Proza 1. Utwory Zebrane

by Tadeusz Różewicz

391 pages

Published January 1, 2003

About the author

Tadeusz Różewicz - poet, playwright, and novelist, was one of Poland's most versatile and pre-eminent modern writers.

Remarkable for his simultaneous mastery of poetry, prose, and drama, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Tadeusz Różewicz has been translated into over forty languages. The most recent English-language volumes, recycling (2001), New Poems (2007) and Sobbing Superpower (2011), were finalists for the 2003 Popescu Prize (UK), the 2008 National Book Critics Award (USA) and the 2012 Griffin Prize (Canada) respectively. In 2007 he was awarded the European Prize for Literature.

Mother Departs (Matka odchodzi, 1999), exploring the life of his mother Stefania, is perhaps his most personal work. It won the Nike Prize in 2000, Poland’s most prestigious literary award. He lived in the city of Wrocław, Poland.

Różewicz studied art history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, but he has been associated with Silesia since the late 1940s and lived in Wrocław for thirty years. His work has been translated into many languages including English (his work is championed in the UK by the poet and critic, Tom Paulin, and the Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney), French, German, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish and he has received Polish state prizes and foreign awards. He is well-known in many countries as an excellent poet of the highest moral authority. Różewicz is a precursor of the avant-garde in poetry and drama, an innovator firmly rooted in the unceasing re-creation of the Romantic tradition, though always with a teasing ironic distance. He is a grand solitary, convinced of an artistic mission that he regards as a state of internal concentration, alertness, and ethical sensitivity.

Reviews

[Nedloha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not biggest fan of Różewicz's poems, as far as i read them, and he sees himself as poet foremost. However i am under powerful impression of some of his short stories and novellas published in this anthology. I least liked his early stories, which are mostly about war, especially about powstancow (upbringers) - and how they were also human and not perfect angels. Theme is overplayed, style is simple and concise. I think his potential is fully realised with his late novelas and short stories like Proba Rekonstrukcji, Smierc w Starych Dekorcjach, Egzamin. Those are post-modern masterpieces, focused on lively stream of consciousnes style much more than on story, which is simple. Important is narrator, and what goes in his head. Różewicz is trying to tell story of "modern man" whose mind is infected with "trash" of information. It could be seen especially in SWSD, story about old crude-intelectual man who goes to Rome short before death. His first-person narration is like a magma - man could goes from rambling about renassainse art to describing toilets of Rome in spite of one shocking sentence. Prose is sometimes interupted by random stream of informations or chunks of poetry. Różewicz's subversive ambitions are best seen in Przygotowania do wieczoru autorskiego, last story in this anthology. Its sprawling, written in several years period, diary-like piece. There is no story, no structure, but absolute freedom. Chunks of poetry, personal abandoned feelings, and especially long meditations about nature of poetry, and even something like critique pieces about philosophy, literature, foremost poetry (as Różewicz is foremost poet). It could be comparable to Pessoa, or Diaries in Gombrowicz, in its modernistic free flow of feelings and thoughts of author. Very interesting and inspiring

[Wojtek Konieczny · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10
Zbiór opowiadań "Przerwany egzamin" - 7/10
Zdecydowanie najlepsza jest "Nowa szkoła filozoficzna" (8/10), warto przeczytać również "Tolerancję" i "Wycieczkę do muzeum" (to taka Różewiczowska wersja "dancingu w kwaterze Hitlera"). Z innych wyróżnia się jeszcze m.in. "Opadły liście z drzew". Ogólnie cały tom to wartościowa proza.
"Moja córeczka" - 7/10; wspaniały początek z odniesieniem do "Pana Tadeusza" i świetny koncept całości.

[Onenick_jr · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5