They Came to See a Poet: selected poems

by Tadeusz Różewicz, Adam Czerniawski (Translator), Anvil Press (Manufactured by)

Tadeusz Rózewicz is one of Poland's most popular and influential poets. Born in 1921, he belongs to the generation of writers whose work was indelibly marked by Poland's traumatic and tragic war-time experience. Rejecting traditional aesthetic values - which struck him as offensive in the face of what he had witnessed - Rózewicz has created a stark, direct poetry rooted in common speech. Yet Rózewicz's poetry is not confined to recording the horrors of war. They Came to See a Poet includes poems addressing childhood, friendship, love, eroticism, art, the poet's rôle and obligations, religion, ageing, death and the anxieties of modern civilization. In 2003 Tadeusz Rózewicz was awarded the Montale Prize, the latest of many awards and honours. Adam Czerniawski, born in Warsaw in 1934, has translated widely from Polish (including Selected Poems by Cyprian Norwid, also from Anvil) as well as publishing original poetry, short stories, criticism, and a memoir in his first language.

Genres: Poetry, Polish Literature, Poland

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

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

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

When all the women in the transport
had their heads shaved
four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs
swept up
and gathered up the hair

Behind clean glass
the stiff hair lies
of those suffocated in gas chambers
there are pins and side combs
in this hair

The hair is not shot through with light
is not parted by the breeze
is not touched by any hand
or rain or lips

In huge chests
clouds of dry hair
of those suffocated
and a faded plait
a pigtail with a ribbon
pulled at school
by naughty boys.

———

Love 1944

Naked defenceless
lips upon lips
eyes wide
open

listening

we swam
across a sea
of tears and blood.

———

She rubs against the crowd's rough skin

Here
the mother of hanged men
walks through the street
black
she carries a silver head
in her hands
oh what a heavy lump
filled with darkness
shattered with light

out of her mind she circles
and sings and sings
her shoes have broken heels
her womb is barren
her breasts dry
a siren out of her mind she howls
to the swollen moon above the roofs

mother of the hanged
paces the concrete streets
with leaden feet
the moon round her neck,
she sinks to the bottom

rubs against the crowd's rough scales

———

I see madmen who
had walked on the sea
believing to the end
and went to the bottom

they still rock
my uncertain boat

cruelly alive I push away
those stiff hands

I push them away year after year.

[Ben Winch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know little of Tadeusz Rozewicz and in truth so far only a handful of his poems (mostly the early ones) have really spoken to me, but those few have spoken clearly and directly, and with the humility of one who realises that his (or better, the) message is more important than any demonstration of skill or personality.

Witness

You know I'm in
but don't suddenly enter
my room

You might see me
silent
over a blank sheet

Can you write
about love
when you hear the cries of
the murdered and disgraced
can you write
about death
watching the little faces
of children

Do not suddenly
enter my room

You will see
a dumb and bound
witness to a love
being conquered by death

'I felt that something had come to an end forever for me and for humanity,' Rozewicz wrote of these early poems, written in Poland in the aftermath of the war.

After the end of the world
after death
I found myself in the midst of life
creating myself
building life
people animals landscapes

this is a table I said
this is a table
there is bread and a knife on the table
knife serves to cut bread
people are nourished by bread

man must be loved
I learnt by day by night
what must one love
I would reply man...

('In the Midst of Life')

Rozewicz: 'The dance of poetry came to an end during the Second World War in concentration camps created by totalitarian systems. The departure... from the special "poetic language" has produced those poems which I call stripped of masks and costumes... (so-called) "prosaicised" works which (create) the conditions for poetry's subsistence and even survival.'

The poem
is finished
now break it
and when it grows together again
break it once more
at places where it meets reality
remove the joints
the random elements
which come from the imagination
those that remain
tie up
with silence
or leave untied
when
the poem is finished
remove the foundation
on which it rests
- foundations
restrict movement -
then the construction
will rise
and for a moment
will soar above reality
with which eventually
it will collide
the collision
will be the birth
of a new poem
a stranger to reality
surprising
splitting
and transforming it

and itself undergoing
transformation

('Proposition the Second')

In his later poems it can seem as if the battle has been fought, but sometimes still he skewers a feeling perfectly:

I feel desire
he said
unfortunately he has no soul
the soul has gone
the young waitress
burst out laughing
her shape was such
one could soulless
create with her
a new man...

the souls have been snatched up
by previous generations
and now one has to live
as best one can
shallowly
quicker

('Shallowly Quicker')

They say in Poland Rozewicz may be the most influential of post-war poets. If this is true, maybe his influence hasn't spread to the Anglo world because we have yet to experience an apocalypse comparable to that of his generation's youth in Poland. In a prison camp or blasted moonscape these are the kinds of poems I would take with me, committed to memory, and easily understood by any who would care to listen.

the most tangible
description of bread
is a description of hunger

('Draft for a Modern Love Poem')

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across some of Tadeusz Różewicz's poems in a Holocaust anthology my local library had and fell deeply, deeply in love with his writing. I bought this collection of exclusively his poems and haven't stopped singing his praises since.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

picked up for the later poems at the end, which i liked. a few that i'll photocopy and keep before i return this one to the library. i'm really glad to have read so much rozewicz in close conjunction. i know there are poems i'll come back to.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

of all the things ed hirsch showed me, this is by far my favorite.