Consul locutus, causa finita – this is how one could sum up the three-day storm over the old print presented to the Pope by the French President, which at some stage found its way onto the shelves of the Academic Reading Room [Czytelnia Akademicka] association in Lviv [the first Polish student scientific and academic community in Lviv, which functioned from the 1860s until the outburst of the Second World War], as indicated by the stamp on the title page. The statement by Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Gliński closes a dispute in which both Emmanuel Macron's hasty accusers and defenders of his honour have been at loggerheads. La galanterie of the latter was particularly uplifting, reminiscent of d'Artagnan's efforts to save the honour of Louis XIII's wife – although the impulsiveness they demonstrated in doing so was at times truly Gasconian.

To summarise briefly: a copy of the French translation of Immanuel Kant's essay Project de paix perpétuelle, published in Königsberg by the distinguished typographer Nicolovius in 1796, was acquired by the French President's office on the eve of his visit to the Vatican from the Hatchuel antiquarian bookshop in Paris for the modest sum of 2,500 euros.

The clues lead to Hatchuel

A French journalist, Arnaud Bédat, who specialises in bibliological investigations (an enviable post!) was the first to reach the Hatchuel auction catalogue, which described the Kantian pamphlet, noting both the “stamp of the Lviv Academic Reading Room from the end of the 19th century” and a small label (flyleaf) on the back cover, indicating that the book came into the possession of Lucien Bodin's bookshop and antiquarian bookshop on the Quai des Grands-Augustins “around 1900”. And this very fact – oh, you ignoramuses, the book has been lying in Paris for a century and a half, and you're picking on it! – was thrown in the sceptics' faces by the Polish sons of d'Artagnan.

The problem is that the brave Gasconian was better at fencing than at finding sources. For while no sensible person questions Hatchuel's catalogue entry, Bodin's label or the act of buying the Project... by presidential officials – it is not as if that settles all the questions.

Enthusiasts of intentional receiving of stolen goods first pointed to the fact that the stamp of the Academic Reading Room was not affixed with a so-called “stamp of removal”, as is routinely done when a book is withdrawn from the library collection or sold.

But let's not jump to conclusions: firstly, the stamps of removal as a tool of librarianship came into general use at the end of the 19th century; secondly, the annual reports of the Academic Reading Room recurrently lament unreliable readers who do not return books on time, and sometimes not at all. If someone did not hesitate to nick Murger's Scenes of Bohemian Life (Viennese pamphlet edition of 1879), why should he not tuck Kant under his frock coat for a nice week in Paris?

It is therefore not the lack of the stamp that is most surprising here, but the fact that the twitter musketeers determined the direction of accession. Namely, that Kant was first in Lviv, but from 1900 onwards – in Paris. Because everything good goes to the West, in this country, Sienkiewicz may be kept, but not Kant.

For instance, Piniński

Well, it is not so obvious. The Academic Reading Room Association steadily multiplied its book collection, which numbered some 20,000 volumes by the outbreak of the Second World War. In the annual reports, of which the National Library has an almost complete set, lists of acquisitions usually take up several pages. Yes, they are usually cheaper and newer items – academic societies rarely have funds for old prints. Fortunately, however, the Reading Room had many benefactors – sometimes mentioned in the reports ("Among the gifts, the most valuable ones were given to us by His Eminence Leon Count Piniński, for which we hereby express our heartfelt thanks" – this is a quotation from 1913), sometimes anonymous. As a rule, their valuable gifts were not mentioned in detail in the reports; perhaps in order not to tempt the owners of too large frock coats.

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  Take Piniński, for example; a great gentleman, heir to Ivanovka and administrator of Grzymałów, governor of Galicia for a trifling six years, lifelong member of the Viennese House of Lords, professor of Roman law at the Jan Kazimierz University, an eccentric, music lover and collector; already impoverished after the First War, he donated 350 Italian and Dutch canvases to the Wawel Restoration Committee. What was it to him to buy up half of Bodin's bookshop and send it to needy academics, along with a crate of muscadet: let them read! And there were quite a few such Pinińskis: "We also owe a debt of gratitude for contributing to the growth of our collections to: the Most Rev. Bandurski, Rt Hon. Professors: H.E. Dr St. Głąbiński, His Excellency Rector Dr Stan. Starzyński, Dr L. Finkel..." – and so on, almost to the end of the page. Could none of them really have bought the Project... in Paris and taken it to Lviv?

Such and further speculations arise – was it bought? When was it bought? And if bought, when and under what circumstances did Kant's work make its way from Lviv back to Paris? Perhaps already in the hungry days of the First World War and the struggle for Lviv in the autumn of 1918? Or perhaps it was carried in a rucksack across the Carpathians, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Italy by a volunteer heading for General Sikorski? Or perhaps three years later, a Wehrmacht soldier who entered one of the university's buildings and – with a degree in philosophy or bibliology – knew what to choose?

Unfortunately, the Reading Room reports do not provide answers: they are incomplete, did not report on sales or losses, and lack a complete list of titles acquired.

Sigillographer urgently wanted

Circumstantial knowledge could be provided by an expert specialising in sigillography, the science of seals: does the stamp of the Academic Reading Room really date from the late 19th century? To me it looks more like art déco, but then again, "Lviv" and the lack of "RP" (standing for Poland) would suggest Galicia. But perhaps – Galicia in 1914? In any case, it would be worth embedding the Reading Room stamp, the Bodin label, more firmly in the timeline and seeing which came first.

Certain knowledge is, of course, provided by accession and provenance catalogues, showing when a given item found its way into the collections of a given institution and what its fate was. It is difficult to speak of institutional continuity between the Jan Kazimierz University and, from 1939 onwards, Ivan Franko – although a call slip from a library catalogue from before 1941 is significant, showing that the University had a twin copy of the Project... published in the original language, i.e. “Zum ewigen Frieden”. Same Kant, same Königsberg, same Nicolovius, same 1796. And so it went.

The catalogues of the Bodin and Hatchuel antiquarian bookshops remain – and it is to be presumed that the Ministry of Culture has just consulted them. "The antiquarian who sold the book to the French president's office declares that he has full provenance, that is, he is able to say where the book was between 1900 and today" – Dr Łukasz Kamiński, director of the Ossolineum, said in a statement given to Polish Press Agency (PAP).

This story by Hatchuel about bibliophile-pacifists, throughout the twentieth century looking to Kant's work for inspiration, must be fascinating, and I hope we get to hear it. But it is, after all, only the beginning of the fascinating Macroniad we have experienced.

The art of conversation

For even the staunchest defenders of presidential honour did not deny that the decision to hand over to the Holy Father a book with clear traces of origin from someone else's library, in addition a non-French one, was controversial. Of course, for old prints, traces of previous fates are like honourable scars, but still – this Lviv? This lack of a stamp of removal? In a situation where you can find dozens of Projects on antiquarian websites such as AbeBooks, whose title page shines with a whiteness as impeccable as the wig of the philosopher from Königsberg?

The usual indication was the limited competence of the official responsible for purchasing the gift. Having syllabified "Szytelnja akkademiska" under his breath, he may have lost his enthusiasm for deciphering the strange "Luoluoluie." Larry Wolf, in his excellent "Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment", points out that since the time of Louis XV, ignorance of the barbarian peoples living between the mouth of the Pechora River and Paphlagonia has been welcomed on the Seine – so perhaps it was all about the prospect of advancement?

Or perhaps not. I am convinced that the choice of such a gift – Kant's essay on universal peace, published in French translation and bearing the stamp of an academic association based in "Polish" (culturally before 1918, nationally between 1918 and 1939) Lviv – was a deeply considered move and one that brought pride to French diplomacy.

As is well known, diplomacy is – also – the art of communicating all sorts of truths and declarations in a veiled, delicate manner that does not offend, especially in the presence of witnesses, the dignity of either of the high contracting parties. It is a profession for Richelieu's disciples, not d'Artagnan's.

What truths, what declarations could Emmanuel Macron's gift to the Pope have contained? Of course, the Polonocentric assumptions that it was about "humiliating Poland" ("we trade in your old prints and what will you do to us? And you are still arguing about reparations!") are as egotistical as they testify to a complete misunderstanding of the language of diplomacy. And it was not Poland that was at stake here in the first place, although its affairs were undoubtedly part of the message. And what else? At this point, unfortunately, in the interests of ensuring that we do not miss any elements, I am forced to skip for a moment to an uncomfortable enumeration for the reader.

What seems most important is the essence of the object offered. We are dealing with one of the last (and more accessible) works of the great philosopher. Nine years before his death, observing the turmoil in Europe (the wars with revolutionary France, the fall of the Republic), Kant postulated a lasting agreement, a "symphony" of republics, striving for peace with the common good in mind.

What kind of peace?

In doing so, Kant proposes solutions that are astonishingly concrete: the prohibition of the use of instruments of war in the form of stealth or poison, the prohibition of breaking the terms of surrender. "No self-contained state," he writes, "small or large, it is a matter of indifference, can be acquired by some other state by inheritance, exchange, purchase or donation, since it is a community of men which no one - except himself - can command and dispose of". He even dreams of abolishing regular troops over time...

It is a very innovative, republican, holistic, somewhat idealistic project for its time: it became an inspiration for Palmerston, Woodrow Wilson and even Wells. Kudos, Mr Immanuel!

At the same time – there is no denying it – it is a concept somewhat different from that proposed, with a view to eradicating violence and war from the world, by the Catholic Church, led by Pope Francis. For, it is also well known, the philosopher's relationship with the Ecclesia was quite complex: the project of a “rational religion”, appearing in the Critique of Pure Reason and further elaborated in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason (1793), was perfectly able to do without Revelation. And although these were no longer the sort of times to drag a philosopher onto the Index of Forbidden Books, the Vatican looked unfavourably on the successive eccentricities of German idealism, from Fichte to Hegel – and with reciprocity. The project of universal peace is thoroughly rational, optimistic, calculated – in short, the Enlightenment. And we know which country is the cradle of the Enlightenment!

So a gift – seemingly in the Franciscan spirit, seemingly leading to a value so close to both interlocutors, both in words and in practice, such as peace, pax – but a gift with a nose flick. "You know, my dear, we will do it on my terms, after all". A flick that should be accepted – diplomacy! – with a smile.

‘No!’ to burger-eaters

With a flick and an edge. For after all, “Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf” was written in German. And it belongs most deeply to German culture. The gift of a French translation is another gentle way of looking towards the City of Lights. And to emphasise that when it comes to the cultural primacy of the country from which the President came, France remains unrivalled. France, and not those hamburger-eaters, whom we both, Your Holiness (this is for the record), do not particularly respect?

So much for philosophy and decorum. But then there is politics and its values. Peace, peace, peace above all, enough of the suffering of the innocent. Peace, without naming the guilty or the victims, peace, built on a reasonable compromise – isn't this the main direction of the ideas presented by Paris (but also the Vatican) during the nine months of Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Peace. Universal peace. Peace, described in French and using the Enlightenment's conceptual apparatus – a slogan that the Vatican (if only by swallowing a bitter Kantian pill) can and will only to applaud?

And the art déco stamp? It influences the pages of our speculation like a nimble fish from the currents of the Poltva River.

After all, the Academic Reading Room, established at the dawn of Galician autonomy (April 1867) as the first Polish student association, was changing its shape. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis . "Defending Polishness" – a slogan that was obvious and valuable to everyone when it came to gaining a Polish foothold in Galicia after the defeat of the January Uprising – sounded a little different half a century later, when nationalisms, from Polish to Ukrainian to Jewish, began to ferment within the walls of the university. And the defensive slogan of the statute "only students of Polish nationality may be members of the Reading Room" – intended to protect the association from Germanisation in 1867 – did not look good in the eyes of a student from a Ruthenian village or, for example, Ludwik Namierowski vel Lewis Namier.

There's always trouble with Lviv

No, the Academic Reading Room was by no means a political institution. But in the 1930s the rule of people's hearts and minds (as in most academic associations of the Second Republic) was taken over by the National Democrats, and the more radical ones at that. Some of them were involved in actions aimed at introducing numerus clausus. Is it really not worth telling the story again?

And besides... This whole Lviv thing. Supposedly "Lwów", and today, rather – "Lviv". And until recently there was "Lvov". And before that it was "Lemberg", and for some לעמבערג [Lemberik], and trains from Budapest used to leave for "Ilyvó". Between 1914 and 1944 it changed nationality thirteen, no, fifteen times. It's all so vague, undefined, fluid, the borders are there and there aren't, or rather – they are there where you decide they are, what's the difference between the Dniester and the Dnieper, and in general, people have got it all backwards: where is Lviv, where is Crimea – don't you agree with me, Holy Father, dear Francis?

So let us summarise, this time already in a few sentences. Sealed with the Reading Room's embers, Projet de paix perpetuelle conveys – of course, only in my uncharitable speculation – the following truths, suggestions and desiderata.

- The idea of peace is important. And it is common to us. And it should absolutely be promoted.
- But – it should be a sensible peace. A well-constructed one. Without all your “Pax tibi” and turning the other cheek. A peace that is enlightened, rational and offers prospects for universal trade.
- It should be a French peace, so to speak.
- But the contribution of German thought should not be forgotten either.
- The glory of French culture should not be forgotten on any occasion.
- Let us remember that it is chaotic in the East. And dangerous. Cities change names and books change affiliations. And it's difficult to get to grips with it, anyway, why bother.
- And now the Poles are supposedly so supportive, yet they oppress the Ukrainians like hell. They closed the Association's doors to them.
- And not only Ukrainians, by the way. Vous savez.

And all this conveyed on the cover of a booklet measuring 158 by 95 mm! If this is not a masterpiece comparable to the porcelain façade of the Trianon Palace – call me a fence.

The perfect gift for Beijing?

In the face of such perfection of communication, one becomes virtually helpless. The only helpless thought – or rather dream – that comes to mind is: can Polish diplomacy ever reach a similar level? What should a gift presented by a Polish head of state during a visit to, say, Beijing look like? Something that would have considerable (but not excessive, I don't mean nouveau riche gestures) artistic value. It would in some way give expression to Polish political concepts. It should be nice to the host – nice, but with some hidden grain of sand, a hint of Polish primacy. It should also give a third party the needle, a reminder that it is not worth counting too much on that third party…

The data is in. The Polish idea? It's known: Inter-Mediterranean, For our freedom and yours. Polish cultural advantages? Well, there are some – not that many, but some. Where we would like to stick the knife in – is also roughly known.

So imagine – I at least imagined – a Polish head of state having to go to Beijing in a few years' time. A major power. Complex relations. And what, are we going to carry Pan Tadeusz in Mandarin again?

Initially, I made no secret of the fact that I was operating a little blind and I was way off the mark. One could look in antique shops for a postcard from Guangzhouwan, the French "special economic zone" forced on China by France in the first half of the 20th century. In addition, the card would have to be written by a Polish tourist and describe with horror the customs of the French colonists, camped out in rickshaws, in solidarity with the oppressed Chinese.

The task – hopeless. There are no such cards. There were no such tourists. Artistic value – negligible.

Tamara's brush

I abandoned the thought of a salvaged beam from the Berezina crossing, where Polish troops defended the remnants of the Grand Army (what relevance does this supposedly have to China?). I was tempted for a moment by a unique atlas by the brush and pen of the Polish Jesuit Michał Boym, presenting the flora of China ("Flora Sinensis", 1658, or rather, to quote the full title – "Flora Sinensis, fructus floresque humillime porrigens, Serenissimo et Potentissimo Principi, ac Domino, Domino Leopoldo Ignatio, Hungariae Regi florentissimo, etc. Fructus Saeculo promittenti Augustissimos, emissa in publicum a R. P. Michaele Boym, Societatis Iesu Sacerdote et a Domo Professa eiusdem Societatis Viennae Maiestati Suae una cum felicissimi Anni apprecatione oblata. Anno salutis MDCLVI Viennae, Austriae').

Rara avis, almost. Beautiful illustrations. Seemingly a praise of China, but a tad perplexing as the Ming dynasty, for which Boym's father lobbied, was just falling. And – inside is a dedicatory poem to the edition's sponsor, Emperor Leopold I, extolling, among other things, his victories over the army of the King of France. All in Latin, a language close to the Poles.

Yes, the “Chinese Flora” is worth having in-store. But I have something better.

In 1921, Tamara Lempicka painted a rather little-known portrait of a young man, “Le chinois”. It is an atypical work for the ouvre of a Polish painter: instead of the alabaster smoothness of her shoulders and breasts, it features bold brushstrokes, sharp features, a bright colour scheme that is almost Fauvist in origin, and sharp facial features.

It is not known who posed for her portrait. However, it bears a striking resemblance to the young Zhou Enlai. One of the most prominent politicians of 20th-century China, Mao's right-hand man, who at the same time sometimes distanced himself from the follies of Maoism.

Young Zhou, above average in talent, ended up in France to study at the end of 1920. There, he lived from hand to mouth, with cops hot on his heels – not only was he a newcomer of a foreign race, he was a communist! He did not retain good memories of France, and sometimes made this known.

At the same time – he was anti-shambling in the world of the Parisian bohemians, eager for all kinds of exoticism (including political) – and his meeting with Lempicka, then at the height of his fame, is at least as likely as Kant's pamphlet resting in an antiquarian bookshop warehouse for 122 years.

As Mao's right-hand man, Zhou was heavily involved in the fight against what he saw as Moscow's imperialism: hence his support for Poland in 1956, but also a series of discreet moves to weaken Moscow's position in Asia and Africa, and as head of PRC diplomacy he had plenty of opportunities to do so. Modern China, of course, prides itself on Zhou – although the memory of his poor years in Paris, his high savoir-faire, his sympathies for liberalism and his growing distance from Mao is troublesome for them.

The original of Lempicka's painting is currently in the depository of the Musée d'art moderne André Malraux in Le Havre. However, perhaps it would be possible to arrange its purchase through the Hatchuel antiquarian bookshop?

– Wojciech Stanisławski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

– Translated by jz