TADEUSZ ROZEWICZ

Born in 1921, a poet, playwright and novelist, Rozewicz is perhaps one of the pre-eminent living writers in the world today, and certainly one of the most versatile, but is still not widely known in the U.S. He is unanimously listed as belonging to the Pantheon of the greatest Polish poets of the 20th century, together with Czeslaw Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, and Wislawa Szymborska, and his dramas are constantly presented by Poland’s best theatres, next to plays by Witold Gombrowicz and Slawomir Mrozek.

Rozewicz’s work has been translated into numerous foreign languages including English, French, German, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish, and received both Polish and foreign awards. Rozewicz is a precursor of the avant-garde in poetry and drama, and an independent artist who, despite the pressure of public opinion, has steered clear of politics. He is a grand solitary, convinced of an artistic mission that he regards as a state of internal concentration, interior alertness, and ethical sensitivity. He is respected worldwide as a writer of the highest moral authority. Rozewicz has provided his own answer to the question, whether poetry is even possible after Auschwitz, by creating a new type of restrained verse that is known as the fourth versification system in literary Polish, in Anxiety (1947) and A Red Glove (1948). The fact that he has never accepted the consequences of the World War II is indicated by the disturbing Our Elder Brother, a collection of stories from the 1950s, dedicated to his brother who was murdered by the Gestapo. Rozewicz ferrets out contemporary instances of human cruelty. He is the founder of a movement in Polish literature, which concentrates on existence as a struggle against nothingness (Conversation with the Prince, 1960; The Anonymous Voice, 1961; Nothing Dressed In Prospero's Cloak, 1962; The Face, 1964; and The Third Face, 1968.)

He is a seeker of new forms in poetic expression that abandon the avant-garde for aesthetic straightforwardness and stunning short-cuts that are a metaphor for a human existence bounded by the act of birth and the act of death. Equal to Beckett or Ionesco in the renovation of theatrical forms, he is fascinated by "open theatre" and the means of expressing on stage the internal anxieties of contemporary man (The Card Index, 1968; The Old Woman Broods, 1969; On All Fours, 1972; and The Card Index Scattered, 1997). He is an artist gifted with an extraordinary "ear," who has anticipated such contemporary artistic phenomena as feminism and post-modernism (White Wedding, 1975). A disturbing writer who resists definition, a poet of silence who rejects poetic trappings, Rozewicz could almost be called a mystical writer.

Tadeusz Rozewicz was awarded Poland’s most prestigious literary prize, NIKE, in 2000 for Matka Odchodzi (Mother Departs), a book of prose and verse combined, dedicated to his mother’s passing. The text has been ‘adapted’ by Leszek Madzik in Passing Away.

Selected Bibliography:

• Anxiety (Niepokoj), 1947
• The Red Glove (Czerwona rekawiczka), 1948
• Our Elder Brother (Nasz starszy brat), 1992
• Conversation With the Prince (Rozmowa z ksieciem), 1960
• The Anonymous Voice (Glos anonima), 1961
• Nothing Dressed In Prospero's Cloak (Nic w plaszczu prospera), 1962
• The Face (Twarz), 1964
• Twarz Trzecia (The third face), 1968
• The Old Woman Broods (Stara kobieta wysiaduje), 1969
• On All Fours (Na czworakach), 1972
• The Card Index Scattered (Kartoteka rozrzucona), 1997
• White Wedding (Biale malzenstwo), 1975
• The Trap (Pulapka), Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1982
• Bas-Relief (Plaskorzezba), Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie, 1991
• The Card Index (Kartoteka), 1968
• Always a Fragment: Recycling (Zawsze fragment. recycling), Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie, Wroclaw, 1998
• Mother Departs (Matka odchodzi), Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie, Wroclaw, 1999
• The Professor's Penknife (Nozyk profesora), Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie, Wroclaw, 2001
• The Grey Zone (Szara strefa), Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie, Wroclaw, 2002

Selected translations into English:

• The Card Index & Other Plays, Calder & Boyars, London 1969
• Faces of Anxiety: Poems, Rapp & Whiting, London 1969
• The Witnesses & Other Plays, Calder & Boyars, London 1970
• The Survivor and Other Poems, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. 1976
• Conversation with the Prince and Other Poems, Anvil Press Poetry, London 1982
• Mariage Blanc ad The Hunger Artist Departs: Two Plays, Marion Boyars, London - New York 1983
• Forms i Relief and Other Works, Legas, New York 1994
• Reading the Apocalypse in Bed: Selected Plays and Short Pieces, Marion Boyars, New York 1998
• Recycling, Arc publication, London 2001