Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People | Adam Zagajewski - Inspiring masters I have known (49/50) @webofstories | Uploaded April 2019 | Updated October 2024, 5 hours ago.
To listen to more of Adam Zagajewski’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzyCHpawMfzZc5HzhP38Qz7
Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He is considered as one of the leading poets of the Generation of '68 or the Polish New Wave (Polish: Nowa fala) and is one of Poland's most prominent contemporary poets. [Listener: Andrzej Wolski; date recorded: 2018]
TRANSCRIPT: I think that every poet, and prose writer, too, would say that there are two types of masters. There are the older writers or poets whom we have met personally and the effects of whose writing is strengthened or goes deeper because we know that person, we knew him. This could, of course, have the reverse effect – we might be deeply disappointed in them and then this detracts rather than adds to our experience. However, in my case, it was a positive thing. A first master, although not chronologically, because chronologically, the first was Tadeusz Różewicz. He was certainly the first poet whom I consciously – Polish poet, because I was reading poetry in translation at the same time. Of the Polish poets, Różewicz, as I've mentioned, lived in the same town and his presence as an author as a poet was ubiquitous. But I hardly knew him and I never really got to meet him properly. He was both present and absent because I never spoke with him although I knew he lived nearby and that we breathed the same not very healthy Silesian air. Then there was Herbert who would come to my school as I've mentioned. This was a friendship which took a long time to develop because I was 17 when he visited us so of course an acquaintance or friendship was out of the question, but it grew slowly. He was in Berlin, that's where he lived and that's where we'd meet, then later in Paris. He became very dear to me and I'd visit him when he was ill, when he was suffering because it was a two-fold illness somewhere between depression and mania causes great suffering even though externally, it all seems like a pantomime, but it isn't. Then there was Miłosz. Miłosz – he was hugely important in my life. I knew him, too, we became friends although I was closer to Herbert. We used the informal 'you' which in Polish is very significant. With Miłosz, we never passed to that stage. But these are the poets. And Wisława Szymborska whom I also knew very well and liked a great deal. There was a kind of good fortune in this that in this generation before me – because not everyone belonged to this generation – there were these great poets. And it was my good fortune that I was able to meet them, hear their voices, their jokes, that I could live among them, know what they wrote about and be privy to their thoughts and their reflections.
To listen to more of Adam Zagajewski’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzyCHpawMfzZc5HzhP38Qz7
Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He is considered as one of the leading poets of the Generation of '68 or the Polish New Wave (Polish: Nowa fala) and is one of Poland's most prominent contemporary poets. [Listener: Andrzej Wolski; date recorded: 2018]
TRANSCRIPT: I think that every poet, and prose writer, too, would say that there are two types of masters. There are the older writers or poets whom we have met personally and the effects of whose writing is strengthened or goes deeper because we know that person, we knew him. This could, of course, have the reverse effect – we might be deeply disappointed in them and then this detracts rather than adds to our experience. However, in my case, it was a positive thing. A first master, although not chronologically, because chronologically, the first was Tadeusz Różewicz. He was certainly the first poet whom I consciously – Polish poet, because I was reading poetry in translation at the same time. Of the Polish poets, Różewicz, as I've mentioned, lived in the same town and his presence as an author as a poet was ubiquitous. But I hardly knew him and I never really got to meet him properly. He was both present and absent because I never spoke with him although I knew he lived nearby and that we breathed the same not very healthy Silesian air. Then there was Herbert who would come to my school as I've mentioned. This was a friendship which took a long time to develop because I was 17 when he visited us so of course an acquaintance or friendship was out of the question, but it grew slowly. He was in Berlin, that's where he lived and that's where we'd meet, then later in Paris. He became very dear to me and I'd visit him when he was ill, when he was suffering because it was a two-fold illness somewhere between depression and mania causes great suffering even though externally, it all seems like a pantomime, but it isn't. Then there was Miłosz. Miłosz – he was hugely important in my life. I knew him, too, we became friends although I was closer to Herbert. We used the informal 'you' which in Polish is very significant. With Miłosz, we never passed to that stage. But these are the poets. And Wisława Szymborska whom I also knew very well and liked a great deal. There was a kind of good fortune in this that in this generation before me – because not everyone belonged to this generation – there were these great poets. And it was my good fortune that I was able to meet them, hear their voices, their jokes, that I could live among them, know what they wrote about and be privy to their thoughts and their reflections.
