Między biografia a legendą [Bronisława Wajs-Papusza: Between biography and legend] by Bronisława Wajs-Papusza and: Papusza by Angelika Kuźniak and: Bronisława Wajs-Papusza (1908–1987): biografia i dziedzictwo [Bronisława Wajs-Papusza (1908–1987): biography and legacy] ed. by Dariusz A. Rymar (review)

The last decade has sparked a wave of interest in Bronisława Wajs-Papusza in Poland. It was not only strictly scientific interest, related to ethnographic and Romani studies research. Papusza has become one of the icons of Polish popular culture. Her image and quotes from her poems have appeared on T-shirts, mugs, stickers, and notebooks. For several years a sort of "Papusza fad" has been growing.

In the area of scholarly research, the phenomenal book by Magdalena Machowska entitled Bronisława Wajs-Papusza. Między biografią a legendą (Bronisława Wajs-Papusza: Between biography and legend) (2011) served as an impetus to rediscover the biography of Bronisława Wajs-Papusza and her work. The novelty of this book lies in Machowska's interdisciplinary approach. The researcher organized the life narrative of Bronisława Wajs, scattered among many press publications, news stories, private archives, and editorial comments. Faced with contradictory information about the poet's life, and a multiplicity of sources, she proposed to paint two different portraits of Papusza: a "factual" biography based on controversial and incomplete factual data, as well as a "possible biography," resting upon a reconstruction of a "literary legend." While working on the facts for her books, Machowska relied on documents, interviews with people who knew Papusza, and the texts of the translator and editor of her poetry, Jerzy Ficowski, sometimes referred to as her "discoverer." As far as the "literary legend," she was concerned with how Papusza's image was mediated by the promoters of her work, mainly by Jerzy Ficowski. Ficowski, presenting the profile of Papusza, highlighted her natural talent and sensitivity, and celebrated her ethos of the "cursed poet" after Papusza was involved in the communist Action C, or forced settlement of the Roma. The distinction between biographical facts and a legend, often contradicting each other, shows the reader the image of the "Gypsy writer" that has been circulating in the majority discourse. Machowska has confronted these two portraits of Papusza with a reconstructed autobiographical narrative based on interviews with the artist herself. She devoted a separate chapter to Papusza's diary. This immensely valuable document, 210 pages long, written in Papusza's hand, was probably penned in the early 1950s. In 2011, when Machowska was writing her book, it was not yet available to researchers. Together with other documents that were earlier unknown to Romani studies researchers, Papusza's manuscripts were kept by the Association of Creators and Friends of Gypsy Culture in Gorzów Wielkopolski (Stowarzyszenie Twórców i Miłośników Kultury Cygańskiej w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim), which refused access to it. Machowska therefore sought to reconstruct the contents of the diary, relying on its fragments from Jerzy Ficowski's legacy dispersed throughout Polish archives.

The Krakow researcher's success is that after the publication of her book and the appeals of the scholars of the Roma culture to the president of the Association, Edward Dębicki, in 2015 a digital copy of the diary, available today in two libraries in Gorzów Wielkopolski, entered the public domain. The autobiographical portrait of Papusza emerging from the diary, exposed those facets of her biography that the poet herself considered important and groundbreaking, unlike those transpiring in her legend. Another vast resource of knowledge about the life and work of the poet...