#marek lugowski

[neon-innessa]

Zbigniew Herbert

NIKE WHO HESITATES

Most beautiful is Nike at the instant when she hesitates the right hand beautiful like a command leans against the air but her wings are aquiver

because she sees a lone youth he is walking a long rut of a war wagon along a gray road in a gray landscape of rocks and an occasional juniper bush

this youth will soon die just now the scale with his fate falls suddenly to the ground

Nike has a tremendous desire to walk up and kiss him in the forehead but she is afraid that he who has not known yet the sweetness of fondling upon knowing it might run away like the others at the time of battle and so Nike hesitates and finally resolves to remain in a position which she was taught by the sculptors very much ashamed of this moment of feeling moved

she understands well that tomorrow at dawn they must find the boy with his chest open eyes closed and a tart obol of fatherland under the stiff tongue

(trans. by Marek Lugowski)

[wishmachines]

I don’t believe that literature should not entertain and humor us, but the goal which it must never surrender is that of being a medium for the intellectual, the philosophical, and the reflective (about the human condition).

Stanisław Lem, interviewed by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay in “Twenty-Two Answers and Two Postscripts” (translated by Marek Lugowski)

[wishmachines]

The literature of the 20th century has lost its battle, or at least finds itself in retreat. I can see more and more books in bookstores, yet fewer and fewer ones that I would like to read. The tales of refugees from totalitarian countries reduce themselves to an exhaustive catalogue of social and psychological suffering that such systems treat their citizens to. These books cannot pick their readers up, and the lessons they teach are not pleasant. One could say that the job of literature is not primarily to entertain, move, and cheer us up, but as Conrad said, to “bring the visible world to justice.” Well, in order to bring this world to justice, it is first necessary to understand it with one’s intellect, to appreciate the wealth of its diversity. That, however, is now impossible, at least for any narrative convention involving plot, the sort that was crafted into perfection by 19th-century prose. (A fine exemplar, if not pinnacle, of this sort of prose is Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for it contains both a sweeping historical view and a focus on individual people and groups.) Since I consider this epic approach no longer feasible today, if only because a microcosm of a few individuals does nothing to reflect the larger macrocosm of our planet, I aim instead to create models of the major problems that lie ahead of us, problems that humanity will have to face right now and in the coming decades.

Stanisław Lem, interviewed by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay in “Twenty-Two Answers and Two Postscripts” (translated by Marek Lugowski)

[wishmachines]

Love is a matter of individuals. It is the fulfillment of the human psyche’s expectations. An individual is able to feel love towards only a small number of the closest persons, be it erotic love, parental, or other—for example, religiously inspired. In my private life, this emotion plays perhaps the main role. But one cannot really love humanity. It is impossible even to get to know all coexisting persons. So put, “love of humanity” is a pure abstraction, entirely impotent in the face of the world’s dramatic problems. This is why making love the subject of a book is tantamount to closing one’s eyes to the problems of the world, and because of this alone, it would hinge on being escapist. Of course, these are strictly my private convictions. I do not believe that love can save nations or entire societies. This may be why love has taken the backseat in my writing.

Stanisław Lem, interviewed by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay in “Twenty-Two Answers and Two Postscripts” (translated by Marek Lugowski)

[wishmachines]

When I write, the process of writing has nothing in common with building a house, a bottom-up activity based on a top-down design (involving architects, investors, builders, and workers). Both the structure of the plot and the adventures of the characters come into being as I write. The initial state of the book is but a nebulous, extremely loose bunch of ideas. The final state—after the writing is done—is still a nebulous, rather loose bunch of ideas, albeit markedly less nebulous and less loose. Nevertheless, this uncertainty never totally shrinks away. For example, even then, I have no clue as to the worth of the new work. I do not know how it will be read and understood by its various readers, whether they will be bored or thrilled. Usually, all my books are first read by my wife, and very often I have gone along with her (highly critical) remarks. It has also often happened that I would not agree with her: for example, when she considered my descriptions of the library in Solaris as spurious. In other works, occasionally I had an inner certitude that the text had to remain in its initial form. I cannot explain that feeling and whence it comes.

Stanisław Lem, interviewed by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay in “Twenty-Two Answers and Two Postscripts” (translated by Marek Lugowski)

[allyourprettywords]

"[Untitled]," Halina Poświatowska

be near me close because only then i am not chilled

the cold roars in from space

when i think how big she is as compared to me

then i am in need of your two interlocked arms two rays of the universe