FROM EDITOR’S READING
Sakrat Janowič
ÁÅËÀÐÓÑÊ²ß Ï²ÑÜÌÅÍͲʲ ÏÎËÜØ×Û.
[BELARUSSIAN WRITERS IN POLAND. THE 2ND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY. „THE BELARUSSIAN LIBRARY”, MINSK, 2000.]
A wide-ranging anthology of poetry and prose by Belarussian writers in Poland, edited under the auspices of the Belarussian Literary Society „Bielavieża” led by Jan Czykwin, Professor of the Białystok University. The volume of almost 600 pages contains the best literary achievements of eighteen authors – poets, prose-writers and esseists.
With the exception of a rather unfortunate preface by Prof. Uładzimir Konan of Minsk, the whole volume is indeed impressive. It is the first publication of the kind.
Belarussian writers of the post-war Poland developed practically a new and highly unique variety of the Belarussian literature in general, very far removed from the Soviet one. Their works are translated from time to time in Europe, mainly in England, Germany and Italy, where they are perceived as an autonomous literary phenomenon aspiring to the name of the second national literature of contemporary Poland. We can speak then of the Polish Belarussian literature whose reception in Belarus itself is by no means simple, as it is affected by complexities characteristic for the reception of literatures of neighbouring states or alien civilizations.
Europe, then, has got richer in yet another, Polish-Belarussian, literature.
RYSZARD RADZIK: MIĘDZY ZBIOROWOŚCIĄ ETNICZNĄ A WSPÓLNOTĄ NARODOWĄ. BIAŁORUSINI NA TLE PRZEMIAN NARODOWYCH W EUROPIE ŚRODKOWO-WSCHODNIEJ XIX STULECIA. WYDAWNICTWO UMCS, LUBLIN 2000.
[BETWEEN ETHNIC COLLECTIVITY AND NATIONAL COMMUNITY. BELARUSSIANS AGAINST THE SETTING OF NATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE OF THE 19TH CENTURY.]
The volume culminates many years of research in Belarussian matters of this exquisite Polish scholar. Impeccably edited, equipped in a broad scholarly apparatus including the name index facilitating the reading.
A major asset of this book is its broad historical and sociological background against which the author sets his analysis of Belarussian nation-forming process in the century of nationalities. The European context framing the book sharpens the problematics in the Belarussian reality.
I have an impression that without reading Ryszard Radzik’s book it is not possible to understand contemporary Belarussians with their ways and attitudes to the world.
ÇßÍÎÍ ÏÀÇÜÍßÊ: Ã˨ÐÛß ÏÀÒÐÛß, ÒÀÂÀÐÛÑÒÂÀ ÁÅËÀÐÓÑÊÀÉ ÊÓËÜÒÓÐÛ ¡ ˲ÒÂÅ, VILNIUS 2000.
[GLORIA PATRIA, THE SOCIETY OF THE BELARUSSIAN CULTURE IN LITHUANIA]
This is a beautifully composed and edited album, containing poems and photos by Zianon Paźniak, the most authoritative leader of the Belarussian opposition. He became known as a politician and it came as a surprise that the same person stored a gifted poet and an artist photographer.
The atmosphere of his works beautifully harmonizes with the aura of the photographs. We could say that they complete one another. What remains untold in the poem, makes itself visible in the photo, and vice versa. It is indeed a rare case of two gifts, in verse and in visual art, going well together.
Composition of the contents is unusual: „Letters to Motherland”, „Luminous joys”, „Wanderings”, „Alien cities”, „My house”, On eternity and time”, „Radiation”, „Vilnius”, „Minsk”, Maxim’s star”, „Sickness”, „Pagan spirit”, „The light of christianity”, „Photographs”, „Parables”, „Sad poems” . . . Almost four hundred items in total. However, reading Gloria Patria is extremely exhausting. You can look at each photo for hours, incessantly finding new meanings. Each poem can be read breathlessly, although they are usually quite short. What an uncanny emanation of meaning! The metaphysics of detail. In the details of the landscape the immensity of nature and a particle of the universe. The philosophical sensititvity of „Gloria…” evokes a perceptible feeling of eternity.
ÀËÅÑÜ ×ÎÁÀÒ: ÒÓÒÝÉØÀß ÑÀÃÀ.
LIBRARY JOURNAL „GODY” (ÃÎÄÛ), SMOLENSK – GRODNO 2000.
[THE LOCAL SAGA]
Aleś Czobat’s writing emerged in the Belarussian literature quite abruptly and, on an instant, on a very high level. It happened only several years ago and the probable reason of the late debut – in the decidedly mature age – is that he was an engineer constructor.
One should not read the locality in the title too literally. It is in fact an ironical treatment of the scarce historical and national awareness of Belarussians, and an idirect reference to the famous classical Belarussian drama („The Locals” by Janko Kupała).
Czobat’s poems do not treat about flowers and beautiful women. He continually ponders the nature of the Belarussians and Belarus. These are essay poems, distinguished by an incredible ability to express a grand thought in merely few lines. The titles are symptomatic: „1866. Some scenes from the provincial town of Grodno”, „A letter to Piotr Habanowicz after the February Revolution of 1917”, „An unposted letter to Janko Kupała”, „A ballad about myself and my Soviet wife Luba, and also about the black cat Justas”, „Maxim’s and Veronica’s tram romance”, or „The 1920”.
Poetry of Aleś Czobat stores a heavy loading of aesthetic and, at the same time, intellectual emotions. They are also somehow a shortened course in Belarussian history in poetic pictures, unique in their honesty and devoid of the banal propensity to create myths.
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