Conrad's Lantern

For almost fifteen years, we have been seeking inspiration in Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski, who left Kraków in search of adventures aged just 17.

Written and edited by
Grzegorz Słącz
Kraków Culture

Founded in the late 2010s, the festival named after Joseph Conrad was Kraków’s opportunity to sail into the open waters of global literature. The city of some of the greatest authors writing at the turn of the millennium – Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz, Stanisław Lem and Adam Zagajewski – paradoxically didn’t have any major literary events. The “Tygodnik Powszechny” weekly circles proposed creating a new festival; city authorities were immediately keen on the idea, and the Kraków Festival Office (KBF) set about organising the event. The collaboration between KBF and the Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation would make the most of the city’s intellectual potential and provide the highest quality programming, as well as ensuring operational efficiency. It also turned out to be a guarantee of success and the starting point of hundreds of extraordinary events. Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Svetlana Alexievich, Olga Tokarczuk… As well as Nobel laureates, festival meetings held since 2009 have brought together close to 1500 guests and countless readers, taking part in a great celebration of literature whose significance and renown was almost instantly recognised in Poland and beyond. Ahead of the 15th anniversary Conrad Festival (23-29 October), we hear from members of the event’s Programme Board.

Chasing modernity
Prof. Michał Paweł Markowski (artistic director of the Conrad Festival)

The Conrad Festival was created in 2008, translating a local need into a global language. Even though our city was already investing heavily in cultural festivals, we didn’t have a regular major literary event. Around the same time, the “Tygodnik Powszechny” weekly needed to step beyond “enlightened Catholicism” and open itself to the secular world. The two needs gave rise to the festival which had to start off by creating its own audience and convincing Cracovians that the city is the best place for serious discussions about literature. It was clear from the start that the Conrad Festival needs to change the formula of a typical literary event and develop something more like an interdisciplinary discussion platform instead of traditional meetings with authors. Of course the classical format is here to stay, but it needed to be given an overarching concept allowing the organisers to select authors appropriate to the concept rather than vice versa. It is this intellectual framework which makes the festival stand out from others.

Each year, we test a brand-new idea (and, believe me, it’s no easy task!) – we strive to put our events in a broader perspective which we feel is especially attractive to the changing audiences (we are now on the second generation of participants) or should be widely discussed in the literary world. We started by defining literature in many ways and attempting to find it a place in the rapidly changing world to preserve its important position at a time when it is increasingly being ignored. However, we gradually started to treat literature as one of the elements of the political and social universe which follows a non-literary logic and which has its own problems examined and tested by literature. It is this shift from aesthetics to politics, from existence to community, which marks the festival’s trajectory and it is a movement which can be found in other streams of international culture. We are proud of the fact that Conrad is following the current of real needs of people on all continents for whom literature is an important tool for coming to terms with brutal changes at the time of global turbocapitalism.

Flagship of literature
Urszula Chwalba (KBF: Kraków UNESCO City of Literature, executive director of the Conrad Festival)

The Town Hall tower at Kraków’s Main Market Square becomes a lighthouse for a week every October – and this lighthouse illuminates our way throughout the year. The festival aims to turn our attention towards important challenges of today’s world and reaches for literature to help us understand them. But the festival is about far more than meetings and debates. The Conrad Prize, awarded as part of the event since 2015, was the first and remains one of the most important instruments supporting literary debuts in Poland. Industry meetings held during the festival have evolved into a “Book Congress” – a year-round platform searching for specific solutions aiming to transform literary life in Poland.

In the European and international context, the Conrad Festival is simply a very important event, as confirmed with prestigious prizes from organisations such as EFFE and Penguin Random House. We hear appreciation every day; while at the start we had to present or explain festival ideas to our guests, now we mainly hear, “Conrad? Great, I’ve always wanted to come!”

Over a decade ago, the city of Kraków decided to make the Conrad Festival one of its flagship cultural events, which also quickly became an important element of Kraków’s application to UNESCO. Today, ahead of the 15th edition, we are certain that it was the right decision. As a UNESCO City of Literature, for Kraków the Conrad Festival is a lighthouse (pun intended) showing the way.

What’s really most important, though, is what the festival quickly became – and I hope remains – for readers. It is a space for contemplation, for savouring literature and for asking important questions, and a platform for meeting authors from all over the globe.

First and foremost: readers!
Grzegorz Jankowicz (Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation, programme director of the Conrad Festival)

We build the relationship with our audiences throughout the year. We publish the “Conrad Magazine” as a supplement to the “Tygodnik Powszechny” weekly, featuring articles about the main themes and ideas of the upcoming edition and introducing this year’s guests. We host regular events as part of cycles “Nature of the Future” (online discussions which I host) and “Conrad After Hours” (in-person meetings). We communicate with our audiences through polls which provide us with many valuable tips and show us that the public is well prepared for taking part in our events. However, since the festival is for everyone, we do not regard anything – any ideas, themes or stories – as obvious. Each guest’s works are presented in different contexts by creating something like a map for the given book to make sure the readers never feel lost or overwhelmed. We are open to different cultures, languages and literary circles. We look after all generations of readers, and we help them find their way through the jungle of new publications. The vast number of recommended books means you can spend an entire year with our programme.

But the Conrad Festival isn’t simply a platform for discussing or promoting books. By entering into dialogue with our guests, we are always sitting on the boundary between literature and reality; we investigate how the spheres influence and determine one another, how literature rises to today’s challenges and how it shapes contemporary reality. At times we welcome writers who are yet to become known in Poland, while more famous ones are presented in unusual contexts. We always aim to formulate questions to surprise and inspire. In practical terms, we are constantly searching for new formulas and formats for our events. We arrange them so that the audience can comfortably participate in as many meetings as possible. Every detail is important: the way we arrange the programme, the language we use to talk about our guests, the formats of individual messages.

***

The 15th Conrad Festival follows its patron’s vision – he wasn’t afraid to set off on a neverending journey, to confront the problems and follies of his era and to peek into the darkest corner of the human psyche. During our meetings, discussions, reading lessons, panels and presentations we explore themes of migration and exclusion – certain rites of passage in the geographical, cultural and spiritual dimensions. Our guides through this world are a group of internationally-acclaimed authors. We talk about borders and glass ceilings, journeys and migrations, difficult homelands and bloody dictatorships with the Finnish author Sofi Oksanen, the French director and winner of Prix Renaudot and Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle Philippe Claudel, the Chilean author and actress Nona Fernández who boldly examines her country’s troubled history, and Natasha Brown whose novel provides a fascinating analysis of British society. We also welcome the Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha, Ukrainian poet Kateryna Babkina and numerous dazzling representatives of Polish literature, from Mikołaj Grynberg to Jakub Żulczyk – and that’s just a taster of what’s in store during this year’s festival.

There are also sessions of the “Book Congress” and the Conrad Prize gala; the jury of the Académie Goncourt attend a rare sitting outside France during the festival, and the International Book Fair runs in parallel with the festival… You’ll soon find that in October Kraków beats with the very heart of literature.