Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People | Adam Zagajewski - 'Tremor' (38/50) @webofstories | Uploaded April 2019 | Updated October 2024, 7 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: It was fascinating because life in America was completely different from life in Paris and I have to say that I was very warmly received there straight away. I had a readership – that first volume of my anthology which was called Tremor, a title that Brodski came up with because my translator at the time was Renata Gorczyńska who lived in New York; I was very reticent about using English then. By that I mean, I didn't dare to suggest my own title but relied instead on my translator. If I remember rightly, she came up with a pretty dire title: 'Travels of the Ego'. My knowledge of English at that point was too weak to know that... I mean, it's easy to make yourself look ridiculous because in English, ego means egocentric, a guy who can only talk about himself because he has a big ego. And Brodski, who felt he was the guardian of this book since he'd proposed its publication, discovered this was to be the title and said, no, that's impossible – we need to change it. That would be scandalous. Later, he explained to me, and this was hilarious, but apparently untrue because I asked the people at the publishers if it were true or not, that he'd said, 'Listen, the production of the book is so advanced, that the title has to have T, R as its first two letters – T, R like travels'. And he said, 'That's when I had the inspiration that it had to be 'Tremor'.' 'Tremor' is a very beautiful title – I can say that confidently because it was Brodski not I who thought of it. In English, tremor means a trembling like before an earthquake when seismic waves occur, and like Kierkegaard's fear, trembling – that's a tremor. So it was thanks to Brodski that I had such a beautiful title for this book.
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: It was fascinating because life in America was completely different from life in Paris and I have to say that I was very warmly received there straight away. I had a readership – that first volume of my anthology which was called Tremor, a title that Brodski came up with because my translator at the time was Renata Gorczyńska who lived in New York; I was very reticent about using English then. By that I mean, I didn't dare to suggest my own title but relied instead on my translator. If I remember rightly, she came up with a pretty dire title: 'Travels of the Ego'. My knowledge of English at that point was too weak to know that... I mean, it's easy to make yourself look ridiculous because in English, ego means egocentric, a guy who can only talk about himself because he has a big ego. And Brodski, who felt he was the guardian of this book since he'd proposed its publication, discovered this was to be the title and said, no, that's impossible – we need to change it. That would be scandalous. Later, he explained to me, and this was hilarious, but apparently untrue because I asked the people at the publishers if it were true or not, that he'd said, 'Listen, the production of the book is so advanced, that the title has to have T, R as its first two letters – T, R like travels'. And he said, 'That's when I had the inspiration that it had to be 'Tremor'.' 'Tremor' is a very beautiful title – I can say that confidently because it was Brodski not I who thought of it. In English, tremor means a trembling like before an earthquake when seismic waves occur, and like Kierkegaard's fear, trembling – that's a tremor. So it was thanks to Brodski that I had such a beautiful title for this book.
