Maciej Zembaty (16 May 194427 June 2011) was a Polish artist, writer, journalist, singer, poet and comedian. Despite being considered one of the classics of Polish black humour, he is perhaps best known as a translator and populariser of songs and poems by

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, soc ...

Life

Maciej Zembaty was born May 16, 1944, in

Tarnów Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east– ...

and raised in

Wadowice Wadowice () is a town in southern Poland, southwest of Kraków with 17,455 inhabitants (2022), situated on the Skawa river, confluence of Vistula, in the eastern part of Silesian Foothills (Pogórze Śląskie). Wadowice is known for being the bir ...

in Poland. He graduated from a musical

lyceum The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies among countries; usually it is a type of secondary school. Basic science and some introduction to ...

(piano class) and attended an artistic lyceum (which he never graduated from). Afterwards he graduated from the

Warsaw University The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well as 100 specializat ...

's faculty of Polish language and literature. His thesis was one of the first studies of '' grypsera'', a distinct

slang A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing and speech. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of pa ...

language used by the criminals and inmates of prisons in Poland. His stage debut was a brief appearance at the Opole Song Festival in 1965, where he was awarded with a prize for the best featuring song author. In 1972, together with Jacek Janczarski, he created the story of Poszepszyński Family, one of the best-known and longest-running comic series ever aired in the

Polish Radio The Polish Radio (PR; Polish: ''Polskie Radio'', PR) is a national public-service radio broadcasting organization of Poland, founded in 1925. It is owned by the State Treasury of Poland. On 27 December 2023, the Minister of Culture and Nationa ...

. It has been aired for 25 consecutive years and became one of the icons of the Polish popular culture of the epoch. Zembaty himself also appeared in the series giving his voice to the iconic personality of ''Maurycy''. Later that year he also received a number of records of Leonard Cohen, whose songs he started to translate. In several months he created a dozen or so translations, most of which became hits in Poland even before the original songs by Cohen became available and known to wider audience. From that time on Zembaty became known primarily as the translator of Leonard Cohen's work into Polish. He holds the record for Leonard Cohen covers, having translated and recorded at least 60 songs over 10 albums. One of the albums (1985 ''Alleluja'') was sold in over 400,000 copies in Poland and became a golden record. In addition, Zembaty published a number of books with translations of Cohen's poetry, some of them in official printing houses, while other unofficially in the

samizdat Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual rep ...

. Zembaty's translation of ''

The Partisan "The Partisan" is an anti-fascist anthem about the French Resistance in World War II. The song was composed in 1943 by Russian-born Anna Marly (1917–2006), with lyrics by French Resistance leader Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie (1900–1969), ...

'' became one of the informal anthems of

Solidarity Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics ...

during the

Martial Law in Poland Martial law in Poland () existed between 13 December 1981 and 22 July 1983. The Polish United Workers' Party, government of the Polish People's Republic drastically restricted everyday life by introducing martial law and a military junta in an a ...

. Apart from his career as a translator of poems by Cohen, Zembaty continued his career as a journalist, comic and writer. He co-authored the screenplays to a number of films, as well as being the author of many songs. He also translated a number of Russian folk songs, most of them related to Blat, a Russian version of the Polish grypsera.

Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zembaty, Maciej 1944 births 2011 deaths Polish male poets Polish journalists Polish radio writers University of Warsaw alumni People from Tarnów 20th-century Polish poets 20th-century Polish translators 20th-century Polish male singers 20th-century Polish male writers