{"id":7758,"date":"2023-02-21T20:03:23","date_gmt":"2023-02-21T19:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/?p=7758"},"modified":"2023-03-12T23:31:46","modified_gmt":"2023-03-12T22:31:46","slug":"anna-swirczynska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2023\/02\/21\/anna-swirczynska\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna \u015awirszczy\u0144ska (Swir), a Poetess of loss and life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Polish Poetry Unites<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is a video series complementing our Encounters with Polish Literature<\/a><\/strong> series for anyone interested in literature, poetry in particular, history, and reading. In each episode, Edward Hirsch<\/strong><\/a>, a distinguished American poet, and the president of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, will introduce a celebrated Polish poet to American audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/NaP3BV2CZmw\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Anna \u015awirczynska (Swir) <\/strong>would have been 114, had she been still alive. She would probably be surprised that her voice from over half a century ago is still heard in the world, and even more in the world than in her native Poland. She represented a free spirit of feminism without a drop of anger, some people say, and her ideas are still appealing to many feminists and women in general who do not necessary think of themselves as feminists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

„Anna \u015awirczynska is a remarkable poet. She was born in 1909 in Warsaw. She\u2019s of the same generation as Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em> Her father was a painter. They were very poor. Her father must have been eccentric too, because in her poems she often refers to him as the madman.<\/em> Her mother was a beauty, and she often says that her\u2013 that beauty married a madman.<\/em>” That\u2019s how Edward Hirsch starts his introduction. Then he continues: „She was affected by the poverty of her early life, but she was really deeply changed and affected by World War II and the occupation of the Nazis. She was in the Warsaw Uprising. <\/strong>She was a military nurse, and she wrote for resistance magazines. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took her 30 years to write about the Warsaw uprising, and she wrote this incredible little book called \u201cBuilding the Barricade\u201d. <\/strong>They\u2019re mostly little prose poems about the Warsaw uprising and I recommend them to you highly.<\/em>„<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna \u015awirczynska\u2019s book of poems \u201cTalking to My Body\u201d<\/em> was translated into English by Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz and Andrew Nathan and published in the US in 1987. It was her first volume that appeared in English. The second one was a collection called: \u201cBuilding The Barricade and Other Poems,\u201d<\/em> and was published in the States in 2011 in Piotr Florczyk\u2019s translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenny Holzer<\/strong><\/a>, a leading neo-conceptual artist based in New York, used Anna \u015awirczynska\u2019s poetry in her installation in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao<\/strong><\/a> recently. In part two of this video a Columbia University student talks about Anna \u015awirczynska\u2019s poem, \u201cThe Same Inside,\u201d<\/em> which became her favorite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

„Anna \u015awirczynska writes about being a woman with tremendous frankness, but also in extremely interesting ways she writes a lot about her body, but her book is called 'talking to my body’,” <\/em>said Edward Hirsch. „And what\u2019s really striking about her is there’s a sense both of having, inhabiting a female body and writing about women\u2019s experience.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But also, there\u2019s the experience of being somewhat separate from your body, of talking to your body in a somewhat objective way. There\u2019s some very funny poems or moments in her poems where she\u2019ll go \u201cI went to the corner, and I turned left. I wonder what would have happened if my body went to the right or if my person went to the right\u201d. It\u2019s very odd the way she talks about it and very, very, very lively. But it\u2019s\u2026 it\u2019s\u2013 it\u2019s really very dramatic, the way she writes about personal experience.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the poem\u2013 In the film you\u2019re gonna see she writes about encountering a beggar woman, and what that\u2019s like for her. But what’s striking also is the\u2013 what\u2026 The person in the film doesn’t mention is that it\u2019s part of a\u2026 the poem is part of a section of poems called\u2013\u201d Felicious Love\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these poems she describes different women, and she takes the view of different women So it\u2019s not just one woman it\u2019s the perspective of a whole various group of women. And it\u2019s really that experience of what it\u2019s like to be a woman and dramatized through a lot of different voices that makes her work so unique and extraordinary.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna <\/em>\u015awirczynska\u2019s poetry deals with the world of women in such a powerful and energetic way, that after almost half a century after her death it still feels original and inspirational.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not many people know that Anna \u015awirczynska was also a very talented artist. Her best drawings, needless to say, are those that depict female bodies. In the video we show samples of her artwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second part of the Polish Poetry Unites video, Tatiana de Dalmas, a student at Barnard College in NYC, talks about her life in the prism of her favorite poem by Anna \u015awirczynska: \u201cThe Same Inside\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Same Inside<\/em>
by Anna \u015awirszczy\u0144ska<\/p>\n\n\n\n

En route to a love feast with you,
on the corner I saw
an old beggar woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took her by the hand,
kissed her soft cheek,
we talked, she was
the same inside as I,
of the same breed.
I felt it right away,
like a dog sniffing out
another dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I gave her money;
I couldn’t part from her.
After all, one needs
someone who is close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then I no longer knew
why I was going to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the Polish<\/em>
by Joanna Trzeciak Huss<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Taka sama w \u015brodku<\/em>
Anna \u015awirszczy\u0144ska<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Id\u0105c na uczt\u0119 mi\u0142osn\u0105 do ciebie
zobaczy\u0142am na rogu
star\u0105 \u017cebraczk\u0119.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wzi\u0119\u0142am j\u0105 za r\u0119k\u0119,
poca\u0142owa\u0142am w delikatny policzek,
rozmawia\u0142y\u015bmy, ona by\u0142a
taka sama w \u015brodku jak ja,
z tego samego gatunku,
poczu\u0142am to od razu,
jak pies poczuje w\u0119chem
psa drugiego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Da\u0142am jej pieni\u0105dze,
nie mog\u0142am si\u0119 z ni\u0105 rozsta\u0107.
Cz\u0142owiekowi potrzebny przecie\u017c
kto\u015b bliski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I potem ju\u017c nie wiedzia\u0142am,
po co ja id\u0119 do ciebie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Anna \u015awirszczy\u0144ska<\/strong> (also known as Anna Swir) (1909\u20131984) was a Polish poet whose works deal with themes including her experiences during World War II, motherhood, the female body, and sensuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u015awirszczy\u0144ska was born in Warsaw and grew up in poverty as the daughter of an artist. She began publishing her poems in the 1930s. During the Nazi occupation of Poland she joined the Polish resistance movement in World War II and was a military nurse during the Warsaw Uprising. She wrote for underground publications and once waited 60 minutes to be executed. Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz writes of knowing her during this time and has translated a volume of her work. Her experiences during the war strongly influenced her poetry. In 1974 she published Building the Barricade, a volume which describes the suffering she witnessed and experienced during that time. She also writes frankly about the female body in various stages of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biography source: Wikipedia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Collections in English translation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n