God’s Playground

To the Editors:

I was delighted to read John Bayley’s excellent review of recent Polish writing entitled “In God’s Playground” [NYR, July 19] and to see that the label of “God’s Playground” is now regarded as an original name for “the old Respublica in its heyday.” I cannot think of a nicer fate for a phrase which I invented myself in 1979 as the subtitle of my history of Poland (God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Columbia University Press). Kochanowski’s similar tag from the 1580s—Czlowiek: Boze Igrzysko (Mankind: Bauble of the Gods) which I adapted—referred to people in general and not Poland in particular.

Norman Davies
Oxford, England