Those who attended the Friday meeting at the Lentz Villa, co-organised with the University of Szczecin as part of the project titled HUMANISTS’ SZCZECIN, had the opportunity to spend some time with Poland’s most eminent Poet, the Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska.

Close acquaintance with the unique Artist and the essential qualities of her poetry was made possible by the presence of her long-time secretary, Professor Michał Rusinek, who in a lecture titled ‘Wisława Szymborska’s Epistolary Friendships’ presented the Poetess as a modest, outstanding figure, with an uncommon sense of humour, a fan of wordplay and practical jokes.

As our audience had the chance to learn, the Poetess, who resided in Cracow for more than eighty years, enjoyed conversations with ordinary people more than scientific sessions and disputes with intellectuals. About those latter debates, she would often say that they ‘offered nothing but empty calories’.

The lecture and the works shown at our exhibition inspired the audience to take part in a discussion titled FRIENDSHIP IN CULTURE, whose panellists were Michał Rusinek, Artur D. Liskowacki, Monika Szpener, Rafał Bajena, Waldemar Wojciechowski, and Professor Urszula Chęcińska, who chaired this meeting.

On the same evening, our visitors also had the chance to learn about the writer’s friends, with whom she corresponded for many years. The exhibition A TRUE POET’S PORTRAIT, held at the Lentz Villa, presented, among others, the several-dozen-year long correspondence between poet Joanna Kulmowa and Wisława Szymborska. The finissage of this interesting exhibition took place on the same Friday evening.

HUMANISTS’ SZCZECIN at the Lentz Villa is organised under the honorary patronage of Piotr Krzystek, President of the City of Szczecin, and Professor Waldemar Tarczyński, His Magnificence Vice-Chancellor of the University of Szczecin.