Marshal of the Senate of the Republic of Poland visits the National Library
Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, Marshal of the Senate of the Republic of Poland, paid a visit to the Palace of the Commonwealth. At the invitation of the Director of the National Library, Dr Tomasz Makowski, she toured the exhibition “JAM POSEŁKINI JEGO. The language and emotions of the Polish Middle Ages.”
The exhibition presents the oldest surviving texts in the Polish language, some dating back nearly 800 years. Among its highlights are two treasures of Polish history, culture and the Catholic Church: the Holy Cross Sermons, the earliest surviving literary text in Polish, composed in the 13th century and already demonstrating the maturity of the language, and the Florian Psalter, produced in the 14th century for Saint Jadwiga, Queen of Poland.
Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska spoke warmly of the exhibition, observing that it offers Poles an opportunity to reflect on the importance of the Polish language, which shapes “who we are, how we speak about ourselves and the world, how we perceive it and describe it in words that are uniquely our own”. In the Marshal’s view, “thanks to places such as this magnificent library, we can see how our language has evolved over its long history and how it has described great matters as well as the everyday – and sometimes even the humorous. […] This story of our language is a story about us, about how we have changed over the centuries. It is wonderful that we can see [in this exhibition] how our language lives and continues to change.” She added that the exhibition also invites reflection on “what our language will look like in the future, how it will speak about us, and how we will speak about our lives.”
The exhibition highlights the role of the National Library of Poland as a place where the history of the language remains alive and continues to inspire reflection on its future. International Mother Language Day, established by UNESCO in 1999 and observed each year on 21 February, serves as a reminder of the need to protect linguistic diversity as a vital part of the world’s cultural heritage.
JAM POSEŁKINI JEGO tells the story of a language that brought together learning and magic, faith and law, and ultimately reflected the everyday life of the medieval world. The exhibition leads visitors through the living history of the language, showing how it shaped medieval reality and how it is through language that the emotions of people from centuries past still reach us today.
The Marshal of the Senate also toured the National Library’s Treasury exhibition and viewed memorabilia and documents relating to her great-grandfather, Władysław Grabski, Prime Minister of the Second Polish Republic, and her grandfather, the writer Władysław Jan Grabski, preserved in the Library alongside the Grabski family archive.
The exhibition is open to all free of charge at the Palace of the Commonwealth in Warsaw, daily except Tuesdays, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
