Letter to Stefan Żółkiewski written in 21.10.1966

Author Roman Ingarden

Category outgoing correspondence, Polish researchers in Roman Ingarden's correspondence

Archive Archive of Science PAN in Cracow

Date of creation 21.10.1966

Related places Paris

Reference code in archive K_III-26_D_79

Resource type letter

Subject matter international trips, organizational issues, publication issues

Field phenomenology, philosophy

Tags #Adam Schaff, #Barthes dispute with Picard, #Belgian Embassy, #Belgium, #Edmund Husserl, #Embassy of the People’s Republic of Poland, #health problems, #Herman van Breda, #Husserl's Archive, #Husserl's letters, #Husserl's works, #Husserl’s manuscripts, #international trips, #Louvain, #no books, #nowa krytyka, #PAN, #Paris, #phenomenology, #Polish Academy of Sciences, #problems with trip, #problems with visa, #publishing, #Raymond Picard, #Roland Barthes, #scientific activity, #scientific work, #service passport, #Stefan Żółkiewski, #trip organisation, #trip plan, #trip to Belgium, #visa

13, rue des Écoles
Hotel Minerve, Paris V c c c Paris, 21 October 1966

Professor Dr Stefan Żółkiewski
Academic Secretary, First Department, Polish Academy of Sciences
Warsaw, Palace of Culture and Art
[sic; actually Palace of Culture and Science]

c Dear Honoured Professor,

      c        c as I’ve mentioned in my previous letters, during my stay here, a plan emerged for a trip to Belgium to the Husserl Archive in Louvain. This is partly connected to the fact that I can’t get English magazines or certain non-French books here, and secondly to the fact that I want to make use of this opportunity to read certain manuscripts of Husserl’s not published as yet and available only in the Husserl Archive – namely, it seems, Husserl’s letters to me (approximately 80 letters from the 1920s). Before leaving Cracow, I wrote a commentary to them in which I had to present a number of matters as my suppositions (concerning works which Husserl mentions in his letters that he was developing and which were not subsequently published, neither by him nor after the war). Well, given access now to the manuscripts, I’ll be able to check my suppositions and offer them as confirmed facts, which will be useful for further research. For this reason, I decided to accept the invitation of the director of the Archives, Prof. H. L. van Breda (who’s known in Poland because he was at the congress in Warsaw in 1957, and Prof. Adam Schaff knows him well). Well, today I received a letter from Prof. van Breda to the effect that I should report to the Belgian Embassy, where there’s supposed to be a visa for me. Indeed, I went there and was told that the visa was there; however, because I have a service passport, I was asked to have the Embassy of the People’s Republic of Poland in Paris address an appropriate note to them. In addition, permission was requested to add a stamp on any free page, because the place where normal visas are supposed to be stamped, as I’ve already written, was already occupied. Next, I went to the Embassy of the People’s Republic of Poland, where this was agreed to, although with a clear reluctance to issue such a note, but they were unwilling to agree to the request regarding where the stamp was to go. On Monday, I’m supposed to pick up this note and then go to the Belgian Embassy and see what results from this.
     c Because I don’t intend to go to Louvain until around 10 November, since I still have to read various things in the Library here, there’s still time for me to receive your answer as to whether you, as the Secretary of the Department, agree to my trip to the Husserl Archives. If this were to raise any doubts, I politely ask you to graciously so inform me. Ultimately, nothing will happen if I return directly from Paris to Cracow – only that one of my publications will possess a hypothetical character, being unsupported by real evidence.
     c Please forgive me for occupying you once again with my formal matters. Of matters that would interest you, I’ll mention that here I’m reading, inter alia, Roland Barthes’s paper and his dispute with Picard on the topic of the ‘new criticism’. This issue been going on for a couple of years now – I hadn’t heard a thing about it in Poland.
     c        c I enclose expressions of profound esteem and cordial greetings from Paris.

Louvain will have the advantage that I won’t have to
ride the Metro, which is very bad for my legs and weak
(for many years now) heart. But too bad.