A Note on Zuzanna Ginczanka, and: Fizjologia, and: Physiology, and: Ucieczka, and: Escape, and: O centaurach, and: On centaurs Joanna T. Huss (bio) A Note on Zuzanna Ginczanka Getting at the sensuous in life through the sensuality of language, the poetry of Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917-1944) is unlike anything else in Polish literature. She chose Polish as her language of poetic expression (Russian was her mother tongue) and enlivened it. Born Zuzanna Polina Gincburg in 1917 into a Jewish family in Kiev, Ginczanka grew up in provincial Równe, Poland (now Rivne, Ukraine), where her parents had fled the Russian Revolution. In order to pursue her education and escape provincial life, she left for Warsaw, where she found her footing in the city's vibrant literary scene. At a time when colloquial speech had begun to enter the language of poetry, she was a bold purveyor of archaisms disguised as neologisms, reviving the language of earlier centuries to reinvigorate poetry in the interwar period. From the avant-garde, she borrowed its branching metaphors and made them blossom. Translating Ginczanka often finds me reaching for a dictionary, and then setting it aside in favor of an even older dictionary, where a word that seemed invented turns out to have been simply unearthed. Thematically, Ginczanka explored the senses and lived experience, with death often hovering over the page and at times searing it. "Physiology" is from an unpublished manuscript dating to 1934, shortly after her seventeenth birthday. Writing about death at such a young age—she wrote these three poems between the ages of seventeen and nineteen—ironically helped seed her immortality. Ginczanka's life was cut short by the war: she was 22 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and was murdered by them in 1944 at the age of 27. She published but a single collection of poems, 1936's On Centaurs (O Centaurach), the title poem of which is included here. "Escape" appeared in 1937 in the journal Skamander (a pivotal journal named for the river that snaked around Troy). At the outset of the war, Ginczanka found herself in Lwów, which the Soviets occupied until the Nazi invasion in 1941. Then came the extermination of Jews, and relentless pursuit of those, like her, who went into hiding. In what came to be her last surviving poem, known by its first line as "non omnis moriar" (I shall not wholly die), Ginczanka interrogates Poland's exclusionary nationalist literary tradition and indicts the neighbor who gave her up as a Jew to the Nazis. Several years after Ginczanka's death, the poem served as evidence at trial, landing her denouncer a four-year prison sentence. [End Page 131] Fizjologia Pod opalonym naskórkiem krew podrażniona boli –w krętych opętlach tętnic życie wylewa wisłą,w cienki nabłonek wargi ciśnie się krwawo półkolem,rumieńcem zgrzanych policzków w manifest chce mi wytrysnąć –cieszę się: życie! (wykrzyknik); oddechom daję posłuch,że niby: lat siedemnaście,że niby: jestem szczęśliwa,a przecież jestem nadziana na pal, na własny kręgosłup(mam w sobie śmierć nieuchronną jak igła krążąca w żyłach)to nie da się przekabacić,i nie da się przeżebrać:w prześwicie słońca przez dłonie mogę pięć kości dostrzec –pod pomarańczą piersi jest suche jak gałąź żebroa pod gibkimi mięśniami jest sztywno chruściasty kościec –Oczami jak agrafkamiostro wpięłam się w świat,żółto strzelony promieńw źrenicę wwiercił się jak świder –znienacka srebrzystym dyskiemblask w odbłysk tęczówki wpadł,znienacka w przymknięciu powiekwzrok z chwytu świata się wydarł –pamiętasz jaki ma znakw dwa serca rozcięta grusza –i jaki na wargach smakzostawia jabłeczny rozgryz?soczysty wytrysk czereśnigdy podniebiem ją zdusiszjest zwiastowaniem bolesnymi lipca chrzęstem szczodrym – Ostrość. Czujność. I baczność.: broń naostrzona – zmysływ walce z dniem, co jest dzisiaj [End Page 132] zdobywam następny dzień –zgrzyt żwiru, żarna i żużlujest wiedzy tajnym domysłema łupem jest to i tamtoi wszystko, wszystko, co wiem...