MADAME
ANTONI LIBERA is a literary critic, translator and theatre director, noted especially for his collaborative work with Samuel Beckett. Madame is his first novel. He lives in Warsaw, Poland.
AGNIESZKA KOLAKOWSKA was born in Poland in 1960, brought up in England and educated at Yale and Cambridge. She has translated works from Polish and French into English, as well as working as a freelance editor and journalist. Books translated include: Them: Stalin’s Polish Puppets by Teresa Toranska and Freedom, Fame, Lying and Betrayal by Leszek Kolakowski.
MADAME
Antoni Libera
Translated from the Polish by
Agnieszka Kolakowska
First published in Great Britain in 2001
by Canongate Books Ltd
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
This edition published in 2004.
Published in English in the USA by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
First published in 1998 by Wydawnictwo Znak, Poland.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 1998 by Antoni Libera
Translation copyright © 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The moral right of Antoni Libera and Agnieszka Kolakowska to be identified as respectively the author and translator of the work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 1 84195 520 5
eISBN: 978 1 78689 336 9
for Pawel Huelle
Contents
Today’s Subject: All Saints’ Day
The Song of Virgo and Aquarius
What Then? What Then, My Lad?
What is the Meaning of the Word ‘Philology’?
Wer den Dichter will verstehen, / Muss in Dichters Lande gehen (Freddy’s Story)
La belle Victoire
Maximilian and Claire
¡No pasarán!
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Constant’s Story)
The Logos-Cosmos Bookshop
Queen’s Gambit
The Knight’s Way, the Courtier’s Way and the Scientific Way
Centre de Civilisation
The Discovery of America
Onward! Westward Ho!
Here is My Space!
The Hand of Hippolytus
Taking Stock
A Man and a Woman
The Dream
The Day After
Handicrafts
Endgame
L’âge viril
Classroom Experience
Those were the Days!
Say
