When the Nazis occupied Cracow, Wojtyła started working in the Solvay factory quarry in Borek Fałęcki. The job protected him from a compulsory trip to Germany. In the coldest winters during the war, when the temperature dropped to -30źC, he would crush and shovel limestone all day... After two years, he was moved to a soda-purifying plant ...
Juliusz Kydryński, who became a well-known journalist after the war, also worked in the Solvay factory. "I don't know how it happened that Karol became my closest friend," Kydryński writes in his memoirs. "It could've been because opposites attract. Even though he had a great sense of humor and was an attractive social figure, Karol was much more serious than us, a little inhibited-as if trying to solve problems which overwhelmed us. I took life much more lightly."
From here
From The Quarry (1956)
The greatness of work is inside man.
…
Fear not. Man’s daily deeds have a wide span,
a strait riverbed can’t imprison them for long.
Fear not. For centuries they all stand in Him,
and you look at Him now
through the even knocking of hammers.
The greatness of work is inside man.
…
Fear not. Man’s daily deeds have a wide span,
a strait riverbed can’t imprison them for long.
Fear not. For centuries they all stand in Him,
and you look at Him now
through the even knocking of hammers.
…
Hands are the heart’s landscape. They split sometimes
like ravines into which an undefined force rolls.
The very same hands a man only opens
when palms have had their fill of toil.
Now he sees: because of him others can walk in peace.
Hands are a landscape. When they split, the pain of their sores surges free as a stream.
But no thought of pain –
like ravines into which an undefined force rolls.
The very same hands a man only opens
when palms have had their fill of toil.
Now he sees: because of him others can walk in peace.
Hands are a landscape. When they split, the pain of their sores surges free as a stream.
But no thought of pain –
No grandeur in pain alone.
For his own grandeur he does not know how to name.
(from Material)
Work starts within, outside it takes such space
that it soon seizes hands, then the limits of breath …
… Man matures through workWork starts within, outside it takes such space
that it soon seizes hands, then the limits of breath …
which inspires him to difficult good …
… Listen to the love that ripens in hammers, in even sounds.
Children will carry them into the future, singing:
“In our father’s hearts
work knew no bounds.”
(from Inspiration)
Whoever enters Him keeps his own self.
He who does not
has no full part in the business of this world
despite all appearances.
(From Description of Man)
