Stefan Themerson

File:Photo of ST in white coat.jpg

Stefan Themerson, Christmas 1977

Stefan Themerson (1910-1988) was a Polish, later British poet, novelist, film-maker, composer and philosopher.

Early life

Stefan Themerson was born in Płock in what was then the Russian Empire on 25 January 1910 and died in London on 6 September 1988. His father, Mieczysław Themerson, was a physician, social reformer and aspiring writer (some of his work was published) of Jewish descent. His mother, also Jewish by ancestry, was Ludwika Smulewicz. During the First World War Dr. Themerson served as a medical officer in the Tsar's army and his family lived in Riga, St. Petersburg and Wielkie Luki. In 1918 they returned to Płock, in an independent Poland, where Stefan attended the King Władisław Jagiello Gymnasium. In this time he showed his first interest in photography and built a radio receiver. In 1928 Themerson went to Warsaw as a student, studying first physics at the University of Warsaw and then, after a year, architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, but actually spending most of his time working at photography, collage and film-making. His first published piece of writing was also in 1928. He never formally left his studies but gradually withdrew to follow his other interests. It was about then that Themerson met- or met again- Franciszka Weinles, an art student, who he married in 1931.

1931 to 1935

During these years the Themersons lived and worked in Warsaw. Stefan contributed articles to various periodicals and prose and verse to school textbooks and wrote at least ten books for children which Franciszka illustrated. Pan Tom Buduje Dom [Mr Rouse Builds His House] is still in print in Poland. Stefan also experimented with photograms and the two of them made five short experimental films Apteka Pharmacy (1930), Europa (1931-1932), Drobiazg Melodyjny [Musical Moment] (1933), Zwarcie [Short Circuit] (1935) and Przygoda Czlowieka Poczciwego [The Adventures of a Good Citizen] (1937). These were shown with other experimental films of the time. Most of them are lost now, but the script for Europa, based on a poem by Anatol Stern was later published by the Themersons' Gaberbocchus Press, illustrated by surviving stills from the film and Apteka was remade from descriptions of it when it first appeared, stills and storyboards. In 1935, with other young film-makers, they founded a cooperative, S.A.F (Spoldzielnia Autorow Filmowych].

1936 to 1939

In 1936 and 1937 the Themersons visited Paris, then the centre of the world for avant-garde art, and London, meeting Moholy-Nagy and other experimental artists and exhibited films in Warsaw for the first time when they returned. They also published a review F[ilm] A[rtistique], Stefan as editor, Franciszka as artistic editor, which lasted two issues. In the winter of 1937 they both moved to Paris ("I just knew I had to be in Paris." Themerson said.) where they found a circle of artists and writers, many Polish, to live among. They thought of staying for good. Themerson wrote for Polish school textbooks and for Polish publications in Paris. With the coming of war, in 1939 Themerson volunteered for the Polish army forming in France after the German and Soviet invasions and division of Poland.

Second World War and after

In 1940 Themerson was called up into a Polish infantry regiment, just in time for the débacle of the German invasion and the Allies' collapse. His memory was of marching day and night in summer heat to St-Nazaire. There, in June, the regiment was disbanded, the officers abandoning their men and the men dispersing where they could. Themerson himself travelled round France, visiting occupied Paris, Toulouse, where- through the Polish Red Cross- he got in touch again with Franciszka, who had worked for the Polish Government in Exile as a cartographer and had escaped from Paris to Normandy and then London. He spent time in refugee camps, worked as a farm labourer, and spent over a year in the Polish Red Cross-run Hôtel de la Poste in Voiron. Here he began writing Professor Mmaa's Lecture in Polish and wrote the long poem Croquis dans les Ténèbres [Sketches in he Shadows]. Towards the end of 1942 Themerson got across France and Spain via Marseilles to Lisbon where he was flown to Britain by the R.A.F., rejoining his wife and re-enlisting in the Polish army. He spent time with the army in Scotland, where he finished Professor Mmaa, and then was sent to join the film unit of the Polish Ministry of Information and Documentation in London. There he and Franciszka made two short films, Calling Mr Smith, an account of Nazi atrocities in Poland and The Eye and the Ear, inspired by four songs by Szymanowski. In 1944 at the PEN club meeting to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of John Milton's Areopagitica, Themerson met Kurt Schwitters, who was a close friend until his death. At about the same time he met others who remained close, including Jankel Adler, Julian Trevelyan and Anthony Froshaug. Also in 1944 the Themersons moved to Maida Vale, where they lived for the rest of their lives.

Stefan and Franciszka Themerson published books through their own Gaberbocchus Press from 1948 to 1979, many of them with Franciszka's illustrations, and sometimes working with the translator Barbara Wright. Among those books were works by Guillaume Apollinaire and Kurt Schwitters, the first English translation of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style and The Good Citizen's Alphabet by Bertrand Russell. The latter wrote a warm preface to Professor Mmaa’s Lecture. In 1981 Stefan Themerson delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, The Netherlands, under the title: A Chair of Decency.

External links

• Bibliography of works by Stefan Themerson
• Stefan and Franciszka Themerson archive
• Gaberbocchus Press website
• Context article
• Description of remake of Apteka
• Review of "Tom Harris" by Seamus Sweeney at nthposition.com