PAPAL BIOGRAPHY
In May, just before the pope came to visit his native Poland again, the best-selling biography His Holiness: John Paul II and the Unknown History of Our Times, by American journalist Carl Bernstein and his Italian colleague Carlo Politi, appeared here. It set off a heated battle over censorship. The original version of the book was duly translated into Polish, but was also heavily edited to remove references to such topics as the pope's ill health, Polish anti-Semitism and critical views of the Polish Catholic Church.
The book's American publisher, Bantam Doubleday Dell, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG, sued Polish Amber Publishing Ltd. seeking damages and the seizure of 14,500 copies of the book. The parties can agree on nothing, not even how much of the text was excised in the Polish version. Doubleday said it was cut by almost 35 percent, even though, as a rule, Polish translations of English books usually turn out longer than the originals.
Politi, who traveled with the pope during his Polish visit, confirmed that the Polish publishers removed references to a controversy involving a Carmelite convent in Auschwitz, and various references to the pope's health, including a nervous disorder.
Politi said that during a papal trip to Hungary, he had the occasion to ask John Paul II how he was feeling. "The pope replied with a smile, 'Jestem biedaczek' (I am a poor creature). They also removed that from the book," said Politi.
Politi confirmed that Doubleday is suing Amber. He noted that in the Polish version's preface, Amber admitted it had asked the American publisher for permission to remove controversial passages, and Doubleday refused. "So it's still worse," he said.
Amber editor-in-chief Małgorzata Cebo-Foniok said that only two or three passages had been removed, portraying the pope as an old, ill and angry man, which would not have been good for his reception during the visit. Cebo-Foniok added that in Amber's opinion these changes did not in any way change the meaning of the "wonderfully written" book. She dismissed Doubleday's claim that over one third of the book was removed as "absolutely impossible."
"Clearly, the Polish publishing industry suffers from the same kind of mentality that characterized the communist era," Bernstein told the International Herald Tribune. "In this case, rather than being communist censors, there are people who fear some kind of imagined reprobation from the church or Polish readers."
Sources from the Polish publishing business say that Doubleday is seeking $50,000 in damages from Amber. They believe that the defendant can afford to pay.
Michał Przeczek with Patricia Koza
Elżbieta Kropilnicka, Amber publishing house promotion department:
We are preparing to issue a denial of the charges concerning the cuts we made. But we have to consult our lawyers about the form this will take. So far, only lies have been spread.
The cuts amounted to about 1 percent of the entire text-not 35 percent, as the media claim. The removal of parts of the text that were insufficiently documented and might infringe upon the personal rights of third parties is in keeping with the law. We have consulted leading experts on Polish copyright law in this matter.
It is not true that we introduced the changes without the authors' knowledge. We informed them and the American publisher of the planned cuts. Unfortunately, the negative reply arrived when the book was already in production. We therefore added all the sections we had removed as anppendices, which constitute an integral part of the book. Polish readers will therefore receive the complete text.
We wanted to cut parts of the text concerning Polish anti-Semitism because we took the view that this was the authors' undocumented opinion and not fact. Apart from that, we wanted to cut the parts containing critical opinions about the Polish primate, Cardinal Józef Glemp, as it might have infringed upon his personal rights. The last section we wanted to delete concerned the pope's health. John Paul II is such an important personality for Poles that it doesn't become us to publish facts about his physiology.
Carl Bernstein won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. His book on the downfall of the Nixon administration, All the President's Men, written with colleague Bob Woodward, became an international bestseller and film, and was followed by The Final Days. Marco Politi, one of Italy's premier journalists, has covered the papacy for the past 20 years and is the Vatican correspondent for the daily La Repubblica.
Back to
the first page of Voice - People Section.
Back to
the first page of this issue.