Today is a public holiday in Poland, the Feast of the Assumption, which is an important Catholic celebration, I presume. Though when I asked my friend this morning about the reason for a day off, she mumbled something about the Battle of Warsaw instead. That battle, also known as the Miracle at the Vistula, took place in August (naturally) of 1920 and is considered as the most decisive turn of the Polish-Soviet War. A guy by the name of Józef Piłsudski was one of the Polish commanders. You might have heard of him. Some Polish-Americans think of him as “the George Washington of Poland” with which I must respectfully disagree. Piłsudski was definitely better looking.

But neither one of these occasions can match the truly important event that happened on August 15 in 1898. That day a guy named Jan Wiktor Lesman was born in a podunk little Galician town somewhere in the middle of nowhere. My Polish readers will recognize him as Jan Brzechwa.

And here I can just imagine them emitting loud snorts and feeling sorry for those of you who are not fluent in Polish.

You see, August 15 is truly a momentous occasion, because without Jan Brzechwa we wouldn’t have had the most famous tongue twister in the Polish language. I think that’s a good enough reason to celebrate, wouldn’t you agree?

Jan Brzechwa is probably most known for his poems for children, and among them, the infamous “Chrząszcz” (A Beetle). The opening line of that poem is probably without a doubt the most difficult sentence to pronounce in Polish, even for a native speaker:

“W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie” which in English would be “In Szczebrzeszyn, a beetle buzzes in the reed”.

Szczebrzeszyn is an actual Polish town, Mr. Brzechwa didn’t make this name up. Really, you couldn’t make something like that up even if you tried.

You can read about the place here, there is also a section in English. I’ve never been to Szczebrzeszyn, but it’s definitely on my list of places to visit. And what’s there to do? I’m not quite sure, I’d go there just to see the statue of the beetle buzzing in the reed.

Seriously, the good folk of Szczebrzeszyn decided to honor the little insect that made their town if not world-famous, then definitely Poland-famous, and erected it a quite handsome statue.

But Jan Brzechwa didn’t just write this one impossible to pronounce poem. He wrote bunches of them. And they’re all witty and delightful, sometimes lyrical, but always amusing. Yet the guy wasn’t even a writer by training. He studied law and actually worked as a lawyer, too. Apart from “Chrząszcz”, most Poles of various ages can quote at least two other Brzechwa’s poems: “Kaczka Dziwaczka” (a story about one very strange duck) and “Tańcowała igła z nitką” (A Needle Dancing With a Thread). I will try to rustle up some proper translations of these, and if not these, then of some other of his writings.

Jan Brzechwa is also famous for a series of books about a magical academy (hmmm, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) for boys. I was never a fan of the “Pan Kleks” (Mr. Kleks, and by the way, “kleks” literally means “ink blot”) books, because well, there were only boys in them. And when you’re like nine or ten years old, you think boys are sooooo gross!

photo: Wikipedia