ENGELKING Leszek

Born on 2 February 1955 in Bytom; son of the classical philologists Edward Engelking and Kazimiera Teresa, née Wilczyńska. His father was a librarian and bibliographer, while his mother was an English teacher. From 1970, he lived in Brwinów, near Warsaw, where he attended the local grammar school (which is now named after Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz). Around June 1972, he published the poem …W wiosce leży wykrzyknik… (...An exclamation mark lies in the village...) in the periodical "Mówi Pruszków". He completed his advanced secondary education in 1974 and began a degree in Japanese philology at the University of Warsaw (UW). After completing the first year, he transferred to Polish philology. He continued to develop his poetry, publishing the poem Piosenka zziębniętej dziewczyny (Song of the frozen girl) in the periodical "Stolica" in 1976 (no. 5). He also contributed the poem Król mówi (The king speaks) to the anthology Świt. Ponowa poetycka (Dawn. Poetic Footprints in the Snow; 1976). However, he considers the 1979 volume of poems Autobus do hotelu Cytera (Bus to Hotel Cytera) as his proper literary debut. He was awarded the Wacław Borowy Prize of the Secretary of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) in 1978 for his academic achievements. The following year he was awarded a master's degree in Polish philology with a minor in film studies. He was a member of the youth section (Koło Młodych) of the Polish Writers' Union (ZLP), until the organization was dissolved in 1983. He published his first work of literary criticism in 1980, Maski Ezry Pounda (Ezra Pound's masks) in "Literatura na Świecie" (no. 4), with his first translations of US-American poetry (works by Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell) also appearing that year in the same monthly. He was a member of the periodical's editorial board in from 1984 to 1995. He continued to collaborate with it as a reviewer, signing his texts with the initial (E). He also contributed sporadically after 2000. His translations of English- and Russian-language literature (and later Czech and Slovak works), articles, reviews and poems also appeared in "Paideuma" (Orono, ME), a periodical dedicated to Ezra Pound, where he became a regular collaborator in 1982; in the quarterly "Akcent" (1985-96, intermittently); and in the weekly "Tak i Nie" (1986-87), where he also published the short story Rękopis znaleziony w pociągu (A Manuscript Found on a Train) in 1986 (no. 27). He was accepted to the Association of Polish Translators (Stowarzyszenie Tłumaczy Polskich) in 1986, was a founding member of the Association of Polish Writers (SPP) in 1989, joined the Polish Branch of the Société Européenne de Culture (SEC) in 1994, was on the international council of the "Poetis Rudųo" (Autumn of Poetry) Festival that took place in Lithuania in 1996, and became a member of the Scriptus literary society in 1997. He taught the history of Czech literature and Czech and Slovak film at the Faculty of Slavonic Studies at UW in 1997/98. At this time he was also a visiting lecturer at the Palacký University Olomouc where he taught the history of twentieth-century Polish literature. He collaborated with the Krakow-based publisher Miniatura between 1997 and 2000 as a translator and editor of the series Biblioteka Poezji Czeskiej on Czech poetry. In 1998 he moved to the University of Lodz (UŁ) where he was a doctoral student and taught courses on literary theory and comparative literature. He gave lectures in Ukraine (at the Ivan Franko University in Lviv in 1998), Slovakia (at the University of Presov in 1999), at the University of Szczecin in 1999 and in Germany (at Justus-Liebig-Universität in Giessen in 2010). Alongside the journals mentioned above, he also started publishing translations (now including texts from Spanish, Belarusian and Ukrainian) and his own works, reviews and articles in periodicals including "bruLion" (1990-91, 1998), the "Ex Libris" supplement of the newspaper "Życie Warszawy" (1990-96), "Tygodnik Literacki" (1990-91), "Kresy" (1994-96 and 2001-02), "Tygodnik Powszechny" (1994-2003) and its supplement "Książki w Tygodniku" (2003-06), "Gazeta Wyborcza" (1995-2003), "Przegląd Artystyczno-Literacki" (1995-2005; which from 1997 was titled "PAL Przegląd Artystyczno-Literacki", where he was also employed as a regular collaborator), "Podkowiański Magazyn Kulturalny" (1996 and intermittently between 2003 and 2008), "Pogranicza" (1996, 1999, and intermittently between 2002 and 2007), "Topos" (1996-97 and 2000-06), "Tygiel Kultury" (where he has been a regular correspondent since 1996), "Akant" (1998-2000) and "Nowe Książki" (since 1998). He has also published regularly in international periodicals, including "Scriptum" (Olomouc, intermittently between 1993 and 2000, where he was also a member of the editorial board), "Literárni Noviny" (Prague, intermittently between 1994 and 2003), "List Oceaniczny" (Toronto, 1996), "Literatura ir Menas" (Vilnius,1996-2007), "Listy" (Olomouc, since 2004), "Slavia" (Prague, since 2007, where he is a member of the international editorial board). In 2000, he was made a member of the Polish PEN Club. In 2002, he defended his doctoral thesis Codzienność i mit. Poetyka, programy i historia „Grupy 42” w kontekście dwudziestowiecznej awangardy i postawangardy (Everyday Life and Myth: The poetics, programme and history of "Grupa 42" in the context of the twentieth-century avant-garde and post-avant-garde) at UŁ, where he was supervised by Prof. Grzegorz Gazda. The following year, as a lecturer at the Chair of Literary Theory in the Institute of Literary Theory, Theatre and Audiovisual Arts at UŁ, he started lecturing in the history of world literature. He also taught on artistic translation during this period as part of the postgraduate programme in translation (Podyplomowe Studium Tłumaczenia) at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (UJ; 2003 and 2005) and at the Institute of Iberian and Iberoamerican Studies at UW (2003 and 2004). He became a member of Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe (Lodz Scientific Society). He was awarded the Czech Writers' Association Premia Bohemica prize in 2003 for his work as a translator and for popularizing Czech literature abroad. In 2006 he received the UŁ Rector's Prizse for his achievements in teaching and research. He has collaborated with the Warsaw publishing house "Muza SA" since 2009 as an editor on the publication of Vladimir Nabokov's selected works. He has appeared on Polish Radio, primarily on Polish Radio 2, to discuss his own works, translations and literary criticism. He became a member of the Polish-Czech Scientific Society (Polsko-Czeskie Towarzystwo Naukowe) in 2008. He has participated in numerous academic conferences and literary festivals in Poland, Czechia, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Catalonia, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. The Polish PEN Club gave him an award in 2010 for his outstanding work as a translator. He was awarded a habilitation degree in 2013 for his study Chwyt metafizyczny. Vladimir Nabokov – estetyka z sankcją wyższej rzeczywistości (A Metaphysical Move: Vladimir Nabokov's aesthetics as sanctioned by a higher reality) from the Institute of Contemporary Culture at UŁ (a unit that emerged from the former Institute of Literary Theory, Theatre and Audiovisual Arts). He received the Decoration of Honour Meritorious for Polish Culture in 2006.

He married the cultural activist, theatre instructor and literature teacher Maja Chadryś in 1994. His son Wojciech Piotr was born in 1992. Engelking lives in Brwinów.