AZ: Polish Writers on Writing
Anna Kamienska
(1920- 1986)
Under the
Nazi occupation of Poland, Anna Kamienska participated as a teacher in
underground education. Before the war she had studied pedagogy; after the war
she graduated from the classics department at Lodz University. She then moved
to Warsaw, where she collaborated with several literary magazines. Kamienska
published many volumes of poetry. She was also active as a translator of
poetry. Later on, she also published books of essays, commenting on poetry from
biblical and classical perspectives.
The history of Karnienska's poetry is a history of a slow,
honest evolution toward religious conversion. Her poetry has nothing to do with
any intellectual fashion, although the twentieth century knew some moments when
religion was hip. Her religious leanings were accompanied by intense reading of
the Bible and Christian and Judaic philosophy, and were deepened by mourning
the death of her husband, Jan Spiewak, also a poet.
The pages presented in this chapter are taken from Karnienska's
beautiful Diary (or Notebook-Notatnik in Polish) of which there are two
volumes. These volumes count among the most moving and perspicacious poets'
diaries. Short entries having to do with poetry and spiritual life radiate
force and freshness that only genuine contemplation can convey
DIARY ENTRIES
1970
The
"cipher" of contemporary poetry - the desperate desire to preserve
the values of art, while it seems everything is being frittered away in cheap
utilitarianism. Opposition to the easy use of goods produced by industry, purchasable,
buyable.
It's a spasmodic defense of the art of remaining oneself in
an epoch of advertising, posters, mass-produced books, pulp attacking from all
sides.
The essence
of contemplation is in listening to music.
Effort and
inspiration - in art. Labor and grace - in spiritual life.
This analogy makes sense to anyone who knows the torment of
waiting for "inspiration," for that strange opening of the
imagination and the mind, when it's as if someone were writing for us. One
can't feign this state or fake it. It's either there or it's not.
Poetry is a
presentiment of the truth. It's the vestibule of faith. It's contemporary poets
who have turned it into a juggling act. People only open up to themselves for
brief moments, like flashes of lightning. At times it requires a single word.
It isn't necessarily happening where confessions pour out in a flood tide.
There are little words, simple, surprising, perhaps disguised. One must be sensitive
to them.
Perhaps this sensitivity to another person is called love?
With poetry
it is sometimes the same way. There are dark closures to the world of poetry.
And there are dazzling openings.
Or perhaps it's just I who am so gagged and
"dazzled"?
The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air.
Its laboring work, lis ffort, its black passageways like despair.
That's the way a poet looks for
words. With muscles, gestures. That's how
[To be continued]
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