Julia Hartwig

Un poemario que nos ofrece un pequeño oasis de orden, templanza y armonía dentro del caos.

Es una obra antológica para cuya elaboración hemos tenido el honor de trabajar durante más de tres años en constante complicidad personal con la propia autora y en la que hemos pretendido que suenen todos los tonos de su voz, desde el primer grito desgarrado de los años de posguerra hasta los silencios más actuales. La iridiscencia de la poesía de Hartwig responde a la actitud misma de la creadora ante la realidad: la contemplación. Hartwig observa la realidad con mirada mística, contemplativa, y la acepta tal y como es. Sin quejido ni llanto, contempla el mundo que la rodea y lo capta como el objetivo de una cámara fotográfica para plasmarlo e inmortalizarlo en el negativo de la memoria para así más tarde —horas, días, meses, años— hacerlo aflorar en el revelado de las palabras.

Hailed by Czeslaw Milosz as the grande dame of Polish poetry and named one of the foremost Polish poets of the twentieth century by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Julia Hartwig has long been considered the gold standard of poetry in her native Poland. With this career-spanning collection, we finally have a book of her work in English. The tragic story of the last century flows naturally through Hartwigs poems. She evokes the husbands who returned silent from battle (What woman was told about the hell at Monte Cassino?) and asks, Why didnt I dance on the Champs-Elysees / when the crowd cheered the end of the war? . . . Why was I fated to be on the main street of Lublin / watching regiments with red stars enter the city. But there is also a welcoming of new experience in her verse, a sense that life, finally, is too beautiful to condemn. She seeks a higher peace, urging us to hear other voices: an ermines cry, moan of a dove, / complaint of an owlthat remind us / the hardship of solitude is measured out equally. Hartwigs compassionate spirit in the face of destruction and suffering, her apparent need to live in the moment, make her poems monumental and deeply touching and the introduction of her work here long overdue. Return to My Childhood HomeAmid a dark silence of pinesthe shouts of young birches calling each other.Everything is as it was. Nothing is as it was.Speak to me, Lord of the child. Speak, innocent terror!To understand nothing. Each time in a different way, from the first cry to the last breath.Yet happy moments come to me from the past, like bridesmaids carrying oil lamps.