/
PL

Letter from Irena Krońska written in 10.07.1954

Warsaw, 7/10/1954

 

  c       Dear and Honorable Professor,

  c       I write unofficially, because our typist is on vacation, and using the machine hall significantly delays the correspondence.
  c       The vacation leave approval certificate can be found attached herewith. Do you intend to hike a little in the mountains? – I am leaving for Sopot to join Myzia at the end of the month.
  c       And now, regarding the matters Professor raised: I talked to Ms. Mianowska. She did not submit the work for review, because her whole project of publishing this volume fell through. Apparently either Polish Writer’s Union or the PEN Club intends to release a similar selection, and therefore the editorial initiative has been dismissed as no longer needed. She was supposed to write to Professor and send the work back.
  c       I got another letter from Gałecki again regarding this unfortunate annotation in the ID. God please, him get it out of his head, it is impossible! No additional information can be added there – only a stamp to certify the holder of the ID is a permanent employee. We can issue him a certificate on separate papers stating that he translates, translated, will translate, etc. – that is all, and it should be more than enough for him. – And now for another matter, although still related to Gałecki. We talked about giving him a bigger portion of Critique of Pure Reason for proofreading. – Don’t you think that considering we have just released “Groundwork” and the fact that Critique of Pure Reason has already been translated twice and a large number of copies of these translations are available in libraries, the demand for readings in the field of Kantian ethics has been met for now, and that instead of resuming work on Critique of Pure Reason it would be better to publish a translation of something that has not been translated yet, namely Critique of Judgment? I am asking you for an answer in this matter, and a decision whether Professor would think it right to entrust the translation to Gałecki? If so, we could sign a contract with him still in July. –
  c       As for Herder’s further fate, I was thinking about giving this item to prof. Adler to be checked. He is a professor of the University of Warsaw (dialectical materialism) and has a doctorate in German studies (wrote his doctoral dissertation under Z. Łempicki). He is currently conducting a study on Herder and intends to write a monography on him.
  c       I have not received the rest of Critique yet; when it arrives, I will confirm its receipt. We have added “Critique” as a certain item to the 1955 plan.
  c       As for Ms. Wójcik and Mr. Szymański, it would be best if Professor directly gave me some samples. Since the samples are not honored anyway and are done at the candidate’s “own risk”, we could indeed give them something that has already been done for us. I do so often, just to make the assessment easier for myself. So, we could, for example, give them some parts from Herder (maybe Mr. Gałecki could lend a copy).
  c       – I was just informed that the typescript of Critique has arrived.

Awaiting a few words in reply

My deepest respect
cordial greetings and best wishes
may you have a nice vacation

I Kronska