Wislawa Szmborska
Wislawa Szymborska was born in Kórnik* in Western Poland on 2 July 1923. From 1931 she lived in Krakow, where during 1945-1948 she studied Polish Literature and Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Szymborska made her début in March 1945 with a poem "Szukam slowa" (I am Looking for a Word) in the daily "Dziennik Polski".
Szymborska published 16 collections of poetry: Dlatego zyjemy (1952), Pytania zadawane sobie(1954), Wolanie do Yeti (1957), Sól (1962), Wiersze wybrane (1964), Poezje wybrane (1967), Sto pociech (1967), Poezje (1970), Wszelki wypadek (1972), Wybór wierszy (1973), Tarsjusz i inne wiersze (1976), Wielka liczba (1976), Poezje wybrane II (1983), Ludzie na moscie (1986). Koniec i poczatek (1993, 1996), Widok z ziarnkiem piasku. 102 wiersze (1996). Wislawa Szymborska has also translated French poetry. She died in 2002 at the age of 101.
The End and the Beginning
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa-springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we’ll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.
Wislawa Szymborska:The Mozart of Poetry
Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88. Poland's Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, whose simple words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life, died at 88 on February 1, 2012.
The Nobel award committee's 1996 citation called her the "Mozart of poetry," a woman who mixed the elegance of language with "the fury of Beethoven" and tackled serious subjects with humor. While she was arguably the most popular poet in Poland, most of the world had not heard of the shy, soft-spoken Szymborska before she won the Nobel prize.
She has been called both deeply political and playful, a poet who used humor in unforeseen ways. Her verse, seemingly simple, was subtle, deep and often hauntingly beautiful. She used simple objects and detailed observation to reflect on larger truths, often using everyday images - an onion, a cat wandering in an empty apartment, an old fan in a museum - to reflect on grand topics such as love, death and passing time.
Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said on Twitter that her death was an "irreparable loss to Poland's culture."
Last year, President Bronislaw Komorowski honored Szymborska with Poland's highest distinction, The Order of the White Eagle, in recognition of her contribution to her country's culture.
In reaction to her death, Komorowski wrote that "for decades she infused Poles with optimism and with trust in the power of beauty and the might of the word."
Szymborska was our "guardian spirit," Komorowski wrote. "In her poems we could find brilliant advice which made the world easier to understand."
Rusinek (secretary) said on TVN24 that as long as her condition allowed, Szymborska was working on new poems, but she had not had time to arrange them in order for a new book, which she had intended. The book will be published this year, he said.
The Nobel Prize brought a "revolution" into the life of the modest poet and she had to struggle to protect her privacy, Rusinek said, but the prize also was a "great joy, a great honor which brought new friendships and changes for the better." Despite six decades of writing, Szymborska had less than 400 poems published.
Asked why, she once said: "There is a trash bin in my room. A poem written in the evening is read again in the morning. It does not always survive."
Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski said in a statement that Szymborska was candid, authentic and hostile to any form of celebrity.
"She had understanding for others, she understood the weaknesses of others and had huge tolerance for them," the statement said. "On the other hand, she expected to have a modest place for herself."
Adapted from The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9055887/Wislawa-Szymborska-Nobel-prize-winning-Polish-poet-dies-at-88.html
Hatred
Look, how constantly capable
and how well maintained
in our century: hatred.
How lightly she regards high impediments.
How easily she leaps and overtakes.
She's not like other feelings.
She's both older and younger than they.
She herself gives birth to causes
which awaken her to life.
If she ever dozes, it's not an eternal sleep.
Insomnia does not sap her strength, but adds to it.
Religion or no religion,
as long as one kneels at the starting-block.
Fatherland or no fatherland,
as long as one tears off at the start.
She begins as fairness and equityt.
Then she propels herself.
Hatred. Hatred.
She veils her face with a mien
of romantic ecstasy.
Oh, the other feelings --
decrepit and sluggish.
Since when could that brotherhood
count on crowds?
Did ever empathy
urge on toward the goal?
How many clients did doubt abduct?
Only she abducts who knows her own.
Talented, intelligent, very industrious.
Do we need to say how many songs she has written.
How many pages of history she has numbered.
How many carpets of people she has spread out
over how many squares and stadiums!
Let's not lie to ourselves:
She's capable of creating beauty.
Wonderful is her aura on a black night.
Magnificent cloud masses at rosy dawn.
It's difficult to deny her pathos of ruins
and her coarse humor
mightily towering above them columns.
She's the mistress of contrast
between clatter and silence,
between red blood and white snow.
And above all she never tires of
the motif of the tidy hangman
above the defiled victim.
She's ready for new tasks at any moment.
If she must wait she'll wait.
She said she was blind. Blind?
She has the keen eyes of a sniper
and boldly looks into the future
--she alone.
-translated by Walter Whipple
Possibilities
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
Amanda Palmer reads "Possibilities" by Wisława Szymborska:
https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/amanda-palmer-reads-possibilities-by-wislawa-szymborska?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fbrainpicker%252Famanda-palmer-reads-possibilities-by-wislawa-szymborska
Adam Zagajewski: Just Children
The poet Alice Quinn speaking about Zagajewski's poem, "Just Children":
Adam Zagajewski was born in Lvov, Poland, in 1945, and his masters were Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Zbigniew Herbert, the great poetic voices of post-war Poland. The New Yorker ran Adam's poem "Try To Praise the Mutilated World" in the issue just after Sept. 11, 2001, and it struck a necessary note at that time. These great postwar Polish poets lived through so much: They'd managed to perfect, in the 30 years following the war, a balance of reverence for the world and a sharp awareness of the fragility of life.
One of the things I love about the poem is the way the punctuation figures: the implied single quotations around the word "just," and the use of an exclamation point at the end following that wonderful question "who wouldn't want to be a child, for the last time"—that exclamation point makes a point, but with an air of gentle surprise. I also love the tranquil mood of the poem and the way that as you read it your senses light up to the dimension of the sentence—you're gazing so intently at the lindens and at the children, lulled into a meditation on how delightful it would be to be a child. Then comes a swerve at the close: "Who wouldn't want to be a child for the last time"—and you think "Ummm … maybe." Childhood, after all, is just the braided thing that every stage of life is: ecstasy, but misery and other things, too.
You could read this a hundred times. It's so limpid and so wise. It reminds me sometimes of that beautiful poem of Elizabeth Bishop's "The Sandpiper" and the lines "[t]he world is a mist. And then the world is/ minute and vast and clear." It's that shift of scale, there, between looking at the children and yet being aware of the larger present—the devil and the minor gods and the politicians who don't keep their promises but are still likely to be just as pierced by the sight of the children playing in the sand.
Just Children
for Ewunia
It was just children playing in the sand
(accompanied by the narcotic scent
of blooming lindens, don't forget),
just children, but after all
the devil, and the minor gods,
and even forgotten politicians,
who'd broken all their promises,
were also there and watched them
with unending rapture.
Who wouldn't want to be a child
—for the last time!
Try to Praise the Mutilated World
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
Esther Nisenthal Krinitz (Polish/American)
Esther Nisenthal Krinitz was a survivor of the Holocaust in Poland. In October 1942, after living under Nazi occupation for 3 years, the Jews of the village of Mniszek were ordered to report to the nearby train station for "relocation." The 15-year old Esther decided she would not go but would instead take her 13-year old sister Mania and look for work among Polish farmers.
Turned away by Polish friends and neighbors, the sisters assumed new names and evaded the Gestapo, pretending to be Catholic farm girls. They never saw their family again. After the war ended, the two sisters made their way to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany, where Esther met and married Max Krinitz. In 1949, Esther, Max, and their daughter immigrated to the United States. Esther died at the age of 74, in March 2001, after a long illness.
In 1977, at the age of 50, Esther Nisenthal Krinitz began creating works of fabric art to tell her story of survival during the Holocaust. Trained as a dressmaker but untrained in art, she created a collection of 36 fabric pictures of strong, vivid colors and striking details with a sense of folk-like realism. Meticulously stitched words beneath the pictures provide a narrative.
The combined effect of story and art is powerful. While the pictures are visually pleasing, a closer examination reveals the shocking incongruity between the pastoral surroundings and the human violence, terror and betrayal depicted. Tom Freudenheim, former director of the Berlin Jewish Museum, wrote: "These extraordinary pictures are very moving, but not in least bit sentimental. The compositional concepts are highly sophisticated. I was overwhelmed by what I saw."
Art and Remembrance has created a traveling exhibit of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz's work that is now touring museums in the United States. In the future they hope to bring the exhibit to Poland, Israel and other countries that share the legacy of the Holocaust.
One important goal of the exhibit is to create an educational component that will teach younger generations about the Holocaust and the lessons of courage, tolerance and faith to be learned from Esther's experiences. In addition to the 36 pictures that make up the full collection, Art and Remembrance plans to offer additional educational materials , programs, activities and events. The website will be enhanced to become interactive, to allow young people to share their impressions and express their feelings and thoughts. A catalog will be developed as a supplement to the exhibit, to include full-color reproductions of the pictures and critical essays by scholars.
Art and Remebrance's 30-minute video on Esther Krinitz: Through the eye of the needle:
https://youtu.be/HCvlhYCKruQ
Complementing the exhibit and other materials, Hyperion Books for Children has published a book of Esther's work, " Memories of Survival ." The book has received widespread critical praise, and was selected by the New York Public Library as one of its 100 Best Books of 2005.
Examples of Esther's Fabric Art
The Somber Death March by Esther Nisenthal Krinitz
"On Friday, October 15, 1942, it was the beginning of the end, the somber march of the Rachow Polish Jews to their deaths."
When we were preparing our annotated bibliography on World War II we came across a truly wonderful book, Memories of Survival, featuring the story and the impressive artwork of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, told by her daughter Bernice Steinhardt. There is an old adage, that frequently becomes cliche, but in the case of Esther's work, a picture is worth a thousand words. What can be more horrendous and unfathomable than the loss and grief of the stories that came out of the Holocaust? Somehow Esther's art, besides being one individual's testimony helps us walk through that horrible time of history and forces us to look where we might choose to shut our eyes or turn our back.
We got a note from Bernice several days ago telling us that there is a new organization, Art and Remembrance, that features Esther's work, and whose mission is to change people's hearts and minds by illuminating the experience of war, oppression, and injustice through the power and passion of personal narrative in art.
Visit http://www.artandremembrance.org/ and learn more about Esther and view some of her incredible works of fabric art.
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933 –2010) was a composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, Poland between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His Webernian-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid 1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2 and the hugely popular Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir, to the choral 1981 hymn Miserere, the 1993 Kleines Requiem für eine Polka and his requiem Good Night.
Until 1992, Górecki was viewed as a remote and fiery figure known only to a few connoisseurs, primarily as one of a number of composers responsible for sparking a postwar renaissance in Polish music. In 1992, 15 years after it was composed, a recording of his Third Symphony, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs—recorded with soprano Dawn Upshaw and released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the Holocaust—became a worldwide commercial and critical success, selling more than a million copies and vastly exceeding the typical lifetime sales of a recording of symphonic music by a 20th-century composer. As surprised as anyone at its popularity, Górecki said, "Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music […] somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed." This popular success did not generate wide interest in Górecki's other works, and he pointedly resisted the temptation to repeat earlier success, or compose for commercial reward.
Apart from two brief periods studying in Paris and a short time living in Berlin, Górecki spent most of his life in southern Poland.
Symphony of Sorrowful Songs Lyrics
Symphony No.3 - III Symfonia zwana też Symfonią pieśni żałosnych
I
Synku miły i wybrany,
Rozdziel z matką swoje rany,
A wszakom cię, synku miły, w swem sercu nosiła,
A takież tobie wiernie służyła.
Przemów k matce, bych się ucieszyła,
Bo już jidziesz ode mnie, moja nadziejo miła.
Lament świętokrzyski
z "Pieśni łysogórskich"
(druga połowa XV w.)
II
Mamo, nie płacz, nie.
Niebios Przeczysta Królowo,
Ty zawsze wspieraj mnie.
Zdrować Mario, Łaskiś Pełna.
Zakopane "Pałace"
cela nr 3 ściana nr 3
Błazusiakówna Helena Wanda
lat 18 siedzi od 25 IX 44
III
Kajze mi sie podziol
moj synocek mily?
Pewnie go w powstaniu
zle wrogi zabily.
Wy niedobrzy ludzie,
dlo Boga swietego
cemuscie zabili
synocka mojego?
Zodnej jo podpory
juz nie byda miala,
chocbych moje stare
ocy wyplakala.
Chocby z mych lez gorkich
drugo Odra byla,
jesce by synocka
mi nie ozywila.
Lezy on tam w grobie,
a jo nie wiem kandy
choc sie opytuja
miedzy ludzmi wsandy.
Moze nieborocek
lezy kay w dolecku,
a moglby se lygac
na swoim przypiecku.
Ej, cwierkejcie mu tam,
wy ptosecki boze,
kiedy mamulicka
znalezc go nie moze.
A ty, boze kwiecie,
kwitnijze w okolo,
niech sie synockowi
choc lezy wesolo
fragment Pieśni ludowej z opolskiego.
Górecki's Symphony No. 3
(in translation)
First Movement
My son, my chosen and beloved
Share your wounds with your mother
And because, dear son, I have always carried you in my heart,
And always served you faithfully
Speak to your mother, to make her happy,
Although you are already leaving me, my cherished hope.
(Lamentation of the Holy Cross Monastery from the "Lysagóra Songs" collection. Second half of the 15th century)
Second Movement
No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Support me always.
"Zdrowas Mario." (*)
(Prayer inscribed on wall 3 of cell no. 3 in the basement of "Palace," the Gestapo's headquarters in Zadopane; beneath is the signature of Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, and the words "18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.")
(*) "Zdrowas Mario" (Ave Maria)—the opening of the Polish prayer to the Holy Mother
Third Movement
Where has he gone
My dearest son?
Perhaps during the uprising
The cruel enemy killed him
Ah, you bad people
In the name of God, the most Holy,
Tell me, why did you kill
My son?
Never again
Will I have his support
Even if I cry
My old eyes out
Were my bitter tears
to create another River Oder
They would not restore to life
My son
He lies in his grave
and I know not where
Though I keep asking people
Everywhere
Perhaps the poor child
Lies in a rough ditch
and instead he could have been
lying in his warm bed
Oh, sing for him
God's little song-birds
Since his mother
Cannot find him
And you, God's little flowers
May you blossom all around
So that my son
May sleep happily
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