Robert Koenig – Discovered

It was the summer of 1848 by the river Zbrucz in Poland. The children first saw a hat above water and thought someone had drowned. What they found in fact was a stone figure which M. Potocki called “Swiatowid”. He sent it on a cart to Krakow.

Do You see it? Do You feel it? – I ask Robert Koenig. – Yes, I’ve been carving this kind of thing for years. First there were the men and then the women of Dominikowice.

Accidents don’t happen. I think to myself – strange Englishman; a Polish mother, Polish father who fought in the battle of Monte Cassino during World War II. When I ask him: Will You eat soup? – he looks at his watch. – What now, at 10am? - It will mess me up. What a relief. An Englishman after all.

Robert Koenig is possessed. He dreams his dream and talks with the spirits. He stands astride two worlds, that of the living and of the dead. He stands between the old culture of remembrance and the new one of obscurity.

Is it a dream? – No.

Robert Koenig talks with the spirits more often than others. He is not the only one. He asks about that which is important: pain, love, asks about the essence and meaning of living. Seeks advice on what to do. Asks about identity. He takes advantage of the oldest law of the imagination; he calls up the deceased, looks out for their faces, listens out for their steps…

Once every few years he drags along this Key to the World. His “Dziady” (Deceased Ancestors). Wooden, thickly hewn figures. Is it a hump or are they Robert Koenig’s wings meditating on the world? Dziady. Some are sad, some happy, some are fools, the intelligent ones head for a feast.

He sets them up as offerings to the eternal gods.
In the square to be admired.
By the path for penance.
At the crossroads for protection.
On the road as an obstruction. Everywhere – in memory.

And then they surround him with a timeless peace foretelling eternal truths. Those - about the birds forever migrating along the same routes, weaving nests in the branches and the shade of the leaves of the Dominikowice trees that grew in the cemetery.

They relate this to him in Polish, in the language of his family, in the language of an exotic land, the nature of whose history was often of the pure fantastic. They tell stories and elongate themselves even more, as if to the sun, everything that is wooden within them splits and blackens, that which is human shines. And for a moment they become human.

And when the darkest hour arrives…I can imagine Robert standing and looking at his figures – when he says: come Mother, come Father. Take a look… At the foot of Wawel Castle your son has his studio.

Prof. Piotr Jargusz Krakow 7 June 2004

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