Tadeusz Chabrowski was born on 11th November 1934 in Złoty Potok near Częstochowa. He studied at the Institute of Saint Paul the First Hermit in Cracow. On 28th August 1958 in Częstochowa, at the Order of Pauline Fathers at the Jasna Góra Monastery he adopted the name Wacław. He received his holy orders in 1960. While being at the monastery he started writing poetry and some of his poems were published in the “Tygodnik Powszechny”. At his order he was also the editor or “Vox Eremi” magazine. At the end of 1961 he left for the US to take up the position of the editor of “Jasna Góra” in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, also known as the “American Częstochowa” where the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa is located.
In America he found freedom and ease so he could get to know literature and poetry unavailable behind the walls of a Polish monastery. Encouraged by Mieczysław Giergielewicz, a literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he published his first volume with the “Painters and Poets” publishing house. Two years later, he published his second volume – “Summer in Pennsylvania”. A sabotage during his works on the third volume made Tadeusz Chabrowski leave the order in 1967. At the same year he met and married Zofia Puszyńska-Gros.
After leaving the order he began studying Philosophy, he taught Religion, Latin and Literature and commenced doctoral studies in Modern Religion and Culture at the Temple University in Philadelphia. At the beginning of the 1970s, when the Chabrowskis moved to New York, Tadeusz was employed as a social worker at „Friendship Centre” in lower Manhattan. Simultaneously he was studying, writing and publishing his works. In 1983, together with his wife, he started issuing „The Voice. Polish-American Media”.
Tadeusz Chabrowski died on 21st December 2016 in New York.
Interviewed by Izabela Barry and Ewa Maliga on 4th November 2015 in New York under the „Greenpoint. Transformations 2015” project. More at: cultureshock.pl.
In 1961, on 8th December, I left for the US. Father Michał Zembrzuski, the founder of American Częstochowa, picked me up from the airport. My first admiration with America was when he took me to the Felician Sisters for dinner. I was surprised that there were so many nuns on American soil. They spoke Polish but they had an accent so I could barely understand them and besides they said a few words and then they started speaking English which I didn’t know at all. Anyway, I remember the road from the Felician Sisters from Long Island to Doylestown, to the American Częstochowa. It was dark, of course, but the avenues od lights, those highways, the Pulaski Bridge and all that, I remembered it all for a really long time. I went to the US as a Pauline Father because back at the seminar I was the editor of “Vox Eremi” magazine, and father Michał, when he had visited us one year earlier, in 1960, he started telling us about the American Częstochowa and that he needs somebody right away to work on the “Jasna Góra” magazine that he was issuing but he just had not had the time to do that. And because I was the editor everyone said: “Wacek, Wacek”, that is my monastic name. And so I was enrolled on a list of six candidates, three of whom left for the US: me, brother Bazyli and brother Leon. This is how I found myself in America. It was really dramatic because at the monastery, the same as in a normal life, there are various groups: left-wing, right-wing, etc. and I belonged to the liberal one. At the monastery elections of the general and the entire structure were to be held because they organize elections once in six years and the structure changes, they chose new definitors, priors, etc. So I was on the list, I got my passport and everything was O.K. but at the last minute my prior in Częstochowa suspended my trip because if I had arrived before father Salezy, prior’s friend, then in the American Częstochowa I would decide, I mean my vote would decide that the progressive group would gain advantage. So he send his delegate to a conference to choose the general. And I had everything ready, my passport, my visa. And then my progressive confratres told me: “Wacek, pack your suitcase and go. The general is on a visit, leave him a note and then everything will be all right because the prior suspended you and before that everything had been set.” So what I did was that I simply escaped from the monastery. For nine days they didn’t know where I was and then father Michał just picked me up from the airport. I found out that I misbehaved when after a week or two father prior Nowak told me: “I still have this order from father general who was the prior’s brother in the American Częstochowa to send you back to Poland”. It all happened because I left without having obtained my exact instructions. Anyway, I felt that it will all pass because coming to America was really hard at the time. The Public Security Office made it really difficult. Out of the list of six people that were to go to America only three of us reached the American Częstochowa. And this was my beginning in America.
For me America was a new land, a new world. I wanted to break free from the Polish monastery because I was starting to realize that my stay at the Pauline Order, at a hermit order, is like being in a balloon where I can’t get a breath, the choice of books is very limited and very specific. It was limited mainly to biographies of saints, etc. second or third class authors who wrote various reflections on meditation but those texts were very undemanding. So I felt that my personal development was restricted in a way and a trip to America, even if I had no idea what will be happening there, I thought that this balloon will burst and it will give me a new world to enjoy, to choose.
It’s in my nature that wherever I am I feel good. I loved being at the monastery because I’m really talkative and there was always someone to talk to. My conversations with my confratres were quite harsh because I liked to make jokes and they got irritated by that because I made jokes about their way of thinking, the way they dressed or behaved. So normally at a large monastery books are read during meals. In such a small monastery as in the American Częstochowa, where there were just 4 or 5 of us, we usually talked during dinners. So at the time I frequently assumed this humoristic attitude during those conversations and from time to time father Michał commented my behaviour and said that I should be more temperate because there were: three Hungarians, five of us, Poles, so there were many occasions to observe slip of the tongue, not to make oneself understood clearly, etc. And so it was a great occasion to make jokes about it. I’m not talented when it comes to languages so there was this one time when I said to myself: “It’s the same with food that gives me energy and vitamins I need so I decided that I won’t learn English from a dictionary. Instead, I will be watching TV, reading English magazines and whatever stays in my mind it will stay and whatever won’t then maybe I can learn it next time. This was my approach to English. Due to the fact that we were living in mainly Polish community because it was the idea to become a Polish shrine, so during my 6-year stay in the American Częstochowa my English got slightly better. I mainly learnt English by reading the gospel on Sunday when I had to read something and say 5–10 sentences in English. After that I could speak Polish and it had to be really simple Polish because the homilies were given to Polish Americans who knew the language a little. Back then we didn’t have to improve our oratory skills because we needed only a few words. It was also this fear whether they could understand us because we came straight from Poland, we didn’t know anything about this Polish American mix they used in emigration. And so it was really easy to give homilies at the time.
A leap from the life spent in a classic monastery, like in the Jasna Góra, with 40–50 monks to almost a life in the field, because when we came to the American Częstochowa that de facto didn’t even exist at the time, there were just 4-5 farmer houses and 5-6 acres of land. So we lived in such houses, two three or one monk per house and it was really a massive change comparing to the previous system. I didn’t see it as a punishment just another way of life in America. And besides, America is mostly outdoors. When we were going for a replacement the most wonderful thing was when I could get into a car and I knew where I was supposed to go with or without a map. I had a half or a whole day to get there. I had various adventures because, I must admit, I wasn’t the best driver and I was so excited to go there and, for instance route 309 is really straight like a ruler and I accelerate, gain speed as much as I can and I get stopped by the police. I always had my clerical collar next to me and I could always explain why I was in such a hurry that I was needed somewhere. Of course, I had some remuneration but it was paid with a cheque and afterwards I just took the cheque to the monastery and that’s it. I got some pocket money when we met with the Polish community. There was always a good soul who gave me 10 or 5 dollars because at the time money was worth more. Anyway, such pocket money should have been given to the monastery but some five or ten-dollar notes didn’t want to leave my pocket. I also started smoking about 3 months before leaving for America. I started smoking back in Jasna Góra. My friend who was a smoker gave me a cigarette. I felt dizzy, I had to lie down on the bed and this was my first contact with my addiction.
It all happened back in Doylestown. I went there to work as the editor of “Jasna Góra” and because it was a shrine that needed attention I started writing religious poems about Madonnas. And something beautiful happened in my life which was my new America. At the Pennsylvania University in Philadelphia there was professor Mieczysław Giergielewicz, a respectable professor who knew Polish versification. And he had a hobby, he collected Polish community press and documented it. He came across our “Jasna Góra” monthly and he noticed my poems. He send a student to the American Częstochowa and asked me to contact him. So I did and then he told me that he reads the magazine and he realized that we can make a small volume out of the poems I’d published there. All I had to do was to collect them and bring them to him. So I did that and then he told me to contact the Painters and Poets publishing house in London about that. I contacted the publishing house and it was my debut in the American Częstochowa and it gave me so much joy because at the time I was trying to define my goal in life. And it was published in such a nice way. Later, two years later, out of the poems I had brought from Poland and my new ones that I wrote in Pennsylvania, I made a second volume in the same publishing house titled “Summer in Pennsylvania”. And that was my output and what I achieved in the American Częstochowa. I surprised everyone when I managed to distribute 1000 copies of my volume within four months. Everyone was surprised and I gave it to all the women that came as a prayer book. So I always got a dollar or more for it. And father Michał allowed me to publish the second volume provided that the earnings from sale of the first will finance publishing the second one. And it turned out that I managed to do that in a couple of months so the second volume was published.
Back in the monastery another thing happened. Before that I’d never thought of leaving the monastery because I felt good but when I was sent by father prior as a replacement my third volume got burnt in the trash. After two volumes professor Giergielewicz suggested a topic to work on. He told me to read Skarga, biographies of all saints and in the same ambience continue to write about religion the way I’d wrote about it in my first and second volume. So it took me some time before I could make everything out in my mind but when I started reading Skarga I just fell in love with it. Such thick, fat language, Skarga had to have such imagination because out of all saints biographies he made such a fairy-tale and multiplied the miracles and it all fascinated me. I worked hectically and I had my third volume ready and everything was set at the Bednarczyk publishing house. I just needed a week to arrange all the poems, make the table of content and I had to take a 3-week replacement. I wrote about it in my book titled “Błażej”. And when I returned from the replacement it turned out that the volume got burnt. I would not want to make direct accusations against the prior but everything points to the fact that it was intentional. I asked him to send someone else as a replacement because I needed one more week to work on my volume. I’ll do it and then he can send me whenever he wants to. And he told me: “We won’t live off your poems here. We have to prepare ourselves to construct the sanctuary and poems aren’t so important right now.” When I came back, and I was living in a farmer’s house because my friend left to Pittsburgh, so my poems were sitting on the sofa but brother Marek took all the papers and put in trash and burnt it with leaves, with everything. And that was something that just threw me off inside. I decided about leaving when I heard one sentence said by father Michał: “If I knew you would make it outside the monastery, I wouldn’t keep you a day because nothing is going to change here. If not this prior then there will be another one and the way you behave, the way you write will always bother someone.” And that was what encouraged me to make the decision.
My friend was to have a lecture at the Polish People’s University in Philadelphia. He asked me, because he was giving lectures in English and now he was asked to give a lecture in Polish, so he says: “Listen, my terminology that I’m preparing for the lecture may not be suitable here. I want you to come with me and then tell me how I did.” So I went with him and there, in the back, during a discussion one of the ladies, Zofia Pyszyńska-Gross, raised her hand, and made a well-grounded comment on part of that lecture. I turned around and said: “Damn, what’s going on? How come they have such smart ladies here?” And I was sitting in the first row as a guest so I just got up and approached her and introduced myself. She was with a veteran so me and the veteran had a discussion. The discussion was long, everyone else left, only Zosia, the veteran and me stayed. She said: “I’m inviting you to a coffee because you won’t finish discussing the topic here.” So we went for a coffee. Later, on 15th May it was her birthday so she invited me and the veteran. That was our second meeting and then we met 4 or 5 times. She once came to the American Częstochowa after my poems had been burnt so father Michał said: “Go to father general, discuss the matter and you’ll surely find a solution.” So I went to Częstochowa, back to Poland, and talked to father general whom I really liked because he knew me as an altar boy, he was a friend of the family, etc. He gave me some advice. He said: “The monastery will survive the prior.” So I went to father Miądzek, who was in Vienna at the time and worked there. And I felt the urge to write a card to Zosia: “I wish you were here. Vienna, the capital city of waltz, maybe I could learn to dance waltz after all.” After 3 or 4 days a telegram came: “I’m coming.” I went to Miądzek, all sweating, I was scared because I knew that it’s no joke with this woman. It’s an engine that will crush me. And at the time, without any effort really, the decision was made. And we wanted to get married in Vienna. She came with all her documents on her. I called my friend in London. He said: “Two weeks and you can come to [ns 00:02:58]”. And this is what we did. The only witness that I had was this friend that I’d called and he brought a friend of his so there were four of us at the wedding. And then we came back to America and that’s the whole story.
America, I had my American dream. I mean that I changed the climate, the atmosphere helped me to release myself from something that my mother had instilled in my life, I mean my way through the monastery, through the covenant. But I have this one thing that the dream had not made real for me because when I was leaving the monastery I didn’t abandon the topic of religious poetry. It took me a really long time before I found a new way to express myself in it. But then I took it really seriously and until today I have this secret dream. I want to live to see somebody make an effort and study my output to say whether it has brought something new to religious poetry or not. If it did, I want it to be communicated because the thing is that I feel saddened inside because I left and they treat me as an ex-priest. And in Poland there are lots of Catholic universities but none has studied the topic of my poetry that I have been creating for 50 years now and it has cost me a lot of effort. I really try to catch up, to read all publications that I had had no chance to read and, at the same time, I still pursue the one topic because it’s really important for me and for my life. I suppose I want to get to a point, where I can reckon with my being, with the world, with the concept of God, like everyone else. And this is my inner dream when it comes to my private affairs. And in the sense of an American dream I can say I feel really well here because I have American press, which is just wonderful when it comes to literary, philosophical, social and liberal ideas, etc. And I feel really well because I simply have things to choose from, I don’t get bored because there are so many wonderful things here and such liberal attitude that the ambience itself makes me happy and brings me joy that I can take everything that suits my tastes, anything valuable for me from that giant melting pot.
Now it’s like I’ve fallen in love with Greenpoint anew and it’s been going on since 3–4 years after major changes started here. Before that I was a bit envious about what was happening in Williamsburg because all the youth went there, because there was subway and one stop further was Manhattan. So I dreamt about them moving here and it happened during the last 4-5 years. Well, Greenpoint is a small paradise now, at least I think so. We have all the eating-houses, all the restaurants you can imagine, they are just half a block or one block away from my house. And in my old age I’m starting to enjoy life anew. I try various kinds of food. I have a son who is really active, he was born here, he attended the school here and he came back here after 5 years of travelling and set up three businesses here and feels great about it. And his businesses really fit into the environment here that we now have so I see that Greenpoint will continue its development in this direction. My son just got the blues and leaped into the ambience of Greenpoint. A lot of youth, I have no idea where they came from, but they have cash so he set up Lobster Joint and Whisky Burger. Anyway, I feel here like in a little Greenpoint heaven here.
