Poetry
Zamknięty echem
Not translated into English
Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński · 1940
Synopsis
A cycle of seven poems written at nineteen, in the first summer of the occupation, and gathered in a slim typewritten notebook. The pieces have not been described one by one in the studies devoted to the poet, which see in it above all the memory of a youthful friendship. The author's work, from these years onward, is a poetry of catastrophe, in which war appears as an immense force that destroys former values and imposes new and cruel laws, and in which the speaker often says “we” on behalf of his generation.
Context
The cycle was typed and produced in seven copies in the summer of 1940, under the fictitious imprint of the Éditions des sous-locataires du passé, in memory of the author's friendship with Jerzy Kamil Weintraub; a second cycle, Dwie miłości, followed in the autumn. According to Kazimierz Wyka, the poet later disowned these two notebooks, and critics do not regard them as a true debut. His next collections, Wiersze wybrane (1942) and Arkusz poetycki nr 1 (1944), circulated under the occupation.
Who it is for
Seven poems gathered in a notebook of a few pages. No French or English translation of this cycle; the author is translated through selections of poems.
Prizes and reception
The first notebook of a poet regarded as the greatest of the Columbus generation; he himself disowned it.
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The pages consulted to check this page.