Tuwim Irena (22.08.1898, Łódź -7.12.1987, Warsaw) - translator, writer.

Irena Tuwim is primarily known as the translator of the beloved by Poles and often reissued Winnie the Pooh by Alexander Alan Milne. She was also a recognised poet and prose writer who, although overshadowed by her brother Julian, managed to shine in the firmament of Polish literature.

Irena Tuwim was born in Łódź as the daughter of Izydor (1858-1935) and Adela Tuwim, de domo Krukowska (1872-1942), who was more than ten years younger than him. Her father was an accountant at a branch of the Azov-Don Commercial Bank, while his mother took care of the house. Her parents came from assimilated Jewish families, and in Julian and Irena's family home Judaism was not practised and Jewish holidays were not celebrated. Irena's grandfather on her mother's side, Leon Lejb Krukowski, came to Łódź from Bialystok and was the owner of a printing house, where "Dziennik Łódzki" was printed, among other things. Irena's cousins included Leon Boruński, a pianist and composer, and the famous Lopek - Kazimierz Krukowski, a popular stage artist during the interwar period in Poland. The poets' father settled in Łódź in 1982, while he spent his childhood in Mariumpol.

As Irena Tuwim's biographer, Anna Augustyniak, points out, Izydor had "an older brother, Albert, who kept the name Towim, which means good in Hebrew"[1.1].

Irena Tuwim recalled her childhood in, among others, Łódzkie Pory Roku: "It was not idyllic, angelic and, as they say, radiant and carefree. Only full of nightmares and fears (...). There was the black, smoke-filled Łódź, there was a flat on Andrzeja Street: five large, uncomfortable rooms that could not be heated in any way (...)"[1.2]. The author also recalled that the atmosphere in the family home was dire and full of tension, which Tuwim understood only years later as being the result of her parents' completely mismatched marriage: "year after year, mutual grievances and resentments grew between the parents, alienation increased, which, in time, in the mother caused severe neurosis and some clear dislike towards the father. He (...) became more and more withdrawn, escaping from life, from her, and even in a way from us, his children"[1.3].

Piotr Matywiecki, author of a comprehensive biography of Julian Tuwim, pointed out that Adela was a neurotic, overprotective mother - for example, she worried that Irena would become a "spinster", which stemmed from her sense of low value and pessimistic character[1.4]. Undoubtedly, the mother's condition, especially her later mental illness and stay in the psychiatric hospital in Zofiówka, left a mark on the siblings. She was murdered in 1942 in Otwock; after the war her grave was found, her body exhumed and laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery in Łódź next to her husband, as described by Julian Tuwim in his poem Matka[1.5]. As Anna Augustyniak points out, little Irena was introduced to the world of literature by her mother, while her brother became a later guide[1.6]. He was interested in his sister's writing and saw poetic potential in her works.

In 1921, the publishing house of Jakub Mortkowicz published her "adult debut", namely the poetry volume 24 Wiersze. Later years would see the publication of Listy (1926), as well as Miłość Szczęśliwa (1930), which show a clear influence of the poetics of the Skamanders, with whom, like Julian, Irena was associated. She was undoubtedly a gifted poet and praised by her circle, but she showed outstanding talent in her work as a translator, especially of children's literature: Fernando by Munro Leaf, Winnie the Pooh, and The House at Pooh Corner, and Pamela Travers' Mary Poppins. The famous nanny was initially called by her second name - Agnieszka.

While Irena Tuwim's professional career progressed relatively harmoniously, dramatic twists and turns took place in her personal life. In 1922, she married Stefan Eiger (1899-1940), a distinguished literary critic and a significantly inferior poet known as Stefan Napierski. Irena's husband came from a wealthy industrialist family. His grandfather, Markus Silberstein, was one of the wealthiest factory owners in Łódź in the 19th century and left his descendants a sizeable fortune, so that Tuwim's first husband did not have to worry about providing for his family. Under her husband's influence, Irena was baptised and declared a Roman Catholic religion. Napierski was a homosexual, and in Warsaw it was rumoured that his marriage to Tuwim - sister of the great Julian - was to be treated in terms of ambition, as an attempt to get closer to the poet[1.7]. The marriage officially lasted until 1935, but Irena left her husband as early as the 1920s, although not without dilemmas, in favour of Julian Stawiński (1904-1973) - doctor of law, lawyer, translator, editor. Her second marriage took place in Vilnius in the Evangelical-Reformed rite and she remained in it until Stawiński's death. She initially lived with Stawiński in Ostrów Mazowiecka, and from 1937 again in Warsaw, where Stawiński practised, among other things, as an advocate at the Court of Appeal.

In 1939, together with her husband, she left Poland via Romania for Paris, where she published in the Polish-language press. She was later evacuated to the UK due to Stawiński's work with the Ministry of Documentation and Information of the Polish Government in Exile. In February 1945, she and her husband left for Canada, and after the end of the war she lived in the United States, where Stawiński served as attaché at the Polish embassy of the Polish Communist government.

In 1947, they returned to Poland and Tuwim continued her translation work, with a particular focus on children's literature. Together with her husband, she has translated, among others, Hariett Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom’s cabin: or, Life among the lowly. She also devoted her own work to the youngest audiences and in the 1950s and 1960s, she published several children's stories, which were reprinted many times, such as Marka Wagarka (1955) or O pingwinie Kleofasku (1960).

In her private life, she took care of her husband, who was periodically hospitalised in Tworki due to his suicidal tendencies. After the death of her husband and, before that, her beloved brother, she delved into loneliness. She passed away in 1984 and was buried at Warsaw's Powązki cemetery.

Maria Antosik-Piela

References:

• Augustyniak A., Irena Tuwim. Nie umarłam z miłości. Biografia, Warsaw 2016.
• Matywiecki P., Twarz Tuwima, Warsaw 2008.
• Stawiszyńska A., Odnośnie artykułu Katarzyny Kuczyńskiej-Koschany „Panienka, Godzina Polski, 1916: Irena Tuwim's Literary Debut”, [in:] "Czytanie Literatury. Łódzkie Studia Literaturoznawcze" 2020, Vol. 9, pp. 375-377.
• Tuwim O., Łódzkie pory roku, Warsaw 1958.

The biography was created as part of the project "Polskie Żydówki dla Niepodległej" (Polish Jewish Women for the Independent), implemented with a grant from the Totalizator Sportowy Foundation.