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.

Jerzy Harasymowicz - A NIGHT IN MARCH

Moon is rushing in ash trees

I'll throw him some golden straw

Moon is rushing in ash trees

I'll brush him really well

Moon is rushing in ash trees

I'll give him an old mantle

Moon is rushing in ash trees

I really love you, my Moon

Moon is rushing in ash trees

I'll drive him to my backyard

Translated by W.F.

Jerzy Harasymowicz (pron. Yezhy Harasimoveech) (1933-1999)

A  poet of the “Generation ‘56”, but very different from Zbigniew Herbert. The subject of poems by Harasymowicz is the cultural landscape of the countryside of South-Eastern Poland, around Cracow, his hometown. This is an area where two cultures meet: Polish Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Greek Orthodox. But it is not theology or philosophy that Harasynowicz is interested in. What arrests his attention is an Ukrainian church seen from afar in a mountain valley, or a dialect spoken by villagers. He uses different dialects to give atmosphere to his poems, in fact some of the poems are written partly in Polish and partly in Ukrainian. He must have been a keen hiker, his poems are full of images from the mountain trail. Many of his poems are like haiku – very short, like quick glances at nature. When he died his ashes were dispersed over the mountains.

In the 1970-ties he was extremely popular, possibly the most widely read poet at that time. He was especially popular among hikers, many a campfire song was written to his lyrics. His popularity fell rapidly after 1980, when he publicly declared his support for general Jaruzelski and his martial law. Now he is slowly regaining popularity among younger generation, for whom the martial law is a problem of a bygone era.

Stanislaw Baranczak - WITH ONE BREATH

With one breath, with one bracket of a breath closing a sentence

with one bracket of ribs around the heart

closing like a fist, like a net

around the narrow fish of breath, with one breath

to close all and to close oneself in all with

one thin slice of a flame shaved off from lungs

to torch the walls of prisons and breathe in the fire

behind the bone bars of the chest, into the tower

of the windpipe, with one breath, before you choke

gagged with the thickening air

of the last breath of a man who is shot

and of the hot breath of gun barrels, and clouds

of steaming blood spilled on concrete

the air, which carries your voice

or muffles it, swallower of swords

the side arms, bloodless but bloodily

wounding the throat of brackets, between which

like a heart between ribs, like a fish in the net

flutters a sentence stammered with one breath

until the last breath

Translated by W.F.

Stanislaw Baranczak (pron. Staneeswaf Baranchak) (born 1946)

The leading poet of the so-called “Generation ‘68” (Baranczak himself coined that phrase). 1968 was the year of the hippie “summer of love” and student demonstrations all over the world, but in Poland it was for many people the year of disillusionment. In March that year Polish students demonstrated against the communist censorship and restrictions at universities, while the government sent the riot police against them and imprisoned its leaders. For people like Baranczak (himself a student at the time) this was a shock. From early on the subject of his poetry is the confrontation between ordinary people and an oppressive government.

Baranczak became a lecturer at the University of Poznan, but in 1976 he joined the dissident movement and was sacked from his post. The dissident movement included the uncensored underground publishing movement, which was a new phenomenon, since then poets like Baranczak could write without taking censorship into account. Political allusions (present in Herbert’s early poetry) went out of the window, poets could write openly about the secret police entering a poetry meeting.

Although Baranczak lost his job at the University of Poznan, he was considered one of the world’s best scholars of Slavonic literature and was offered a post to teach this subject at Harvard University in Boston. In 1980 the Polish authorities allowed him t leave the country and Baranczak has lived in Boston ever since.

Tadeusz Rozewicz - GOLDEN MOUNTAINS

The first time

I saw mountains

was when I was twenty six

years of age

I didn't laugh

didn't shout

in their presence

I spoke in whisper

When I returned home

I went to tell

my mother

what mountains look like

It was difficult to tell

at night

everything looks different

mountains and words

mother was silent

maybe she was tired

and fell asleep

in the clouds

the Moon grew

the golden mountain

of poor people

Translated by W.F.

Tadeusz Rozewicz (pron. Tadewoosh Roozhevich) (1921 - 2014)

The third of the three great post-war poets of Poland. Born in a small town in central Poland, during the war he was a member of the underground resistance army fighting the Nazis. After the war he studied History of Art, but never finished it. He was one of the first post-war poets to write in an open verse. Reflected in those poems is the terror of war, but never despair. For some reason his poems were published before 1956, during the Stalinist era, even though Rozewicz in his poetry never praised socialism or Stalin. Thus for a reader living in the country it would appear that Rozewicz was the first important poet to write in a modern style. In the hindsight we know that at the same time Herbert wrote no less modern poems, but didn’t publish them, whereas Czeslaw Milosz published his poetry abroad.

Wislawa Szymborska - NOTHING IS GIVEN

Nothing is given, everything is borrowed

I am in debt up to my ears

I will have to pay for myself

With myself,

Pay for my life with my life.

It has been so arranged:

My heart will have to be repossessed

My liver will have to be repossessed,

And every one of my fingers as well.

Too late to tear up the contract;

My debts will be extracted from me

Together with my skin.

I am walking in this world

In a crowd of debtors

Some of whom will be forced

To pay off their wings,

Others, whether they like it or not

Will pay for their lives.

Everything is on loan

Every tissue in us

Not a single eyelash or leaf-stem

Will be kept for ever.

The account is very accurate

And it looks like

We'll be left with nothing.

I cannot recall

When where and why

I allowed to open this account

In my name

Our protest against it

Is called „soul”

It is the only item

Not in the register.

Translated by W.F.

Wislawa Szymborska (pron. Veeswavah Shimborskah) (1923 - 2012)

Born in a little town of Bnin near Poznan, she grew up and spent most of her life in Cracow. Unique among poets considered important today – during the era of Stalinist terror she wrote socialist-realist poems praising the socialist state and its communist leaders. She was also a member of the communist party, although in 1966 she left. She made her debut in 1952 with a book of her socialist-realist poems, and thus she cannot be considered a poet of the “Generation ‘56”. Later she became disillusioned with communism and supported the dissident movement. Her poetry was considered good, but not the world-class (as was the case of Milosz, Herbert and Rozewicz), therefore her Nobel Prize in 1996 was a big surprise to everybody. As it happens – the Nobel Prize changed the popular opinion and now she is considered one of the greatest Polish poets.

Zbigniew Herbert - REPORT FROM HEAVEN

In heaven the work week is 30 hours long

The wages are higher, prices always go down

The physical work doesn't make you feel tired (because the gravitational force is not so strong)

Chopping wood is just like typewriting

The social order is stable and the government wise

Really the life in heaven is better than in any other country.

In the beginning it was supposed to be different -

The circles of light, choirs and degrees of abstraction.

However, the separation of the soul from the body

Was not entirely successful and she was arriving here

With a drop of fat attached, or a thread of muscle.

Conclusions had to be drawn

A grain of the absolute was mixed with a grain of clay.

One more deviation from the doctrine; it will be the last.

Only John foresaw this – you'll be resurrected in a body.

Only a few see God.

He is only for those of pure pneuma.

The rest listens to official messages about miracles and floods.

In time all will see God,

Although nobody knows when this is going to happen.

So far on Saturday at noon

The sirens sound sweetly

And the heavenly proletariat leave their factories

Clumsily carrying their wings under their arm, like violins.

Translated by W.F.

Zbigniew Herbert (pron. Zbeegnyef Herbert) (1924-1998)

An economist by education, for some time he worked in a bank. Later he studied philosophy. Fascinated by the Mediterranean civilisation, he wrote poetry full of allusions to the culture of antiquity. During the worst Stalinist terror he wrote poetry, but never published it, making his debut only after the worst years, in 1956. He is considered the most important poet of the so-called “Generation ‘56”.

Czeslaw Milosz translated his poems onto English and thus Herbert gained his international reputation, even before Milosz himself. For some time the two poets were very friendly, but after the end of the communist era Herbert in his writings viciously attacked everyone who has ever had any sympathy for the communist regime. That included Herbert’s erstwhile mentor, Czeslaw Milosz.

The best known poems of Herbert are philosophical deliberations of “Mr. Cogito”, but many critics agree that his best poems are the earlier ones, those reflecting on the themes of Mediterranean antiquity.

Czeslaw Milosz - MEDITATION

It is quite possible, O Lord, that people were wrong when they praised You.

You weren't the prince on a throne, to whom prayers and smoke of frankincense raise from the earth

The throne they imagined was empty and you smiled bitterly

When you saw them turning to you with hope

That you will save their crop from hail, their bodies from disease

That you will save them from pestilence, fire, famine war.

The traveller staying by the invisible waters

You kept alight the tiny flame in the surrounding darkness.

By that fire, deep in thoughts, you shook your head.

You really wanted to help them, glad whenever you could.

Full of sympathy, you forgave their mistake,

Their deceit, of which they were aware, though they pretended they didn't see it.

Even the ugliness, when they gathered in their churches.

My heart is filled with awe, O Lord, I want to talk to you,

Because I think you understand me, despite my contradictions.

I think I know now what it means to love people

And why loneliness, pity and anger are barriers to love.

It is enough to ponder about one life persistently and forcefully.

Of – for example – one woman, which is what I am doing now,

And a multitude of those weak creatures will manifest itself.

They can be just and patient till the end.

What more can I do, O Lord, but to remember it all

And bow before you in deep supplication

Imploring because for their heroism: admit us to Your glory.

Translated by W.F.

Czeslaw Milosz (pron. Cheswaf Meewosh) (1911-2004)

Born in Lithuania, he would consider himself to be a Polish-speaking Lithuanian. Born when Lithuania was a part of the Russian Empire, he travelled around with his father – an engineer – and grew up bilingual, speaking Polish at home and Russian elsewhere. After the Soviet Revolution the family returned home. Poland has just regained its independence. So did Lithuania, but the Lithuanian nationalists wanted to eradicate the Polish language there, so the Polish-speaking part of the country (including the city of Vilnius) chose to join Poland rather than Lithuania. Milosz grew up in Vilnius, went to the university there and published his first poems. During the Nazi occupation he lived in Warsaw, where he took part in the underground publishing movement. After the war at first he supported the new regime, but soon he was disillusioned and emigrated – first to France, later to the USA. For many years he taught Slavonic Literatures at the University of Berkeley in California. After the end of the communist rule Milosz returned to Poland and died in Cracow.

In the communist Poland his works were banned, the censors wouldn’t even let his name be mentioned. Some of the Polish anticommunist exiles wouldn’t accept him either because of his support for the regime during the first years after the war. Nevertheless he gained international recognition and in 1980 received the Nobel Prize. Everything changed after that – it was impossible to ignore him in Poland and the traditional exiles had to accept his great talent. After the end of communism in Poland he was treated as a national prophet.

During his life Milosz witnessed the indescribable inhumanity of the Nazi occupation, including the destruction of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto. He has consciously decided that his poetry will not reflect desperation, widespread in those years. There is enough evil, poetry should bring hope – this is what he tried to do all his life.

Milosz himself translated his poems into English (in collaboration with Robert Hass) and his translations are easily available. I, however, made a few translations of my own and decided to include them here. Perhaps another view of the same poem won't do any harm.

Jan Kochanowski - SONG 5

Who has his bread

All that man needs

Does not need to worry about high incomes

About villages, towns and high castles.

In my opinion a lord is someone

Who is satisfied with what he has.

Whoever seeks more than he has, shows himself

That in his own opinion he is inferior.

Great riches has gained

Who has discarded greed.

It is more difficult than to make Turks pay tribute

Or to fight fierce Tartars.

A big chunk of the world

Won in a short time

The king of Macedon, but still he thought

That for him it won't be enough to have the whole world.

What's the use of armour

Or temporal power?

Gold is no medicine for your heart.

Treasures won't drive worries away from your head.

Lady Death is nasty

Grabs by their throats

Both rich lords and their servants

Won't give you time to regulate the accounts.

Humans, however,

Mostly worry about this:

How to make gold come to gold.

No matter how much, a glutton won't have enough.

It will all stay here

After you are deceased

And what you gathered here greedily

Will end up in somebody else's house.

This supposed safe house

One day will disintegrate

And the wine that you worry so much about today

Your grandchildren will give to horses to drink.

Translated by W.F.

Jan Kochanowski (pronounce Yan Ko-hanofskee) (1530-1584)

The best known poet of the Polish Renaissance. A son of a noble family affluent enough to send him to the best universities, first to Cracow, later to Padua in Italy. Padua at that time was one of the best European universities, a centre of humanism, Kochanowski would meet there the best minds of the continent. After he returned to Poland he had a career in administration, for some time he was a secretary of king Sigismund Augustus. After the king’s death he retired from official duties and lived in his manor in a village called Czarnolas.

The Kingdom of Poland was at the hight of its power at that time. It was one of the great powers of Europe, the one that stopped the expansion of the Ottoman empire. Consequently in Kochanowski’s poetry there are no worries about the independence of the motherland, so typical of the later Polish poetry. The typical subject in the poetry of Kochanowski are joys of simple village life.

Adam Mickiewicz - ORDON'S RAMPART

We weren't told to shoot; I stepped on a gun

And looked at the field – 200 cannons thundered.

Rows of Russian artillery are in lines

Spread far and wide, like shores of a sea.

I saw their captain – he came, signalled with his sword

And like a bird he closed a wing of his army.

From under that wing infantry spills out

In long and grey columns, like a torrent of mud

Sprinkled with flashing bayonets; like vultures

The black banners lead those columns to their deaths.

Against them stands a white, narrow, sharp bastion

Like a rock cutting through the sea – Ordon's rampart.

It only had six guns, all flashing and smoking

And an angry mouth won't say as many words

A despairing soul wont change it's mood as quickly

As those guns shot cannonballs, bombs and grenades.

Look, there a grenade plunges into the middle of a column

Like a lava into the waves of the sea – it covers the column with smoke

The grenade explodes in a cloud of smoke, the column flies to the sky

And a great clearing shines among the lines.

(...)

Where is the king, who sends those crowds to the slaughter?

Does he share their courage? Does he risk his life?

No, he sits 500 miles away on his throne.

A great king, the autocrat of a half of the world.

He frowns – a thousand prisoners are sent to Siberia.

Puts a signature – a thousand mothers cry over graves of their children.

He nods – whips are cracked from Niemen to Khiva.

O strongman, powerful as God, malevolent as Satan

When the Turks beyond the Balkans are scared of your guns

When the envoy from Paris licks your feet

Warsaw alone laughs at you omnipotence

She lifts her hand against you to take down the crown

The crown of king Casimir and of king Boleslaus

Because you have stolen and bloodied it, you son of a Russky bitch...

Translated by W.F.

Comments:

The subject – 1830 uprising against the Russian rule in Poland. After the Napoleonic wars a part of Poland – including Warsaw – was given to Russia and the Tzar assumed a title of the King of Poland (which is why „he has stolen the crown”). Casimir and Boleslaus are names of two great Polish kings of the past.  Ordon is a name of an officer who commanded one of the bastions during the defence of Warsaw against Russian troops. 

Adam Mickiewicz - DAD'S HOMECOMING

Come here children, come all together

Out of town by the pole on the hill.

Let's kneel there before a holy icon

And piously say a prayer.

Your dad is not coming and I wait for him

Each morning and evening, in tears and fear.

Rivers burst their banks, forests are full of wild animals

And roads are full of brigands.

When the children hear this, they run all together

Out of town by the pole on the hill.

There they kneel before the holy icon

And they start the prayer.

They kiss the ground, then: „In the Name of the Father

The Son and the Holy Spirit.

Be praised, Most Holy Trinity

Now and forever, Amen.”

Then „Our Father...” and „Hail Mary” and the Creed,

The Ten Commandments and more

And when they have finished the set prayers

They take a book prom a pocket.

And the litany to the Holy Virgin

The eldest brother sings, and with him

„O Holy Mother” all the children sing

„Protect, protect our father”.

Creaking wheels of carts suddenly are heard

Familiar carts can be seen.

The children jump, shout as loud as they can:

“It's our dad, he is coming!”

The merchant saw them, shed tears of happiness

Jumped to the ground from his cart.

“How are you all, what are news from home?

Did you long for your dad?”

“Is your mum well? Your auntie? Everybody else?

Here are raisins in the basket.”

This one is talking and that one is talking

Lots of happiness and noise.

“Go” the merchant commands his servants,

“I will walk to the town with the children”

Suddenly robbers appear all around.

There is twelve of them.

They have long beards, long and twisted whiskers

Wild eyes, dirty garments.

Knives behind their belts, a sword flashes by the side

A huge mace held in a hand.

The children cry, they cling to their father

They hide under his mantle.

The servants tremble, the masters face is pale

His shaking hands he lifts to the robbers.

“Take all the carts with all the goods with them

But let us walk away.

Don't make the little children orphans

Don't make a young wife a widow.”

The brigands don;'t listen, one leads away horses,

Another shouts: “Where is the money!”

And grabs the enormous mace,

Another threatens the servants with a sword.

Suddenly a senior brigand shouts “Stop it!”

And drives away the gang.

He lets go the father and children

and says: “Go without fear”

The merchant thanks, but the robber says:

“Don't thank me, I tell you honestly.

I'd be the first to crack your head with a mace

If not for the children's prayers.”

“It is because of the children I am letting you go

Thanks to them you are alive and well.

You can thank them for what has happened

And I will tell you why.

“Long ago we heard that a merchant will pass this way

So I and my companions

Here outside the town, by a pole on a hill

Were sitting in an ambush.”

“Today I came and looking through bushes

I saw them praying to God.

I heard them, at first it made me laugh

But then my heart started trembling.”

“I heard them and I remembered my own home

Suddenly I dropped my mace.

I also have a wife, and with my wife

There is my little son.”

“O merchant, go to the town, I will go to the woods.

You, children, sometimes come to this hill

And for my soul

Sometimes say a prayer.”

Translated by W.F.

 

Adam Mickiewicz (pron. Adam Meetzkyevich) (1798-1855)

Born four years after Poland lost its independence, conquered by Russia, Germany and Austria, Mickiewicz is the leading poet that encouraged his countrymen to struggle to regain it. In fact he considered himself to be a Polish-speaking Lithuanian (the kingdom that usually is called Polish was actually the United Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania). He was born in a small town called Nowogrodek in what used to be Lithuania (now it is Belarus), studied in Vilnius (today the capital of Lithuania), travelled in Russia, emigrated to France, died in Turkey, he actually has never been to Poland proper. In France he taught Slavonic Literature at Sorbonne and was a member of Academie Francaise. In Turkey he tried to organise a Polish legion that would fight against Russia.

Throughout the 19^th century many Polish poets wrote poems that would help to keep the fighting spirit, so one day the independence might be regained. Mickiewicz is the best known of those poets. Of course this was not the only subject of his poetry. His best work, entitled “Pan Tadeusz” is a masterpiece unique in the whole European literature. It is a multi-plot novel written entirely in beautiful and majestic verse. Set in a manor in rural Lithuania, it has a romantic plot as well as a fast action plot, and a dark past of one of the main characters being slowly discovered. Of course there is also a fight between Russians and Poles, which in the book the Poles win.

Cyprian Kamil Norwid - IN VEROVA

Over the house of Capuletti and Montague,

Washed by rain, moved by thunder,

Calm eye of deep blue

Looks at the ruins of hostile castles,

At the crumbling gates to gardens,

And throws a star from on high.

Cypresses say that it is for Juliet,

That it is for Romeo, this tear drop from heaven

That fall on the graves to water them,

But people say, and they say with wisdom

That these are stones rather than the tear drops

And nobody waits for them.

Translated by W.F.

 

Cyprian Kamil Norwid (pron. Tzipryan Kameel Norveed)(1821-1883)

Born in Warsaw, he wanted to be a painter and enrolled in an art school, which he never finished. He travelled to Italy, Germany, France, even New York, from where he returned to Paris. He never returned to Poland and died in Paris.

One of the forgotten poets, never popular during his lifetime, some of his works weren’t even published until well after his death. He died penniless and homeless in Paris. A 100 years after his death he is considered one of Poland’s greatest poets, even rock musicians write songs to his lyrics.