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War's Aftermath

Rozewicz
Ficowski
Although the Second World War and its moral as well as physical aftermath have been a major preoccupation in Polish literature of the last fifty years, two poets immediately come to mind as representatives of this theme. 
Tadeusz Różewicz (b. 1921), freedom fighter during the war, expresses the shock not only at the war but also at the fact that the world did not end in this apogee of brutality. Rózewicz is then a spokesman for a whole "death-contaminated generation:" his scathing irony is an endorsement of existentialism. In the words of Czeslaw Milosz, "Rozewicz is a poet of chaos with a nostalgia for order."
Jerzy Ficowski (b. 1924). member of the Polish resistance, sociologist and philosopher, is often seen as a champion of Poland's past and present minorities, with his keen interest and inspirations in the Jewish, Romany, and Lemko folklores. Mourner for those nations' respective Holocausts, he is also famous for the discovery of Papusza, the first Romany poet to ever put her verse to print. 
 

 


©2000 Jan Rybicki
This page was last updated on 02/12/01 .