The writer’s university experiences and the specific characteristics of crime fiction. A few autobiographical remarks.

Marek Krajewski

Rector Universitatis Magnifice, Prorectores et Decani Spectabiles, Professores et Doctores venerandi, Studentes Dilectissimi!

In hoc sollemni die inaugurationis novi anni academici bis millesimi vicesimi quinti liceat mihi Latine vos omnes salutare summa cum gratia et reverentia.

His Magnificence Rector, Dear Vice-Rectors and Deans! Reverend Doctors and Professors! Dear Students!

In this ceremonial day of the new academic year inauguration, let me greet you all in Latin with the utmost respect and admiration. So much is conveyed by the above formulas, expressed in Latin – a language so close to my heart. Over the centuries, the Latin language has resounded in this magnificent Hall. Their walls are embellished by the Latin captions, maxims and portraits of exquisite Latin users – including Seneca and Virgil. Those prints on the walls illustrate the inseparable connection between academic tradition and the noble language of the Romans, which can be learnt and delved into within the Classical Philology studies at my Alma Mater.

And these are the studies I graduated from in 1991. I will mention continuously my studies and the late professor Herbert Myśliwiec in my inaugural speech. Notwithstanding, not to get back to cheerful moments of my youth, but to show you by my example how academic, philological and classical education shaped the crime novels author, or more precisely, the detective. When journalists or readers asked me questions whether my education influenced the literary genre I write, I answered: yes, classical philologist is the detective of the text. And here is an example which I discuss and will, as I assume, explain the metaphorical nominal group of the detective of the text.

Right now I will transfer with thought to the gloomy day in November 1990, when professor Herbert Myśliwiec presented us in one of the seminars “the identity issue of the wonderful infant” from Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, written around 40 B.C. According to the poet, this divine infant will renew the world because along with its coming, our reality will change dramatically. The peace amongst people will prevail, wars and crimes become only the sad memory. In nonhuman world the predatory animals will get hungry, their savage instincts will be suppressed and the Earth of their own volition untouched by the tiller’s plough, will yield rich fruits, and as a result the farmer will not have to toil. That child, having reached manhood, will ascend Olympus and will be amongst the gods. These are the changes that will come alongside the birth of the boy. (Eclogue IV, ll. 19–26):

But first, untended, the earth shall bring forth

Her earliest gifts for thee, the goat shall come

Laden with milk, and the wild lion’s brood

Shall fear thee not. Thy cradle shall be strown

With flowers, and the serpent shall be slain,

The poison-weed shall perish, and Assyrian

Spices shall grow in every field.

(transl. J.W. Mackail)

In the later times, this child was embodied with Christ, and the Virgil itself was deemed an insightful visionary, foretelling the coming of Messiah.

This “prophetic” fame of Virgil was established and reinforced by a very similar vision outlined by the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 11:6–8), in which we read:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;

and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together:

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.

(King James Version)

But let us return to Virgil. The consequences of child’s appearance were described in detail by the poet, while the little divine hero himself is portrayed rather sparingly. At the end of the text vv. 60-63) we can read this peculiar condition of the child’s divinity:

“Little child, begin to recognise your mother with a smile: ten months have brought a mother’s long labour. Little child, begin: he on whom his parents do not smile no god honours at his banquets, no goddess in her bed.”

(transl. J.W. Mackail

In a bit shortened, periphrastic, dry, analytical, yet substantively adequate form, this sentence reads:

If someone (shortly after birth) did not win their parents’ smile, that one is not worthy to become a god.

(transl. J.W. Mackail)

Classical philologist, the detective of the text – in my memories prof. Herbert Myśliwiec – acts. After the first hearing of the witnesses, he knows that this peculiar condition is contradictory to everyday experience. The textual investigator directs these words to the interviewed Virgil:

– Virgil, yet almost all infant parents’ smile. Could it be, then, that every newborn is worthy to become a god? Could it be, that it being “everyone” is enough to ascend Olympus? Yet, you write, the poet, that with the birth of this child the new era in the history of the world will come. Do you think that with birth of every child – hence all parents smile at their infants – it can come a new year in the history of the world? Is smile of the parents enough? Notwithstanding it is not this way. The children are born, the parents smile, and the law of the jungle prevails, and savage animals still bites the weaker ones

Virgil’s hearing is obviously a literary fiction. We cannot interview the poet and – what is worse – we cannot get a warranty that all the verses 60-63 were indeed written by the same character that we currently imagine.

No fragment of the Eclogue written by the hand of their author has survived. Nonetheless, numerous medieval manuscripts of Virgil’s words remained, produced by monastic scribes and copyists, who often distorted the text of the Eclogues.

For this reason, there is a possibility that mistakes have crept into the verses 60-63.

And here the philological detective can show off their talent. He must get to the truth – that is the version of the text closest to the original. In contrast, the contemporary researcher in the field of Polish romantic literature has an easier task. Researching e.g. some textual problem in “Sir Thaddeus, or the Last Foray in Lithuania”, he can just visit Ossolineum and check the excerpt written by Mickiewicz.

The classical philologist must wade through the plethora of indirect sources; texts that were produced by scribes and commentators. He can put later witnesses through a rigorous cross-examination. In this sense, he resembles more the detective from The X Files, than the one who investigates the current cases.

Let’s get back to our philological detective. He still has nagging doubts, is the smile of the parents a sign of the child’s divinity? The questions arise. Maybe that’s what the Ancients thought? Maybe they smiled at their children so little, that their smile – as an extraordinary reaction – addressed to the infant of the Fourth Eclogue made him precisely a “divine” and exceptional being?

Professor Myśliwiec always warned us not to attribute our reasonings and habits to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, so as not to – I am citing his words – “to see Antiquity through contemporary glasses.

The investigator calls another witness. He begins from the ancient descriptions of parents smiling over the infant’s cradle. One of these descriptions we encounter in the ancient science prose of Pliny the Elder. He writes in his “Natural history” (VII 2) that a child (let’s clarify: a usual child) does not smile before it turns 40 days old.  Nonetheless, this author states – as an exception – the character of great Persian religious agitator – Zoroaster. We read in VII 72 that: “It is recorded of only one person, Zoroaster, that he laughed on the same day on which he was born…”. (trans. H. Rackham)

The philological detective rubs his eyes in amazement. After all, the parents do not smile at the infant but the infant smiles at them! Perhaps role reversal is the clue? In different work, the New Testament apocryphon The Armenian Infancy Gospel, we read about Christ (IX 3):

And the foremother entered the cave and took the infant into her lap,

hugged him tenderly and kissed him and blessed God.

The child looked beautiful, bright, full of grace, and happy in countenance.

And she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger of the oxen. (trans. A. Terian).

The latter testimonies state that the magnificence of the infant (Christ, Zoroaster) stems from smiling right after their birth. This matches Virgil’s description – hence the child from the Eclogue IV is divine! Now the detective asks the ultimate question – if the translation “For him, on whom his parents have not smiled, gods deem not worthy of their board or bed.” (trans. J.B. Greenough) is the only possible one? Or, perhaps, this sentence can be translated differently, whereas the infant smiles at their parents and not parents at the infant? Fortunately, there’s an answer for that question. This excerpt can be translated as follows:

“for those who smiled not upon their parents when they were born, are not worthy to be among the gods.” (trans. M.R. James)

My lecture is titled: “The writer’s university experiences and the specific characteristics of crime fiction. A few autobiographical remarks”. The time has come to justify this title. I think that this whole speech presented to you is isomorphic with the structure of the crime novel. I already suggested that, while speaking about the detective of the text character embodied by prof. Herbert Myśliwiec, who researched and utilised the tradition of “the divine infant” in one of his exquisite methodology papers

Right now, I will attempt to translate this speech even more faithfully into the formal language of crime literature. The traditional crime novel (that I write) has two climaxes – the so-called small and the big one, which define a three-act structure. At the beginning, there is a question about the perpetrator, followed by the first investigation and an attempt to solve the mystery. Nonetheless, it occurs that the new facts, new doubts and more precise question occurs, which undermine the attempt to solve the mystery (hypothesis) and call into question the small climax. This follows the main investigation, culminating in suspense, surprise, a narrative climax, or the unexpected resolution of the mystery (the major climax).

The philological investigation which I presented was in the exact same structure. At the beginning there was a question: how to understand the final excerpt from the Eclogue IV by Virgil, how to interpret this strange sentence “for those who smiled not upon their parents when they were born, are not worthy to be among the gods” Some philological investigators were bothered by this peculiar wording, but for their peace of mind they suppressed the investigation (small climax). Not until the centuries, the new inquisitive detectives had appeared who uncovered new senses and raised other questions – Eduard Norden, Theodor Birt, Herbert Myśliwiec (incidentally, two of them, Norden and Myśliwiec, involved with the University of Wrocław, the first one with the University of Breslau, the second one, my Master, with the University of Wrocław. Professor Myśliwiec used research of their predecessors as an inspiration to a certain methodological thesis, but to us, his seminar participants, he presented the whole investigation in his unique didactic style on a gloomy November 1990. Every one of his lectures and seminars turned into a detective mystery.

Virgil, of course, was no criminal, but the master of poetic language, classical philologist Herbert Myśliwiec, who traced the Virgil, was not pursuing a detective, but the detective of the text. His prodigal son, Marek Krajewski, a pale shadow of the philological Socrates who lectured at our Alma Mater until his untimely death in August 1998, this pale shadow changed his direction – he became an author of crime novels.

Without my studies and my philological Masters – professor Alicja Szastyńska-Siemion, Professor Jerzy Łanowski, or last but not least Professor Herbert Myśliwiec – I would not have understood that the structure of the philological discovery resembles the traditional structure of the story, which is the most accurately reproduced as I saw later, in the traditional crime novel. And here is the mystery, and here, and here, apparent solution, and here, and here the search for the truth (investigation) and finally – the revelation.

Classical studies shape not only language and philological skills, but also the specific mindset and research attitude. One of the crucial outcomes is a critical eye toward received information – the skill to constantly verify the sources, question their credibility and search for hidden layers of meaning. All this is done is to reach the truth, no matter it may be. To answer the question: Who did that? Is there an isomorphism not posed by both the investigator and the crime novel author: who killed?

The practise of dealing with antique texts, which survived in the fragmentary form, often distorted by the scribes, translators or later commentators, develops in students’ sensitivity to the philological “detective” suspiciousness. This suspiciousness is grounded in the awareness that every piece of information, even one that appears self-evident, requires verification, and that a text is never a neutral carrier of meaning but always the result of transmission, reinterpretation, and distortion.

I don’t overrate my literary work, and I don’t think that it is going to be read by my grandchildren’s generation. Still, one thing is certain – my little popular books would have not come into life without my studies at University of Wrocław, without the whole tradition of this wonderful Alma Mater. Without the constant cultural and scholarly references – both verbal and non-verbal – to the heritage of the Jan Kazimierz Polish University in Lwów, as well as to the German traditions of our own university. Without all this, I would not have been who I am – the modest author of crime novels, writing about lost words of Polish Lviv and German Wrocław. I would not have been the author shaped by the oldest and most noble field of study – Classical Philology.

Translated by Amelia Kłaniecka (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.

Date of publication: 6.10.2025
Added by: M.J.