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.