|
''The Pianist'' is a memoir of the Polish composer of Jewish origin Władysław Szpilman, written and elaborated by Jerzy Waldorff, who met Szpilman in 1938 in Krynica and became a friend of his. The book is written in the first person, as Szpilman's memoir. It tells how Szpilman survived the German deportations of Jews to extermination camps, the 1943 destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising during World War II. The book, originally entitled ''Death of a City'' (''Śmierć miasta''), was first published by the Polish publishing house Wiedza in 1946. In the introduction to its first edition, Jerzy Waldorff stated that he wrote "as closely as he could" the story told to him by Szpilman, and that he used his brief notes in the process. In the same year, novelists Jerzy Andrzejewski and Czesław Miłosz wrote a screenplay based on it, for the movie called ''Robinson of Warsaw'' (''Robinson warszawski''). In the next three years a number of drastic revisions were requested by the Communist Party, prompting Miłosz to quit and withdraw his name from the credits. The movie was released during the Conference of Poland's Filmographers in Wisła on November 19–22, 1949 and met with a new wave of political criticism. Further revisions were requested and new music commissioned, and the movie was re-released in popular movie theatres in December 1950 under a different title: ''Unsubjugated City'' (''Miasto nieujarzmione'').〔 Because of Stalinist cultural policy and the ostensibly "grey areas" in which Szpilman (Waldorff) asserted that not all Germans were bad and not all of the oppressed were good, the actual book remained sidelined for more than 50 years. The subsequent prints of Szpilman's memoir omitted the name of Waldorff altogether and asserted that it was authored by the subject himself. Szpilman was not a writer, according to his own son Andrzej. The latest edition was slightly expanded by Andrzej Szpilman himself and printed under a different title, ''The Pianist''. In 1998, Szpilman’s son Andrzej Szpilman republished his father's memoir, first in German as ''Das wunderbare Überleben'' (''The Miraculous Survival'') and then in English as ''The Pianist''. It was later published in more than 30 languages. In 2002, Roman Polanski directed a screen version, also called ''The Pianist'', but Szpilman died before the film was completed. The movie won three Academy Awards, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Film Award, and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. ==Synopsis== Władysław Szpilman studied the piano in the early 1930s in Warsaw and Berlin. In Berlin, he was instructed by Leonid Kreutzer and, at the Berlin Academy of Arts, by Artur Schnabel. During his time at the academy he also studied composition with Franz Schreker. In 1933, he returned to Warsaw after Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party rose to power in Germany. Upon his return to Warsaw, Szpilman worked as a pianist for Polish Radio until the German invasion of Poland in 1939. He was forced to stop work at the station when German bombs destroyed the power station that kept Polish Radio running. He played Polish Radio’s last ever pre-war live recording (a Chopin recital) the day the station went off the air. Only days after Warsaw’s surrender, German leaflets appeared, hung on the walls of buildings. These leaflets, issued by the German commandant, promised Poles the protection and care of the German State. There was even a special section devoted to Jews, guaranteeing them that their rights, their property, and their lives would be absolutely secure. At first, these proclamations seemed trustworthy, and opinion was rife that Germany’s invasion may have even been a good thing for Poland; it would restore order to Poland’s present state of chaos. But, soon after the taking of the city, popular feeling began to change. The first clumsily organised race raids, in which Jews were taken from the streets into private cars and tormented and abused, began almost immediately after peace had returned to the city. But the occurrence that first outraged the majority of Poles was the murder of a hundred innocent Polish citizens in December 1939. After this, Polish opinion turned strongly against the occupying army, especially the organisation responsible for the majority of civilian murders, the SS. Soon, decrees applying only to Jews began to be posted around the city. Jews had to hand real estate and valuables over to German officials and Jewish families were only permitted to own 2000 złoty each. The rest had to be deposited in a bank in a blocked account. Unsurprisingly, very few people handed their property over to the Germans willingly in compliance with this decree. Szpilman’s family (he was living with his parents, his brother Henryk, and his sisters Regina and Halina) were among those who did not. They hid their money in the window frame, an expensive gold watch under their cupboard, and the watch’s chain beneath the fingerboard of Szpilman’s father’s violin. 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「The Pianist (memoir)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|