"Literature's middle name is homelessness" – writes Jerzy Jarniewicz. "Ulysses and Leopold Bloom were homeless; Holden Caulfield was wandering around New York; there were V.S. Naipaul's Indian heroes; Bruce Chatwin was travelling through Patagonia; Doris Lessing was disillusioned with communism; James Joyce liberated himself from Ireland; there was the American Jew from Philip Roth's novel; there were Virginia Woolf, who was feeling alien in her own happy home and the socialist George Orwell (...) Literature brings together those who have lost or rejected their homes, it tells the story of the homeless and homelessness, but it is also homelessness itself. I like to think that it has no home to which it would have to return. That it left home and is an eternal wanderer by choice. The homelessness of literature is its purpose as an element of difficult freedom, movement and change. As long as it is homeless, it has something important to say," – reads a note from Ossolineum Publishing House.
Here they are: Charles Dickens and George Eliot, Doris Lessing and Bruce Chatwin, James Baldwin and Zadie Smith, V.S. Naipaul and Hilary Mantel, Virginia Woolf and Cormac McCarthy in the good company of many other writers. And between them, there are sketches – postscripts, i.e., short pieces about the book as an object, about the materiality and historicity of literature, about the circumstances of reading, which form a separate story. And before the following parts of "Frontaż" there are mottoes from recent press statements of such figures as Jan Klata, Renata Lis, Inga Iwasiów, setting my literary reflections in the time of dilemmas, expectations and disappointments closest to us. In addition to the premiere "Frontaż", after six years Ossolineum has also reissued "Tłumacz między innymi". August is a good month
– wrote the author on their profile on Facebook.
Prof. Dr Hab. Jerzy Jarniewicz is the Head of the Department of British Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies at the Faculty of Philology, University of Lodz. His main areas of research interests are contemporary British and Irish poetry, literary translation and the history of the counterculture of the 1960s.
He is a winner of, among others, the Nike Literary Award in 2022 for the volume of poetry "Mondo cane", the Julian Tuwim Literary Award in 2022 for lifetime achievement and the Łódź Energia Kultury Award 2022 for his work on promoting literature, the role of translators and translation. Prof. Jerzy Jarniewicz received Honorary Citizenship of the City of Lodz in June 2023.
Edit: Communications and PR Centre, University of Lodz