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Poems Letters Drawings

Cyprian Norwid

Edited by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

Translated by Christine Brooke-Rose, Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer

Cover Picture of Poems Letters Drawings
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Paperback
ISBN: 978 1 857545 01 2
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Published: October 2000
216 x 135 mm
128 pages
Publisher: Carcanet Press
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  • Mischance, ferocious, shaggy, fixed its look
    On man, gazed at him, deathly grey,
    And waited for the time it knew he took
    To turn away.

    But man, who is an artist measuring
    The angle of his model's elbow joint,
    Returned that look and made the churlish thing
    Serve his aesthetic point.
    Mischance, the brawny, when the dust had cleared
    Had disappeared.


    'Fate'

               
    The story of Cyprian Norwid (1821-83) is a tragic one. Orphaned early, in a Warsaw bleak and oppressed after the defeat of the 1830 rising, he was recognised as a poet. As soon as he reached his majority he chose exile. In Paris and elsewhere he found the Polish community, befriending among others Chopin and writing brilliantly about him and his circle. In London, living in the poorest neighbourhoods, he composed his poem Larwa. He bases his syllabic verse on the rhythms of common speech, a novelty at the time for Polish, as for other European verse. His masterpiece is the long poem Promethidion (1851).

    Selected Writings includes a range of his verse in formal translations which replicate in English the inflections of the originals, selections from the formal and informal prose, and other material crucial to placing Norwid back on the map of European literature.
    Cyprian Norwid
    CYPRIAN NORWID studied sculpture briefly in Italy, went to Paris and then to America (1852) whence he returned to Europe in even greater poverty than he had departed. He died penniless in Paris. His work was rediscovered by the poet and critic Przesmycki at the beginning of the twentieth century. ... read more
    Christine Brooke-Rose
    Christine Brooke-Rose was born in Geneva and educated at Somerville College, Oxford and University College, London. She taught at the University of Paris, Vincennes, from 1968 to 1988 and lived for many years in the south of France. Carcanet publish her novels Amalgamemnon , Xorandor , Verbivore and Textermination and her ... read more
    Burns Singer
    Born in 1928, Burns Singer was brought up in Glasgow. After four years as a marine biologist in Aberdeen, he became a freelance literary journalist in London. Still and All , and his classic study of the British fishing industry, Living Silver , appeared in 1957. He died of heart failure ... read more
    Praise for Christine Brooke-Rose If we are ever to experience in English the serious practice of narrative as the French have developed it over the last few years, we shall have to attend to Christine Brooke-Rose.
    Frank Kermode on Thru
    If we are ever to experience in English the serious practice of narrative as the French have developed it over the last few years, we shall have to attend to Christine Brooke-Rose.
    Frank Kermode on Thru
    Out represents quite a new departure in Miss Brooke-Rose's work... a splendid achievement...
    Isobel English
    Such is a runaway success for her original technique... funny, painful, exciting, haunting...
    Elizabeth Smart
    Her finest novel completely succeeds because subject and language are one.
    Angus Wilson on Between
    If we are ever to experience in English the serious practice of narrative as the French have developed it over the last few years, we shall have to attend to Christine Brooke-Rose.
    Frank Kermode on Thru
    Out represents quite a new departure in Miss Brooke-Rose's work... a splendid achievement...
    Isobel English
    Such is a runaway success for her original technique... funny, painful, exciting, haunting...
    Elizabeth Smart
    Her finest novel completely succeeds because subject and language are one.
    Angus Wilson on Between
    She is a sublime rollercoaster: hold on and hurtle with her - the ride will be exhilarating.
    Spectator
    We always need to have somebody who is willing to venture into the still vast terra incognita of fiction.
    Sunday Telegraph
    Her finest novel completely succeeds because subject and language are one.
    Angus Wilson on Between
    Such is a runaway success for her original technique... funny, painful, exciting, haunting...
    Elizabeth Smart
    Out represents quite a new departure in Miss Brooke-Rose's work... a splendid achievement...
    Isobel English
    Lesley Chamberlain, Times Literary Supplement , 29th July 2005
    Relaxation with ashes
    Cyprian Kamil Norwid was, in the view of the outstanding Slavist Roman Jakobson, "one of the greatest world poets of the later nineteenth century". read more
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