Like the winter

Be in front of all parting, as though it were already
behind you, like the winter just gone by.
Because among winters is one so endlessly winter
only by over-wintering does your heart still survive.

Be always dead in Eurydice – climb, with more singing,
climb with praising, back to the pure relation.
Here, in the failing place, in the exhausted realm,
be a sounding glass that shattered as it rang.

Be – and know at that time the state of non-being,
the infinite ground of our deepest vibration,
so that you may wholly complete it this one time.

In both the used-up, and the hollow and dumb
recourse of all nature, the un-tellable sum,
joyfully count yourself one, and destroy the number.

The Sonnets to Orpheus
Rainer Maria Rilke

True Love

 







True Love by Wislawa Szymborska

 True love. Is it normal
 is it serious, is it practical?
 What does the world get from two people
 who exist in a world of their own?

 Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
 drawn randomly from millions but convinced
 it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
 For nothing.
 The light descends from nowhere.
 Why on these two and not on others?
 Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
 Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
 and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

 Look at the happy couple.
 Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
 fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
 Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
 The language they use - deceptively clear.
 And their little celebrations, rituals,
 the elaborate mutual routines -
 it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!

 It's hard even to guess how far things might go
 if people start to follow their example.
 What could religion and poetry count on?
 What would be remembered? What renounced?
 Who'd want to stay within bounds?

 True love. Is it really necessary?
 Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
 like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
 Perfectly good children are born without its help.
 It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
 it comes along so rarely.

 Let the people who never find true love
 keep saying that there's no such thing.

 Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.



Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Freedom exists inside us

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) is recognized as a one of the greatest Polish theatre artists in the world. He is known for his stunning visual performances – Wielopole, Wielopole, Today is my Birthday, I shall never return.

In June 1986 Tadeusz Kantor taught group of eleven students at the Civica Scuola d’Arte Drammatica in Milano. The Milano Lessons were intimate commentaries.

The highest freedom

that is demanded by

A r t

will not be understood

Freedom in art

Is a gift neither from the politicians

Nor from the authorities.

Freedom exists inside us.

We have to fight for freedom

within ourselves

in our most intimate interior

in our solitude

in our suffering

It is the most delicate domain,

the domain of soul and spirit.

Kantor pointed out in the Milano Lessons:

The Space of Life and everything that is contained in this phrase.

Exists parallel to

This other space,

The space of art

The two of them converge, overlap

And coalesce

Sharing their Fate and Destiny.

Sources:

A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944-1990

Photo: Anna Halczak / Kantor in Milan 1988, ze strony - http://en.poland.gov.pl

Still friend of many distances

Rilke – Sonet to Orpheus XXIX

Still friend of many distances, feel how

your breath increases space even now.

In the timber-frames of shadowy bell towers

let yourself ring. That which saps your powers

grows ever stronger from this sustenance.

Through transformation, cross the borderline.

What's your most sorrowful experience?

If drinking you is bitter, turn to wine.

Be, in this night of extravagances,

magics at the crossroads of your senses,

the sense they oddly all cohere.

And when the world no longer knows

you, to the still earth say: I flow.

To the rushing water speak: I'm here.

Single Color

My hands were too soft.. I had to find some special occupation, some kind of work that would not force me to turn away from the sky and the stars, that would allow me to discover the meaning of life.

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

Marc Chagall

Sailing to an Island

The boom above my knees lifts, and the boat 
Drops, and the surge departs, departs, my cheek
Kissed and rejected, kissed, as the gaff sways
A tangent, cuts the infinite sky to red
Maps, and the mast draws eight and eight across
Measureless blue, the boatmen sing or sleep.

Sailing to an Island - Richard Murphy - fragment

Clouds over Europe - part 1

Clouds are always with us although they never belong to us.

    Clouds over Normandy

  

    Clouds over Spain

Clouds by Wisława Szymborska.

I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds -
a split second’s enough
for them to start being something else.
Their trademark:
they don’t repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.

Clouds over Spain

Unburdened by memory of any kind,
they float easily over the facts.
What on earth could they bear witness to?
They scatter whenever something happens.

   Clouds over Madrid

Compared to clouds,

life rests on solid ground,

practically permanent, almost eternal.

    Clouds over Lisbon

Next to clouds
even a stone seems like a brother,
someone you can trust,
while they’re just distant, flighty cousins.

    Clouds over Portugal

Let people exist if they want,
and then die, one after another:
clouds simply don't care
what they're up to down there.

    Clouds over Sevilla

And so their haughty fleet
cruises smoothly over your whole life
and mine, still incomplete.

   Clouds over Barcelona

   Clouds over Chamonix

They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone.
They don't have to be seen while sailing on. 

                                                            Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

    Clouds over Alps

Love more important than death

It is unusual book, poignant, deeply touching and beautiful. Beautiful because love is beautiful always. Love is even more important than life.

 in Polish

In the midst of the horror, people found moments of happiness said about it, in his book Marek Edelman, doctor and military commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Edelman’s book I byla milosc w getcie (And There Was Love in the Ghetto) - In 150 pages, Edelman explores ghetto memories which differ from the mass deportations, massacres and starvation. Survive together or perish together – it was important.

Marek Edelman about love in the ghetto - English

And the next story about Estusia (excerpt from the book)

That was probably after the second Action - Akcja in January. I don't remember how it was that I happened to be on Wronia Street. I entered the attic, and on the floor, on mattresses, people were lying everywhere. There I saw Estusia. She was lying on a mattress. A man was serving her tea or hot water. I tell her: "Madam, there is a flat for you on the Aryan side. You have a lot of money, you can get away." Then it was supposed to be a way to survive. "You have enough to keep you there until the end of the war." She almost did not reply. She just said: "No, I'll stay with him. Either we will survive together somehow, or we will perish together. I've never been so happily in love like those four years. That is why I did not look for you." "Mrs. Estusia, you do not have a chance here," I pleaded. I don't remember her answer, but she said something like: "My chance was those four years, and I used it."

There was the love in the ghetto - English
A fragment of the film ( director - Jolanta Dylewska) it is not a film about the Holocaust, but a film about love, the most important human emotion

Mountain Butterfly

It is more than just a place. Mountains were in my every child’s holiday.
Mountain hostels and shelters with a golden light in the windows. The best hope in the evening after long hard trip.
Hot tea with a lemon – which probably can never taste better, gives a new power always.
Bustle and noise in the hostel full of excited travellers – rain outside.
Spruces proudly growing into the sky, straight and high.
Breath of the Tatra forest with green plants and smelling pines.

And the only one sound of entrance door opening, in the evening.
Thanks Be to God they have returned, our friends that were climbing that day.
More mystery than story.
Memories about all people that loved the same Tatra before my time – the same rain, rocks, gullies, dangerous storms.
When I was sitting Roztoka hostel (built in 1876) – perfect shelter for climbers. Sitting, drinking tea and looking through the window.
Outside the window was my life – first time I was here with my mother when I was 13 maybe. Later I was here many times with my friends, my husband, my daughter and sometimes I am here alone with myself only.
Not far from here is a Roztoka Valley, one of the most beautiful in the Tatras.
Is it the best place to think about order in my life?
Easier to think, easier to agree with ourselves.
Confession? - yes.
One September I found a butterfly in the valley. His wings were broken. I put him on the leaf. I didn’t know if his life was ended?
He was born merely that morning. Butterflies live so short.

If I could only turn back the clock.

Sunsets

Zachody słońca, nostalgia przemijania .. Sunsets, nostalgia of passing ..

Kto pogubił te pióra różowe na niebie?

Aniołowie kochania, kochania, kochania. -

Popłynęli daleko - nie do mnie i ciebie,

lecz tam, gdzie szyby płoną snem oczekiwania.

Who has lost these pink feathers in the sky?

Angels of Love.. Love .. Love

They flown far away – not to me and you

But where windows burn with dreams of waiting

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska

Fair is the sun when first he flames above,

Flinging his joy down in a happy beam;

And happy he who can salute with love

The sunset far more glorious than a dream.

Rzucając nam dzień dobry! Jak wybuch z ciemności

Szczęśliwy ten, kto może pozdrowić w miłości

Swój zachód promienniejszy nawet od marzenia.

Charles Baudelaire

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colours

which it passes to a row of ancient trees.

You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing

that turns to a star each night and climbs 

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)

your own life, timid and standing high and growing,

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star

Rainer Maria Rilke

Seagulls

Unosiły się w powietrzu przez cały dzień gdy wiał wiatr.. One są jak przejrzyści ludzie, naprawdę istnieją..

They floated in the air whole day when the wind blew... they are like transparent people, they truly exist.. seagulls..

Te nad morzem obłąkane mewy
zdają mi się jak myśli człowieka,
których w całym ludzkim wielkim życiu
nic nie wzywa ani nic nie czeka.

Those deranged seagulls of the sea
seem like thoughts of the man to me
In the long long human life
Nothing calls and nothing waits

Kazimierz Przerwa Tetmajer

Tęsknota nade mną szeleszcze.

Trąca mnie skrzydłem mewim.

Czy wciąż ta sama jeszcze?

Nie wiem! nie wiem ...

  

The longing above me rustles

Jostles me with the seagull’s wing

Is it still the same?

Don’t know… don’t know

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska