Rafal Wojaczek - ON ONE RHYME

                                              for Jadwiga Z.

As many worlds as flowers in this one world

As much light as eyes in this dark world

As many voices as bells in this mute world

As much faith as fear in this faithless world

As many poems as truths in this uncertain world

As much glory as suffering in this temporal world

As many nooses as defeats in this temporal world

As much happiness as death in this miserable world

Translated by W.F.

Rafal Wojaczek (pron. Rafa'w Voyachek) (1945-1971)

Although born after the end of the war, so he couldn’t have witnessed the Nazi atrocities, Wojaczek is a poet of despair. He suffered from depression, some time he spent in a psychiatric hospital. In the end he took his own life. Although full of desperation, his poems are also very poetical and very musical. After his death he gained a large following. 

Ryszard Krynicki - WHO CHOSES LONELINESS

* * *

Who choses lonliness – will never be alone

Who choses homelessness – will have the roof of the world over his head

Who choses death – wil not cease to live

Who is chosen by death – will die

only this

Translated by W.F.

Ryszard Krynicki (pron. Rishard Krineetzkey) (born 1943)

Born in Austria, most of his life he spent in Poznan, where he was a friend of Baranczak. A few years ago he moved to Cracow. Like Baranczak, he is considered a poet of the “Generation ‘68”, but his poetry formally is very different. He is a master of a short form, like haiku, but he doesn’t write about nature. Instead, his poems are like short thoughts with some kind of transcendental dimension.

Stanislaw Baranczak - NOBODY WARNED ME

Nobody warned me that freedom may also mean something like

sitting at the police station with a roughbook of my own poems

hidden (how clever it was) under my underwear

while five civilians with higher education

and still higher salary waste their time

analysing some rubbish taken from my pockets

tram tickets, a laundry receipt, a ditry

handkerchief and a mysterious (that's a good one) loose page:

„carrots

can of peas

tomato paste

potatoes”

and nobody warned me that captivity

may also mean something like

sitting at the police station with a roughbook of my own poems

hidden (how grotesque!) under my underwear

while five civilians with higher education

and even lower IQ are allowed

to touch the entrails torn out of my life

tram tickets, a laundry receipt, a dirty

handkerchief and even (no, I can't stand this one) this page:

„carrots

can of peas

tomato paste

potatoes”

and nobody warned me that the whole globe

is the space between these two opposite poles

between which really there is no space at all

Translated by W.F.

 Only recently I learned that on 26 December the great Polish poet Stanislaw Baranczak had passed away.

I knew him quite well when I lived in Poland. The country was under the Communist regime and we were both dissidents, I was a student and he was an university lecturer who lost his position because of his activities. He didn't stop giving lectures, the students organised meetings in private houses and Stanislaw carried on teaching in the underground. At that time he was already a famous poet. I thought I might be a poet, too. One day I took what I thought were poems and asked Baranczak what he thought of them. He told me to leave them with him and come again a week later. When I did, he gave me the following advice:

“When you write a poem, read it again two weeks later and cross out all words that are not necessary.”

I went home and applied this procedure to my poems and they disappeared.This is how I did not become a poet. I am very grateful to Baranczak for this advice.

It didn't stop me translating somebody else's poems, though. Baranczak himself was a fantastic translator and what he wrote on the art of translation had huge influence on me. When I settled in England and was surrounded by all those books in English I translated some poems into Polish to feel what they are like when read in the mother tongue. Years passed, at one point I realised that I had lived in England more than a half of my life. Then I started translating the other way, from Polish into English. Naturally I translated the poems that had influenced me when I was younger. Of course poems by Baranczak are in that number. I have never published them anywhere.

Except, of course, here.

I decided to add a couple of Stanislaw's poems.

You will find another one here (posted just a few days before his death).
Stanislaw Baranczak - WITH ONE BREATH

Papusza - WATER THAT ALWAYS WANDERS

Long gone are the times

When Gypsies wandered around,

But I still see them.

They are like running water

Always running away.

You can only guess

What she would like to say.

Poor water has no speech

With which she could talk or sing,

Only sometimes she whispers

A silver splash like a heartbeat.

A heartbeat of speaking water.

Only a horse on a meadow

Not far the stables

Hears her and understands.

Water looks not at the horse,

Always running away.

No eyes could ever pin down

Water that always wanders.

Translated by W.F.

Papusza  (pron. Papooshah) (1909 - 1987)

Papusza was born probably in 1909 among the Polska Roma tribe of Gypsies. The date is only probable as she was born among wandering Gypsies who didn’t bother with birth certificates.

Polska Roma are the Gypsies who since the Middle ages have wandered within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Poland. The old Polish Kingdom was a multicultural society where the Polish culture was dominant, so the Polish Gypsies tended to be bilingual in Romany and Polish. During the Second World War the Nazis wanted to exterminate all “alien races”, which included Jews and Gypsies. The Gypsies could hide in the woods easier than the Jews, but in the Eastern part of Poland (now Ukraine) there was another problem – the Ukrainian extreme nationalists, who were allied with the Nazis. Their goal was to exterminate all Polish speakers in their area and so they also targeted the Polish speaking Gypsies. Papusza’s band during the war stayed in Volynia (now Ukraine) and had to hide both from the Nazis and from the Ukrainian extremists. After the war the Polska Roma Gypsies moved with the boundaries and Papusza’s band left Volynia for what is now Western Poland, but was Germany before the war.

Just after the war a young Gorgio (non-Gypsy) who was fascinated by the Gypsy life joined her band and travelled with them for some time. He was a young and aspiring poet Jerzy Ficowski. He was charmed by the songs of this young girl and translated them into Polish. The translations came to attention of Julian Tuwim, who at that time was considered the best living Polish poet. Thanks to Tuwim’s influence Papusza’s first book of poems appeared in 1951.

As it happens Papusza was unusual among the Gypsies of her time – she could actually read her book. It was not usual among the Gypsies in the 1920s to send children to school and Papusza said she taught herself to read by asking Polish schoolchildren to explain her the meaning of letters. She read a lot and was fully aware of what it meant to have a book published and to have as a friend some like Tuwim. Other Gypsies, however, did not necessarily appreciate this and here her problems started.

Jerzy Ficowski was fascinated by the Gypsies and wrote a book about them. This was the time when the Polish government tried to persuade the Gypsies to settle (the communist government did not like a wandering people who were difficult to control). In the early sixties the government forcibly settled all the Gypsy bands. Some Gypsy people connected this to the book written by Ficowski. And who was his chief informant? Papusza! The girl who could read Polish and who herself had a book published. To add insult to injury Ficowski also published a Polish-Gypsy dictionary! Sacrilege! Papusza was declared a traitor and excluded from the Gypsy community.

Gypsies usually outwardly profess the religion of their country but apart from that they have their own system of values and taboos. Or one should rather say they have a system of values different from that of Gorgios. It is not considered wrong to take somebody else’s property, certainly not it the owner is a Gorgio. A Gypsy would think nothing of pinching a chicken from somebody’s yard for dinner (or – as Papusza said she had done – to pay with it for reading lessons), but the betrayal of “Gypsy secrets” – such as the language – is an offence of the highest order. Gypsies also have a kind of a chief, called “baroshero” (literally “bighead”) who acts as a judge in matters of Gypsy law. The baroshero of Polska Roma decided that Papusza should be excluded from the Gypsy community.

Papusza’s band settled in the 1960s in Gorzów in Western Poland. This where Papusza lived with her husband Dionizy Wajs. Since the problems with the Gypsy elders started she had serious psychological problems and had to spend some time in an asylum. At the end of her life she moved to Inowroclaw in Central Poland, where she died in 1987.

Her real name was Bronislawa Wajs.

As often happens – her work grew in popularity after her death. The younger generation of Gypsies – who would have attended a school – is not likely to condemn her any more. The younger generation is more likely to be proud of the Gypsy poet who gained fame among Gorgios.

Her name should be pronounced Papooshah (Broneeswavah Vice)

The name of her translator into Polish is pronounced Yezhy Feetsofskee

Andrzej Bursa - LEARNING HOW TO WALK

I had so many difficulties

with overcoming laws of gravity

I thought that when in the end I stand on my own two feet

I would get some respect

but they punch me in the face

I don't know what's going on

I try heroically to keep myself upright

and I don't understand it at all

„You are stupid” some well wishers tell me (they are the worst racsals)

„in real life you have to crawl crawl”

so I lay myself down on my belly

with my bum cutely-stupidly sticking up

and I try

from the little sandal to the little shoe

from the little plimsole to the little boot

I am learning how to walk on the world

Translated by W.F.

Andrzej Bursa (pron. Andzhei Boorsah) (1932-1957)

All his short life he lived in Cracow. He made his debut in the press in 1954, although he never wrote praises of socialism. Three years later he died because of problems with his heart. The first book of his poems appeared after his death. He grew up during the Nazi occupation of Poland and the Stalinist terror. Never attracted to the socialist-realism, he wrote poems full of anger, which could only be published after the terror ended. Unfortunately the poet himself did not see that.

Zuzanna Ginczanka - INSTEAD OF A ROSY LETTER

 There are too many streets in my not-too-big town
(I count them every morning but I can't find the one).
My little town is too little, not enough streets in it
(Unfortunately not there, the street where we'd meet).

My little town, although little, a thousand streets could contain
Each leading somewhere far, with both sides nicely paved.
Millions of narrow houses along each of those streets,
Each house as full of people as pumpkins full of pips.
Full of your loving could be a different street every day,
The houses for our meeting would organ music play
On a colourful keyboard, each key a different house,
And we would walk along.
Silence would be
In us.

My little town could stand along a single street
A lonely little streetlet as narrow as a stream.
This little narrow streetlet just two houses could have
Like two little bell flowers, each with a smiling face.
We could come out one evening from our houses' doors;
Maybe one happy evening, maybe one happy dawn,
And this could be the meeting, our hearts ringing like bells,
And we would stay together,
Forever
Till our deaths.

Not enough streets in my town, for it is far too small
Too many streets are in it, I'll never count them all.

Translated by W.F.

In English, NON OMNIS MORIAR seems to be the best known poem by Zuzanna Ginczanka, but this is actually very unusual poem for her. She was a very delicate poet, very feminine. I decided to add another poem of her, more typical of her poetry.

Zuzanna Ginczanka - NON OMNIS MORIAR

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
When it does not love the neighbour and all his belongings
Always ready those belongings to remove.
You, Mrs. Chominowa, you are my neighbour
You will inherit my things after I am taken.
I have no worldly heir, you have grassed on me
In order to speed up my journey to heaven.
Soon you’ll be ready to search for that Jewish gold
It must be hidden in quilts and pillows of down.
You’ll rip them open, and the feathers from the pillows
Will stick to your hands and arms, still wet with my blood.

With those hands like wings you will be an angel
And you'll be ready to fly straight to Heaven.

Translated by W.F.

Zuzanna Ginczanka (pron. Zoozanna Geenchankah) (1917-1944)

Zuzanna Ginczanka was born in 1917 in Kiev as Zuzanna Polina Gincburg. Soon after the Russian Revolution her parents moved to Rowne, which was then in a newly created Republic of Poland (it is in Ukraine now). Rowne was a town whose majority of inhabitants spoke Yiddish, but Zuzanna's parents were emancipated Jews and spoke Russian at home. Thus she had a choice of a language: either Yiddish of the shtetl, Russian of her parents or Polish of her school friends. Fascinated by Polish poetry, she chose Polish and wanted to become a Polish poet. She started publishing her poems when still at school. During her studies in Warsaw she entered literary circles; one of her friends was Witold Gombrowicz, another Julian Tuwim. She published her works mostly in periodicals, only one book of poems appeared before the war. As a pen-name she used half of her Jewish surname with a Polish ending.

During the war she lived at first in Lvov, later in Cracow. Her life is a perfect example of the tension between the Polish underground state, which tried to protect its Jewish citizens, and some of the anti-Semitic Poles, who co-operated with the Nazi authorities. As a fluent Polish speaker she could pass for a non-Jew (most Yiddish speakers spoke Polish with a strong accent), and her friends, who were involved in resistance, found her a new identity. However, her neighbour in Lvov, one Mrs. Chominowa, reported to the Nazis that a Jewish woman lived next door and they came to arrest her. Zuzanna's Polish friends managed to spirit her away in time and she moved to Cracow. There she was arrested again, this time as a member of the resistance, not as a Jew. She was executed in 1944, not long before Russian troops entered Cracow.

Her most famous poem – NON OMNIS MORIAR – is really impossible to translate, most of all because this is really a paraphrase of a well known Polish poem written by Juliusz Slowacki, one of the great authors of old Polish poetry. It is as if someone took one of Shakespeare's sonnets and paraphrased it. Which is exactly what I have done in the translation proposed above.