Doubt, secrecy, uncertain rebellion, shameful yearnings, erotic love—all the forces of youthful discontent animate Józef Czechowicz’s novella, The Story of the Paper Crown. Appearing in English for the first time, one hundred years after publication in a small avant-garde Polish magazine, the novella tracks Henryk, a brooding, Chekhovian protagonist, through fever dreams and philosophical ramblings animated by the question: How does one live in a world whose governing fabric is unraveling? 

The open secret of Henryk’s homosexuality has dislodged reliable beliefs, particularly religious ones, flinging Henryk into an existential abyss. Intense lyricism and an uncompromising artistic vision merge in this hypnotically associative text as Henryk, in search of his own convictions, seeks to create a new world from within the confines of an old one. As Henryk declares: “I’m only making my way toward a new life. My new life has to be consistent with my faith so that there won’t be this torment of discord with which we now live. So there won’t be this sham unity of the world but something genuine.” 

Killed at the age of thirty-six by a German aerial bombardment, Czechowicz was one of Poland’s most influential modern poets. A prolific journalist and a teacher, he was among a group of writers in 1930s Warsaw that included such notables as Anna Świrszczyńska and Czesław Miłosz—who doubted Czechowicz’s translatability. Translator Frank Garrett has risen to the challenge, rendering this daunting text into gorgeous, accessible English that preserves Czechowicz’s musical poetics. Describing the sadness in a character’s eyes, Czechowicz writes: “this one was indeed always alone, with the melancholic beauty of his own life. A babe of the fields on city pavement.” Beyond such striking imagery, identity and time are subtly warped as the novella progresses. Characters blend and double in the prism of Henryk’s visions, and the clock’s steady forward march becomes doubtful as tenses dance from past to present to future within the space of sentences. Opposing themes—of ancient and modern times, of fields and cities—ripple throughout. 

Bedridden following a suicide attempt, Henryk has phantasmagoric visions of being a tattered, paper-crowned king plagued by unhappiness. He dreams of a coronation ceremony in Warsaw’s Wawel Cathedral, only to be chased through the streets by a violent crowd. Later, he is a centaur galloping over flowering hills and cobbled city streets. This vision shades into religious rapture as Francis of Assisi steps out of a stained-glass cathedral window, and God reveals himself in the rafters. But there is no peace for Henryk, who is entrapped by guilt because he can’t reciprocate the boundless love of a peasant girl, Marsyia. He is even less able to confess his true feelings and leave. Interludes of reality break up these visions as doctors, lovers, family, and friends visit his sickbed. He floats in and out of consciousness, shouts incoherently, denounces himself, and is seduced by a servant boy.  

The Paper Crown is less a narrative than a poetic explosion. Assiduous readers must be prepared to take a firm grasp of the story as it races from apocalyptic imagery to Edenic gardens, through castle courtyards and along rivers, past lovers’ assignations and public executions into heady debates on the nature of faith and predetermination. Symbolism is thickly laid on, with references drawn from Greek mythology, biblical tales, and classic literature.

One memorable scene involves Henryk, in his alter-ego as the paper-crowned king, gazing out over a bucolic vista where two lovers walk, filling him with difficult feelings. Julian, the king’s imagined brother, advises him to abandon Marysia: “A strong man must hold a woman in contempt. Do you not feel that everything in you breaks down just because you delude yourself with love? If you love, it’s nothing, but if they love you, it’s destructive. Then you fester, and you can’t find a way out.” Such harsh advice doesn’t sit well, but in his weakened state the king is malleable. Like Faust and any number of literary men dreaming of grandeur, Henryk is both certain of what he wants and easily led astray. Of the many nested stories in this slim novella, the disastrous relationship that unfolds with Marysia is the most engaging and tragic. 

Structurally, the text is varied. Theatrical scenes give way to sudden poems and sections of traditional prose. A rhythmic, cinematic quality unites these different modes, consistent with Czechowicz’s early interest in film (he was among the first journalists to write regular columns on contemporary cinema). For example, this description’s attention to movement, color, and juxtaposition reveals a filmic inclination: “The king walked out onto the terrace. In the sunset’s crimson blush an ugly and evil face can be seen, with eyes in which the dusk lies hidden, lurking. The gold and silken mantle stretched over him casts a reflection on the face and crown of the king. Vivid golden. Billowing silk.” The vividness and scope are characteristic of Czechowicz’s writing, balancing experimentalism with painterly beauty.

For all its knots and complexities, The Story of the Paper Crown will transport patient readers. Czechowicz is a poet of uncertain times, when sincerity is doubtful, maudlin, a laughingstock. In full awareness of that fact, Henryk is his histrionic hero, nostalgic, progress-sick but still longing for a bright future.

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Józef Czechowicz, who lived openly as a homosexual, is still considered one of the greatest Polish poets of the twentieth century and one of the main proponents of the literary avant-garde. His writing weaves together nostalgic provincialism, an openness regarding sexuality, prophetically catastrophic visions, folklore and mythology, and technological alienation.

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Frank Garrett trained as a translator at the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and at Philipps-Universität Marburg after earning advanced certification in Polish philology from the Catholic University of Lublin. Since 2021 he has served as essays and features editor at minor literature[s]. Sublunary Editions published his translation of Bruno Schulz’s Undula in 2020. Frank lives in Dallas with his husband.

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Willem Marx is an editor, translator, and teacher from Brooklyn by way of Vicenza. His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Foreword Magazine, and elsewhere. He reads for Electric Literature and writes for himself.