Is Czeslaw Milosz the greatest Polish poet? (poetry from Poland cycle)

Growing up in Poland in 1960s and 1970s and being interested in poetry I came across all the great names, including Zbigniew Herbert, but I never heard of Milosz. Then one day in 1977 I was invited to go to a poetry reading of "the greatest living Polish poet". I somehow assumed it would be Herbert. At the evening I heard two well known Polish actors reciting poems that were definitely not Herbert's, I knew his style well enough to realise that, but I couldn't recognise who it was. However, I had to agree - this was the best poetry I had heard so far. Only later I learned this was Czeslaw Milosz, a poet banned in Poland, which is why I had never heard of him. It all changed in 1980, when Milosz received the Nobel prize. Then he suddenly was published in his own country and became a national hero.

Czeslaw Milosz was born in Lithuania and 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 there 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 anti-communist 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.

His poetry is often compared with that of Zbigniew Herbert, whom Milosz himself promoted in the English speaking world and whom some people consider even greater. I myself consider this competition "who is the greatest" a futile activity. I see most of all one big difference between them: where Herbert uses metaphor in his poems, Milosz uses metonymy most often. This is why I had no doubt the poems weren't Herbert's when I heard them for the first time.

Milosz himself translated his own poems into English (in collaboration with Robert Hass) and his translations are easily available. I, however, had audacity to write some of the poems in English again (so to speak), having been inspired by the Polish versions I read. Here they are:

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.

BELATED MATURITY

Belatedly, when I am nearly ninety, the door inside me opened

and I entered the brightness of dawn.

I saw my earlier lives float away, like ships

One after another, together with their suffering.

Countries, cities, gardens, sea bays, they all suddenly appeared

Assigned to my pen, so I could describe them better than before.

I was not separated from the people, sadness and sympathy formed the bond between us

I said: We have forgotten thet we all are the children of the King.

Because we come from where the difference between yes and no doesn't exist

Or the difference between is, was and will be.

Woe to us, because we use less than a hundredth

Of the gift given to us for our long journey.

Moments of yesterday and of centuries gone: a strike of a sword,

Making up eyelashes before a mirror of polished metal,

Deadly shot of a musket, a sailing ship hitting a reef -

They all live in us and wiil have to be completed.

I always knew I would be a worker in a vinyard,

Just like all people living in my time,

Wheather they are aware of it on not.

IN CRACOW

On the border between this and the other world, in Cracow

Patter patter on worn floors of churches

One generation after another. There I understood

Something of the customs of my sisters and brothers.

Nakedness of a woman meets nakedness of a man

And completes itself with the other half

Corporal, or maybe divine.

It probably is the same,

As „Song of Solomon” tells us.

Isn't it true that everyone must hug the Ever Living?

His fragrance of apples, saffron, cinnamon, cloves, frankincense

Him, who is and who will come

With the light of the wax candles?

He, divisible, separate for everyone

Accepts him and her in an oblate, in their own flame.

They cover the light with the fabric of their misty velvet garments

They wear masks of silk, porcelain, brass and silver,

So the faces, which are common, wouldn't get mixed up.

Their graves will be adorned with crosses of marble.

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"

Why Zbigniew Herbert did not receive a Nobel Prize? (poetry from Poland cycle)

When Czeslaw Milosz received his Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, some people asked this question. Why indeed? Isn't Herbert a better poet after all?

Zbigniew Herbert was a poet who didn't want to cooperate with communists and in 1950s, when many poets wrote poems praising socialism because they wanted to be published, Herbert refused and only circulated his poems among friends. Only after the liberalisation of 1956 his poems were published. There were more poets who made their début in that year, they were called "Generation 56" and Herbert was considered the best of them. He was discovered by Czeslaw Milosz, who was also a poet and who at the time was teaching at the University of Berkeley in California. Milosz translated Herbert's poems and published them in America. Some say Milosz only became known because of his translations of Herbert's poems. Others clearly have a different opinion as it was Milosz who in the end received the Nobel Prize.

The two poets were for some time very friendly but later Herbert started attacking everyone who had any involvement with the communist regime. That included Czeslaw Milosz, who for a brief period after the war worked for the Polish embassy in Paris. Later Milosz became known as the author of books like "The Captive Mind", which analyses writers seduced by communism, but for Herbert this was clearly not enough.

The best known poems of Herbert are those in the cycle of Mr. Cogito, published in 1970s, but for some people (me included) his earlier poems have more charm, which their magical rhythm only amplifies. Here I wrote three poems having been inspired by Zbigniew Herbert.

TAMARISK

I was telling about battles

battlements and warships

the slaughtered heroes

the sloughtering heroes

but I forgot about this one

I was telling about a sea storm

about walls crumbling down

about cornfields aflame

hills toppled over

but I forgot about the tamarisk

when he lies

pierced by a lance

and the mouth of his wound

closes

he does not see

either the sea

or the town

or the friend

he sees

just next to his face

a tamarisk

he climbs

onto the highest

dry twig of the tamarisk

and going around

brown and green leaves

he tries

to fly to heaven

without wings

without blood

without thoughts

without...

THE PRIEST

The priest whose deity

descended to earth

in a broken up temple

showed the human face

the helples priest

who raising his arms

knows that it won't bring rain or locust

neither good harvest nor hailstorm

- I repeat the same verse

with the same intonation

of awe

the neck ready for martyrdom

is struck by a flat hand of a mocker

my holy dance before the altar

is only seen by a shadow

that moves like a street urchin

- nevertheless

I raise my arms and eyes

I raise my song

and I know that the incense of my offering

that drills into a cold sky

plaits a plait to a deity

who has no head

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 the soul 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 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.

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"

Why is Papusza considered a Polish poet? (poetry from Poland cycle)

She never wrote in Polish, only in her native Gypsy language. Even today the Polish Gypsies speak Polish with a clear foreign accent and very likely this was her case as well.  Why is she considered a Polish poet?

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 someone 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 authorities 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 is 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 gone to 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.

O DEEP DARK FOREST (Vesho dadoro mio)

O deep dark forest

You are my father, I know.

You brought me up,

Later you left me.

Your leaves tremble

And I tremble, too.

You sing and I sing.

You laugh and I laugh.

You have never forgotten

And I remember, too.

Dear God, where shall I go?

What shall I do, where shall I find

Fables and songs?

I don’t go to the forest any more.

I don’t go to the meetings with the river.

O deep dark forest

You are my father

I know.

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 from 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.

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"

A lesson from Stanislaw Baranczak (poetry from Poland cycle)

 Stanislaw Baranczak (pron. Staneeswaf Baranchak) (1946-2014) was a leading poet of the so-called “Generation ‘68” (Baranczak himself coined that phrase). 1968 was the time of the hippies 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.

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.

However, when I settled in England and was surrounded by all those books in English, including books of poetry, and I wondered how they might sound in my mother tongue. So I wrote them anew, in Polish. Years passed, at one point I realised that I had lived in England more than a half of my life. Then I started doing the same, but the other way around: writing in English what I knew in Polish. Naturally I tried to render in English what influenced me when I was younger. Poems by Baranczak were among those things.

The poem titled "With one breath" was one of the most influential poems of my generation in Poland, whereas "The evening of poetry reading" was an actual even at which I was also present, when the secret police entered, arrested all those present and detained them for 48 hours.

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 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

A SHOT BROUGHT ME DOWN TO EARTH

A shot brought me down to earth

a shot in a dark alley

a dark negation behind a shaken window pane

it got me, shot though, brought down when I was having high dreams

in an ant-like stampede, where all muscles agree

supported by the stirrup of loudly pumping blood

with the harness of tendons barely restraining

with the bridle of tongue in the mouth

it brought me down to earth

this gunshot with its dark, sober vowel of negation

my hand grabbed the throat shot through

the same fingers which

there, in the dark alley

held the neck of the rifle and

the same which grabbed the earth

into a fist very tight, as if they wanted the Earth

knead into a cobblestone and throw it at me

this shot through down the sleepy acceptance

of my body when it ran towards the greedy meadows

and, in each moment

shot through with a volley

of my own blood, which from veins' dark alleys

gushed impatiently, multiplied in light

I saw

myself as I fell on the tarmac with the throat shot through

with the bridle of the tongue turned into a gag

wet with the words written into my body

by a lead bullet

IF YOU HAVE TO SCREAM, DO IT QUIETLY

If you have to scream, do it quietly (walls

have

ears), if you have to love

turn the light off (your neighbour

has

binoculars), if you have to

live somewhere, don't close the door (the authorities

have

warrants), if you

have to suffer, do it in your own house (life

has

its rights), if

you have to live, limit yourself in everything (everything

has

its limits)

NOBODY WARNED ME

Nobody warned me that freedom may also mean something like

sitting at the police station with a rough book 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 dirty

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

EVENING OF POETRY

They came, because there are certain things and anyway it is your own fault, gentlemen.

They entered, because there are certain laws and I don't think you'd like us to break in.

They stopped the reading, because there are certain words and we we'll give you an advice..

They confiscated the poems, because there are certain limits and lets agree.

They checked everybody's documents, because there are certain regulations and you better don't stretch our patience.

They searched the flat, because there are certain rules and please calm down this child, madam.

They took with them certain people, because certain things have to be done and don't worry, your husband will be back in two days.

They didn't hit anybody, because there are certain forms and oh yes, you'd like it, wouldn't you, gents.

They didn't work too long, because there was certain film on the telly and after all we are humans too.

CLEAN HANDS

Fingers of a young officer of the Security Service

who in his office at the railway station looked through

drawings of Jan Lebenstein dug out from the depths of my luggage

and every so often looked at me with reproach

did not leave any marks on paper

Strange

Not that I would expect stains of blood, smudges of sweat, dirt

or even greasy fingerprints supposedly left on books

by the Great Teacher of Humanity, who liked to read while eating;

the work of the young officer of the Security Service

is clean

he himself has Masters degree in law

and habits of personal hygiene acquired at

his well bred

middle class family

However

it would be more natural if they left

in our poems, drawings, diaries and brains

perhaps just as a souvenir

their unique (fingerprint) sign

of the most meticulous conaisseurs of modern art

especially when they save it from annihilation with one reluctant sentence:

„O.K., you can keep this,

we don't have to confiscate it.”

If you would like to read these poems (and some more) on paper, 

You can get a printout of my book "POLISH INSPIRATIONS"