“I am aware of the difficulties and I do not get disheartened”: Wanda Dynowska’s Papers about India Collected in Tadeusz Pobożniak’s Archive

Abstract

“I am aware of the difficulties and I do not get disheartened”: Wanda Dynowska’s Papers about India Collected in Tadeusz Pobożniak’s Archive The aim of the present paper is to discuss the process of self-creation discernible in hitherto unpublished letters written by Wanda Dynowska-Umadevi to Tadeusz Szukiewicz, her literary representative in Poland, acting on her behalf in 1938–1939. Besides discussing the documentary value of the letters, which, for instance, shed some light on Dynowska’s relationship with Tadeusz Pobożniak and her other eminent contemporaries, or contextualize the origin of selected volumes published afterwards with Biblioteka Polsko-Indyjska (Polish-Indian Library), I also try to show that the manner of Dynowska’s self-creation in the personal documents that predominantly concern the efforts to publish her articles intended to popularize India in Poland could have been shaped by the particular addressee of her letters, and thus culminated in Dynowska projecting herself in her own writings.

Keywords

• Wanda Dynowska-Umadevi
• Poles in India
• Tadeusz Pobożniak
• letters
• personal papers
• self-creation