euro|topics - The legacy of Ryszard Kapuscinski

Main focus of Thursday, January 25, 2007

The legacy of Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Polish writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski died on Tuesday, January 23rd, at the age of 74. The European press pays tribute to the indefatigable globe-trotter, who was probably the most translated Polish author in the world thanks to his reportage works.

ABC - Spain

The Spanish writer and journalist Alfonso Armada praises the political engagement of Ryszard Kapuscinski. "He was not a Communist, but his writing contains the profound moral indignation provoked by injustice. This was neither the sorrow nor the pity that accompanies the Eurocentric paternalism that Kapuscinski so disdained. ... It came from the same fundamental quality that allowed him a sort of mimetic relationship with the subjects he treated. This quality led him to continually return to the same little hotel in Accra, far from the splendour of power and hordes of colleagues who pounce on subjects as if hunting hounds before then abandoning their prey. Kapuscinski stayed on when everyone else had left. He stayed around for the time when stories really begin, when crimes are committed without witnesses, when victims die in silence, in the oblivion constructed for our comfort and maintained by the subject that interests us most: ourselves." (25/01/2007)

Libération - France

"The world has shrunken mournfully, one of those who most contributed to expanding it has passed away", regrets the journalist Philippe Lançon praising the style of journalism practiced by Kapuscinski. "Kapuscinski did not save the world he described from anything, but John Le Carré was right to call him 'the conjuror extraordinary of modern reportage'. He is one of the rare journalists to have invested the genre with tragic levity: seeing, feeling, understanding, bridging the detail of life and the heart of circumstances, hinging heroic destiny on the daily life of mere mortals, orchestrating or staging things when necessary and never allowing a story to be suffocated by moral pontificating. For him morality was not something to be extracted from facts and situations, but rather something living hidden within them." (25/01/2007)

Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Switzerland

In his obituary of Ryszard Kapuscinski, Ulrich Schmid recalls Kapuscinski's book 'The Emperor', written in 1979, which describes the end of Haile Selassies' reign. "The self-adulation of the Ethiopian ruler resembled in many ways the arrogance of the communist government in Poland in the 1970s. Many readers realised that Kapuscinski wasn't just describing some exotic African country, but also his own. The administration of a regime whose main goal was to stay in power had absurd consequences in both Ethiopia and Poland. The loyalty of subordinates was more important than their competence. Crises were kept secret from the public or simply waited out. Important social reforms were neglected for the sake of prestige projects... For Kapuscinski, the experience of colonialism was something Africa and Poland had in common." (25/01/2007)

Le Soir - Belgium

"He was the biggest Polish author of the second half of the 20th century. He was a chronicler of despotism, of conflicts, of third-world misery and of our world's blindness", writes Pol Mathil on the Polish journalist's capacity to analyse the conflicts and revolutions that he covered. "Kapuscinski has left an exceptional legacy. But though his books remain, the man will be missed. In the developing world, he was much more than an important author; he was a sort of prophet. For the Poles he was a sage able to teach them to tell good from bad, true from false, fair from unfair, to decode the mechanisms of power, of all forms of power and those in power. He was a moral authority of a kind that no longer exists." (25/01/2007)

» To the complete press review of Thursday, January 25, 2007

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