Estrela Ruiz Leminski and Aurea Alice Leminski. (Multiple Leminski Cultural Productions Ltda)

Writer and poet Paulo Leminski, born in Curitiba, was the grandson of Polish immigrants by his father’s side, and claimed his Polishness in an unconventional but very assertive way, by associating his poetic sensitivity with his family’s expatriation. It is easy to detect in his work echoes of the history of Poland and the resilience of its people, who always knew how to resist, rebel and rise when subdued and oppressed, without ever losing the tenderness of their poetic soul. Leminski’s Brazilianness did not prevent him from proudly declaring his Polack heart. Although rooted and deeply attached to his homeland, Leminski distinguished himself as a polyglot intellectual, humanist, universalist and cosmopolitan, characteristics that permeate his prolific poetic and literary production. His work is marked by transgression and breaking away from traditionalism, although his creative process was grounded in the erudition conquered by a life devoted to study and knowledge.

Leminski navigated with skill and ease through the Brazilian cultural and artistic universe, opening up new places and broadening horizons and frontiers. As if tracing his grandfather's route backwards, Leminski himself takes a ship to Poland. And this imaginary crossing is less about locating roots than about taking root in the soil of a choice, it is less about documenting the ground zero of an origin, than about forging a persona, creating an identity.

The Vistula in the Leminskian literary veins, the Polack heart beating in verse and prose, constitute a deliberate practice of self-construction, affirmation and cultivation of difference. Leminski did not turn his Polishness into an aesthetic or a political project. He was not a pamphleteer of his ethnicity. Anyhow, Poland is a constant presence in his works. Walking through his grandfather’s country, while never having left Brazil, Leminski visits many times and places. Sometimes you can hardly perceive when you cross the borders between history and memory, between the province of remembrance and the domains of invention.

This symposium aims to identify and understand the aspects and traits of Polishness in the works of a writer from Curitiba, who projected the State of Paraná on the national cultural scene and is one of the most respected and revered names in Brazilian literature.