Firebird

by Zuzanna Ginczanka, Alissa Valles (Introduction)

Energetic, formally audacious poems by a recently rediscovered Polish writer, shining examples of art as resistance.

Zuzanna Ginczanka’s last poem, “Non omnis moriar..." (“Not all of me shall die”), written shortly before her execution by the Nazis in the last months of World War II, is one of the most famous and unsettling texts in modern East European a fiercely ironic last will and testament that names the person who betrayed her to the occupying authorities as a Jew, it exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of Polish nationalist myths.

Ginczanka’s linguistic exuberance and invention—reminiscent now of Marina Tsvetaeva, now of Marianne Moore or Mina Loy—are as exhilarating as the passionate fusion of the physical world and the world of ideas she advocated in her work. Firebird brings together many of Ginczanka’s uncollected poems and presents On Centaurs , her sole published book, in its entirety.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published August 22, 2023

Reviews

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zuzanna Ginczanka died before the age of 30, denounced to the Nazis by a Polish collaborator. She left behind a comparatively tiny corpus of poems, but they are searing, trippy, unsettling, and ultimately beautiful. As a hobbyist poetry translator, I know that poetry is, to put it bluntly, fucking hard to translate. You’ve got to be loyal to what’s there, to the manifold meanings and depths of the poem, but you also can’t allow loyalty to strip a poem of its poetics. And this translation is absolutely poetry. I devoured it. I wanted to reach for my pen and underline stanzas, lines, entire poems. The fact that Ginczanka had only one collection, and that her life was snuffed out before she had the chance to write more poetry, to live longer, to witness the rediscovery of her work, makes me want to weep. But what we have, like the titular Firebird, illuminates, and will leave its flaming shadows in my mind for a long time.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think poetry is sometimes harder to appreciate in translation. That being said, it did wonders to my pre-results anxiety and gave me a sense of security in knowing I’d stay alive regardless of how things would go. For anyone waiting for IB results: the key is to read and distract yourself.

[JJS. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems that there are those artists whose lives are cut tragically short, yet they leave a small body of work that is beautiful, and Zuzanna Ginczanka, whose life was cut short in her mid-twenties during the brutal Nazi occupation of Poland amidst the world war, is one of those artists. Alissa Valles, who I had originally only known as the author of the insightful introduction of Rayfield's second volume of Shalamov's Kolyma Stories, turns out to be a very talented translator from Polish. Her English translation of the Polish poems by Ginczanka are beautiful. I am not able to say any more about these poems, other than to put here some of my favourite sections of Valles' translation, just some of the many lovely translated verses:

"And conquering the indolence native to northern seas
with a wave drawn out on shore like a dead frozen tongue,
boiling blue mercury broke from its tether
and crept across land like a turtle under the veil of night -
ships lay wrecked on the deserted seabed
with shattered hulls and lopped-off masts."

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to start #WomenInTranslationMonth off with a #SealeyChallenge crossover. I learned about this book very recently while on a translated poetry rabbit hole, and immediately put in an interlibrary loan request.

Zuzanna Ginczanka was born in the Ukraine, but moved to Poland at eighteen, during the interwar period. This collection includes the only volume of poetry she published during her life, On Centaurs, in its entirety. The poems in this collection sparkle with youth and exuberance. They brim over with nature imagery and the language of natural sciences. There is also a richness of humble simple lives: merchants and fisherwomen, poets and oarsmen.

Also included here are many of Ginczanka's uncollected poems (from 1936-1944). The individual poems aren't dated, but you can start to see the war imagery creep in, page by page.

Ginzburg fled back to Ukraine after the Nazi invasion of Poland, where she married and lived in hiding for years, until she was reported by her landlady as a Jew living with false papers. While she was arrested, she somehow escaped and fled back to Poland, where she was ultimately executed shortly before the city was liberated by the Soviets.

As it was mostly her biographical information I was aware of before picking this up, I was surprised and delighted by the joy and humor in her early poems, the defiance and judgement in her later.

A bit I particularly love from "Process":

In a thundering cosmic straddling,
carbon saturates the earth with petrified coal pulp —
— and he sees that it is good for the stars and moist amphibians.

From "Vocations":

Yours is the task of judging in a forceful soldierly stanza
man's hatred for man, and clothing the verdict in a chant—
while my fiery task
is to strain in the night's cool pitchers
the resonant honey
of a woman's
different
song.

---------------

As I said, I got this from the library, but this goes on my mental list of books already read but still to maybe buy a copy to keep myself one day.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grateful to translators and publishers who support translated works. I never would have known this poet or this history.

Quotes (unformatted)

I call for passion and wisdom
joined at the waist
like a centaur (30)

And delight dazes like a fragrance. (18)

Joy sails by
in the distance
in a festive pink boat
down a far foreign river (21)

and I caress the moment with my mouth
when it awakens
warm from sleep (23)

"Lord," I repeat, singing--
"try me with grief, despair, the pit and ruin of death
but don't try me with happiness; I won't stand the test." (38)

I see and see around me
things full of harmony, lights, magnificent forms,
and noble proportion. No storm comes near,
the waive is flat as glass. And it won't burst. This is peace. (41)

Blind and trustful to a fault you rush into current time,
deceived by the ease of the road which aids your steps,
but I know time will condemn you
and therein lies my advantage, though your fist is hostile
and angry and there's a haughty gleam in your eye. (47)

a shrouded and fitful reality (54)

And I can feel you inside me, O intimate matter,
you who ally me to birds, to the mass of clouds.
[...]
O the gladness that flows from knowable things!
O rapid rivers of albumen! O mounds of carbon!
O sweetness of cognition! Darkness falls, fades.
Delicate mica gleams, streams run white,
and slender trees grow in open country.
I watch the stars. I see. I burn with delight. (55)


Favorite Poems

and taking root in words is such delight,
and it's easy to fall in love with words
-- from Grammar (14)

How do you know love? By the inner commotion?
[...]
How do you know love? Joined in a tight embrace
they stand, each disquieted by a body too close by,
searching silently for signs.
-- from Libra (42)

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first collection and the very last poem particularly resonated with me. Images pulled from a northern/central European landscape and imaginary abound-centaurs, does, deer, black currant, forest, flaxen hair, constant Old Testament references, etc. Ginczanka seems especially interested in what it means for her to be a woman poet (how this contrasts to male poets / the war and nation-obsessed, those who believe they can find 'fulfillment' in conquest, who follow the Firebird's bloody call to battle). Ginczanka, meanwhile, argues for complexity and beauty in everyday thinks. Honey, a cool jar.
Superb translation-the rhyming, the amount of creative word choices, the sound repetition in "Fur." Brilliant.

[Angela]

I raise my visor sleepily and go, conscious of my losses,
into the still, frozen underground, full of subterranean
memories and dreams wafting from walls. Exhaustion
crushes my throat, and I trail a harsh wake of poems.

Poems about flirtation, victimhood and the twisted benefaction in it, the chemical origins of the world as seen by the last pair of good eyes. Read in one sitting at Powell’s City of Books, Portland OR.

[Teresa]

Inspiration to read: Padraig O Tuama’s “Poetry Unbound” newsletter Sept 3 2023

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A more than worthwhile voice unknown to far too many. I is good that in 2023 two collections of her poetry has benn (finally) translated into English.

[Alana · Rating 3 out of 5]

i read it too fast, and i enjoyed it too much, please forgive me. i will read it again in a week and maybe every week after that 🐦‍🔥

[Jesse Hassinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This new collection and translation of Zuzanna Ginczanka's extant poems is an important and shocking book. Well known in Poland, even though she was killed at a young age just months before the end of WWII, Ginczanka is not known well in the U.S. - this collection will hopefully change that. Just for the introduction alone this new edition of her work is important. One of the most impressive aspects of Ginczanka's reputation was her fearlessness. Her last poem, "Not all of me shall die", published in a newspaper shortly after her death, named the person who betrayed her to the Nazis, which resulted, after their surrender ending the war in Europe, to that person being condemned. A rare instance where the pen actually is mightier than the sword. All of the poems in this collection similarly do not shy away from the reality of living through war or of being an unapologetic chronicler of the ills of humanity. Like the Phoenix of the title, Ginczanka will continue to rise from the ashes with her beautiful poems, newly translated with special attention paid to her actual line-breaks and internal wording where previous editions have tried to standardize her line-breaks or find rhymes where her original text does not.