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A civilized mind
Keeping company with Adam Zagajewski
BY ADAM KIRSCH

Without End: New and Selected Poems
By Adam Zagajewski. Farrar Straus Giroux, 278 pages, $25.


For reasons both literary and political, Americans have given a warm welcome to Polish poetry over the last 30 years. Many of us have become familiar — in translation, of course — with the work of Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Zbigniew Herbert, leading poets of the World War II generation, and have admired their struggle to uphold humane speech in a time of violence and barbarism. They encountered the evils of the 20th century more authentically than Americans ever could; and their very language, ironic and reduced, bears the scars of that encounter.

Adam Zagajewski, who was born just after World War II, is one of the leading poets of the younger Polish generation, and he inherits this tradition. He divides his time between France and the United States, and several volumes of his poetry and prose have been translated from Polish and published here. Without End is a generous sampling of his work, and an ideal introduction for readers who don’t yet know his beautiful, intelligent, and moving poetry.

Many Americans first met Zagajewski in the issue of the New Yorker that was published just after September 11; it ended with his poem " Try To 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 going nowhere,

You’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully,

You should praise the mutilated world.

It was the right poem for that awful moment, but of course it was not written about September 11 — Zagajewski’s everyday awareness of violence and his tragic hope were merely being confirmed once again. " Hope " may be too strong a word: the poem does not tell us that it is right to praise the world, only that we " should " try. Praise in Zagajewski’s poetry does not cancel out lament, or lament praise; they are simply there, together, as they are in life.

That is the terrible irony in " Life Sentence " :

Those sufferings are over.

No crying anymore. In an old album

You look at the face of a Jewish child

Fifteen minutes before it dies.

Your eyes are dry. You put the kettle on,

Drink tea, eat an apple.

You’ll live.

In just a few simple lines, Zagajewski has captured one of the most important experiences of life in the West: the feeling that one’s own peace and safety are absurd and even contemptible when surrounded by so much suffering. We are " sentenced " to life in a world where so many others have been sentenced to death, and there’s no way we can justify our good fortune.

Spirituality — in a modern, unreligious form — is another such experience. Zagajewski is not an orthodox believer, but many of his poems are about moments of vision or communion that are almost mystical — brief epiphanies. A cathedral can provoke them, as in " The Gothic " :

I feel

Your presence in the bright gloom,

A sheet of torn paper, healing, healing

Again, no trace, no scar. . . .

I feel you, I listen

To your silence.

But they can also come from encounters with art, especially music, as in " Late Beethoven " :

We don’t know what music is. Who speaks

In it. To whom it is addressed. Why it is

So obstinately silent. Why it circles and returns

Instead of giving a straight answer . . .

And they can simply happen, as though there were a grace hidden in things that could emerge at any moment:

So what if Pharaoh’s armies pursue you,

When eternity is woven

Through the days of the week like moss

In the chinks of a cabin?

As these lines attest, Zagajewski’s style is direct and clear. Anyone who reads poetry, and even those who don’t, should enjoy this chance to keep company with an exceptionally honest, gifted, and civilized mind.

Issue Date: April 11-18, 2002
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