O tym, jaką przyszłość przewidywał Lem, przed czym przestrzegał oraz czy nadal pozostaje autorem nierozumianym, mówi prof. dr hab. Jerzy Jarzębski z Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego w Krakowie i Państwowej Wyższej Szkoły Wschodnioeuropejskiej w Przemyślu.

The year 2004 has been named the "Year of Gombrowicz" in commemoration of the author's 100th birthday. Scholars both in Poland and abroad are taking a new look at his output and originality (or "authenticity," as the author himself might have preferred).

We talk to Prof. Jerzy Jarzębski from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and the Eastern Europe State University in Przemyśl about Stanisław Lem and the future he foresaw, his cautionary tales and whether he is still an author often misunderstood.

I can't remember when I first started reading Mrożek, but he was undoubtedly the writer of my generation - people born in the late 1940s and studying during the 1960s. He was our model ofliterature and humor - absurd humor, at that I remember a time when Czesław Miłosz wrote in an article reviewing my book about Gombrowicz ["Gra w Gombrowicza, 1982 - ed.} that while he couldn't deny my erudition, he was shocked that my views were so unbecoming of a Pole. He meant that he expected me to fall to my knees before Gombrowicz and confess my sins, or perhaps attack him - after all, what he wrote was harshly critical of Poland, our traditions and ethos. Meanwhile, we had just finished reading Mrożek, and were fully on his (and Gombrowicz's) side.