Prof. Arkady RZEGOCKI: Countess Markievicz unites the Polish, Irish and Ukrainian people

en Language Flag Countess Markievicz unites the Polish, Irish and Ukrainian people

Photo of Prof. Arkady RZEGOCKI

Prof. Arkady RZEGOCKI

Professor at Jagiellonian University.

Ryc.Fabien Clairefond

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Constance Markievicz continues to inspire and strengthen the bonds between Ireland, Poland and Ukraine even today. We can see it for ourselves by visiting an extraordinary exhibition of photos taken by Contance with her small portable camera in 1902-1903. In the sepia-toned old photographs shown publicly for the first time at the Polish House, a Georgian tenement house at 20 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin, the people and the nature come alive in the ways that are amazingly fresh and modern.

The exhibition „Native Europe: Photographs of Ukraine 1902-1903 & the Polish Citizenship of Constance Markievicz”, presents photos taken by Countess Markievicz in Żywotówka (UKR Zhyvotivka), Ukraine, the family seat of her bohemian husband, painter and playwright Kazimierz Dunin Markiewicz. These unique newly uncovered photographs document Ukrainian countryside, people at the market, family gatherings of the Markiewiczs at their manor house as well as a mix of people living in the area, including the Ukrainian Jews. The photos show Ukraine as an enslaved and impoverished part of the Russian empire, but also as a world of many nationalities and intertwiningcultures. The title of the exhibition hints at the book by Czesław Miłosz, entitled “Native Realm” (Rodzinna Europa), a moving biographical essay by one of the leading writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. In the book, first published in 1959 at the Polish emigré-led Literary Institute in Paris, Miłosz delves into his childhood memories, into his experience of growing up in a multicultural, multilingual and multireligious world. This world was erased by the oppressive totalitarianism of the tzarist Russia that enslaved Central and Eastern European nations. The destruction was further intensified by the German Nazism and Soviet communism. Today, in order to make sense of the presence of the Poles, the Markiewicz family, who lived near Kiev, to see the context of the Jewish population and so many other ethnicities co-existing in the Central-East of Europe, we need to read Czesław Miłosz and to look at the photographs by Constance Markievicz.

There unique photographs have been unearthed in the family archives of the Malkiewicz family, the direct descendants of the Markieviczs by dr Jarosław Płachecki and Patrick Quigley, the two tireless members of the Management Board of the Polish House and the Irish-Polish Society in Dublin. The Malkiewicz family live in Kraków and have generously shared Constance’s photographs with the Irish public. It is thanks to their goodwill and the beautiful displays designed by Jarosław Głowa, that we can reconnect with Constance through her photography. The photographs are testimony to Constance’s artistic taste, but also tell much about her budding social and national interests. These are great vistas of the early Irish photography and are not to be missed by anyone interested in the art of photography, Polish-Irish history and photo journalism.

Patrick Quigley, a native of Monaghan who has written extensively on the Gore Booth sisters, on Constance, Kazimierz and Staśko Markiewicz, argues that Constance’s repeated stays in the very centre of the Russian Empire and her contacts with the Polish and Ukrainian participants of the January 1863 Uprising had a significant influence on her nationalists views and her subsequent revolutionary path. In one of the few colour photographs in the exhibition, we see her, a happy, newly wed woman, wearing a Ukrainian folk costume. This was the time when she plunged into the beautiful and unknown  world of Central and Eastern Europe. Today, as we look at her photographs, we realize that the themes and the subjects of these photographs are as symbolic as the female gaze of their author and her life. Constance truly felt with the oppressed national communities and became their advocate and champion of freedom.

The opening of the exhibition was graced with the presence of Larysa Gerasko, Ambassador of Ukraine to Ireland who spoke warmly of the collection and emphasized the unfailing Irish and Central-European support for the fighting Ukraine. We known it means a lot to the Ukrainian people.

Next to the photographs, the visitors can also see for the first time Contance’s application for Polish citizenship. As the first woman ever elected to the British House of Commons, and the first female minister in the world (apart from the female minister in the Bolshevik government), Constance refused to go on her American tour on the British passport. Encouraged by the success of De Valera’s American Tour in 1919-1920, Constance planned her own and in 1921, she submitted her passport application to the Polish consulate in London. She was entitled to Polish citizenship by marriage, and she eagerly took this consular path since Poland would have regained its independence in 1918. Unfortunately, two years later, in 1920, Polish independence was severely threatened by the Bolshevik invasion sought to defeat independent Poland and to start a revolution in Western Europe. Thanks to the enormous mobilization and determination of the entire Polish society, and the support of a few European nations, Poland defended itself and won its twenty years of freedom before 1939. While the episode of Constance’s passport, is no doubt an important update in her biography, it also reminds us all of the importance of having your own country and public institutions. It serves as a reminder of the historic role Polish diplomacy played in rebuilding Polish statehood and during World War II, as it rescued thousands of persecuted Polish Jews.

The twentieth-century teaches us all a lesson in empathy and support for those countries whose  independence is under threat. Today, Poland and Ireland are among the countries that strongly support Ukraine, heroically fighting against Russia’s aggressive imperialist attack. Anyone who follows the life of Constance Markievicz, will know that the war recently waged by Russia is of a colonial nature. It aims to subdue and enslave a nation that aspires to freedom. The opening of Constance Markievicz’s photo exhibition was a meeting of friends and the like-minded, we shared a bond of friendship and solidarity with the Ukrainian nation fighting for the right of self-determination. After over 120 years, the photos of the remarkable Irish artist and revolutionary continue to inspire and strengthen the ties connecting Ireland, Poland and Ukraine.

Arkady Rzegocki

The exhibition „Native Europe: Photographs of Ukraine 1902-1903 & the Polish Citizenship of Constance Markievicz” was earlier shown at the Polish House, 20 Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2, D02 YV58 and later at the Malahide Carnegie Free Library, Main Street, Malahide. From 22 September it will be on view at St. Audoen’s church in Dublin, 14 High Street, Dublin 8.

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