Are Things Worse or Is This Normal? Polish Poetry in the 1990s

Abstract

I can't shake my fear that there won't be enough room in this important periodical for my hasty perusals of ten years of Polish poetry. That said, it's hard to imagine that a topic this hot, and this internally convoluted and vast, could fit into even the longest conference paper. So, I must here admit to an awkward dilemma: Dissertation or feuilleton? Should I thoroughly investigate one select aspect, or briefly overview the--unknowable, even nonexistent--whole? My commission expressly indicates a feuilleton, i.e., a genre that is not only inadequate, but for a number of reasons, simply impossible. But why? First, there's the problem of the language that we've used so far in discussing Polish poetry of the 1990s: it has undergone a significant and irreversible deterioration, which is only natural given the erosion or decay of hopes and illusions that were still vital only a few years ago. Around 1996, there occurred a climax of popular interest in the activities of the so-called bruLion generation and, at the same time, a culmination of that generation's original dynamic. As soon as the leading critical works by authors of this new generation appeared--beginning with Jaroslaw Klejnocki and Jerzy Sosnowski's Chwilowe zawieszenie broni (Momentary ceasefire, 1996) and Izolda Kiec and Rafal Grupinski's Niebawem spadnie bloto (The mud's about to fall, 1997), and followed by a series of critical approximations and investigations, among them Mieczyslaw Orski's Autokreacje i mitologie (Autocreations and mythologies, 1997), Marian Stala's Druga strona (The other side, 1997), Jerzy Jarzebski's Apetyt na przemiane (An appe tite for change, 1997), and Przemyslaw Czaplinski's prolegomena to modern Polish literature, Sladow prezelomu (Signs of the turn, 1997)--the pre-1996 way of talking about works by younger writers lost much of its usefulness, either because its generational or scene-oriented specificity had reached saturation, or because it showed deficiencies when confronted with the language of literary analysis. In the abovementioned books, as well as in a few journal articles, that style either fulfilled itself or was indirectly unmasked. This phenomenon, which took place over time, couldn't have happened if the new literature itself hadn't just then begun to cool down its passions of the previous several years. The diagnosis of the new poetry and prose was fueled by the lexicalization of these writers' most significant attitudes and poetics, and paralleled the sclerotic processes of their nurse-like or companion-like critics. Paradoxical evidence for this is the fact that in the same year, 1996, new books were publi shed by a number of bruLion authors, including Marcin Baran (Sprzeczne fragmenty [Conflicting fragments]), Marcin Swietlicki (Trzecia potowa [The third half]), Milosz Biedrzycki (PYL/LYP [Dust/squint]), Maciej Melecki (Niebezpiecznie blisko [Dangerously close]),Anna Piwkowska (Skaza [Flaw]), Ewa Sonnenberg (Hazard [Hazard]), Artur Szlosarek (Popiot i miod [Ashes and honey]), Krzysztof Sliwka (Niepogoda dla kangura [Bad weather for the kangaroo]), Adam Wiedemann (Samczyk [Male]), Wojciech Wencel (Oda na dzien sw. Cecylii [Ode for St. Cecilia's day]), and Jaroslaw Zalesinski (Wiersze i slady [Poems and traces]). There hasn't been a season that good since. Literary discussions have diminished, the situation for journals has become increasingly grim, literary debuts (in the form of second or third books...) take place without the publicity of previous years, the young poet no longer wakens great hopes, he's had kids, he's lost his looks, he's no longer treated as unpredictable or dangerous. Caught in a net of con cepts, pinned into place in the canon, outfitted with labels like master or epigone, he has, one might say, finally come to conform to the picture of contemporary literature. Indeed, there's something intriguing about the fact that 1996 saw the demise of the magazine Nowy Nurt (New Current) and the inception of the nagroda Nike (the Nike Prize). …