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.