«Aller à la Pologne, c’était aller à la lumière». Claude Backvis et la médiation de la culture polonaise en Belgique francophone (1930-1960)

The figure of Claude Backvis (1910–1998) is well known to Polish scholars. His research is still valued today, especially his seminal work on the Baroque period. However, there is an aspect of Claude Backvis’s activity that has been neglected: his work as a popularizer and disseminator of Polish culture to a non-specialized audience. For many years, especially before the Second World War, Backvis regularly published articles on Poland and its literature in various Belgian French-language magazines. He also published a few translations of Polish authors such as Zygmunt Krasiński and Maria Kuncewiczowa. Which strategies of adaptation (or acculturation) did Backvis, a rara avis in a country practically devoid of any tradition in the field of Polish studies, adopt to present Poland, especially its history and its literature, to readers little acquainted with Polish affairs? How did the period (particularly the years before the war) and the places of mediation (generally linked to the spiritual climate of the Université libre de Bruxelles) influence the mediation itself? These are the questions that this article attempts to answer