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.