Near the end of the Second World War, a magazine made of wit and levity was born; everyone in Poland read it. While the external factors may change over time, our inner vibe remains the same.
If this text had gotten into the hands of Marian Eile, this paragraph wouldn’t exist. The founder of Przekrój always cut out the introduction, with no mercy and no hesitation. He believed an article with no beginning was better, and usually he was right. On rare occasions the editors would secretly restore the deleted passage, keeping their fingers crossed that the boss wouldn’t notice. Even when he did, he let it go. The issue went to print, and, as nature abhors a vacuum, other texts were already waiting in line where “the great editor”—as his colleagues called him with both humor and admiration—could cut other things out. And that’s how it went, week after week, for the full twenty-four years and 1,277 issues of Przekrój.
It was 1945 when a spark of inspiration flashed anew over Poland. The war was dragging on and not all the survivors had yet returned from Nazi camps to their homes, but there was already a sense of hope in the air. Kraków—the second largest city in Poland—was more fortunate than Warsaw, which was tragically razed to the ground by the German Luftwaffe during the Warsaw uprising. Kraków was battered too, but most of the houses were still standing. There were places to live and work, which is why it became a post-war destination for Polish writers, artists, and intellectuals.
The first issue of the Przekrój weekly appeared in mid-April 1945. It was thin—only sixteen pages long—but included, among other things, a column by Czesław Miłosz—a Polish poet, and later, a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley as well as a Nobel Prize winner. Przekrój aimed high from the start, with literature by the best authors, humor of the highest order, articles on the most interesting topics.
“Lightly; the magazine should have a light touch,” was one of editor-in-chief Marian Eile’s many mottos. During these difficult post-war years, Przekrój provided its readers with a hefty pinch of beauty and wit. It was supposed to be clever, but never boring, thus, serious texts were lined with funny drawings. Communist commentaries—without which no newspaper could be published in the Eastern Bloc—were often juxtaposed on the same page with nonsense poems. Instead of justifiably complaining about hardships of the time, which was forbidden under Communism, it was better to make fun of them. The age-old notion that satire blooms most beautifully when it’s dark and cold around was supported here too. Readers loved the magazine’s unique, light, and mocking style.
In difficult times, when there was a shortage of literally everything—from bread to shoes—Przekrój’s influence spread rapidly. Everybody read it, and by the one hundredth issue, published in 1947, the weekly had reached a circulation of more than 250,000 copies. In a country with a population of twenty-four million and one that was just recovering from five years of war, this number was unthinkable. Ten years later, distribution increased by another nearly two hundred thousand, and would have continued to grow had it not been for the state-imposed paper limits forced upon press publishers in post-war Poland.
The Great Editor
Almost from the very beginning, the Przekrój publishing house was squeezed into a three-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom. In the tub was a pile of letters from the readers. The hallway was crammed with authors coming and going; editors pulling their hair out over the texts. There might have been a messenger from the press dropping by, or someone else cowering at the entrance hoping the editor-in-chief would take a peek at a few of their drawings. Everything was engulfed in the smog of cigarettes because almost everyone smoked, and if there was someone who didn’t, it was inappropriate to ask others to stop—as advised in Przekrój’s regular social etiquette columns, Demokratyczny savoir-vivre (Democratic Savoir-Vivre).
Eile and co-founder Janina Ipohorska were visionaries with remarkable senses of humor who made efforts to keep this smoky chaos in order, with mixed results. The former was the only person with editorial experience. Before the war, he worked with renowned journalists and poets at the best Polish literary magazine of the time. He was also a brilliant writer himself, but above all he identified as a visual artist—he drew, painted, and designed sets for the theater. Although the editorial staff employed excellent graphic artists—who were even given their own office, much to the envy of the editors—the original “crowded” look of Przekrój was owed to the editor-in-chief.
Supposedly, Eile didn’t care about his own appearance at all, or so his former co-workers claimed. The colorful striped shirt he loved and wore all the time was proof he didn’t indeed pay attention to such earthly matters as clothing. The making of the magazine, without question, consumed him almost entirely. He made decisions on every text and designed every page, at a time when Photoshop was just scissors and glue. He was experimental; he wanted to surprise. He would say that, for him, the most important thing was not delighting readers, but making them wonder, “What does this actually mean?”
Apart from editing out opening paragraphs, Eile would also cut the word “very” out from every article. He was allergic to journalistic exaggeration and disliked elevated style even more, being weary of it at work and in life. Perhaps that’s why he never talked about how he had to hide during the occupation because of his Jewish background. It may also be why he had no confidence in the new post-war order. Even so, he had to write about it if he wanted to continue publishing Przekrój. However, he treated the pages with official party communications like contemporary publishers approach advertisements—as seemingly part of the publication, but not really. At meetings with his superiors, Eile would clarify his expertise on art, literature, and culture, while explaining that he knew nothing about politics. Similarly, other editors at Przekrój, he would say, are so poorly versed in affairs of the state that they stay away from writing about them, lest they accidentally write something stupid. As a matter of fact, argued Eile, bypassing political content shows editorial responsibility, which, after all, is an objective for the biggest culture and society magazine in the country.
Believing in the healing power of laughter, Eile published funny drawings and anecdotes, and he even approached the promotion of Przekrój itself with a sense of humor. While other magazines were dominated by columns like “You Write, We Answer,” Przekrój declared it was “the only weekly in the world that doesn’t respond to readers’ letters” on its cover. That wasn’t entirely true, but more about that later. Another inviting slogan graced the cover at a different time, calling Przekrój “an organ of friendly people.” When Mao Zedong announced that China was joining the Communists of the Slavic states in 1949, Eile responded by advertising that Przekrój was “the only such weekly for eight hundred million Slavs.” So what of the fact that well over five hundred million of that impressive number were Chinese?
Of course, Przekrój was still unknown in China, but there was some truth in Eile’s saying. Slavic languages are quite similar, and many people in Bulgaria, and what were then Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) actually reached for the Polish weekly paper themselves. When Russian-American poet and 1987 Nobel Prize winner Iosif Brodsky was asked about his creative path, he replied that in his youth he learned Polish so he could read Przekrój. Only that way did he learn about foreign masterpieces before he was expelled from the Soviet Union and moved to the United States.
The Eleventh Commandment
Without Marian Eile, there would be no Przekrój, but the same goes for Janina Ipo-horska, the second—or, according to some, the first—person on the editorial board. She was an aesthete and erudite, an expert on theater, French literature, and painting, and was regarded as an authority on elegance. In the magazine, she ran the fashion section and the Democratic Savoir-Vivre column under a pseudonym. The latter was initially intended as satire, with funny questions made up and answered by Ipohorska. However, real letters soon started arriving in the editorial office and—contrary to the policy of unresponsiveness, as declared by the earlier-mentioned cover—Przekrój began replying.
All sorts of questions were asked. “Is it okay to keep one’s hands in their pockets during a conversation?” “How can one introduce an acquaintance to a group, when they don’t remember their name?” “Should a man greet a woman with a kiss on the hand?”. The answer to this recurring inquiry was always, “No.”
After the war, Poland underwent a social revolution. A large segment of the country’s intellectual elite had perished at the hands of the Nazis, and the new generation had no one to teach them, not only how to be polite, but also more broadly, about the etiquette of living in modern society. It’s understandable that the biggest society and culture magazine, which reached hundreds of thousands people every week, would offer advice on such topics. Their example clearly showed the power of a joke. Ipohorska’s witty responses in her column, which was as difficult to write as it was educational, was also wildly popular. While readers were unlikely to start with it when perusing a new issue—because even then, it was clear that the last page is looked at first in Przekrój—they certainly consumed it eagerly. They read, smiled, and unwittingly learned good manners, and, above all, common courtesy.
For Ipohorska, genuine kindness toward others was the most important thing. Referring to Christianity’s Ten Commandments to follow in life, she asserted, “Eleventh: be tolerant.” Ipohorska witnessed what happens in a world where there is a lack of acceptance and kindness toward others.
Janina Ipohorska ran Democratic Savoir-Vivre until her death. Although she stopped working in the editorial department of Przekrój in 1968, she still answered readers’ letters for the next twenty years as an independent writer. When she passed, the directors of the magazine at the time decided that the column, although still enjoyed by readers, would disappear from its pages. It was clear to everyone in the editorial office that it would be difficult to find a worthy replacement; the column returned to Przekrój for a short time in the early 90s, and it was run by poet and popular song-writer Agnieszka Osiecka.
How Wonderful! How Awful!
The work of Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Gabriel García Márquez, excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses, Steinbeck all graced the pages of Przekrój. Less seriously, there was Betty MacDonald’s humorous memoir, The Egg and I, published episodically, as well as short stories by Mark Twain, excerpts from Gerald Durell, then the canon in Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens. Iosif Brodsky knew what he was doing when he learnt to read Polish. Przekrój smuggled novelties that otherwise probably wouldn’t have reached not only Poland, but beyond the Iron Curtain in general. It didn’t stop at literature either—there were texts about Pasolini’s films, French theatrical premieres, and even yoga, which was still little known then (“yoga helps with not smoking” encouraged one of the 1974 issues). The weekly published write-ups on Italian cuisine, like pizza, which in the 1950s was not only unknown in Poland but also in places like the United Kingdom. The cafes and hairstyles of the Parisian streets featured, and so did fashion, as well as jazz, which Przekrój’s editors listened to with passion.
As for what got published, it was still somewhat limited because the Communist censors had sharp scissors. Kafka and Borges were very frowned upon, and their publications were always met with resistance from the censor. Fortunately, sometimes Eile managed to persuade the authorities, which is why Przekrój regularly included drawings by the legendary Saul Steinberg from The New Yorker. Eile obtained the rights to reprint them for free from the American embassy, and, during his only ever trip to the United States, he confirmed it with Steinberg himself. This was more difficult with jazz. From 1949, when the party line tightened its grip, even the explanation that it was, after all, music that came from the social lowlands that opposed capitalism didn’t work. The ban on writing about the genre was over in the late 1950s, which Eile celebrated by including a photo of Louis Armstrong on the cover of the 1957 New Year’s issue.
Przekrój had a few methods for publishing news from the United States culture and art scene. The most common trick was accompanying it with a text saying something like “look how awful this is!” Sometimes it worked, other times—often completely unexpectedly—it didn’t. This was the case in 1951, when Poland was in its deepest communist period, US troops were clashing with the Soviet-backed Korean People’s Army, and Marian Elie decided to print an American gangster detective story in weekly episodes. He was a great admirer of crime fiction, unlike the Communist authorities, who believed that reading this kind of literature demoralizes young people and teaches them to commit crimes. The first installment was accompanied by a preface explaining that it was printed solely as a warning to respectable readers. It didn’t work, and the next episode wasn’t published. The heads of the publishing house urgently summoned the editor-in-chief for a meeting. Eile had to agree to discontinue the series that had barely started, reportedly without even protesting too much. According to Eile, there was only one thing worth losing his job over—Pablo Picasso.
Eile worshiped Picasso unconditionally. “This one man fertilized an entire era,” he would say, seeing him not only as a great artist but also a person who teaches how one can look and think, shatters stereotypes, and encourages stepping off the beaten track. Aside from his paintings, Przekrój also included lengthy reviews of exhibitions and birthday announcements for Picasso, which the weekly, of course, went about in its own way by publishing imaginary telegrams with well-wishes from, for instance, Charlie Chaplin. Once, there was even a guide on how to casually start a conversation with the painter when meeting him at a party or on a walk. Picasso even visited the Przekrój editors in 1948, when he flew to Poland for the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace. In 1959, the magazine declared a solemn “Year of Picasso,” publishing his works in each issue—often on a full page so that they could be cut out and hung on the wall. Eile encouraged this, explaining that everyone deserves some real art, even if they can’t afford to buy a real painting. The abstract works of Picasso, like those of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, did not meet the tenets of Socialist Realist art, but Przekrój could print them without having to feign disgust or scorn in the process. The leftist views of the artists were enough for a pass to its pages.
The Philosopher Dog
“What are you afraid to growl or bark at?” “Don’t believe other people’s words. Believe your sense of smell.”, “It’s always worth barking at things that are important to us.” “Everyone has a table at which they would wag their tail at for something to fall off.” These proclamations of canine wisdom appeared in Myśli ludzi wielkich, średnich i psa Fafika (The Thoughts of Great Men, Average Men, and Fafik the Dog). Seneca and, of course, Picasso were sometimes quoted in the column, as were poets and writers, along with Tom Thumb or simply Fafik, the wire-haired terrier himself, who actually existed. He was a gift to editor-in-chief Eile in 1964 for his name day, a holiday that, in those days in Poland, was celebrated more festively than birthdays. Fafik became a regular guest at the editorial office, and the cover of Przekrój was emblazoned with another tagline—“The only magazine in the world with a dog on its editorial board.” The golden thoughts of the philosopher dog appeared almost every week, although once, instead of a quote, there was a protest: “Printing the sayings of Fafik the dog is absurd. After all, everyone knows dogs don’t talk.” However, since Francis the talking mule was its author, one can only assume it was simply a case of interspecies jealousy. One of Przekrój’s Christmas issues dedicated an entire two-page spread to Fafik’s latest paintings, colorful paw prints. The editors clarified it was simply Tachisme, only it was made with the foot of a dog.
The greatest achievement of the editorial pup, however, was the Silver Fafik Award (neither gold, nor bronze, but silver; just somewhere in the middle), established in 1961. The list of winners was printed in the Christmas issue, and the award itself was compared by the office to—obviously—the Nobel Prize. One of the first winners was, obviously, Pablo Picasso, who probably never learned about his accolade—the editors didn’t inform laureates, assuming that after all, they could read about it in Przekrój. Other awardees included Agatha Christie, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Paul Sartre, and more, who all enjoyed the dog’s esteem in subsequent years. Of course, many prominent Polish artists also received the Silver Fafik. A young Jerzy Skolimowski received it in 1966, before becoming Poland’s entry for the 2023 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for EO, fifty years later, at the age of eighty-one. The Silver Fafik was, of course, one of many playful events that took place at Przekrój, but it also introduced new trends in art and culture, showing those readers behind the Iron Curtain what was worth knowing, reading, watching, and listening to.
Here Comes the New
The former weekly Przekrój is now primarily an online magazine, but many things have remained just the same. Our new content is often accompanied by old drawings by Lengren or Mróz—still funny after the years, sometimes even a little tender. Just like the first Przekrój team, the current editorial staff wants to surprise and inspire our readers, again and again. Just like them, we want to participate in the creation of a world in which we would like to live ourselves. That is why we write—among others— about ecology and tolerance, that’s why we teach how to find peace and balance in the chaos of conflicting information. We teach deep breathing (literally!) and gratitude, because we believe that these are the skills that allow us to live more fully, simply: better.
How do you read us? The best way is: every day! Each day there are new topics on our website, stimulating reflection and inspiration. Przekrój (read: P-sheh-crooy) means cross-section in Polish and this word perfectly defines what you will find on our website—our full “reading instructions” can be found here.
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