Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna was a great poet. It is a well-known fact, as well as the fact that for almost nine years she was Józef Piłsudski's secretary. However, hardly anyone has heard that at some point the writer became - as we would say today - the Marshal's manager. Let's add a very effective manager!
Józef Piłsudski met Iłłakowiczówna in Kraków when she was still a teenager. At that time, her sister Barbara cooperated with the future Commander as a translator of various kinds of brochures and military literature. Initially, Kazimiera was not very interested in the activities of "Ziuk" and his entourage. She even laughed - as she recalled years later - at all this independence rhetoric. For she believed that these were people who would not even kill a fly let alone talk about armed struggle against the invader. Everything changed during the Great War, when she fired passionate faith in Józef Piłsudski which she did not dispose of until her death.
The secretary's secret mission
After Poland regained independence, she almost immediately applied to work in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she was an official for eight years. When Piłsudski withdrew from public life in 1923, her views often exposed her to harassment from her associates. But she was by no means going to change her beliefs.
Perhaps it was this stubbornness that impressed the Marshal, who in the summer of 1926 asked the poet to become his secretary in the Ministry of Military Affairs.
Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna in the photo from 1919. Six years later, she was already the personal secretary of Marshal Piłsudski.
Initially, Iłłakowiczównie did not enjoy the work. Responding to thousands of letter requests and accepting dozens of petitioners had nothing to do with personal cooperation with Józef Piłsudski. All this changed one November afternoon when the bell called the secretary to the minister's office. Piłsudski has just finished writing - as he called it - an interview with himself entitled "People without yesterday, people without tomorrow".
Now Kazimiera was to rewrite it and bring the finished text to the Commander. It would seem like a completely routine business order. None of these things. After the poet did what she had to do a surprise ensued. Piłsudski said out of the blue:
- I, you think I am also a writer, and I earn quite a lot as a writer. So you sell me this interview to the newspapers . You can do it? I am asking you, because it is not part of your duties. If you don't want to or can't, someone else will do it to me.
Marshal Józef Piłsudski in his office at work. Was he writing another article?
The unexpected proposal somewhat baffled the poet, who, however, quickly regained her senses and undertook an unusual task. As she had never done anything like this before, she asked the Marshal if he had already chosen a specific newspaper in which the text would be published and the amount of the fee to be requested. While in the first case Piłsudski did all the same, as long as the text was printed only by one newspaper, when answering the second question, Mr. Marshal laughed.
- Oho, I'm dear! Let it not be to you. My last interview brought me about eight thousand zlotys.
Are you wondering if it's a lot or a little? For those times it was a really crazy sum. For comparison, the president of the council of ministers then earned a little over PLN 1,600 a month, and a primary school teacher less than PLN 250. Therefore, the poet-manager faced a difficult task. Additionally, the whole thing was to be kept strictly confidential.
I will sell the Marshal's article dearly
Immediately after the secretary left Piłsudski's office, she started to work. Having consulted the language of colleagues who know the realities of the press in Warsaw, she first called the editorial office of "Kurier Poranny". The diary was known for its pro-Słupsk sympathies, therefore its owner, Feliks Fryze, immediately expressed his will to buy the article. Unfortunately, the price he heard acted on him like a bucket of cold water. With disarming frankness he blurted out: But ma'am, it's an impossible price. The "courier" cannot pay such a fee. We have no money. N i k t there is no such money .
Undeterred by the failure, Iłłakowiczówna turned to the "Polish Day". There, too, the required amount was not immediately available, in addition, the editors wanted to see in advance what they were to pay such money for. The poet-manager, however, did not intend to make any concessions, in the end - at least once - it was she who dictated the terms.
Interwar PLN 500. Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna received sixteen such banknotes for an article by the Marshal. As it turned out, the amount of the fee surprised Piłsudski a lot.
After two unsuccessful attempts, Kazimiera decided to call the editorial office of "Express Poranny" - a very widely read, but not respected Warsaw tabloid. A kind of ancestor of newspapers such as Fakt or Super Express. This time it hit the jackpot. Anyway, let's give the floor to our heroine, who described the whole thing in her memoirs like this:
- What? Interview of Mr. Marshal! Where is? We're taking it now.
- Go slowly, gentlemen. It costs eight thousand zlotys.
- We take it. Can I watch the interview?
- You can't. I will read it to you in the editorial office, after receiving the fee.
- Done, please, as soon as possible.
As you can see, Piłsudski was right with the choice of the "manager". Now everything happened very quickly. Iłłakowiczówna collected a fee, and the circulation of the journal with the interview literally sold out, but this is not the end of the whole story. When it was time to report the transaction to the Marshal, it suddenly turned out that the amount negotiated by Kazimiera was definitely ... too high!
Only the editorial office of Express Poranny was ready to spend eight thousand zlotys for the 'interview' with the Marshal.
Exactly. As explained to the confused subordinate Piłsudski, he received the aforementioned eight thousand from all the magazines in which his previous article appeared. However, there is no "bad" that would not turn out to be good. A large sum was donated to the poor, and the Marshal was very impressed with the talents of his secretary, endorsing the whole matter with the words:
- You're a bastard - I can see. And they say literature doesn't pay!
Sources:
Basic:
- Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna, Path next to the road , Warsaw 1939 (reprint 1989).
Complementary:
- Andrzej Paczkowski, The Polish press in 1918-1939 , Warsaw 1980.
- "Yearbook of Statistics of the Republic of Poland 1927", Warsaw 1927.