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Ryszard Kapuściński (; March 4, 1932 – January 23, 2007) was a Polish reporter, journalist, traveller, photographer, poet and writer whose dispatches in book form brought him a global reputation. Widely considered a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature during his lifetime, he is one of the Polish writers most frequently translated into foreign languages. In an obituary published in ''Der Spiegel'', Kapuściński was described by German journalist Claus Christian Malzahn as "one of the most credible journalists the world has ever seen". Daniel Alarcón, the Peruvian-American novelist cited Kapuściński as a formative influence together with Dostoyevsky. The American journalist and reportage-writer Richard Bernstein, saw value in the "penetrating intelligence" of Kapuściński's vision and in his "crystallised descriptive" style of writing. The British journalist Bill Deedes, who had witnessed the Rwandan Genocide first-hand, said of Kapuściński that what he "writes about Africa is authoritative as well as captivating. His account of how the Hutus and the Tutsis were drawn into that dark night of genocide in Rwanda is the most enlightening I have read anywhere" even while, at the same time, proclaiming that it was Kapuściński who had "transformed journalism into literature in his writings about Africa".〔 Professor Philip Melling of Swansea University concurred with this opinion, citing Kapuściński as an authority on the Rwandan conflict.〔Cf. Philip Melling, ''Fundamentalism in America: Millennialism, Identity, and Militant Religion'', Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1999, p. xiv. ISBN 0-7486-0978-4.〕 He was celebrated by other practitioners of the genre, the acclaimed Italian reportage-writer, Tiziano Terzani, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda having accorded him the title "Maestro". ==Biography== Ryszard Kapuściński was born in Pinsk (now in Belarus), Polesie Voivodeship, in the Kresy Wschodnie or eastern borderlands of the Second Polish Republic in 1932 as a son of Maria Bobka (b. 1910) and Józef Kapuściński (b. 1903), primary school teachers. Next year his sister Barbara was born. He was born into poverty: he would say later that he felt at home in Africa as "food was scarce there too and everyone was also barefoot." In September 1938 Ryszard started attending Primary School No 5 in Pinsk. Summer of 1939 he spent together with his mother and sister in village Pawłów near Rejowiec in Lublin Voivodeship. When the Second World War began in September 1939 they came back to Pinsk after the city was captured by the Red Army and Ryszard returned to school there. In 1940 Maria, afraid of deportation to the East, together with Ryszard and Barbara left Pinsk and moved to Sieraków, near Warsaw. There they met Józef. Later the family moved near Otwock. Ryszard continued education in primary school in Otwock (1944–45).〔Nowacka B., Ziątek Z. "Ryszard Kapuściński. Biografia pisarza", Znak, Kraków 2008〕 He described his early life in the book ''Imperium''. In 1945 the family settled in Warsaw where Ryszard began education in Stanisław Staszic Gymnasium. He became an amateur boxer (bantamweight) and footlball player. In 1948, Kapuściński joined the official Communist youth organisationthe ZMPand served lower rank posts. Kapuściński was the hero of the article published in the weekly periodical ''Odrodzenie'' reporting on a poetry conference organised at his school, in which the teenager's poems were compared with works of Mayakovsky and Wierzyński. In June 1950 he graduated from Gymnasium and started working for the ''Sztandar Młodych'' (The Banner of Youth), a nationwide newspaper founded in 1950 as the organ of the ZMP. In October 1950 he began his studies at Warsaw University (Department of Polish Studies) and in 1951 he moved to the Department of History after he suspended working for ''Sztandar Młodych'' till 1955. He participated in the Youth Festival in East Berlin staged in August 1951 in East Germany. This was his first foreign trip. From 1952 and till his death Ryszard Kapuściński was married to doctor Alicja Mielczarek (b. 1933). Their daughter Zofia was born in 1953. During the period from 1953 to 1981the year of the imposition of the martial law in PolandKapuściński was a member of the Polish United Workers' Party (the PZPR). His attitude to the PZPR changed early on, "the decisive moment having come in the year 1956" (presumably a reference to the events of Poznań June and the process of de-Stalinisation brought about by the Thaw of Gomułka, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956).〔In May 2007''Newsweek Polska'' magazine wrote that Kapuściński worked for the Communist Polish secret service from 1965 to 1972 or 1977. ("Teczka pisarza" (The Dossier of a Writer; an interview with Ernest Skalski) ). Nowacka and Ziątek in the book published in 2013 ''Literatura „non-fiction”. Czytanie Kapuścińskiego po Domosławskim'' (Non‑fiction literature: Reading Kapuściński after Domosławski) state that in the case of Kapuściński one can not say about Kapuściński's consant coperation, rather about three cases of secret service's extortion on Kapuściński of intelligence activities (during his travels abroad) from which he evaded either not writing the demanded "reports" or writing analysis which could be published in the official press.〕 In June 1955 he graduated from Warsaw University. After publishing, in September 1955, a critical article about the construction of Nowa Huta, a Cracow conurbation built on a site chosen as the "first socialist municipality in Poland",〔Cf. Jan Skarbowski (al.'' ), ''Nowa Huta: pierwsze socjalistyczne miasto w Polsce'', Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1971. Similarly, the French urban sociologist, Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe (1913–1998), (called Nowa Huta "''ville phare du socialisme''" (flagship conurbation of socialism). )〕 which brought to light the inhuman working and living conditions of the labourers involved in the venture—a story which occasioned consternation before eventually winning favour with the Communist authorities unsure at first how to react to a fault-finding depiction of their pet project by one of their own—Kapuściński was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit at the age of 23. In August 1956 he reported from Kiev and in September he was sent to India, his first travel outside Europe. He returned via Afghanistan (where he was detained at the airport in Kabul) and Moscow. In August 1957 he went for half a year to China (via Tokyo and Hong Kong). He came back to Poland by the Trans-Siberian Railway. Beginning with that journey to India undertaken at the age of 24, he travelled across the developing world reporting on wars, coups and revolutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He started learning English in India by reading, with the help of a dictionary, a copy of Hemingway's ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. He wrote about his first travels to Asia in the book ''Travels with Herodotus''. In 1958 he left ''Sztandar Młodych'' and started working for the Polish Press Agency. Shortly afterwards he also joined the weekly ''Polityka'' (where he worked till 1962). The result of his work for the weekly was the book ''Busz po polsku'' (The Polish Bush) published in 1962, a collection of his articles from the "Polish wilderness" that he went into to relate "the perspectives of forgotten, invisible, marginal people and so to record a living history of those seldom deemed worthy to enter the annals of official history" (in the words of Diana Kuprel, the literary scholar and translator of Kapuściński's works).〔Diana Kuprel, "Literary Reportage: Between and Beyond Art and Fact"; in: ''History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries'', ed. M. Cornis-Pope and J. Neubauer, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 2004–2006, vol.1, p.384. ISBN 90-272-3452-3.〕 He was aggrieved at the indifference of the reading public towards the majority of his early books.〔( "Antyciała: z Ryszardem Kapuścińskim rozmawia Andrzej Skworz" (Antibodies: An Interview with Ryszard Kapuściński Conducted by A. Skworz) ), ''Press'' (monthly magazine), No. 2 (121), February 2006, pp. 25–28. ISSN 1425-9818.〕 In the late 1950s he went for the first time to Africa (Ghana, Republic of Dahomey and Niger). After honing his skills on domestic stories he was later "'responsible' for fifty countries" for the Polish Press Agency in Africa.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Soccer Wars (excerpt from jacket) )〕 (Although a correspondent of an official state press agency, he never in his life asked a single question at any press conference that he attended〔). When he finally returned to Poland, he had lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups, been jailed 40 times and survived four death sentences. In the English-speaking world, Kapuściński is best known for his reporting from Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, when he witnessed first-hand the end of the European colonial empires on that continent. In 1961 he reported from the Republic of the Congo. He described his escape to Bujumbura and subsequent arrest in the book ''The Soccer War''. In the years 1962-65 he lived initially in Dar es Salaam and later in Nairobi from where he travelled to other countries in Africa. He came back to Poland only for few weeks in 1965 but returned to Africa to live in Lagos and continue reporting. In April 1965 he travelled to Senegal and Mauritania which he later described in the book ''The Shadow of the Sun''. At the end of 1966 he came back to Poland. In April 1967 he went to Central Asia and Caucasus. In November the same year he started working as a foreign correspondent in South America, based in Santiago. Later he moved to Mexico (1969–72). In 1969 he witnessed war in Honduras which he described in the book ''The Soccer War''. In 1969 he edited and translated from the Spanish ''El diario del Che en Bolivia'', the final literary bequest of Che Guevara.〔Ernesto Guevara, ''Dziennik z Boliwii Che Guevara'', intro. Fidel Castro, ed. & tr. R. Kapuściński, Warsaw, Wydawnictwo Książka i Wiedza, 1970.〕 Kapuściński analyzed the situation in Guatemala after a German diplomat Karl von Spreti was kidnapped. He published his reportage in 1970 entitled ''Dlaczego zginął Karl von Spreti'' (Why Karl von Spreti Died). He returned to Poland in 1972 and later worked for magazines ''Kontynenty'' and ''Kultura''. In September 1975 he went to Angola after which he published the book ''Another Day of Life''. In 1975 and 1977 he went to Ethiopia. ''The Emperor'' was written after his travels there.〔A film-script adaptation of Kapuściński's ''The Emperor'', written by Marcel Łoziński for the film-director Andrzej Wajda in 1979, has never reached the production stage, having been banned by Communist censors (Kapuściński's original book was not affected). 〕 In 1979 he visited his birthplace Pinsk for the first time since 1940. In 1979 he went to Iran to witness the Iranian Revolution. His book ''Shah of Shahs'' deals with this subject and the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. In 1980 he witnessed the strikes that took place in Gdańsk, Poland.〔Pracownia Reportażu (Beck et al., inspired by Marek Miller), ''Who Allowed Journalists Here'' ("Kto tu wpuścił dziennikarzy"), Independent Publishing House NOWA, 1985 http://kapuscinski.info/kto-tu-wpuscil-dziennikarzy.html〕 In 1988 two episodes of Arena were dedicated to him and his work. He travelled in European and Asian parts of the Soviet Union (1989-1992) and witnessed the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. After this experience he wrote ''Imperium''. He was awarded German Academic Exchange Service scholarship in Berlin in 1994. In 1999 Kapuściński talked about his life in VPRO in a series of autobiographical interviews with prominent people from the worlds of science, culture and politics. In a 2006 interview with Reuters, Kapuściński said that he wrote for "people everywhere still young enough to be curious about the world."〔 He was fluent in English, Russian, Spanish, French and Portuguese. He was visiting professor in Bangalore (1970s), Bonn, Cape Town, Caracas (1979), Columbia University (1983), Harvard University, Irkutsk, London, Madrid, Mexico (1979), San Sebastian, Temple University (1988) and Vancouver.〔Kapuściński R., "Encountering the Other", Universitas, Kraków 2007〕 Kapuściński died on January 23, 2007 of a heart attack suffered in a Warsaw hospital where he was being treated for unrelated ailments.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ryszard Kapuściński」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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