The Poetry of Survival: Post-War Poets of Central and Eastern Europe

by Daniel Weissbort (Contributor)

This anthology, beginning with Brecht and ending with the Romanian poet Marin Sorescu, provides a translation of poems from Eastern Europe from between 1939 and 1970. The book includes poets like Zbigniew Herbert, Vasko Popa, Tadeusz Rozewicz and Miroslav Holub.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

388 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Daniel Weissbort was educated at Cambridge, where he was a History Exhibitioner. In 1965, with Ted Hughes, he founded the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) which he edited for almost forty years. He also directed the Translation Workshop and MFA Program in Translation at the University of Iowa for over thirty years. In addition to his translations, Daniel Weissbort published many collections of his own poetry, co-edited a historical reader in translation theory, and wrote a book about the translator Ted Hughes.

Reviews

[Liam Guilar]

The Goodreads star system is inadequate for this one. It introduced me to a list of poets I would never have encountered otherwise. (It's the kind of brilliant anthology that results in far too much time and money being spent at bookfinder.com). There's a fine introduction, and then each of the 28 poets is introduced by a brief biographical note. There's also a section of conversations and essays at the end. How representative is the choice of poems from each poet i'm not fit to judge but none of the books I bought as a result were disappointing.

(If nothing else it saved my reputation over breakfast in Warsaw when it meant I knew who they were talking about. The world of poetry beyond English is huge. Books like this allow some sense of its range and value. )

What I'd most recommend about this book, despite the horror at its core, is the range of poems. It sounds like it should be unrelentingly grim but it's not.

Weissbort's contribution to poetry in translation has been huge, and one of the other characteristics of it is the quality of the translations that he advocates. The poems here read as poems. and that is a victory.

[Steven Godin]

When you take the likes of Czeslaw Milosz, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Zbigniew Herbert & Wisława Szymborska—all poets I'm familiar with and have read before, and put them together into a single volume you know you are getting some of the most important poetic voices of the 20th century. Those who lived through the absolute worst it had to offer.

Added to this are many other poets I've never heard of before but was equally impressed; including Nina Cassian -

I left those walls
smeared with my blood -
it was an atrocious massacre.
Now I'm flying over the city
not like a Chagall bride
beside her bridegroom, the violinist,
but like a winged nightmare
with an entire biography of dirty feathers


Slavko Mihalic -

A scream that climbs a candle.
Great hollow scream above the feverish city.
The heavens now can be ripped open too.
Every moment we expect to hear news:

nothing exists - except our troubles.
The stain of the scream on the shimmering table of midnight.
Useless the effort to move my fat fingers;
I'm choking - there's a scream around my neck


and János Pilinszky -

Already their bodies belong to silence.
And they thrust their faces towards the height
as if they strained for a scent
of far-off celestial troughs

because, prepared for their coming
like an opened stock-yard,
its gates flung savagely back,
death gapes to its hinges

which resulted in a collection of such staggering power and profound tribulation. A book that, in the end, makes me appreciate the small things in life a whole lot more.

[Miggy Angel]

Currently absorbed in this book, & the experience is a sobering one. This is an anthology of the work of that generation of European poets whose poetry appeared in the aftermath of the second world war, a conflict which delivered unprecedented destruction to the Central & Eastern Europe these poets hail from. We often speak about poetry as 'witness', & today are apt to read the testimonies of poets who have barely ventured beyond the comfort of their front steps. This book features the work of poets who were actually present, participant, active witnesses, to some of the worst atrocities imaginable.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys wonderful poetry, also to those who seek proof or affirmation of the courage & endurance of the will to live; but I would doubly recommend this book to practising poets. Inside the book's front cover, is a quote from the great Polish poet, Tadeusz Rozewicz, who said, "One of the premises & incentives for my poetry is a disgust with poetry. What I revolted against was that it had survived the end of the world, as though nothing had happened." This quote sets the challenge & the tone for the book. When the unimaginable befalls us, what then of poetry?

To read the work of those poets who have been confronted with that dilemma, their differing responses to its demand, is an often emotional experience. In the work of each featured writer, it is clear that the practising of poetry was an aid in their survival & continuance.

I particularly enjoyed the work of Rozewicz, a stripped down, artifice-free, attempt to return himself, & us, back to the original meanings of words themselves. I found his poem, 'In The Midst Of Life,' heartbreaking. In this poem, it's as if he is renaming, reclaiming, revalidating, reacquainting, reabsorbing, the world, its values & its particulars, himself included, after 'the end of the world'. Part of the poem goes, "this is a table I said/this is a table/there is bread & a knife on the table/knife serves to cut bread/people are nourished by bread".

In comfortable times, the comfortable forget what is at stake. This book can serve as a reminder. The statement that 'poetry persists as if nothing had happened' can still be leveled at poetry today. The challenge to the writer of contemporary poetry is that it should continue to justify its existence. To speak of the knife on the table, its function to cut the bread, & for the people who must be nourished.

(Just as a coda to this review, I must say that if you are a Vasko Popa fan, YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK. Has a great selection of his work, but, more rarely, the appendix contains an essay from the man himself. I know of no other of his personal testimonies on his own poetics in print, & it is absolutely beautiful. A rare & precious gem.)

[Kris Kipling]

THE NEED FOR CENSORSHIP
by Reiner Kunze

Everything
can be retouched

except
the negative
inside us.


...................................................



The finest compilation of poetry I have ever come across. 20th century titans - Milosz, Brecht, Celan - along with less household figures (though precisely what strange household would one expect to find any of these odd, jangled east European names?): Holan, Huchel, Kocbek, Sachs (an unknown despite the Nobel Prize), Swir, Bobrowski, Rozewicz, Popa, Cassian, Enzensberger, Ficowski, Karpowicz, Miedzyrzecki, Holub, Bachmann, Amichai, Szymborska (also a Nobel winner), Mihalic, Nemes Nagy, Pagis, Pilinszky, Zach, and Kunze. Weissbort's introduction is thoughtful and his selections almost across the board first-rate; there are also appended short prose pieces and interviews. A wealth of brilliant poetry, called by translator Michael Hoffman the best collection of poetry to have appeared in the last thirty years, I have dipped into this time and time again in the ten since I bought it. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the miracle of how art can flourish under the heel of tyrannical regimes.

[Dani]

This book is filled with beautiful poetry. There are several of my favorite poems of all time in this book

[Mejix]

In the early 90's this book introduced me to Amichai, Celan, Herbert, Milosz, Popa, and Szymborska. Great selection. Or in internet-speak "incredibly, amazing, unbelievably iconic selection."

[Mii]

This book is a great read!