years old.
So many pictures from childhood. But these books...?
I wrote to my sister. Yes, I had remembered correctly, but she doesn't have those books, maybe I'll find them at our Parents' house. So, I went and... there they were! Two of them. Square. One blue, one light brown. With black spines. "Die Malerei des Barock” and "Die Malerei der Gotik und Früh-Renaissance”. Footnote: by Cigaretten-Bilderdienst Hamburg-Bahrenfeld. Printed in Germany. Wissenschftliche Bearbeitung und Text von Herman Wiemann, Berlin 1940.
Real-life "post-German” books: many of the illustrations had been torn out, the first page of the Renaissance was also gone...
I'm looking for "my” still life. At first I thought it might be Claesz - perfect match including the lemon peel spiral, the light on the seeds or the round grapes, and the porcelain plate (a blue pattern?), and probably, too, some valuable glassware as is so typical of the Dutch.
Meanwhile there is only one illustration in the book with "such" a still life but it is surely the one, on page 93: Willem Kalf, Stillleben mit chinesischer Schale. Berlin, Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum.
The nautilus shell is mounted in the form of a goblet. The plate, porcelain - with blue pattern! - on it peaches and half a pomegranate with the seeds, deeper, next to the nautilus, some glassware - barely visible, just bright spots and shine. In the foreground, a lemon with spiralling peel...the text on the same page next to the reproduction mentions Claesz - he fascinated Kalf, thus the still lifes. So, I had overlooked the nautilus for certain "Freudian” reasons (maybe some other time about that) - but I had added the fig because it was a "present" for my sister, to whom the poem was dedicated, and I had remembered the dark pomegranate with its multitude of seeds. In the bottom left corner there is a delicately engraved little silver or gold box with the lid open.
Now I can answer your question!

Sincerely,
Kasia krenz
 

Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2000 23:36:53 +0100
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl

Dear Kasia,
I just love such answers. It's exactly what I wanted: to trace the substance that lies at the base of a poetic experience. Sometimes a literary historian is able to do this, however knots often have hidden endings, so it is best if the author is alive and can actively contribute. This confrontation with the past was probably somehow useful to you too. Thank you very, very much. I will try to find the publication in Swiss libraries, and if not, I will at least obtain a reproduction of the painting.

Warm wishes,
Janek
 

Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 10:45:37 +0100
From: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
It is I who should thank you. You have no idea what an experience it was for me. At first I was frightened. Truly. How should I answer Janek's question about substance if I myself don't know? My poetry doesn't exist one moment and then exists the next. I see pictures somewhere from behind a mist and I am either able to catch them by the tale and turn them into words, or they remain enigmatically, in a shapeless shadow of sounds and colours.
I returned from Warsaw with a cold and without a voice. Neck wrapped in a shawl, scratchy throat, the smell of camphor, the taste of honey. I reached for a stack of books from the table to replace them on their shelves when the situation revived a similar scene from the past…
I was supposed to tell you about the nautilus. It was a sort of mythical, metaphysical shell in our house. The unfulfilled dream of our mother. Of antiquity, of beauty, of world's paintings she never saw and was probably never meant to see. I went abroad once and brought back such a nautilus for her. It was creamy white, unpolished, with brown knots turning to black at the base of the spiral. Then in England I found a polished one - shiny and pearly.
Now the pearly one sits on the shelf by my desk, I look at it daily. It is real. A dream come true. I don't need to catch at figments to describe it. Memories of my childhood home, my Mother, and Kalf's still life are figments. They are like amethysts and light greens of grapes, the violets of fresh figs and the golden lemon twirl.
Thank you once again.

Hope to hear from you soon,
Kasia
 

Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 23:04:33 +0100
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl

Dear Kasia,
I haven't written for a long time but various other duties somehow kept me away. This doesn't mean, however, that I haven't thought about Kalf's painting. I wasn't able to find that particular book in the public collections of Bern. But I wasn't very surprised, as it seems it was an album for chocolate collectors and such books rarely reach libraries. In Charles Sterling's "Still-life", so beautifully published in Polish not so long ago, there is a colour reproduction of a rather similar painting by the same artist. However, I found an even closer semblance in the net, as part of the collection of a known Swiss arts patron (and arms dealer). Address: www.buehrle.ch/bio.asp?lang=e&id_pic=155
Please, have a look and let me know if it is the same Berlin painting or some mutation of it. Kalf painted many very similar pictures.

That's all for today. Sincerely,
jz
 

Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 23:40:50 +0100
From: Krenz jkrenz@pg.gda.pl
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
Alas, the arms dealer bought himself a different Kalf. I investigated Berlin museums in the net. No trace of "our" painting. What became of it? In 1940 it was still in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum! Is it possible that someone has taken it out of the country, sold it? Stolen it?
I am sending you a scanned copy of the picture from my book so that you can see what we are looking for.
Please, let me know if the attachment went through and if it's visible, alright?

Best wishes,
kk

[picture]
 

Subject: Re: Scanned painting
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2001 17:15:40 +0100
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Kasiakrenz@poland.com

Dear Kasia,
Thank you for the scan. No, it is not the same one. Even the arrangement of the main objects is different.
I continue my search.

All the best,
jz
 

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 19:02:38 +0200
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Kasiakrenz@poland.com

Dear Kasia,
I took the first and probably only monograph on Willem Kalf, written by Lucius Griesebach (Berlin 1974), off the shelf of the Art History Seminar library today.
"Our" painting ("Stilleben mit Nautiluspokal, Glaspokal, Obstchüssel und Gläsern") is number 112 in the catalogue, it was in the collection of Adolph Thiem, first in Niederschöneweide, then in San Remo, in 1904 it was bought by the Berlin Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, went up in flames in 1945. A few of its copies by various artists can be found in Antwerp, Stockholm, Berlin and Amsterdam. However, the next number in the catalogue, also by Kalf, almost identical, has been in Moscow (Pushkin Museum) since the 18th century. According to a catalogue dating from 1906 it was painted in 1661 - today the date is no longer legible. So many facts. Unfortunately, the monograph - in which the Berlin painting is mentioned only twice (pp. 116 and 131) - gives nothing more than comments about the arrangement of the objects and the role of the middle axis. From the description it seems there is a Römer and a pocket watch to the left.

Sincerely,
Janek Zielinski
 

Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2001 18:47:40 +0200 (CEST)
From: Kasiakrenz@poland.com
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
Thank you very much for the letter.
I cannot express how moved I was by your findings. I couldn't sleep - the burning painting in bombarded Berlin kept appearing before my eyes. I returned to my childhood "box of chocolates”: is it possible that I will never know what lies in those darkened margins of the poor - wartime! - illustration? Yes, the left corner seems to bear a large pocket watch with the lid open, strung on a light blue ribbon. It's strange to think that a German wrote the "first and only monograph on Willem Kalf”. And that it was published in Berlin - the very same city where our painting went up in flames.
A true still-life...

Melancholy greetings,
KK

P.S. I had a look against the light: there, in the darkness, there is more glass - yes, glass because the dishes look thin and delicate and not carved from thick crystal. Yes, in the Römer on the left one can see the sparkle of wine, and further back, behind the nautilus there is a taller dish, also on a stem, with a round lid like the dome of an orthodox church. And on the right, as if just above the porcelain plate with the blue pattern - something like a small ice-cream dish. Did people already eat ice cream  then? K.
 

Date: Thu, 29 March 2001 21:55:24 +0200
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Kasiakrenz@poland.com

Dear Kasia,
I apologise for the nocturnal unrest - this wasn't my intention. But December 4th you wrote: "Memories of my childhood home, my Mother and Kalf's still-life are figments. Like the amethysts and light greens of grapes, the violets of fresh figs and the golden lemon twirl.”
I somehow thought you knew this painting no longer existed (although it does exist through the artist's copy in Moscow). Griesebach's paper was a Ph.D. thesis from the Free University of Berlin in 1971. They don't mention his nationality, but if he were Swiss he would have boasted about his origins.
I look closely at the reproduction and I see, from the left: the watch, the Römer, then as if little fishes leaping out of the water but these are probably peach leaves, next the glass goblet with the orthodox church dome-like lid, the nautilus, behind it a tall narrow goblet (Flötglas in the description), and the small goblet to the right but of thin glass, as if made of separate petals - for a fruit drink or a sherbet.
On p.116 the author describes the Berlin and Moscow paintings together with a third, also similar, the Alsatian version. Do you read German? If so, I will send you this fragment (half a page).

I wish you a peaceful night,
jz
P.S. The painting is gone, but the poem remains.
 

Date: Fri, 30 March 2001 22:25:44 +0200 (CEST)
From: Kasiakrenz@poland.com
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
I apologise if I sounded too dramatic. And probably slightly "incommensurable" with the "pains of the world” - but somehow that burning painting truly hurt me. I am trying once again to penetrate the dark shadows of the reproduction. Yes, they really are the leaves of that peach in the foreground. There is white wine in the Römer. Maybe golden - riesling? muscat? Or perhaps a nice sweet moelleux from a late harvest? The tall glass goblet with the orthodox church dome lid maybe truly is slender and not round, but I cannot see exactly, it is night-time there in the painting's depths. And that goblet on the right - yes, perhaps it is a sherbet glass - it looks like the flower of a lotus or an anemone.
Unfortunately, I do not read German, only French and English, but I have specialists of the German language in my family, I'm sure they'll translate the half a page, so please send it to me, alright?

Goodnight. And thank you.
kk
 

Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 13:32:10 +0200
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Kasiakrenz@poland.com

Dear Kasia,
Here are the quotes you requested. […]
I feel that our exchange of notes regarding Kalf's "still" is slowly taking on the weight of a sort of article that we could write together. Perhaps for Krysia Lars' literary magazine "Tytul". What do you say?

Sincerely,
jz
 

Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 10:52:33 +0200 (CEST)
From: Kasiakrenz@poland.com
To: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch

Dear Janek,
A book for a book, a quote for a quote. Below is a fragment from my wartime "chocolate box” (I am forever bewildered by the twisted meanders which ordered some Germans to hang paintings in museums and write monographs about them, while others unscrupulously left them to the mercy of war's fire).
"[…] we owe the first truly excellent examples of still lifes to a painter born in Amsterdam, Willem Kalf (1622-July 31, 1693), whose life, artistic education and achievements remain, unfortunately, almost unknown. His early still lifes from the years 1643-44 - representing breakfast tables with simple meals, glassware and tin or silver jugs - […] indicate the influence of Rembrandt with their grey-brown tones and layout of light and darkness. With time, affected by the richly coloured paintings of the great masters, Kalf's paintings became more satiated and exquisite in choice of colours and arrangement of objects. [...] From the substantial number of paintings of this kind, we have chosen to present this "Still life with Chinese Bowl” (65-54 cm) from Berlin. On a stone table, from which a tapestry has partly been removed, we can see a Chinese faience bowl decorated with a blue pattern, in it fragrant peaches and a thin slice of melon [sic! yet it is a pomegranate]. Beside the bowl there is a half-peeled lemon and a fruit knife on a richly ornamented silver tray. A shiny pearl nautilus goblet and several wonderful glass goblets filled with red and golden wines rise above the first group of objects. To the left of the tray, beside a fine pocket watch, stands a swelled Römer, a slender Venetian glass goblet with a bulging lid can be seen in the back centre. Finally, on the right edge of the painting, there is a crystal fruit bowl. [...]"
Enough quoting for today.
These glasses, sparkling with various shades of wine, and these sliced fruits - moist, juicy, fragrant - affected the imagination of Dutch Philistines, charming the senses and…wasps. Thus the peeled lemons, whose tart essential oils apparently served as efficient protection from the winged intruders. Lemon juice was also sprinkled on oysters to prevent them from squealing in the stomach. So, in truth, still lifes were a kind of photography of contemporary life, a record of daily life.
Overseas travels brought far-off worlds to Dutch cuisine.
Words, dreams, memories - all that is left of our painting. And one gloomy illustration.

Goodbye,
kk

P.S. I think I like your idea of writing about "our painting. Actually, the story has already written itself and has - unexpectedly - taken on a strangely strong internal drama. Well, maybe not all on its own - time and history also had their part.
Eager to work, spring greetings at last! K.
 

Subject: Re: And so...
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 20:14:12 +0200
From: Zielinski zielinski@econophone.ch
To: Kasiakrenz@poland.com

Dear Kasia,
Let us try to summarise.
17th century Dutch painter Willem Kalf specialises in still lifes. His favourite motifs are goblets (especially nautiluses - no surprise in a maritime country) and various fruit, especially lemons. The lemon with a dangling spiral peel (slightly different in each painting) is as if his artistic trademark, his signature. One of these paintings displayed in a Berlin museum is printed in a wartime book written by a known German art historian and sent as a prize to children who have collected the required number of chocolate boxes.
The painting is devoured by flames during the war but the book survives and comes into the possession of a little Polish girl who looks at its colourful pictures while sick. Years later the girl becomes a poet who writes a poem about this painting. Perhaps she doesn't consciously remember that there is a pocket watch to the left, and she was unaware of the painting's having gone up in flames, yet her poem is about time and passing. In the poem the yellow lemon is entangled in the spiral of time in an unbreakable knot. Together they wrap the pomegranate whose seeds, transformed into the "seeds of words", will fall into the earth to bear new fruit. The "bunches /of green days / and violet nights" are also a symbol of passing. These grapes "appear from out of the darkness".
One of the greatest still life specialists, Charles Sterling wrote:
"Kalf does not describe objects, he drowns them in a half-dusk. The true subject of his work is the shine of metal, the reflection of glass, the deaf and soft reflections on wool. [...] Kalf combines the blue of Chinese porcelain and the yellow of a lemon with unparalleled taste; something like a poetic resoluteness dictates his choice of tone, its intensity and sonority.
The fig, though not in the painting, is included in the poem as a memento for the author's sister, Ewa Maria Slaska, incidentally also a writer. The return to the earth is "uncertain" as uncertain were the details of the poorly reproduced still-life and other circumstances which came to light only later, during the poet's virtual encounter with a certain collector of the sparks which fly between paintings and literature. This time, the spark appeared from out of the darkness of a poem and returned to the darkness of a painting, restoring to it the life it lost to flames. The dark seed bore a new pomegranate after years spent underground. A new quality was born. The still life came back to life...

Until our next meeting in the immeasurable virtual space of images and words
yours,
Jan Zielinski