Latvia

There is not that much English info out there on Latvian poetry. Many of the linked articles I came across looked sketchy, even if they were just victims of poor translation. Here’s what I did find:

The Latvian Institute loves N.E.P.!

This site also has great info on Latvia in an all-around sense (History of Latvian Lit! Latvian Economics! Latvian Government and Politics!).

On nature in contemporary Latvian poetry, from Lituanus, Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences.

A feature on Latvian Poetry can be found in the Winter 2005 issue of Drunken Boat.

J.C. Todd, Margita Gailitis and Inara Cedrins, translators for the Latvia section in N.E.P., were also involved with the Drunken Boat feature (Gailitis and Todd, in fact, split editing duties for it).

Cedrins also wrote this book, published in 1984 and translated this blurb about Liana Langa.

The environment of Latvian poetry is an insular one. This is not surprising given the following:

*Latvian is an Indo-Baltic language that is closely related to Sanskrit; as a result it is linguistically complex and therefore infrequently translated.

*Latvian was suppressed as a national language for a half-century during the Soviet occupation. It reemerged as a recognized language in 1990, yet Latvians struggled to reestablish its relevance in a world relatively saturated by the geopolitical dominance of Russian and English.

*During the Soviet occupation, massive immigration occurred between Russia and Latvia. Sixty-five years later, Latvians are outnumbered by ethnic Russians in many major Latvian cities, including the capital, Riga.

However, as Todd states in her introduction to the feature at Drunken Boat:

“…Latvians have had a millennium of practice in sustaining the repertoire of meanings embedded in their language when it has been forced underground. From the tenth century, AD, when Rune stones in the region of Courland document Viking attacks, until the twentieth century, Latvia struggled against repeated sieges and occupations by Danes, Germans, Russians, Tartars, Teutonic Knights, Poles and Swedes. In 1920, Russia and Latvia signed a peace treaty that relinquished all Soviet claim to Latvian territories in perpetuity, yet by 1940 the Soviet military had violated the treaty and occupied Latvia once more, an occupation that continued until 1990-91 when, with the collapse of the Soviet government, Latvia gained the independence it currently observes. During the centuries of occupations, Latvian dainas (folk songs) have recorded, revealed and handed down not only the cultural heritage but also the effects of oppression and moral resistance to it. When they were sung, and that was frequently, the language emerged, alive with history yet imbued with the sense of hereness that song in throat achieves. By the late 1930's, over 2,000,000 dainas had been collected in the Archives of Latvian folklore in Riga. Collected, but not embalmed for the dainas form the core of a vast repertoire performed by Latvian choral societies. Folk fests and choral competitions have been part of the fabric of Latvian life for centuries, festivals in which the collective consciousness of the nation is awakened in song. When the dainas are sung, the nation listens.

The submersion of the Latvian language during multiple occupations has not destroyed its roots. Instead it has created a contemporary poetry of displacement and psychic rupture expressed in fragmented images and narratives, a Baltic surreal that emerges from multiple perspectives, blurred definitions of time and place, neologisms and other linguistic innovations, and anti-authoritarian subjectivity. This is a thoroughly post-modern, post-colonial, post-traumatic poetry, as literary historian Karl Jirgens has noted. Paradoxically, Latvia's position as a “weaker,” occupied nation has been transformed into the strength of its literature.”

Bravo!

Here’s an example of a Daina:



And in the spirit of a strong Latvia, here’s the national anthem:



Now that you’re jumpin’, here’s a Latvian Folk Dance:



Finally, burn one down with Ronalds Briedis:

LITHUMANIA!

Lithupedia

Lithuture

The poets featured in NEP:

Gintaras Grajauskas (born in1966) is a poet, essayist, prose writer and a dramatist. He is considered to be the best author of ironic and prosaic poetry about contemporary life.

He studied at a music school and at the Jazz Department of the Klaipėda faculty of the Lithuanian Conservatory of Music. He worked for radio and TV editorial offices and since 1996 has been compiling the literary publication Gintaro lašai (Amber Drops). He sings and plays guitar in the band Rokfeleriai.

Grajauskas’ poetry tells seemingly irrelevant, even trivial stories about the present day and the mundane. However, the triviality in Grajauskas’ poetry is not easy to understand: irony and humour prevails over spiritual shallowness and ennui thus revealing a different perspective of the world. This ambivalence is one of the reasons why Grajauskas’ poetry is so popular. The life of an individual is ambiguous – tragic and comical, repulsive and attractive at the same time.

Aha! 

Marius Burokas (b. 1977 in Vilnius) is a poet, translator, and literary critic. He matriculated at Vilnius University in 1995 to study Lithuanian language and literature

He has worked as a Lithuanian language teacher, has served as project editor for a public relations agency, and has coordinated literary programmes at the Eastern Lithuanian Cultural Centre. He has translated short stories and a novel by Charles Bukowski as well as poetry by Craig Czury. He currently works at an advertising agency.
Burokas made has debut with the poetry collection Ideograms (Ideogramos) in 1999. His second book of poetry, States of Being (Būsenos), appeared in 2005.
The writer lives and works in Vilnius.

from the horse's mouth:

Most often a single line appears in my head, and little by little it becomes a poem. When it's necessary to release these thoughts from my head, I have to run and write them down somewhere since, unlike some other poets, I don't have a notebook or even a pen.
I often write poems in strange places and under strange conditions. They often appear when I'm incredibly bored.

Daiva Čepauskaitė (born in 1967) is a poet and dramatist. Her works combine (auto) irony and the sharpness of the tongue with lyricism, and the merciless world of today is portrayed with humour.

Čepauskaitė has a medical doctor's diploma, but has never worked as a doctor. While a student of medicine, she also studied stage art at the Youth Musical Study. Since 1990 she has worked as an actress in the Kaunas Youth Chamber Theatre. In the Kaunas State Drama Theatre she has played a role in Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. She has been writing since her early youth, so, according to herself, she came to poetry "unawares". In 2005 she was declared winner of the 41st "Spring of Poetry" festival.

Neringa Abrutytė (born in 1972) is a poet who introduced into Lithuanian poetry provocative subjects and styles of expressions characteristic of ingenious syntactic experiments that help create a unique rhythm, intonation and open several possibilities of interpreting the same text.

She studied Lithuanian language and literature at Vilnius University and has worked as editor and teacher. Currently she lives in Denmark.

In her poems Abrutytė openly speaks about the emotions of forbidden love for an older man, contempt to parents and her desire to reach the heights of poetry. Her poems seem as if they have been clipped out of a small girl's/woman's diary that is all about everyday experiences. Without exaggerated significance she describes her love or erotic experiences, childhood memories and the search for her proper place in European cities. The author imitates a teenage style of writing by using abbreviations usually found in students' notes, snippets of the jargon, plays with her name or biographic detail thus creating the impression of shocking sincerity. Everyday intonations reinforce the impression of intense, emotionally fragmented and therefore authentic speech.

Eugenijus Ališanka (b. 1960 in Barnaul, Russia) is a poet, essayist and translator. Following his graduation from Vilnius University with a degree in mathematics, he worked for the Culture and Art Institute of Lithuania and then, from 1994-2002, as a director of international programmes in the Lithuanian Writers' Union and a director of an international poetry festival 'Spring of Poetry'. Since 2003 he has been working as editor-in-chief of the magazine Vilnius, published in English as The Vilnius Review. Ališanka is a member of the Lithuanian Writers' Union's Board and of PEN.

here: have some more Alisanka poems! yum!

Laurynas Katkus (b. 1972 in Vilnius) is a poet and translator. He studied Lithuanian philology at Vilnius University and comparative literature at Vilnius and Leipzig Universities. He has worked in radio and publishing. He made his debut in 1998 with Voices and Notes (Balsai, rašteliai), a book of poetry.
Translations of his poetry have been published by American, German, Slovenian, Polish, and Latvian literary publishers; English and German translations of his book appeared in 2001 and 2003, respectively. His second Lithuanian-language book of poetry, Diving Lessons (Nardymo pamokos), appeared in 2003 and demonstrated the author's maturity. Katkus has translated works by Friedrich Hölderlin, Gottfried Benn, Walter Benjamin, Peter Handke, Susan Sontag, and other authors into Lithuanian.
He lives in Vilnius.

ESTONIA! Youtube!

Asko Kunnap

Karl Martin Sinijarv

Elo Viiding

Россия представляет собой огромную массу земли.

I'm no fool—y'all get links for this stuff:

A smattering of Russian poets, past;
a quick Wikipedia blurb on the golden age of Russian poetry;
the bawdy but ideologically correct chastushka (think Russian limerick);
another poorly written ("the Silver Age was a golden era") wiki about the silver age;
a charmingly-phrased site about the same thing;
the entry for Russian Futurism, which was kind of a thing;
Wikipedia's entry for Futurist bad-ass Vladmir Mayakovsky;
the school of imaginism, whose members were not down with the Futurists;
(by the way, why aren't we creating more schools of poetry like this?);
Vadim Shershenevich, one of the Imaginists;
Acmeist Osip Mandelstam, Ilya Kaminsky fave;
here's what the heck Acmeist poetry is;
Nobel-refusing (voluntarily, coughcough) Russian megapoet Pasternak;
mother of Russian poetry, Anna Akhmatova;
(see, she had kids);
and, okay, okay, the father too;
(he gave birth to a little guy named Onegin, and poetic forms);
again, read (almost) everybody's stuff;
oh yeah, some other people wrote stuff too;
lastly, if you could, thanks.

ESTONIA!

Estonia + the internet = HERE.

For history, go here.

History of Estonian literature and poetry here.

And here's the dude that started it all (as far as Estonian poetry is concerned):

Kristjan Jaak Peterson.

HERE is the Estonian Literary Magazine, in which 2 of the 4 poets in the book are widely 

discussed. 

Throwback to Iberia

As I think I mentioned last week, Florida Review has published Rosa Alice Branco in its new issue. They ran the poems in the original Portuguese as well as publishing the translations, which I think was a really nice choice. I wonder if both versions of the poem were sent as a package, or if FR received the translation and solicited the originals... anyone know how that usually works? We have the issue in the BWR office, if you are interested in borrowing it.

Also, we received a review copy of a book by Spain's Bernardo Atxaga, if anyone is interesting in perusing that. Much love from BWR to the Euro Poets.

Some Thoughts from Valzhyna Mort, Belarusian Poet, on Translation

First, here's a poem of Valzhyna Mort in Poetry.

She has this to say about translation, which I think is a nice response to many of our questions this semester:

"I believe that a translation should be a new poem. My favorite saying about translation is that poetry translations are like men. When they are beautiful, they are unfaithful. You have to choose do you want beautiful poems or do you want faithful poems. And of course the best if you can merge beautiful and faithful as close, if you can, but if you cannot, it’s better to make it beautiful."

That comes from this interview (a video that includes her readings poems to a woman baking - it's hard to tell who looks more uncomfortable).

And here is another brief interview, which also touches on translation.

A very layman's version of Ukrainian history

During the 10th and 11th centuries, much of what is now known as Ukraine was part of Kievan Rus, the most powerful and largest state in Europe and eventually laid the foundation for the national identity of Ukrainians and Russians. That time period saw the rise of Vladimir the Great, who helped steer the nation towards Byzantine Christianity, and the Yuroslav the Wise, whose tenure as the nation’s leader saw increased cultural and military development.

After the disintegration of the Kievan Rus state after the reign of Mstislav (1125-1132), foreign invasions and incursions plagued the land, including from Turkic tribes and Mongols (they decimated Kiev in 1240); the state was succeeded by Galicia-Volhynia, a merged state consisting of the principalities of Galich (Halych) and Volodymyr-Volynskyi.

In the time that followed, the Poland and Lithuania both ruled in Galicia-Volhynia, and then jointly (although the Polish Crown apparently ruled a lot more of the territory) after the 1569 Union of Lublin, which established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Under Polish rule, and as a result of Polonisation of Rutheian nobility (yielding a blending, of sorts, between the two cultures), many Ukrainian commoners turned to the Cossacks for protection. Then, the Cossacks turned to Orthodox Russia for protection, forming an alliance that eventually lead to the downfall of the Polish-Lithuanian state.

Apparently there was a broken promise between the Russian Empire—which controlled a good chunk of eastern Ukraine (western Ukraine was under the rule of Austria after the Russo-Polish war)—and the Cossacks and Ukrainians, in which Russia renigged on Ukrainian independence as detailed in a treaty. Later, tsarist Russia supressed the Ukrainain language in print and public.

Then a bunch of time passes. Nearly 4 million Ukrainians fought in WWI (3.5 million under Russia, 250,000 under Austria) and, following the collapse of the two empires after the Great War, a pretty bitchin’ independence movement was started up. After some stuff, western Ukraine was incorporated into Poland and Poland recognized the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a founding member of the Soviet Union. The revolution left over 1 million Ukrainians dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. A devestating famine gave the Soviet Union reason to slacken the restrictive rules in regards to Ukrainian language in print and public, and that caused a resurrgence in Ukrainian culture. However, this was largely reversed by the mid-1930s under Stalin—whose political repression also resulted in the deaths of 80 percent of Ukrainian cultural elite.

During WWII, since Poland (which controlled the western part of the Ukraine) and the Soviet Union were fighting together, there was a reunification of Ukraine. This was apparently a watershed moment for the Ukraine. But not every Ukrainian was happy; apparently some, but not many, fought against the Soviet Union. Of 8.7 million Soviet felled in battle, 1.4 million were Ukrainian.

After Stalin’s death, Soviet-Ukrainian relations were less tense under Kruschev (he was apparently First Secretary of the Communist Part of Ukrainian SSR).

Of the 7 million people in the contaminated area of Chernobyl, 2.2 million were Ukrainian.

On August 24, 1991, the Ukrainian parliament adopted the Act of Independence and, less than three months later, there was a referendum and presidential election in which 90 percent of the people voted for the Act and Leonid Kravchuk to become the country’s first president.

I hope I got most of this right. Here is a link to the CIA's World Factbook on the Ukraine.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/up.html

Wikipedia Bits About Belarus...and Pictures

Some general history here.
Some literary history here.

Daniel Craig and Liev Schriber as Belarusian Partisans

Soviet Partisans in Belarus


Belarusian Ballet
Belarusian Pipe-Player (from here)



Double pipes or "Parnyia dudki"
are also referred in Belarus as "Parniouka", "Parnyaty", "Dvojni", "Dvzajchatki", "Dudki", "Pasvisceli","Hoosli", "Dvajchatyia Hoosli". They are made of two pipes of different length. The upper end of each pipe is plugged by a circular insert, with 1/5 of it cut off - "cork" ("shpoont" or "sapoh"). The space between "cork" and the outside wall of pipe makes a narrow crack - "halasnik" for blowing air. There is an alongate whistle cut in the pipe's wall at it's upper end. The bottom end has three holes: 2 at the front - "perabirki" ("finger runs")for finger playing and one - "klapan" ("valve") - in the back. The bottom outlet holes are tied with rope, the tension of which allows to tune two pipes into harmony. Below is a military song suitable for double pipe:
Some Belorusian Folk Music

Preferably in a language I don't know: Poetry in the Ukraine

An Abbreviated Online Encyclopedia's History of Ukrainian Poetry

The history of Ukrainian poetry can be divided into three major periods, made all the more distinct by sharp discontinuities between them. Underlying and producing these discontinuities are profound shifts in Ukrainian society; not only do basic political and social structures disappear, to be replaced by entirely new ones, but, at least until the modern period, Ukrainian literary and historical consciousness does not succeed in bridging these changes.

The first period, from the beginnings in the 10th-11th c. to roughly the 14th c., coincides largely with the lit. of Kievan Rus’, which by general consensus is taken as the common patrimony of the East Slavs—the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Russians. The second, middle period, from the late 16th to the late 18th cs., reflects primarily the poetics of the baroque and witnesses a flowering of U. lit. and culture, even though later the bookish and church-dominated character of this lit. came to be seen as a fatal flaw, given 19th-c. U. sociopolitical development, and the entire period underestimated or even dismissed from the canon. The third period, from the beginning of the 19th c. to the present, coincides with the birth of the modern U. nation and the emergence of contemp. literary U. based on the vernacular. Because of the strong populist current underlying this political and cultural revival, the idea and content of “U. lit.” was often identified, throughout the 19th and even into the 20th c., with this third period alone.

(Skip very, very far forward to the 19th c.)

Generally, poetry in the latter half of the 19th c was strained by the weight of perceived realist obligations and, more concretely, by official Rus. edicts of 1863 and 1876 banning the publication and importation of U. books...

The period of modernism, generally from the 1890s to World War I, witnessed the differentiation of the U. literary marketplace and the emergence of poetry for a more select public. One of the first to turn to European and universal historical and philosophical themes was Larysa Kosac-Kvitka (pen name, Lesja Ukrajinka; 1872–1913); her drama (much more than her lyric poetry) serves to establish these concerns in U. p. Her masterpiece, The Forest Song, draws its inspiration from folklore and psychological introspection.

On the eve of World War I there appeared the symbolist poetry of Oleksandr Oles’ (1878–1944), Mykola Voronyj (1871–1942), and Mykola Filjan-s’kyj (1873–1938), an anticipation of the outstanding poet of the 20th c—Pavlo Tychyna (1891–1967). At first a symbolist and spirited supporter of the U. national revolution, and at the end of his life an orthodox spokesman for the Soviet system, Tychyna underwent a complex evolution, but in his early and mature poetry, at least, remains the most innovative and influential poetic voice of his time.

In the 1920s, with the establishment of Soviet rule in Ukraine and esp. the official policy of “Ukrainization”, U. lit. for the first time since the 17th c enjoyed the support of a state; its growth and energy were spectacular, as manifested in the proliferation of separate movements, particularly the neoclassicists...; and the futurists... Adding to the variety, ferment, and sheer breadth of expression of U. p. in the 1920s and early ‘30s were the constructivists (e.g. Valerjan Polishchuk), neoro-mantics (e.g. Oleksa Vlyz’ko), and others who belonged to no formal organization or movement—such as Jevhen Pluzhnyk or esp. Volo-dymyr Svidzins’kyj (1885–1941), master of lyrical, almost mystical introspection.

But by the 1930s the Stalinist terror had crushed the national and cultural revival, and hundreds of writers perished in camps and purges. With Soviet U. p. reduced to silence or the empty rhet. of paeans to Stalin and the Party..., the poetic scene shifted to western Ukraine, then under Poland, or to Poland itself, and Czechoslovakia, where various poets and writers had emigrated, fleeing the Bolsheviks...

Immediately after World War II, U. p. had a short period of intense activity in the emigration, beginning with the Displaced Person camps in Germany, where long-repressed energies came to fruition in a multitude of publications. ...The highpoint of U. emigré poetry, however, was the informal “New York Group” that arose in the late 1950s and lasted to the early 1970s.

Most significantly, however, the liberalization of Soviet society then political collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s had a profound and positive effect on the general climate of U. p.—in its rehabilitation of victims of repression and of historical memory as such, in its galvanization of various established poets, in its reassertion of the social and historical role of U. p., and above all in its facilitation of the emergence of a new generation of poets in the U. republic.

Important Links:

• A 4-year-old reads a very brief, very beautiful poem in Ukrainian.
• Viktor Neborak reads in a very animated style his poetry at Penn State, which his translator then hilariously attempts to approximate while reading in English.
• A large collection of Ukranian Poetica can be found on this online library.
• Oksana Zabuzhko has her own fancy schmancy website, and she can write in all genres.
• Oksana Zabuzko also gives a very helpful talk about the evolution of Ukrainian literature and her own book of prose, starting with pointing out the Ukraine on the map.

Points to Ponder for the Poems this Week:

1. Drinking seems to be a heavily recurring theme amongst the poems of the Ukraine ("Alcohaiku," "Jamaica the Cossack," "Alcohol"). In what ways might these poems be read as about intoxication? As ars poeticas (arses poetica?) on the intoxicating nature of writing poetry?
2. The Belarus and especially Ukrainian poetry seem particularly interested in poetry establishing place. Think of the wide range of settings occuring in the Ukrainian section alone (Hotel Central, Kreschchatyk Boulevard, Cafe Francois, subways, rivers). Some of these locations are literal, others may be read as figurative. As foreign readers, do these place names and location discussions help to ground us in the culture or distance us from our ability to read the poems as universal?
3. The body has always been a popular theme of poetry, and the Ukraine references blood, shit (no bloody bat shit, though), tears, drinking, spasms, death, laughter, vomit, birth and a flying severed head. How do we respond to these very human presentations of the body? Are they merely advancing the literary grotesque? Are we humbled or exhalted for these functions our bodies can perform? Is the body, in other words, being celebrated or critiqued?

Website

Link.

My Poland Post, Part II

ADAM WIEDEMANN

18 pages of poetry

**************************

MARZANNA KIELAR

Here are several English translations.

**************************

PIOTR SOMMER

Here are two poems and an interview with Pitor Sommer (Chicago Review).

**************************

MARTIN ŚWIETLICKI



5 poems translated into English

**************************

MIRON BIALOSZEWSKI

And Even, Even If They Take Away the Stove (My Inexhaustible Ode to Joy)

I have a stove
similar to a triumphal arch!

They take away my stove
similar to a triumphal arch!!

Give me back my stove
similar to a triumphal arch!!!


They took it away.
What remains is
a grey
naked
hole.

And this is enough for me;
grey naked hole
grey naked hole.
greynakedhole.


(translated by Czeslaw Milosz; Postwar Polish Poetry)

**************************

Mark Tardi is a Polish-American poet currently living in (the Polish city of) Łódź, where he is a Fulbright Lecturer. His book of poetry is called Euclid Shudders. Mark is currently working on translating Miron Bialoszewski (see Alissa Valles' post below) into English. He has graciously agreed to answer my questions about contemporary Polish poetry.

Which non-Polish poets are Polish poets reading these days?

O'Hara is really big here. He informs people like Sommer and Świetlicki obviously. Ashbery has also had influence. And Creeley. There's a kind of interest in voice & address that they pick up from O'Hara & Creeley (not so much Ashbery, who offers more in terms of the plasticity of language). There are different pockets of readers here.

Are there any specific trends you are seeing in Contemporary Polish Poetry (for the purposes of our class, we are defining contemporary as “written by a poet born after 1950.”)?

Trends. Yeah, sure. Poland is a country that is changing rapidly. Most of my students now never suffered Communism; the professors did. So this reflects in the writing: some want to grab onto tradition; others are diving into the new, playing with form. Wiedemann is a good example I think, though Bialoszewski opened a lot of doors.

Do you feel that the New European Poets selection is an accurate representation of What Is Happening in Polish Poetry Right Now? If you had been asked to edit this selection, who would you have picked?

The anthology has most of the people. I'd add some poets, but I don't know the landscape of Polish poetry exhaustively, so I wouldn't want to edit an anthology like that.

Anything else you think us punks in Tuscaloosa should know about Poland, Polish poetry, European poetry-in-general?

Poland...hmm. It's a wonderful place which I love deeply?

I simply can't imagine a Pole referring to her or himself as a "punk." Just not the same kind of generosity of humor or self-deprecation. With the language, Polish poetry has a lot more room for nuance. Being a case-based language, when you have 35 ways to say "my," context is more minute, wiry. There's a lot more nuts & bolts & hinges. And there's something I always notice about hearing it: how its so much in the front of the mouth, as if a language built on whispers and "psst." It communicates a different kind of emotional register.


P.S. One more thing. I've noticed in book stores that there are a lot of Murakami books. Like WAY more than you'd see in a typical American bookstore.

**************************

A Shamefully Wiki-Style History of Poland

Poland's earliest form as a state was around 966, under the Piast dynasty. My various internet sources point to the conversion of Miezko I to Christianity as the founding moment of Poland, although it was his son Boleslaw who was the first officially crowned King of Poland, approved by the Pope. Fragmentation stemming from Boleslaw III in the 1100's eventually led to the Union of Krewa in 1385, between Poland and Lithuania. Although Poland and Lithuania remained separate states ruled by separate kings, essentially the kings were Lithuanian. The first Lithuanian King of Poland was Ladislaw II, Grand Duke of Lithuania who married the rightful Queen of Poland and converted to Christianity. Poland became a constitutional monarchy in which the succession of throne must be approved by consensus of Nobility, Lithuania became Christian. 

In 1569, yet another union with Lithuania led to the the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland became an elected monarchy under which the nobility enjoyed Golden Freedom. The nobility legislated laws and elected the monarch as well as enjoying religious tolerance unheard of elsewhere in that era. At this point Poland was home to the largest population of European Jews (and had been for almost 2 centuries).  Unfortunately the lesser nobility were not afforded the same rights as the land-holding nobility, which combined with a series of wars (with Russia, Ukraine, Sweden) in the 1600s weakened the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and marked the decline of the Polish Golden Age.

Although Poland fought to maintain independance in the late 1700s the country was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria. In 1807, Napoleon defeated Prussia and set up a Polish state, the Duchy of Warsaw, under French rule, adding to it's mass two years later when he defeated Austria. After Napolean was defeated the Duchy of Warsaw was renamed the Kingdom of Poland under the Russian Czar before finally being incorporated into Russia.

After WWI, Poland declared independance in 1918, which was followed rather quickly by the Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War in 1919.  Joseph Pilsudski led Poland in stability until the late 1930s, when the Great Depression and WWII took their toll. In 1939 Poland entered full military alliance with Britain and France. Later that year in alliance with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union invaded Poland. In 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union and took complete control of Poland, although a Polish government in exhile remained which controlled Polish armed forces operating outside of Poland alongside the Red Army of the Soviet Union. During the war the Polish people continually to resisted the Nazi government. In 1944 the Soviet army entered Poland and defeated the Germans.

In 1945 an independant Polish state was formed. The Communist Party controlled the elections of 1947, however, and so a communist regime was established. In the early 1980s, a Solidarity movement began which was the first non-communist trade union under a communist regime. The government attempted to destroy the union by declaring martial law, but ultimately had to negotiate with the union. These negotiations eventually led to semi-free elections in 1989 and ultimately the end of communism in Poland. Poland's first free parliamentary elections were held in 1991 and in 1993 the remnants of the Soviet army finally left Poland.

Editor Alissa Valles Speaks

Team NEP: The below just in from translator, editor, and poet Alissa Valles. And here's an interview with her about her work as a translator. JB



Hello: I’m Alissa Valles – I edited the Polish, Spanish, Dutch and Flemish sections of the NEP anthology. Joel asked me a few things related to translation and cultural context that I’d like to respond to here. My own relationship to each of the above countries and cultures is very different, so first a word on that, because it may be relevant to some of the issues of cultural resonance Joel raised. I have ancestry and family history in Spain (my parents lived there before I was born, my brother was born there) but have never lived there. I was born in Amsterdam and raised there and in the US, multilingually; I’ve always felt more comfortable in English than in Dutch, and although I’ve translated into Dutch, all of my own writing is in English. I studied Polish in England (alongside Russian) and later lived, studied and worked in Poland for years, and now spend part of each year in Warsaw.

Here are Joel’s questions:

- Obviously, when we read a poem in translation, we apprehend a different object than the original in terms of language. But what about in terms of culture? Reading the poems in the anthology, my students have consistently expressed anxiety over the idea that even when they're enjoying a given poem, they may be enjoying it for the "wrong reasons," because they don't have an understanding of the cultural context in which the poem was born. How necessary would you say it is for American readers of these poems to acquaint themselves with the contemporary political/cultural/economic/ religious contexts of the countries represented? How much of the poetry is "lost" to us if we don't understand those contexts?

Obviously a great deal of the context for a poem is embedded in its linguistic choices and texture, but there is also context that can be learned – though the meaning it adds is still not even near what is available to a native speaker. One helpful analogy for reading poetry in translation may be reading poetry in English from a time or place remote from our own. To read Shakespeare, it obviously helps to learn something about his world. But in fact, readers of the NEP anthology may know (or intuit) more about the contemporary European world to which the anthology is related, than about Elizabethan England or colonial America. I’m not convinced a set of footnotes or a program of research is necessary to an enjoyment and immediate basic grasp of the poems in NEP (anymore than they are for Shakespeare). It’s a bit like meeting a bunch of new people at a party – you may not get all of their references, but you can have fun getting to know them. There is always room for a deepening of the response, if you decide you want to spend more time with these people, and history, politics, art, gender relations, religious tradition, anything you can learn about the culture will add interest and perhaps understanding. The untranslatable meanings embodied in language and social context of which a reader is acutely or vaguely aware should not preclude exploration and engagement with what is open. I feel poets in particular have a licence, and perhaps even a cultural duty, to guess and glean. Even misreadings, if we believe Harold Bloom, can be fertile. If the translator has done his or her job properly, the reader will be given a rich and suggestive poem that remains as faithful to the original in form and meaning as an English poem can. It is an impure, hybrid process – both for translator and reader - that should enrich poetry in English with new forms and meanings.

As for ‘wrong reasons’ for enjoying a poem in translation, what would be an example? There may be obstacles and misreadings, but perhaps there are no ‘wrong reasons’; just reasons, or readings, that are more or less profound. There may be a hierarchy of readings from shallow to deep, but I’m reluctant to be the arbiter of that hierarchy, or to dismiss a surface impression which may in fact lead to something important in the poem that isn’t so obvious. Being too much on top of a culture (as you often are if you’re immersed in a particular translation project) can also blind you (me) to potential meanings. So a widening of the readership only helps.

Generally speaking, I suspect that some knowledge of the culture is more important in reading the Polish section of the anthology than in reading the Dutch, Flemish or Spanish sections, and this is in itself interesting. For obvious political and historical reasons, Poland has undergone a radical transformation in the last thirty years, which is roughly the span of the anthology. In that period, Dutch and Spanish society have been relatively stable – despite their own at times explosive problems with immigration or separatism. (The Dutch section should really have some of the poetry written by the young poets writing in Dutch but intimately tied to the culture of Turkey or Morocco or Bosnia – all I can plead is lack of space, and a tentative sense that a great talent has yet to make its appearance among that group.) I think it’s fair to say – though I don’t know if the other regional editors would agree – there is not the same kind of generational revolution in poetry in Western Europe that you see in Poland. The younger Polish poets are often reacting against the politically engaged and often moralizing poetry of their predecessors who found themselves, in a variety of ways, opposing themselves to an authoritarian regime. In a more general way, the younger poets are trying to topple (or enrich, depending on your point of view) the canon of Polish poetry presented by Czeslaw Milosz. Sometimes polemically, sometimes by simply turning to relatively unexplored territory, particularly life in a new and very raw consumer society.

As I look at ‘my’ sections now, it seems to me that the Dutch and Spanish poets write with virtually no explicit references to their national culture, no geographical or linguistic markers. The Poles do it (perhaps only a bit) more. One should ask why this is. Have poets become more cosmopolitan, less connected to a particular culture and place? Certainly the NEP poets may be to an extent self-selecting, in that poems that translate well tend to be poems that forgo emphasis on local detail, slang, etc. In reading the whole anthology, I was struck by how many of the poets were themselves already tuned in to American (or English-language) poetry, spoke fluent Ashbery, had spent time in America or England, and so on. I made a conscious effort in working on my sections not to yield to that bias, and not to settle for any bland internationalism, but I did want to include poems that ‘worked’ in English. It’s very frustrating, and you see the phenomenon in the earlier generations of Polish poets as well: terrific poets whose language is rooted in slang, etymology, bent syntax, local references, are harder to transport – I’m thinking of Miron Bialoszewski, Krystyna Milobedzka, there are others. This is the real loss – or lack – which is a challenge to translators, but it remains in a sense invisible to a reader without knowledge of the particular foreign language and poetry. Some of the best wines don’t travel.

A side note: Another thing invisible to readers of translations is the involvement or non-involvement of the poet in the translation, and the arguments that may have gone on between translator and poet or translator and editor or editor and poet. Although the translation may be given as the work of a translator with the author, there are smaller but not insignificant interactions – a kind of back-stage life – which are another kind of context for the poem. Some poets don’t care if very place- or culture-specific references are preserved and would just as soon see some sort of English or American equivalent, others are terrified of losing them. Some translators avoid contact with the poet they are translating, some want to vet every detail.

One example of a poem for which some context may be essential is ‘Good Later’ by Marcin Sendecki. For a Polish reader, the poem takes place in the context of a certain polemic about and ‘incomprehensible poetry’. Sendecki inserts a particular Polish critic-poet’s text (published in a periodical) into the poem – everything in italics is an extended quote. In the background of the polemic is Czeslaw Milosz’s essay “On Incomprehensible Poetry” (cf. Milosz’s essays To Begin Where I Am, FSG 2001). Sendecki’s tactic for responding to the accusation (often leveled at him) is framing it in mundane, tacky, vital details of everyday life, as if tuning into it and out of it as if it were a radio broadcast, or a voice heard in passing. The title itself is a colloquial contraction of ‘good morning’ and ‘see you later’. I included the poem because it seems to me a kind of ars poetica poem (and because the Sendecki poem I wanted to include was too long for the section).

This is what I have time to write today, but I’d be happy to comment more on specific poets or sections, if questions come up in your reading.

My Poland Post

I have no idea what I should be telling you guys about Poland. Or, I have some ideas, but their scope is so opus-scale that I'm a little bit paralyzed. I feel that there are roughly five hundred names, dates, and places that you must know in order to have even the beginnings of an understanding of Polish poetry. But, even if I imparted 500 plus Facts About Poland into your brains, I still worry that there's something fundamentally Polish about Polish poetry that makes the gap un-closeable.

My national pride makes me want to believe that this complicated-ness is a condition unique to Polish people (we are beautifully and terminally unique...). But, my (kind of failed) attempts at writing up blog posts to explain a (for me) non-foreign country has made me question our class' habit of reading these poems in the context of their country of origin's Wikipedia page. Think of it this way - How much light does this shed on this?

That said, I can't think of any other way to go about reading these poets. Ideally, everyone would learn Polish, move to Poland, spend the next ten years translating Polish poetry into English (and vice versa), and then come back to Tuscaloosa prepared to have a "real" conversation about Polish poetry. However, most of you seemed resistant to this plan when I brought it up the other night. So, here are some precursors to the poets in the Polish section of New European Poets:


Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)



Polish literature was invented by Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). Mickiewicz was born in Nowogródek. Nowogródek used to be part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; at the time of Mickiewicz's birth, the town was ruled by Russia. Nowogródek is currently part of Belarus.

Mickiewicz is most famous for his epic poem, Pan Tadeusz, czyli Ostatni zajazd na Litwie. Historia szlachecka z roku 1811 i 1812 we dwunastu księgach wierszem (English: Mister Thaddeus, or the Last Foray in Lithuania: a History of the Nobility in the Years 1811 and 1812 in Twelve Books of Verse). All Polish people are required by law to love this poem. Here is an average-to-good English translation.

Some people claim that Mickiewicz is Lithuanian because he spent the majority of his early life in what is now Lithuania proper. However, Mickiewicz considered himself a Polish nationalist, wrote all of his poems in the Polish language, and is buried in Wawel Cathedral (So, suck it, Lithuania.).



Juliusz Słowacki (1809-1849)



Słowacki's popularity really picked up after his death. He is regarded as a national prophet, especially in light of his poem "The Slavic Pope" (written in 1848). Go here for more information and sample poems. Here is a longer biography.



Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004)



Won the Nobel Prize in 1980. By far the most famous Polish poet (in America). Most of you seem to already be pretty familiar with his work. Miłosz's legacy in Poland is complicated by his having cooperated with the Russian government and by his defection to America.

A Poet Worthy of Protest

The Doubter and the Saint




Tadeusz Różewicz (1921 - )

My personal favorite. Miłosz summed him up thusly: "Różewicz is a poet of chaos with a nostalgia for order."



Profile by Adam Mickiewicz Institute

David Orr's Review of New Poems

University of Buffalo's Links to Poems in English



Wisława Szymborska (1923- )



Token female Polish poet. Won the Nobel Prize in 1996. I wish I could talk about her work outside of the context of Sexism in Poland. I bet she wishes that too. My affection for her is tempered by her early sympathy for communism.

Szymborska's "How to (and how not to) write poetry

some links to English translations




Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998)



The Solidarity Poet. My Dad forced me to read a lot of Herbert while I was growing up; I haven't decided if I'm grateful for it or not. Alissa Valles (the editor of the Polish section) translated and edited Herbert's Collected Poems 1956-1998.

Profile by Adam Mickiewicz Institute

Poetry Foundation's Herbert Page

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Here is Michael Braziller and Edward Hirch's informative (but kind of toothless) lecture about Post-War Polish Poets.

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Further Reading

Altered State: The New Polish Poetry

Ambers Aglow: An Anthology of Contemporary Polish Women's Poetry

Carnivorous Boy, Carnivorous Bird (anthology that includes a lot of the poets in New European Poets)

Chicago Review's New Polish Writing (some online content)

Jacket Magazine's Poland section (scroll down)

Polish Poets on Writing - edited by Adam Zagajewski

Postwar Polish Poetry

Twisted Spoon Press - a Czech press that publishes a lot of newer work by Polish poets

Hungary

Following a Celtic (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (9 BC – c. 4th century) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late Ninth Century by the Magyar chieftain Árpád, whose great grandson Stephen I of Hungary ascended to the throne with a crown sent from Rome in 1000. The Kingdom of Hungary existed with interruptions for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world. A significant power until the 1910s, Hungary lost over two-thirds of its territory (along with 3.3 million ethnic Hungarians) due to the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the terms of which have been considered harsh, and even humiliating by Hungarians. The kingdom was succeeded by a Communist era (1947–1989) during which Hungary gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal move of opening its border with Austria in 1989, thus accelerating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The present form of government is parliamentary republic (since 1989). (via Wikipedia)

Hungary is surrounded by Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria. According to the CIA World Factbook, Hungary is "slightly smaller than Indiana." It might be useful to consider the possible effects of so many linguistically-diverse neighbors on such a "small" country.

According to the 2001 census, 92.3% of people living in Hungary identify as Hungarians, 1.9% as Roma, and 5.8% listed themselves as Other or Unknown. Also, 51.9% of people living in Hungary identify as Roman Catholic, 15.9% as Calvinist, 3% as Lutheran, 2.6% as Greek Catholic, 1% as Other Christian, 11.1% as Other or Unspecified, and 14.5% as Unaffiliated. Those of you who have been paying attention to the ethnic and religious breakdowns of the other countries we've studied will note that Hungary is diverse by Central/Eastern European standards. There are 9.96 million people in Hungary (There are 6.35 million people in the state of Indiana).

As you may have heard, Hungary is currently having some financial troubles.

Things Hungarians have invented include the Rubik's cube (Ernő Rubik), the hydrogen bomb (Edward Teller), the ballpoint pen (László József Bíró), and the noiseless match (János Irinyi).

Radio Free Lincoln - an Op-Edby Gabor Boritt about Abraham Lincoln and Hungarian freedom

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Some Hungarian Poetry Links

Hungarian Literature Online

Greatest Hungarian Poets

excerpts from Contemporary Hungarian Poetry

some Hungarian poetry translated into English

POETRY: Hungarian poetry truly "Lost in Translation"