Tomasz Różycki and the Long Life of the Past

Poetry has a very economical way of using language, good for nations that do not have a lot of peace and quiet. This may help explain the excellence of the poetic tradition in a country like Poland. The best known Polish poets—Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, Tadeusz Rózewicz, Zbigniew Herbert—lived through the devastations of the Second World War and the travails of the cold war that followed. They mastered a way of transmitting their experience of history in a personal and very condensed way. That tradition continues beyond the generations that had a direct collision with war and violence. The consequences of the Second World War are still with us. Tomasz Rózycki is one such witness to the continuity of the past.