A particularly significant and valuable expression of solidarity with Ukraine is the continuation and deepening of cooperation with our Polish partners in the context of the war with the russian aggressor. Another proof was the visit to our university of Professor Katarzyna Kuczynska-Kosany of the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań – a well-known literary critic, poet and essayist who recently spent an intensive and diverse week at Drohobych University under the Erasmus+ program.
Katarzyna Kuczynska-Kosany’s contribution to the development of cooperation between the scientific and academic communities of both universities is difficult to overestimate. The literary scholar has been fruitfully collaborating with the Polish Research and Information Centre and the Faculty of Ukrainian and Foreign Philology for over thirteen years with her first visit to this university in 2012 being participation in a conference dedicated to the work of Rainer Maria Rilke followed by the invitation of Professor Lesya Kravchenko. And since then her regular visits are part of the broad discourse of the International Bruno Schulz Festival in Drohobych (SchulzFest), which has been taking place in a biennial cycle since 2004 at the initiative of the Polish Research and Information Center.
Katarzyna Kuczynska-Kosany’s intensive week under Erasmus+ lasted from June 15 to 20. It began with the the two-day literary and artistic project “Poems in Shelters / Shelter in Verses” – a series of events within the cultural program of the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union, implemented by the Polish Scientific and Information Centre at Drohobych University in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland), the Polish PEN Club, the Polish Institute in Kyiv, Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Lviv and the Workshop of the Anthropology of the Word (Lublin).
Together with Pawel Pruchniak from the University of Krakow, the National Education Commission – the inspirer and coordinator of the project, Jurek Prochaski, Ostap Slywinski, Hryhoriy Semenchuk, Danylo Ilnytskyi, and Vira Meniok, Katarzyna Kuczynska-Kosany spoke about the saving power of poetry and the therapeutic dimension of poems on June 15 at the Polish Research and Information Center, with the participation of the Director of the Polish Institute in Kyiv, Jarosław Godun, and the Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Lviv, Marek Radziwon.
On the second day of the project “Poems in Shelters / Shelter in Verses”, the Poznań scholar and poet read her own poems and Polish translations of poems by Viktoria Amelina, Lyubov Yakymchuk, and Bohdan Ihor Antonych at the Center for Urban History and Art “Kimnata”. Her reading of poems by Ukrainian and Polish poets was accompanied by jazz improvisations (Yaroslav Protsiv: piano, Marek Radziwon: saxophone)”.
During her stay Katarzyna Kuczynska-Kosany visited the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, where on June 18 she delivered an academic lecture on overcoming aphasia in the poetics and autobiographical poetry of Serhiy Zhadan, Paul Celian, and Sławomir Mrożek – as part of the Summer Academy of Translation and Intercultural Communication, at the invitation of Ostap Slywinski – the organizer of the academy, literary critic, poet, and translator.
The stay of the Poznań literary scholar at our university was also fruitful in the context of discussing further areas of cooperation, in particular in the field of professional training of Polish students, which is related in terms of profile and career guidance to the didactic and methodological patronage of the Drohobych Lyceum No. 3 named after Vyacheslav Chornovil, where in-depth study of the Polish language has been introduced recently.
On June 17, these and other opportunities for cooperation between the scientific and academic communities of the Universities of Poznań and Drohobych were discussed during a meeting with Vice-Rector for International Relations Ihor Hrynyk and Head of the International Relations Department Krystyna Woytovych in the presence of Professor Pawel Pruchniak, to whom this university owes its cooperation with Krakow University of the National Education Commission.
The highlight of Katarzyna Kuczynska-Koszańa’s stay was her open lecture on the life and work of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim. The lecturer insightfully spoke about the trials, defeats and traumas in the biography of the most famous poet in the Polish interwar period, and on the other hand –about the undeniable achievements and victories in his poetic biography. She described Tuwim’s fascinating poetic world and at the same time his difficult life path in a variety of ways. The lecture took place on June 20 at the Polish Research and Information Center. The audience of the extremely interesting narrative was scientific and academic staff of the Department of Foreign Literature and Polish Studies, Polish students at the Faculty of Ukrainian and Foreign Philology, as well as residents of Drohobych who gladly responded to the invitation.
We are grateful to the University of Poznań for the implementation of such an optimal model of bilateral exchange under the Erasmus+ program, primarily to Dr. Justyna Wciurka, who coordinates mobility programs at the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology. It is to this faculty, represented by its Dean Krzysztof Skibski, that we express our gratitude for the currently implemented forms of academic interaction and the outline of prospects for further cooperation between our universities.
Vira Meniok,
Coordinator of the Katarzyna Kuczynska-Kosany Mobility Program, Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Literature and Polish Studies, Head of the Polish Research and Information Centre
Photos by Ihor Feciak
