Paradox - a poetic device

"We are dealing here with a poetry that presents the concrete experience of human beings living in their time. The essence of such an experience and its poetic transcription is the sacral reality that lies beyond the duration of nature and history. This experience is signalled ... by the intervention of visual elements, by the use of parallelism and paradox. Paradox appears in Jawien's (KW's) earlier texts, but only in 'Considerations on Death' has it been given the main role. The structure of the poem is supported by paradox. The theme of death/resurrection and the schema of death leading to life are two of the most important paradoxes in Christianity. Semantic figures based on antithesis (include): 'maturity, descending into the hidden essence', 'passing is also gathering'; 'the dying world reveals its life anew';'the body of my soul and the soul of my body are united again'. Words with antithetical meanings are linked in a dialectic tension: maturation/regression, word/silence, body/persistence, death/hope."

from The Poetic Phenomenology of a Religious Man: About the Literary Creativity of Karol Wojtyta By KRZYSZTOF DYBCIAK

poetic phenomenology

"Thus Wojtyła's literary writings can be regarded as poetic phenomenology which gives an account of the process and essence of religious experience." Krzysztof Dybciak
Read the whole of this very illuminating afterword about KW's place in literary history (from p281)

Profile - a Poetic Device

Profile = a sudden revelation of a person. For the Polish poet Cyprian Norwid (a poetic influence on KW), profile was a manifestation of God, for we can't see our Creator face-to-face. 'Beauty, like lightening, illuminates the many profiles of God' (1982:14). In KW's Cyrenean cycle, the Son of God is met in profile, not face-to-face. This cycle contains 14 profiles - a car factory worker, a girl disappointed in love, a schizoid etc, and each faces themselves as if for the first time against the cross they have to carry. The last profile in the cycle is the Cyrenean himself. JP notes that there is perhaps an analogy between KW's 14 profiles in the cycle and the 14 stations of the cross (which are usually made in relief), and that the stations, as they follow one another, form a sequence of profiles.

Source: Collected Poems 1982, Hutchinson, trans and intro by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

Poetics of Contemplation

the poetics of contemplation

cycles, profiles
reiteration, repetition, reinterpretation, recurring themes, repeating images
thought poised on thought
sudden leaps into paradox, the paradox of negation
inscape
monologue, implied dialogue, speaking through an adopted character, articulating the struggle for self-knowledge, segments of conversation embedded in the text without formal indication they are dialogue, sequences of thought presented as conversations with oneself, inner dialogue implied [ ] –
overlapping questions and answers, double-edged questions
the subject and object uniting, the medium and the message converging
compact phrases, as well as long, long lines . . .
the poetics of contemplation, the frontier of language redefined
an invitation, a welcome, a greeting – please, my love – come inside

What's in a translation? 1

Man of Emotion

You don't really suffer when love is flooding you:
it's a patch of enthusiasm, pleasant and shallow;
if it dries up—do you think of the void?
Between heart and heart there is always a gap.
You must enter it slowly—
till the eye absorbs color,
the ear tunes to rhythm.

Love and move inward, discover your will,
shed heart's evasions and the mind's harsh control

Official translation Jerzy Peterkiewicz


Man of Emotion

You never tire of the love that constantly floods you
Here is the stain of ardour, a charming and shallow stain
When it dries – do you feel an absence?

There is a space between one heart and another
Into which it takes time to enter
During which sight grows to know the colour and hearing the rhythm

So love as you enter the depths and reach the will
So as not to witness the heart’s escape and thought’s tormenting control!

Translation Karolina Stolarska (2010)

what's in a translation? 2

Girl Disappointed in Love

With mercury we measure pain
as we measure the heat of bodies and air;
but this is not how to discover our limits--
you think you are the center of things.
If you could only grasp that you are not:
the center is He,
and He, too, finds no love---
why don't you see?
The human heart--what is it for?
Cosmic temperature. Heart. Mercury.

Official translation Jerzy Peterkiewicz


Girl Disappointed in Love

Often suffering is measured by the line of mercury
Just like the temperature of air or bodies -
But you need a different gage of its dimensions…
(Yet you’re too much an axis of your own affairs).

If you could grasp that you are not their centre
And that the One who is
Also finds no love
If you could manage to see this

What is the human heart for?

The temperature of the cosmos and the human heart – and mercury.

Translation Karolina Stolarska (2010)