Articles - November 2015

Różewicz and purity

Tadeusz Różewicz is the master of purifying poetry. When I read him, I wonder, why is it I like all this filth that sticks to me. Purity, though it seems simpler, in fact incapacitates; it’s hard to shape something with it. Różewicz shapes his sculptures with filth, then washes and smoothens until they look cast in bronze. Conversely Miłosz turns every purity into the purest shit. Must you always combine Miłosz with Różewicz? Yes.

Tadeusz Różewicz is the master. I read, I wonder, it sticks. Always? 

Różewicz is. I read for filth.

Grzegorz Wróblewski and Różewicz

In the interview published last year in this magazine, Polish poet, writer, and dramatist Grzegorz Wróblewski refers to Różewicz as a “great poet” and “genuine innovator.” It would be accurate to say that much of his own poetry, which he has been writing since the early 1980s, builds on Różewicz’s example. In many of his poems Wróblewski adopts an austere and straightforward style.