Translated from the Polish by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter
I depend on the sentence A stop that seeks form
orderly and modest like everyday speech
Everything in me awaits the moment when a shape
encloses shapelessness where it was suspended
I suffer gently but persistently the pain of uncertainty
the dissolution of feelings and thoughts in which I live
like in a diluted space
It doesn’t hinder me from admiring the linden branches
spread wide behind the window a screech of a magpie
annoying and blessed because it exists
it doesn’t hinder me from taking in the heat
of this dry and tragic summer
But a sentence a reliable sentence
restores under my feet the firm earth
Julia Hartwig occupies a prominent place in the Polish literary landscape. She has been awarded numerous prizes in Poland, France, and the United States, including the Jurzykowski Prize and the Thornton Wilder Prize from the Translation Center at Columbia University, and the Austrian Georg Trakl Prize for poetry. Hartwig has translated many American poets into Polish. She has also translated poetry by Apollinaire, Rimbaud, Max Jacob, Cendrars, Supervielle, and Henri Michaux, and published studies of Apollinaire and Gerard de Nerval.
John Carpenter is a poet and critic. Bogdana Carpenter is a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, currently chair of the Slavic Department. They have translated many volumes of the writer Zbigniew Herbert, among other works; they are preparing a collection of Julia Hartwig’s poetry with the working title In Praise of the Unfinished. (10/2006)
Julia Hartwig (1921–2017) belonged to the great generation of Polish poets that included Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert, and Wisława Szymborska. In Poland she achieved something of a cult status, her public appearances and readings drawing large crowds. She was awarded numerous prizes in Poland, France, and the United States, including the Jurzykowski Prize and the Thornton Wilder Prize from the Translation Center at Columbia University, and the Austrian Georg Trakl Prize for poetry. Hartwig translated many American poets into Polish. She also translated poetry by Apollinaire, Rimbaud, Max Jacob, Cendrars, Supervielle, and Henri Michaux, and published studies of Apollinaire and Gerard de Nerval.
John and Bogdana Carpenter, working together, have translated seven volumes of poetry and prose by Zbigniew Herbert, for which they received the Witter Bynner Translation Prize, the Islands and Continents Translation Award, and the Columbia University Translation Center Merit Award. They have also translated two volumes of Julia Hartwig’s poetry. Bogdana, professor emerita of Polish and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is the author of The Poetic Avant-garde in Poland, 1918–39, and Monumenta Polonica: The First Four Centuries of Polish Poetry. John is the author of Creating the World and Wall, Watchtower, and Pencil Stub, a study of wartime writings by participants in World War Two. (updated 10/2015)
John and Bogdana Carpenter’s translation of Zbigniew Herbert’s book Mr. Cogito was reviewed in AGNI 39 by Susan Miron.