Liebert’s legacy reflects the dilemmas of a generation which was to create Poland anew
To a Poet
What are they to the heavens and void dark, mad
Our hells familiar, absolute, over which
We stretch half-yellowed skies with a lute pitch
In order to cast them longingly after earth – so sad?
Oh, what is this love, the heart on an endless beat,
Gales and storms, wise retreats, doubts and defeats,
Compared to mighty gales sent by the highest seat,
And quiet and humble ’neath angels’ feet?
From the world’s bottom we scoop up words
Wisdom, feeding hearts with supercilious despair –
And if our words count only here, not there,
If our talk is to the heavens something unheard?
Oh, now poet inspired! Neath a statue gleaming
Bent double and beating those strings with all might!
Your lute silver, black, so much alike the night,
When you lay it down, exhausted, pray as if dreaming!
Painful Inspiration
In among my sinful acts as among sleepy grasses
Your stream floats, Lord
Moving my lands, cracking open mountain passes
Hard, massless,
Allow this stream and mead and milk
To climb up aboard
For human kind, for their love, its ilk
I pray, dear Lord.
Liebert’s legacy reflects the dilemmas of a generation which was to create Poland anew
Translation rights: In the public domain. Rights to further elaboration (including the afterword) must be obtained from the publisher: e.szwagrzyk@piw.pl
Foreign language translations: Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy (in anthologies)
Jerzy Liebert (1904-1931) was a Polish poet whose work covers the experience of the transcendent. It is vigorous in its descriptions of reality. Before his untimely death from tuberculosis, Liebert revealed himself to be a talented translator of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok, and a fan of Sergei Yesenin. As a poet, he followed in the literary footsteps of the likes of Jan Kochanowski, and Cyprian Norwid, was associated with the Skamander poetic group, and a keen reader of John Henry Newman, Stanisław Brzozowski, Thomas Mann and Joseph Conrad.
His life story reflects the complex fates of the Polish nation; his legacy – the dilemmas of a generation which was to create Poland anew, having brought it back into existence in 1918, only to meet with the challenges freedom presents us with. This young generation was faced with a situation radically different from the four previous generations of their countrymen, who were forced to live under foreign oppression. Liebert showed his fellow poets a path which led them to the most difficult existential and metaphysical questions.
Liebert’s poetry celebrates language as a communicative device, necessary for expression, but also as a meeting place, a phenomenon of ineffable, spiritual and restricted coexistence. The spiritual dimensions found in these poems provoke the contemporary reader with their dynamism and dramatic nature, their condensation of meanings and tensions.
Liebert’s poetry features angels who are not the winged creatures of Christian iconography, but a completely new quality, a relational drama, a concretisation of extreme situations. Everyday objects are participants in the process of transience. Paradoxically, the experience of the passage of time does not answer any questions about the meaning of existence, but leads instead to acceptance of the process of things passing on, revealing itself as meaning in itself. Formal rigorism brought to absolute perfection endows this poetry with lightness and musicality, something recognised by Karol Szymanowski, the Polish composer who, between 1930-1933, wrote a two-part cantata entitled Litany To The Virgin Mary op.59 in which he set Liebert’s poetry to music. It was this cantata he once referred to as his ‘deepest, most condensed piece’.
In 2008, Sir Simon Rattle recorded this work with the City of Birmingham Orchestra, which went on to win the prestigious Gramophone Classical Music Awards.
Anna Szczepan-Wojnarska, translated by Marek Kazmierski
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
