Demokratyczny savoir-vivre Jana Kamyczka

Abstract

Democratic savoir-vivre of Jan Kamyczek, a pseudonym of Janina Iphorska (born 1914 in Lvov, died 1981 in Krakow) first appeared in “Przekrój” in January 1947 and was a kind of compromise between a cyclic social guide and a “funnies” section. The author’s pseudonym was invented by the editor-in-chief of the Krakow magazine, Marian Eile, and the idea of the column came from Jerzy Waldorff. J.Iphorska’s hints did not resemble a collection of etiquette instructions, but were rather aimed at teaching the elementary rules of interpersonal culture, kindness, and situational logic. Since 1949 the column changed its character and became an answer- section, helping those readers who needed information in the filed of broadly understood interpersonal relations: at work, school, or in a shared apartment. The author in an optimally elegant way gave a helping hand to many generations of young intellectuals, migrating from the countryside to the cities, who were becoming the “new elite” of the Polish People’s Republic. Jan Kamyczek’s letters marked the “golden mean” between tradition and common sense approach to requirements and needs created by the reality of our country at that time. J.Iphorska always treated the readers who asked for help seriously, without mockery, but with a lot of humour, sometimes with “a warm touch of irony”. The author frequently took with a pinch of salt the rules of savoir-vivre (after all, it was supposed to be democratic!) and inclined to the rational understanding of ethics. Undoubtedly, she was a pedagogue in disguise. Her Democratic savoir-vivre was published in the form of manuals: Grzeczność na co dzień (Everyday etiquette, Warsaw 1956) and Savoir vivre dla nastolatków (Savoir-vivre for teenagers, Warsaw 1974). It was also appreciated and analysed in Socjologia moralności (Sociology of Morality, Warsaw 1963) by professor Maria Ossowska, a sociologist and theoretician of morality, director of the History and Theory of Morality Department of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw).