The author presents a series of publications by Franciszek Ziejka related to his stays in France and Portugal in 1970–1973 (Aix-en-Provence), 1979–1980 (Lisbon) and 1984–1988 (Paris). At that time, Ziejka disseminated knowledge about the language, Polish literature and culture in those universities, and at the same time, in libraries and especially archives, he undertook research on the culture of these countries and the presence of Polish literature and culture. The result was groundbreaking studies on the relationships and contacts of Polish artists and writers with representatives of Western creative circles. In these studies, Ziejka expanded our traditional knowledge of the presence of Polish culture in the West and discovered new traces of it, including those sometimes associated with such famous artists as Chopin, Joseph Conrad or Zygmunt Krasiński.

Provence has been playing an important role in Russian literature for two hundred years. Numerous Russian artists have visited this French region or settled there for a longer time; enchanted by the beauty of south European nature and mild climate, they depicted it in their poems, stories or travel journals. The list includes, e.g. Semen Nadson, Alexandr Kuprin, Ivan Bunin, Sasha Chyorny, Vladimir Nabokov. Galina Kuznetsova (1900–1976), representative of the first wave of Russian emigration, spent several years in Provence. The poet lived in Grasse on and off from 1927 to 1942. Her stay on the south of France greatly influenced the journal she then wrote (Грасский дневник, 1967), and her only poetry collection published in her lifetime, entitled The Olive Garden (Оливковый сад, 1937). This article covers the Provence threads present in both texts. Kuznetsova depicts in these works the beauty of exotic nature, combining descriptions of landscape with her own emotional states, using solutions characteristic of impressionism.