Nero, Lula, Hegel, and the other office dogs feel right at home here. They’ve got their bowls, blankets, and lots of hands to pet them. This is not only the case today—apparently it was also the case a few decades ago, back when we were published as a weekly in Kraków. After all, how could you make a magazine without a dog under your desk?
Przekrój has always been a big menagerie: from Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński’s “Green Goose” to Daniel Mróz’s spoiled cats. But only one animal joined the board of editors—Fafik the dog. He managed that trick back when he was a puppy, and he didn’t even have to sign anything. Things did not always go so smoothly when it came to his articles. “He’s one of my best authors, but the bastard just won’t learn how to hold a pen in his paw,” said Marian Eile, Przekrój’s legendary editor-in-chief, and Fafik’s caretaker. Despite the dog’s evident idleness (breed: almost a Scottish terrier) he kept his post in the editor’s office, right under the editor-in-chief’s desk, until his dying days, making up for his shortcomings with his talent for creating a light atmosphere, his general charm, and his antics.
We cannot say he wrote nothing at all—that would be unjust. Since 1957, when he had turned eleven and had licked his share of the world, he co-created the Thought of Great People, Middling People, and Fafik the Dog column, in which the editors published his pearls of wisdom alongside such luminaries as Einstein and Horace. His name featured under such pearls of wisdom as: “We ought always to bark when it comes to what’s important,” or “Don’t believe other people’s words. Believe your nose,” or the contemplative “Having a bone means you must growl.”
Apart from his bon mots, he could also paint. In a holiday issue he got a two-page spread for his colorful paw prints. As Eile explained, this was paw Tachisme, a variant of ordinary Tachisme. To refresh your memory: this trend in abstract painting emerged soon after World War II (we can see that, when it came to art, Fafik had his paw on the pulse) and involved unleashing creative energies. Seeking new forms of expression, artists “threw” splashes of color at the canvas (la tache in French means “spot”), guided only by their instinct or intuition. With Fafik it was the same, though his work never again appeared in the magazine (which only confirms his laziness). There were rumors that a dispute over whose dog was more beautiful and clever caused the famous journalist Jerzy Waldorff, owner of a floppy-eared spaniel named Alfi, to part ways with Przekrój in 1950. The truth will remain a mystery. The fact of the matter is that both gentlemen, Eile and Waldorff, stopped speaking to one another after a quarrel and the latter’s resounding departure.
Fafik was not the only dog at Przekrój, but he was definitely the most well-known. Marian Eile got him for his name day (a Polish tradition not unlike a birthday) in 1946. The little guy lived to be seventeen, but even as an old dog (apparently, he became a feistier character every step of the way), he regularly dropped by the office. At the end of his life, he inspired the Silver Fafik Award—not bronze or gold, but right in-between—handed out by the editors of Przekrój. Its winners included Agatha Christie, Pablo Picasso (twice!), Magdalena Samozwaniec, and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz and Antoni Słonimski, between whom there was bad blood, and who were jointly honored in 1963 in order to make amends. Many winners of the Silver Fafik never found out about their distinction, however—the list was only published in the magazine, no certificates were handed out, and there was not even a ceremonial pawshake. The last award was given out in 1967, just after the canine editor passed away. At present, the Fafik Award is given out (just as nonchalantly as ever) by the Instagram creator who runs Make Life Harder—it goes to people who work selflessly to support animals, which we encourage!
A Dog Who Eats Bones
Is Free as a Bird
If one dog could publish philosophical sentences in a Polish magazine, surely another could read them. Unfortunately, it was hard to find one that would volunteer to do so—he had to be invented. This was done in 1963 by Ludwik Jerzy Kern, a poet, editor of the “Varia” page (the one at the end), and a great writer. Given that his beloved (and quite real) boxers always had names starting with “F”—Farce, Farce II, Fighter—the canine reader he invented could be no different. Ferdinand the Great was a dog that dreamed so hard of becoming a man that he became one (spoiler alert)—in his dreams. We have long been aware that dogs have realistic dreams—in which they run, fight, cry, or eat—or at least since the 1970s, when research conducted by William Dement, a scientist at Stanford University, confirmed similarities between the sleep phases of people and dogs. We believe, however, that Kern was first. He maintained that the idea for Ferdinand the Great came in a dream: not his own, but Farce’s, his first dog’s, and he only wrote it down. But coming back to Przekrój—let’s look at an excerpt from Ferdinand: “His master generally fell asleep quickly, the newspaper slipped from his hands and quite often it landed in front of Ferdinand’s nose. Like it or not, Ferdinand began to read. You know how it is: you have no desire to read, but then someone passes you a paper, on the tram for instance, and you automatically start reading. The same went for Ferdinand. … First, he saw what was playing in the cinemas… . Then he read the pharmacy opening hours. Then the theater schedules. Then the next day’s weather forecasts.” It’s true that Przekrój did not publish any weather forecasts (only meteorological columns titled—what else?—“Is the Weather Going to the Dogs?”), nor film nor theater schedules, and of course, it has never had a soporific effect, but we take these minor inconsistencies as Ludwik Jerzy Kern’s licentia poetica and still believe Ferdinand must have been reading “the world’s only illustrated weekly whose editors include a real dog.” Because, after all, it would hardly have been the tabloid Express Wieczorny, nor Przekrój’s competitor, Szpilki!
Our magazine proudly reported the successive translations of Ferdinand, always with an up-to-date portrait. When a Czech edition was announced in 1969, Ferdinand sported a bowler hat, trench coat, and an Austro-Hungarian mustache; when volume two of his adventures came out in Japanese in 1970, he was illustrated with (presumably cherry tree) leaves. The translation was rendered by Risako Uchida-Yoshigami, a splendid linguist who performed a great service to Polish literature, including works by Makuszyński and Parandowski.
Returning to Ludwik Jerzy Kern—readers have him to thank for the observation that “where there’s the end of the hound, / That’s where his tail is found” or “It’s plain for all to see,/ that the majority,/ the majority of dogs, that is/ have a bit of artistry.” He wrote plenty of poems about dogs, many of which ended up in “Varia,” and that meant that thousands of readers began their issue of Przekrój with them.
If There a Canine Heaven Be,
That’s Where I Hope They’re Sending Me
You could also find dogs on the cover. Fafik wound up there twice—first as a puppy in 1946, and then almost twelve years later, in November 1957. Wojciech Plewiński’s cover with a flying dog (which Ida Świerkocka wrote about in the fall edition of Przekrój) was famous in its own right. Elsewhere, the front page (in those days, to save space, the photographs did not fill the cover entirely) of the June 6, 1965 issue featured a piece by Ewa Kossak about Karo, a militia hound dog that got up for work with his human companion every morning for ten years. Really, it’s a piece about an animal’s love for its caretaker and a caretaker for his animal. In the piece, Senior Sergeant Wawrzyńczyk tells the reporter: “I have to trust him as completely as he trusts me.” And then, when he states that Karo is soon to be retiring, he says: “I’d do anything to take him home. We’ve spent so many years together, we’ve been through so many good and bad times. I’m so proud of that dog. He’ll live with my family, at home.” That was a beautiful story, and one that addressed an important topic: what happens to service dogs when they are no longer fit to work (now they retire a bit earlier, after nine years). It turns out that only since December 2021 has Poland had a law that says the upkeep of a veteran dog is to remain the responsibility of the unit in which it served, right until its death. Prior to that, senior dogs often ended up in shelters; sometimes they had been injured in service, but their old workplaces did nothing to finance medical check-ups and treatment.
Ewa Kossak, who wrote the article about Karo and was one of Przekrój’s longest-employed journalists, also had a dog, and it had her. Moreover, their great, enduring love affair began at the editorial office. Here’s how it went: head Przekrój illustrator and lover of all animals (though most of all, cats) Daniel Mróz, was standing in the Main Market Square in Kraków, observing the pigeons. Suddenly, something caught his eye: a woman swiftly hopped into a cab, the car sped off, and a dog chased it for all he was worth. The taxi was gone in a flash. The desperate dog, not knowing where to run to chase its master, began pacing back and forth. Mróz could not leave him there, he managed to attract the dog and decided to take him in. It was a noble plan, but, as Andrzej Klominek described, it did not work out: “What then happened all night in the Mróz apartment we can only imagine. In one room the hysterical dog howled and raged, in another… terrified cats hissed away.” The next day, he took the dog to the office. It was young, but quite large (like a calf, Andrzej Klominek said), also joyful and quite active, which not everyone saw as an asset. “And then Ewa Kossak appeared in the office, and we witnessed the beginning of mutual love at first sight.” Rex found a loving home, where he was petted and hugged until the day he died, though we should add that he felt just as welcome in the office.
A Dog’s Not Just a Dog,
As You Know
Of course, in Przekrój’s long history there were also people who needed a bit more time to be sold on dogs. Take Professor Filutek, a cartoon man drawn by Zbigniew Lengren and famed throughout Poland, the suave retired Krakow intellectual. He first appeared in the magazine in 1948, but it was only twelve years later, on Christmas Eve night, as Lengren wrote, that he decided to adopt Filuś the dog (he preferred to have a dog than to get married, which readers also encouraged in their letters). As soon as he adopted him, they were practically inseparable. In the comics, Filuś and his caretaker play pool (he proudly fetches the ball before it goes into the pocket!), Filutek takes him (dragging with all his might!) to the dentist, they go sledding together, and Filuś suns his nose in the park. Observant readers will note that ever since Filuś appeared at Filutek’s side, the latter became more cheerful, and his adventures more interesting. Was anyone really surprised?
Today, a bronze Filuś, with Professor Filutek’s bowler in his teeth, sits in the main square in the city of Toruń, patiently looking out for his caretaker. Just like how, nearly ten years ago, a real dog named Hachikō waited at Tokyo station, after his companion one day boarded a train, went to work, and never came back. Or Dżok, the Kraków mutt (and the cover star of Przekrój in October 1991). When his caretaker died suddenly during a walk, he spent the next year sitting where the incident occurred. These two animals also got their monuments: the former in Tokyo, the latter on Kraków’s Vistula Boulevard.
Buddy, whose story was featured in the October 6, 1957 issue, also has a statue (this time in New Jersey); apparently Marian Eile talked about it for years thereafter. She was America’s first guide dog. Frank Morris, whom she looked after, brought her from Switzerland. When he was sixteen, he lost his sight in an accident; four years later, in 1927, his father read him an article about a woman who, after World War I, began training dogs to help people in the same situation as he was. So he set off on a journey and came back a few weeks later with Buddy. A journalist was waiting for him in New York; he bet Morris that he would not dare strike out on bustling Wall Street with only the dog, without the support of a second person who could see. Morris won the bet, of course, and for the next week New York reporters stuck to him like glue, making Buddy famous. Her charge soon established the first American foundation training guide dogs, helping thousands of visually impaired people gain more freedom of movement. At the end of Buddy’s life, the article says, the regulations changed in the United States and seeing-eye dogs could accompany passengers on airplanes. When Przekrój published the story of Buddy and her charge, guide dogs were also being used in Poland, but as it turns out, to this day we do not have the systemic solutions we need. That is why, according to the Main Statistics Bureau and Polish Union of the Visually Impaired, out of every 100 blind or visually-impaired people, only three have guide dogs. For instance, we still have no regulations (unlike the aged police dogs) for these dogs’ retirement, and so, when they can no longer assist their charges, they are often simply put in shelters.
In the same issue as the tale of Buddy, Fafik had another philosophical and self-reflexive thought: “Dogs are so nice. And so wise!!” Fafik was more prone to speak sardonically when it came to people, and was not always, we believe, totally correct. But he was surely right when he wrote: “No one has ever regretted loving a dog.” At least, we here at Przekrój have never met anyone who has.
The section titles come from Ludwik Jerzy Kern’s Cynological Thoughts: If There Is a Canine Heaven and A House With No Dog. All can be found in Przekrój’s archive
Read similar:
