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SUMMARY:Cyprian Kamil Norwid with George G. Grabowicz – Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature
UID:https://instytutpolski.pl/newyork/2026/06/08/cyprian-kamil-norwid-with-george-g-grabowicz-encounters-with-polish-and-ukrainian-literature/
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DESCRIPTION:S6E6 and all video recordings are available on our YouTube.
Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature is a video series for
anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each
month, host David A. Goldfarb will present a new topic in conversation with
an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature. More
about the Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature series and the
timeline.
Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-83) was born in the village of Głuchy north of
Warsaw to a family of minor nobility, but both of his parents died when he
was young, and his upbringing was further complicated by the November
Uprising of 1830, but he studied the visual arts and was able to make a
modest living as a graphic artist and sculptor, living abroad for most of
his life in Italy, Berlin, New York, London, and primarily Paris. He
maintained connections with the major cultural figures of the Polish
emigration, including Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Chopin, Krasiński. He was
critical of the Messianism and nationalism of the earlier Romantics, but
was a devoted Catholic and was dedicated to the advancement of society
toward greater freedom and sympathized with the American abolitionist
movement. Norwid avoided the trend toward greater uniformity of
versification, exemplified by Bohdan Zaleski and Wincenty Pol, often
composing free verse, and experimenting with neologisms, irony, and subtle
metaphor. He saw the artist as being in dialogue with the people in their
labor. The folk could be the source of art, but the artist could draw on
these sources to “organize the national imagination” (tr. Czesław
Miłosz) through high art, “raising the inspirations of simple folk to a
power which touches to the core and encompasses all of humanity” (tr.
Manfred Kridl).
In this episode we discuss Norwid’s background and context in relation to
Romanticism, and how he rose to prominence only after his death, thanks to
the interest of the Modernists associated with the artistic movement known
as “Young Poland” (Młoda Polska), especially Zenon Przesmycki
(“Miriam”), editor of the influential journal Chimera. We look closely
at a few poems that unlock some of Norwid’s major ideas—the
introduction to Vade Mecum (1858), “To Citizen John Brown” (1859), and
“The Native Language” (1865)—and explore some of the challenges in
reading and translating his poetry.
Cyprian Kamil Norwid in English translation:
Norwid, Cyprian Kamil. Poems. Tr. Danuta Borchardt. Brooklyn: Archipelago
Books, 2011. 
Norwid, Cyprian Kamil. Poems – Letters – Drawings. Ed. and tr. Jerzy
Peterkiewicz with Christine Brooke-Rose and Burns Singer. Manchester:
Carcanet, 2000. (Best sourced from a research library or through
interlibrary loan).
Norwid, Cyprian Kamil. Selected Poems. Tr. Adam Czerniawski. London: Anvil
Press, 2004.
George G. Grabowicz is the Dmytro Čyževs’kyj Research Professor of
Ukrainian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Yale University (1965) and
his PhD in comparative literature from Harvard (1975), where he was also
Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows (1971-1974).
Professor Grabowicz has been Chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages
and Literatures at Harvard (1983-1988) and Director of Harvard's Ukrainian
Research Institute (1989-1996). He was one of the founders and President
(1991-1993) of the International Association for Ukrainian Studies and
Chairman of the American Committee of Slavists (1983-1988). From 2012 to
2018 he was President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US and is
currently a Vice-President there.
In 1997 he founded and since then has been editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian
monthly Krytyka, a leading intellectual journal in Ukraine. Since 2000 the
publishing house of Krytyka has produced some one hundred and fifty books,
particularly academic books in the humanities, many of them published
jointly with Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, the Shevchenko
Scientific Society in the US and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences
in the US.
Professor Grabowicz has written on Ukrainian, Polish and Russian literature
and on literary theory. His first book on Shevchenko (The Poet as
Mythmaker, 1982; Ukrainian editions: 1991 and 1997) has been voted the most
influential academic book of the post-Soviet period in Ukraine. His most
recent publication is the two volume Тарас Шевченко в
критиці [Taras Shevchenko: The Critical Reception], Kyiv, Krytyka,
2013 and 2016. He currently heads an international team of scholars working
on a history of Ukrainian literature that is due to appear in 2023. A full
bibliography of his writings (up to 2015) is available online. In March
2022 he was awarded the Shevchenko Prize, Ukraine’s highest award in the
humanities and arts, for his series of articles on modernism and the poet
Pavlo Tychyna.
David A. Goldfarb, Host & ProducerBartek Remisko, Curator and Executive
ProducerNatalia Iyudin, Produce
Image:Cyprian_Kamil_Norwid, foto Michał Szwejcer, 4 Jan 1871, photo credit
© public domain, photo by Michał Szwejcer, 4 Jan. 1871Image courtesy of
© George G. Grabowicz
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