On a sunny afternoon of 24 April 2013 the already domesticated by us Manor of Sierakowscy was filled with guests expecting to meet one of the most renowned polish writers – Marek Bieńczyk.
An exquisite essayist, translator, historian of literature and enologist, author of, among others, an award-winning novel Tworki, collections of essays Melancholy and Eyes of Dürer, and recently winner of the Nike for Book of faces, gave lecture – or rather told a tale or shared an essayist reflection – entitled „Zidane’s Gesture and other melancholies”.
By sharing his sports passion, Marek Bieńczyk brilliantly demonstrated, how a seemingly trivial deed of a professional writer is enrooted in the anthropology of gesture, history of France and romantic melancholy. Considerations on a famous violent gesture of another French footballer, Eric Cantona, were accompanied by reflections on the nature of French esprit, as well as memories concerning other important, yet often disregarded pieces of existence, which – as interpreted by the author of Terminal – proved to be far from obvious, and imbued with multiple senses.
These reflections, willingly complemented by the audience, were finished with a story of a well-known case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, presented by Marek Bieńczyk in the context of scandalous book by Marcela Iacub, which in turn became contribution to broader comments on French history, as well as eroticism in literature and exhibitionism of modern media. In this way, surprising, meandering thought of the writer guided us, painlessly and with a dose of humor, through many crucial problems of late modernity.
