Poetry
Łąka
Bolesław Leśmian · 1920
Synopsis
Poems of the countryside and of nature (a drowned man, a windmill, a barn, the first rain), ballads nourished by folklore, in which the peasant Bajdała, asleep under a tree during his travels with his nag and his ox, sees a monster rise from the ditch and choke him, and the love cycle Dans la framboiseraie. Behind the rustic scenes, the book raises the question of existence, in a language rich in words coined by the poet.
Context
The author's second collection, after Sad rozstajny, which went unnoticed in 1912, Łąka was published in Warsaw in 1920 and was received with enthusiasm by Karol Irzykowski and Ostap Ortwin; it was this book that established his reputation. The interwar period nevertheless regarded his work as a belated remnant of Young Poland, and it was fully recognised only after the war, especially from the end of the fifties. The new words he coined have been called leśmianisms.
Who it is for
Poems that are often brief, to be read slowly; the verbal inventiveness resists translation. No French edition of this collection.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as his best-known book; its author, a marginal figure in his lifetime, is now considered one of the greatest Polish poets.
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