مرثیه‌ای برای درخت

by Tadeusz Różewicz, شهرام شیدایی (Translator)

مجموعه شهر
تادئوش روژه‌ویچ، شاعر، رماننویس، نمایشنامه‌نویس و فیلمنامه‌نویس معاصر لهستانی در سال ۱۹۲۱ در شهر رادومسک به دنیا آمد و در ۲۴ آوریل ۲۰۱۴ درگذشت. روژه‌ویچ در کشور خود با ۲۰ عنوان کتاب شعر منتشر شده، بیشتر به عنوان یک شاعر معروف است تا نمایشنامه‌نویس. وی بارها نیز از سوی آکادمی سوئد به عنوان کاندیدای دریافت جایزه نوبل ادبیات معرفی شد.

Genres: Poetry, Polish Literature, Poland

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

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

[sana · Rating 5 out of 5]

he’s my fav.

[Cla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maravilla

[ola k · Rating 5 out of 5]

mój ulubiony

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tadeusz Rozewicz fits a lot into a few words. His poems are plain and simple, but often hard hitting. They are sensual, occasionally sexy, but more often there's a violence and a bitterness below the starkly beautiful arrangements of words. And there is that note of bitter, weary, knowing grief and anger that I am coming to associate with European poets who grew up with the Second World War - a tone that is part way between a sob and a yell, a tone that imparts that passion comes in many shades, from the gently sweet to the brutal.

I could write about the poems that are about poetry, poetry as part of life rather than something separate from the world. I could write about the recurring motifs, especially the Christian symbols for the body and its beautiful abuses: bread, blood, thorns, hair, torn skin. But instead I will pretend you are sitting next to me, and I will pull your eye from dog-eared page to dogeared page ...

Here is, I think, the most poignant poem in this collection: 'What Luck'

What luck I can pick
berries in the wood
I thought
there is no wood no berries.

What luck I can lie
in the shade of a tree
I thought trees
no longer give shade.

What luck I am with you
my heart beats so
I thought man
has no heart.

And one of the most passionate: 'Leda', in which she takes and is not taken

Leda with strong
arms
and thighs

Leda pressed
against the bird's
supple body

her head thrown back
a mysterious smile
absent
she receded

I was torn away
from her
pushed aside

blood
flowed
from
my lips and tongue

Here is one of the more sensual: 'New Comparisons'

To what will you compare
day
is it like night
to what will you compare
an apple
is it like a kingdom
to what will you compare
flesh
at night
the silence
between lips
between
to what what will you compare an eye
a hand in darkness
is the right like the left
teeth tongue mouth
a kiss
to what will you compare
a hip
hair
fingers
breath
silence
poetry
in daylight
at night

That simple listing that delineates all these intimate things, hip, hair, breath, tongue, darkness, daylight, silence, poetry, like two lovers fingers drawing each others' bodies into being in the dark and the warmth. That poem crept under my skin. But not nearly as much as this following fragment did - from 'Home Exercises on the Theme of Angels'

angels in paradise
are like the inner side
of an adolescent girl's thigh
they are like stars
they shine in private parts
are clean like triangles and circles
with silence
in the centre

'Farewell' reminded me of one of my favourite Cummings poems, which ends 'there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards / she is sitting beside young death, is slender; / likes flowers.'

She thought
the world around
is sad
that flowers are sad and the rain too
that sadness is nesting
in rough wool
smelling of migonette
that the voices of those departing
are sad
that the jovial cabby
who cracks his whip is sad
she thought
the sky and earth
are sad beyond measure
whereas
it was the wheels turning
faster and faster

Wide limitless.

And to end with, the resigned but tongue-in-cheek 'Busy with Many Jobs':

Busy with very urgent jobs
I forgot
one also has
to die

irresponsible
I kept neglecting that duty
or performed it
perfunctorily

as from tomorrow
things will be different

I'll start dying meticulously
wisely optimistically
without wasting time