When I visited Poznan in 1987 I met my old
friend Rafal Grupinski, who asked me a question: "Wouldn't you like to be
a representative of our magazine in the West?" The magazine was CZAS KULTURY,
an underground periodical. It was only two years before the end of communism,
but we didn't see it then. General Jaruzelski was still in power, martial
law regulations were still in force, uncensored literature was still illegal
and one could be arrested for just possessing it, let alone publishing. I
lived in the West, so I could become a representative without the police
knocking at my door the next morning
CZAS KULTURY wasn't particularly anticommunist. During the eighties a political
magazine CZAS (Time) appeared in Poznan. Rafal just wanted to publish
literature without censors mutilating it, so he created another magazine,
entitled CZAS KULTURY (Culture Time). CZAS didn't survive long, whereas
CZAS KULTURY in 1990, when censorship was abolished, started appearing
officially. Rafal's ambition was to discover young talents and make CZAS
KULTURY a vehicle of new literature. In many cases he succeeded, some of
the authors discovered by CZAS KULTURY became quite popular. Here we present
some of them, with samples of their writings in translation.
CZAS KULTURY works in close co-operation with OBSERWATOR Publishing House,
which in several cases published books of CZAS KULTURY authors.
Rafal Grupinski (on the photo above) was the chief editor of CZAS KULTURY
until summer 1999, when he resigned. His successor for two years was Grzegorz Luterek, since June 2001 the chief editor is Marek Wasilewski.
Rafal Grupinski is also an accomplished writer. A sample of his prose can be seen on the page of Mariusz Kruk, where Rafal wrote the introduction.
Below right is a cover of an old underground issue of Czas Kultury.