Kornel Makuszyński (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkɔrnɛl makuˈʂɨɲskʲi]; Stryj, now Ukraine, 8 January 1884 – 31 July 1953, Zakopane) was a Polish writer of children's and youth literature.[1][2] He was an elected member of the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature in the interwar Poland.[3]
Contents |
Makuszyński attended the Jan Długosz gymnasium in Lviv (Polish: Lwów). While in school he wrote occasional poetry[1] (he started writing at the age of 14), and had his first poem published in 1902 in the newspaper Słowo Polskie (Polish Word), for which he soon became a theatrical critic.[1][2] He studied language and literature at both the University of Lviv (then Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów, Poland) and in Paris. He was evacuated to Kiev in 1915, where he ran the Polish Theatre and was the chairman of the Polish writers and journalist community.
He moved to Warsaw in 1918[2], and became a writer.
He was buried at the Peksowe Brzysko cemetery in Zakopane, where he lived from 1945. There is a museum dedicated to him there.
His children's books, particularly the series about the goat, Koziołek Matołek, have an enduring popularity in Poland, whatever the sharp changes in the country's fortunes and its political system. They have been translated to many other languages. Among others, they are very popular in Israel, where Polish Jewish immigrants since the 1920s and 1930s took care to have many of them translated to Hebrew and introduced them to their own children.