Zapis rozmowy uczniów V LO w Gdańsku, Zofii Piwońskiej oraz Ihora Saładiaka z klasy II dg z Matthew Tyrmandem, polsko-amerykański ekonomistą, publicystą, działaczem społecznym, synem Leopolda Tyrmanda.
Ihor: Hello.
Mathhew: Hi there.
I: We actually met here, because of the competition “Let’s talk about the Story of Mr. Not-So-Bad Guy” (pl. “Możemy porozmawiać… o nieZłym bohaterze”). It is organised by our school, 5th High School, and the primary school in Banino. We have a wonderful guest with us today. Mr. Matthew Tyrmand – how are you?
M: I’m okay, back in New York, unfortunately. I have been travelling a lot. Happy to be with you guys and to answer any questions you may have about my father, his history, legacy and literature.
I: We are really honoured to have you here. Let’s start with the process of discovering, ourselves our story – it usually all starts with our family. What was it like in your case? How does it feel to have a famous Polish writer as a father?
M: You have to understand he wasn’t famous in the USA. He was decently well-known among certain intellectual circles, but as a writer, creator of literature, he was virtually unknown. Even in Poland there was a period, in the 80s and well into the 90s, where there was less interest and attention focused on his work. It wasn’t until an admirer and biographer of my father, Mr. Henryk Dasko did a lot in the 90s to have more of his work re-published under real western market conditions. He organised a documentary about him with TVP. You see, he died when my sister and I were 4 years old, he was 61 when he had us. We knew he was a special figure, a writer, thinker and anti-communist activist and dissident in his own way. We grew up with that legacy encircling us – as you can see, I do have a lot of books. My mother’s house, where we were living as children, was literature-friendly. Seeing the name in the bookshelf was an imprint on us. Learning about him, especially about him fighting with communism and growing up in the US, being very politically-minded, understanding the parallels in the political debate, but more about the socio-political criticism. He did not write any fiction after he arrived in the USA. He wrote essays, political analysis, criticism, cultural commentary, a journal “Chronicles of Culture”, that he founded in the 70s. It was an important piece for conservatives, who are a little bit of an ivory tower onto themselves, they are rather academic, so my father wasn’t a wide-spread figure. The first time my sister and I recognised there was something bigger to his legacy was when TVP came and did the documentary film. We had the film crew in our small, New York apartment, where our family was interviewed – that was a wake-up. We were 11 or 12, this would have been around 1993. We were relatively young, but old enough to have some sort of conscience and understanding of his history’s dynamic and the renewed interest. It really wasn’t until I started coming to Poland in 2010 that I was really able to get in touch with it and have it shape me more, professionally and intellectually as an adult.
Zosia: The next question is a little bit more personal. Do you think you took after your father in any way? What have you gotten from him?
M: Oh, yeah! When I was younger, my mother would say I was clearly my father’s son, based on my stubbornness, opinionated nature, agressiveness, willing to tell the truth, no matter whether they wanted to hear it or not. I certainly picked up a lot through heredity, but because he died when I was 4 there was no other way for it than passing through bloodstream. I believe everyone is a confluence of nature vs nurture – what you’re given hereditarily vs what you develop in conditioning, due to your external environment and education, the way you’re raised, the people around you. I did inherit a lot through heredity from my father. If you look through my activity in the past 10 years, since I left Wall Street and got full-time into political activism, advocacy, into writing myself, you notice my style is similar to his – the agressiveness, calling out truth, totalitarian behaviour and over-step by government by those who would abrogate freedoms. He was a better writer, undoubtedly, in terms of the craft, as that’s what he did his whole life. He was nonetheless a fighter for liberty and I have inherited that from him, that desire to fight for the same ideals, read the same books. He always said he was shaped by Edmund Burke and the treaties on French Revolution, that perfectly predicted the Jacobean-Robespierre reign of terror, by virtue of what the new revolution was predicated on, which was equality, liberty and fraternity. My father was shaped by that work of Edmund Burke and many other thinkers throughout enlightenment, throughout ages. I have taken the same political-philosophical approach in the way I try to advocate for policy.
I: We would like to ask you whether you feel the importance your name carries? Were there any situations you were recognised because of it?
M: I mean, absolutely – my entire family is incredibly proud of his legacy. Since I have inherited certain hereditary characteristics, which we have already discussed, it is a very big part of my identity. Especially since I have gotten involved in Poland’s and European politics through journalism, advocacy, activism and advising conservative political parties in places like France, Sweden, Germany – all the evil right-wing parties, if you read the left-wing newspapers. The fact that I stem from an anti-communist dissident and somebody, who stood against the regime gives me a lot of credibility and it’s not something I take for granted. I try to live up to it with quality ideas, work, output. To many, all I have to do is to go on Twitter and see the Polish troll farms, be it from far right or far left, whether it is Konfederacja or Gazeta Wyborcza. Saying that I am nothing but the lucky son of an accomplished father, who did something as a writer, thinker, as a doer. I did not grow up in NYC and in a public school system and filled the crew on Wall Street by virtue of the last name. I did that very much on my own! Then I come to Poland and yeah, I have an entree to the political debate and maybe I can get into something more easily because of my father’s legacy and his name, but I don’t think that’s a trait that purely defines me as a person. It’s a confluence again of all the different dynamics, his history. Before coming to Poland there wasn’t much recognition of it – we talked about it, a little bit, we had some interest in small circles, but nothing publicly visible. There were a few times I went to school in Chicago – then I was recognised due to my last name. I paid with credit card is, per say, a Polish restaurant and they would say ‘Oh, do you have any relation to the writer?’. I would say ‘Of course!’ in what they would be balled over, very interested. When I came to Warsaw, I remember I saw a kid reading one of my father’s book on Warszawa Centralna Station. I walked up to him (mind it, it was the first or the second time I was in Poland, so I had no public persona whatsoever) and asked him about his opinion on the book. He said it was great, and so I said that Tyrmand was my father. He was impressed – I was kind of testing out how people would react to that, as this was something new to me. There were some random experiences like this, but the place where it all gets ugly is social media. Both sides on the political extremes are trying to attack me, using this frame of “Oh, you’re nobody except the relevance of your name” and so on. It doesn’t really bother me much. I take criticism well, just like my father did.
Z: It must be useful to have that shell you must have built over the years. You said before there are some differences between you and your father, but that generally you are similar to him. Was it his influence that led you to a career in publishing?
M: Oh, yes. When I was growing up, there were few of his books in English, but I read him. I remember “Notebooks of a Dilettante” (pl. “Zapiski dyletanta”), that was published in Poland in 1991. That was his impression of the US when he got here, in the 1960s, during a kind of a cultural revolution. The left was ascendant and taking control of the institutions – he wrote some trenchant observations about these things. That I read early on in high school. Reading a lot of books that I know were important to him, for example Orwell, Dostoyevsky, shaped me. His world view mashed with what was picking up from these great pieces of literature. When I was 32 or 33, I read the “Diary” (pl. “Dziennik”). That had a huge impact on me, because it was like talking to him, with his inner monologue; seeing how he communicated to himself about what he was observing opened my mind to how similarly we do that, how we absorb stuff and how we take away observations about people, especially the dishonesty, which was prevalent in the post-Stalinist era and the communist era, when he was in his 30s, trying to make his way as a writer, and being censored. He was thinking he would never amount to anything, that he’d never be published. The “Diary” was written in 1954, in the first 3 months. It’s concluded with getting a contract from Czytelnik to write “The Man with the White Eyes” (pol. “Zły”), the book that made him famous in Poland. The novel about the dark underbelly of Warsaw, set in the communist, post-war ruins of the city. Reading his diary, when he was at a low point, like me when I left Wall Street and was embarking on something I wasn’t sure about, but I knew I wanted to be involved with public policy, philosophy and writing – generally more intellectual than finance, which is highly intelligent but not intellectual itself. That really taught me a lot about him. Growing up, there were only some things – I read some essays, some articles he had written. One of his greatest works is a long essay “The Media of Shangri-La”, it’s about the perniciousness of the mainstream media and how they bend the truth to serve their political agendas. It was written in 1975, certainly something everybody sees after the 50 years. There’s almost a consensus that the media is not the trusted institution it was meant to be, the observer and reporter of reality – instead, it’s tampering with it. He [Leopold Tyrmand] had that call half a century ago. Reading things like this certainly shaped me and has given me a lot of ammo, using which to discuss these same political, philosophical matters and ideas.
I: You said you grew up on works of your father, but how do you feel about “The man with the white eyes” coming to theatre?
M: Do you know something I don’t?
I: I just think that thanks to your involvement in publishing his literature in English, more people would be familiar with his persona. A movie could make it more approachable and hence – more known, more recognised.
M: Yeah. There have been some false starts on “Zly”, some bad production structures. I inherited a lot of very bad contracts, that were signed before I got involved in Poland, with trying to defend his legacy and intellectual property. “Zly” is obviously the most cinematic of his works. That being said, there are also some that have already been or will be produced. “The Seven Long Voyages” has been done in the 60s, there was a rendition of it with Beata Tyszkiewicz, then there was another one in the 90s. There’s a film I would like to see redone – “Filip”, which is more autobiographical work of fiction, about his wartime experiences. We are talking about it with a major production studio in Poland and coproduction with other major studios. Right now, we are sort of starting it. There was this high-profile launch with Ksawery Żuławski, but he was completely wrong to do it. He did not share my father’s vision on art, culture, politics, policy, philosophy, literature. It would have been like “Wojna polsko-ruska”, which was not „Zly”, it’s much more new one. Żuławski was a post-modernist, my father was a conservatist, in art and culture as well. The idea this book was about evil and the battle between the good and the bad, whereas Zulawski believed there was no good, no evil; we are all good, but bad at the same time. That’s a post-modernist cultural relativism my father would have opposed. I was not happy to inherit that project and I did what I could to restructure it. There was some bad behaviour on his part, others that will come to light later on, when the time is right. “Diary” has already been done in the past, TVP did a production and there was also a recent film, that took its parts. That got some press. There are certainly works of his that we will be able to transcend the written word into the moving image, live action. I hope to realise them soon. “Filip” will be coming soon. I’m in talks with the director and producer to relaunch “Zly”, it’s been a hard project due to its very large scale. It is gonna be done right. It has to be done big, what is not easy in Poland, to be frank.
Z: Do you have any wishes when it comes to these projects? You said that the previous film “Zly” was not done correctly, so what do you think the best way to make a movie out of your father’s novel is?
M: Personally, I would like to see it and hear closely to the novel. In the last, the adaptations were very modified into a more modern sensibility while scripting. It could work well, perhaps, if it was done right. What I saw was pretty poor attempts at it. I would love to see it as a mini-series, which is now a major way of delivering more complicated scripts and adaptations, those that are more profound than a 2-hour-film. Doing it as a mini-series with HBO, Netflix and Amazon, so that the production would be carried by studios, that do large scale mini-series. It would certainly introduce my father’s story, legacy and work to the entire world, if we did it in English. Even if we did it in Polish and then subtitled and dubbed it, which is now done more and more, it would be a powerful vehicle to promoting my father’s legacy and ideas into the more mainstream. I’m working on it in ways I can, behind the scenes.
I: We are hoping to see this as soon as possible. To finish our interview, how do you think you would be described as a character in one of your father’s work, “Zly” per say. Perhaps you feel connected to some already existing characters?
M: It’s a hard question, but I like to think I would be written up the way my father described himself. As a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued writer, editor, observer of what goes on around him. Not only as an observer though, as a doer, who takes action to fluctuate positive outcomes. I know the character that had the most of my father in himself was Kolonko. I think that would be the closest characterisation, certainly I could build it from the ground up. I think everyone is nuanced and to fit someone into a framework that is two dimensional. You can never know somebody’s whole story, background.
Z: Of course, your father did a great job with that, actually.
M: He did.
Z: That’s all the questions we had. We are very thankful we had the opportunity to talk to you.
M: My pleasure, bardzo mi miło (chuckles).
Z: Oh! Nam również!
I: Thank you very much, have a nice day.
M: Thanks guys, good luck!
I i Z: Thank you!
