Zeszyty Literackie
Eurozine
Zeszyty Literackie
2007-09-04
Summary of Zeszyty Literackie 97 (2007)
This year's second issue of the Polish periodical Zeszyty Literackie 97 is dedicated to Yehuda Amichai.
Ted Hughes said that he thought Amichai was one of the most successful poets of the Palmach generation: "It is as if the whole ancient spiritual investment has been suddenly cashed, in modern coinage, flooding his poetry with an inexhaustible currency of precise and weighty metaphors".
Zeszyty Literackie 97 publishes a Polish translation of Amichai's poems. The subject of war has always been a favourite of poets. In "God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children", Amichai offers a chilly, relentless picture of the war: "God has pity on kindergarten children, / He pities schoolchildren -- less. / But adults he pities not at all. // He abandons them / And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours / In the scorching sand / To reach the dressing station, / Streaming with blood".
In his essay "Sentenced to reality", Anthony Hecht writes that Amichai's work composes a bitter quarrel with God. Yet, as he points out, the poet found inspiration in the biblical imaginary. Amichai studied Hebrew from early childhood and read the Bible. His cadences bear witness to this reading.
The issue also features a large section devoted to Polish-Jewish relations.
Adam Zagajewski's new poems are about the efforts, and occasionally the revelations and satisfactions, of the spiritual life. They are bursts of unified perception. His work is witty and intelligent to a superlative degree. Zagajewski sees a necessity for recomposing the world. He writes in a tradition that honours Arthur Rimbaud, R. M. Rilke, and Czeslaw Milosz as its distinguished pioneers.
Also to look out for: Roberto Salvadori on Boston and Tomasz Cyz on Dionysius in the music of Karol Szymanowski.