On Thursday, September 16, the guest of the Booksellers’ Salon was Józefa Witas, owner of the Agora bookshop in Bolesławiec. “These meetings are held regularly, four times a year,” says the Bolesławiec resident. “Despite the name, they are not just meetings with people from the bookselling community. The Salon also hosts librarians, publishers and writers. The organizers simply invite people who stand out in some way.”
Indeed, the invitation to the Booksellers’ Salon was not accidental. Józefa Witas is very well known in the community and has long been involved in promoting high culture in our town and, consequently, promoting Bolesławiec itself. For years, the owner of Agora has invited outstanding personalities and great literary figures to our town. In 2007 alone, among others, Professor Jan Miodek, Tadeusz Różewicz (neither for the first time), Małgorzata Kalicińska and Maryla Hempowicz came to Bolesławiec. In 2008, the Bolesławiec resident organized meetings with, among others, Italian director Giuseppe Recchia, Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski and Henryk Baranowski, an outstanding theater, film and opera director. In 2009, our town hosted Jan A. Choroszy, author of the study “Our Father—Ours. Translations, Paraphrases and Other Literary Adaptations of the Lord’s Prayer.”
Thursday’s meeting at the National Library was held under the slogan “Ziuta—Books Painted with Clay.” “I wanted the slogan to refer to Bolesławiec,” explains the owner of Agora. “After all, it is a city of ceramics, a city built on clay.”
“During this meeting, I also wanted to show that a small bookshop in a small town can operate differently from large bookselling companies focused solely on profit,” emphasizes Józefa Witas. “Bookshops used to be unique cultural centers whose task was to spread education. After 1989, almost everyone forgot about this. Because books made their way into supermarkets, bookshops themselves are treated differently. In the past, when you entered one, you lowered your voice. Today, a book has been reduced to the status of an ordinary commodity. This has also happened because virtually anyone can now publish their own book. And these works are not always valuable.”
This November, Agora will celebrate its twentieth anniversary (the Booksellers’ Salon did not forget the jubilee; during the meeting at the National Library, Józefa Witas received the Twentieth Anniversary Laurel from a representative of the Polish Booksellers’ Association). On this occasion, there will be a meeting devoted to French poetry and more. Adam Tadeusz Bąkowski will present his poems and translations of Georges Brassens’s texts.
More about the activities of the owner of Agora can be found in our article: Józefa Witas Honored with the “Mickiewicz-Pushkin” Medal.
(ii information)