Last weeks I received a beautiful invitation from London: Jasia Reichardt the niece of Stefan Themerson will introduce to readers the monography of his uncle this 13 june. Jasia has always invited me when there are new events on Stefan Themerson and her wife. A memory that Jasia is continuing to keep alive with great energy.
Written by 13 contributors, each of them space through the eclectic world of Themerson. Published by Themerson Estate, Edited by Jasia Reichardt, Designed by Piet Gerards and
Some topics? Semantic Poetry, his family, his films, Brother Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio, Bertrand Russell, and much more.
I firstly met Jasia and Stefan Themerson's world in 2008 thanks to the opera written by the beloved thinker: St.Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio or Brother Francis' Lamb Chops. Two acts funny, comical, absolutely wonderful!
So, what can we say first of all of Stefan Themerson? He was born in Plock, Poland. He was an eclectic mind: philosopher plenty of humor and sense of adventure, in his existence three the crucial words accompanied him: language, music, images treated under many different aspects.
He invented an opera, wrote 8 children's books, 14 books of prose, novels and essays, numerous articles. He knew three languages and loved to write in three different languages: polish, french and english.
Which was his opinion on these lands?
He said once: "In Poland when you met someone, their instinct was to doubt your value or worth. You had to prove them. Friendships were hard-won. In Paris, you were accepted as a friend until and unless you did something to lose that status. In London, of course, it’s different, neither one nor the other. There’s this objectivity and you sometimes don’t find out if you are a friend until long afterwards."
Themerson made also several experimental movies, five when he was still in Warsaw and two in London always with his wife, Franciszka Themerson.
At some point, he decided to leave Poland for the UK. He thought that "Writers are never, writers are nowhere in exile, for they carry within themselves their own kingdom, or republic, or city of refuge, or whatever it is that they carry within themselves. And at the same time every writer, ever, everywhere, is in exile, because he is squeezed out of the kingdom, or republic, or city, or whatever it is that squeezes itself dry."
Themerson learned languages pretty quickly and was ready to publish in english a piece on the magazine Polemic in 1946, while that same years, it was 1948 decided to create at home his own publishing house, the Gaberbocchus Press for publishing what he wanted and in complete freedom. In the 1950's precisely from 1957 to 1959 Stefan created a so-called Common Room, a weekly forum with a membership. There, you could meet painters, writers actors, scientists, musicians, filmakers, philosophers, poets, actors. They read Beckett, Queneau, Schwitters, Shakespeare.
Great was his friendship with Bertrand Russell started in 1950 and continued 'till at the death of the philosopher, publishing two books by Russell as well: Good Citizen’s Alphabet in 1953 and History of the World in Epitome, 1962, both with Franciszka Themerson’s drawings.
The correspondence between Themerson and Russell is now at the McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.
Themerson thought that passing the time new generations would have lost what produced by the past ones and this, yes, would have been terrible.
Speaking about the comic opera St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio written in 1972 we see the integrity of poor Francis put in danger by the sly wolf. With the promise of not killing arbitrarialy lambs, the wolf agrees with the creation of a factory where selling, so, in a more controlled way, lambs's meat. And putting inside the poor and ingenuous Francis who will remain skeptical and sad because the problem of the killing of that poor innocent creatures won't end but will cotinue, although legally.
A thematic pretty warm these days in Italy is the one of love, considering the killing of women because of their partners. Themerson on love had precise ideas.
"Love is cruel, and decency is gentle. Love is ugly and decency is beautiful. Love is easy and decency is difficult. Love creates hate."
Stefan Themerson was son of a doctor, an eccentric guy, someone who would have let perform to the wife a piano composition of Chopin for the death of a relative. Stefan remembers the father in this way: "Emotionally – sentimentally romantic; stylistically – naïvely baroque; morally – classically dogmatic; in the conduct of his life – an unpractical realist."
Anna Maria Polidori
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